There are so many reasons women make the choices they do when it comes to having a child. Whether the decision is raising, aborting, or giving up a child for adoption, it is without a doubt something that is deeply personal. However, it is also a vital part of that child’s story, too, and it can leave kids in the “adoption” bucket with a lot of questions about their identities.
UK woman Lisa Dyke, who recently appeared on the UK show Long Lost Family, was left with so many questions after learning she was mysteriously left outside a health clinic in another child’s stroller in 1969.
Dyke said on the show: “My story started the day I was found. What I need to know now is what happened before. Why was I left in another child’s pram? Who left me? I assume it was my birth mother. I just want to know the truth.”
In 2005, she was finally able to gain access to her adoption file, and she learned that there was a heartbreaking note left with her. It read: “Please take care of her. I cannot and never will be able to give her a good home where she will be happy. She is just born and needs a doctor.”
Upon discovering it, Dyke said, “To actually have the original note means so much to me, because it’s the one thing I’ve got that connects me to her … It takes the negativity of abandonment away because I know she cared.”
She also learned that she had two older siblings and a younger one, who all grew up together. The host of the show, Davina McCall, said the older siblings shared that they were scared many times that social services would take them away since they were so destitute. They also confessed that they had no idea Dyke even existed and Dyke was shocked to learn that her parents were together at the time of her birth. Her father was away a lot as a merchant seaman and truck driver, Dyke was told. He left the family when the youngest was 7 years old.
Sadly, she learned that her birth parents both died before she got to meet them, but she is now building a relationship with her siblings.
“I can start to see perhaps now what the picture was … to understand why she felt that she couldn’t keep me if he wasn’t always there,” Dyke said.
