Adoptee: The Real Story
This is the real me. It doesn’t get much realer than this.
So how is it then, that my name, Louise Bhabra, doesn’t reflect my true ethnicity?
I’m Irish and Pakistani by birth, but my adopters were from the UK and India. Makes more sense now, doesn’t it?
So here we are, my story of reconciling a name with a heritage and piecing together a life that began with a complicated history.
The Early Bond
It was the 1970s. Fourteen days after I was born, moral-welfare officers arrived at the hospital in the north of England where my mother and I were together. She wasn’t married to my father, although he had very much wanted to be part of my life. Knowing this still brings comfort today.
My mother and I shared two precious weeks before we were separated, because she was unmarried. She would often take me out of the ward just to hold me.
A psychotherapist once told me that as humans we absorb those early moments the touch, the warmth, the sound of a heartbeat. Our bodies remember before we can think.
That early connection, as brief as it was, became an anchor that stayed with me through all the years of wondering and searching. It was a memory without words, buried deep in the subconscious, yet it shaped everything.
“Our bodies remember before we can think.”
Searching For Each Other
During my primary-school years, my mother travelled from her Northern hometown to Worthing where the adoption agency that handled my case was based. She believed she might find me.
When she arrived at Worthing station, someone told her that was also an East Worthing and a West Worthing station; she was definitely there. She visited the seafront, stayed two nights in a guest house, and walked along the beach. Dreaming and hoping, that by some miracle she might catch sight of a little girl she’d only ever seen as a baby. Perhaps I’d be playing by the shore and laughing at the waves. And talking of dreams, at around the same time, little me was looking for her in my own way.
When the Women’s Weekly magazine arrived, I’d scour through it. All twelve pence of it. I was studying the faces of the models next to the knitting patterns. Searching for a woman, with blue eyes and mid brown hair, my mother’s brief description from the adoption agency.
As I chewed on my tangy pink and orange fruit-salad sweets, I’d imagine that if not this week, then maybe next week, she’d appear on one of those glossy pages; and somehow, find me and take me home.
But of course, she wasn’t going to find me on a beach, any more than I was going to find her in the Woman’s Weekly magazine, styling the latest knitwear. Yet those shared dreams gave us hope against all odds. A bit like an invisible thread, that kept us both searching, each in our own way.
“She believed she might find me”.
The Journey to Truth and Healing
Growing up, I often felt different like an outsider looking in. My identity was a puzzle I couldn’t quite solve, and I needed to piece it together to understand who I was.
My life became a long journey of self-discovery, filled with questions about nature and nurture. I held onto the belief that there had to be more to uncover, even when the world seemed indifferent to my search.
In those moments of profound otherness, I clung to the hope that one day I would know what really happened. And so, I kept going.
Healing came through reunion, answers, understanding and the exchange and validation of experiences that had lived too long in silence.
Reunion, has brought its own challenges in a long and winding path of patience, resilience, and above all…love.
“..a long journey of self-discovery..”
From Story to Practice
My work as a Hypnotherapist grew from that same lifelong search for answers.
Over time, I realised that we’re all searching in some way. That search for answers, truth, understanding and connection is at the heart of every healing journey. It’s what drives us to look beneath the surface and ask:
Why do I feel this way?
Why do I keep doing this or that?
What needs to change so I can feel better?
When clients work with me, I recognise that same courage, same willingness to face what’s been hidden and find that inner calm and peace.
So whether you’re here to overcome anxiety, fear, loss, low confidence, or a quiet sense of disconnection, it always begins with the same impulse; the need to understand ourselves.
Every path toward healing begins the same way. With the decision to look for answers.
And when we do, life begins to make sense again.
Ready to begin your own journey of self-discovery?
Sometimes all it takes is one calm conversation to start seeing things more clearly.