About NEPAS Narrative Archive

North East Post Adoption Service - Adoptees

" If we wish to know a man, we ask ' what is his story, his real innermost story? ' for each of us is a biography, a story." Oliver Sacks

People display a natural tendency to organise their life experiences into stories. Adoptive people are no different but their stories often contain complexities that other people never have to think about. Sometimes these questions are so complex that many adoptive people experience great difficulties in discovering what their ' true story ' really is. In part this is because some stories are just very hard or impossible to find out. People move, people die, people change, some people don't want to be remembered or to be reminded.

All families have their difficult stories and their difficulties with certain stories. Often such stories are the stuff of local gossip, or are kept secret to avoid such gossip. Communities and families develop a stock of such stories over time and the telling and retelling of them becomes a means by which people affirm and reaffirm their own identities as well as that of the group. Some people however have stories that don't easily fit in with those of the wider community..

‘It is our experience at Nepas that people who share a part the adoption story often fall into such a category. While stories about finding lost birth parents often have happy endings this is of course not always the case. Finding birth parents and then walking away from them is a different kind of story, a more difficult, complex, and often painful story. NEPAS has created this archive of adoption narratives to enable those who are part of the wider adoption story to listen to other peoples unique take on that story, told in their own way and usually in their own voice. While adoption stories of all kinds are becoming more widely available, these are often presented in a sensational format, and often tied into some social, political, or religious agenda. NEPAS frequently finds that for our clients, this media sensationalism often reinforces the continuing need for a veil of secrecy that the adoption community is often wrapped in.

Listening to other people's stories in the straightforward and direct way offered by the NEPAS archive allows people the opportunity to compare their own unique stories with those they find there. Often people will recognise a particular incident or part of a story that makes them begin to rethink aspects of their own story.

The NEPAS archive is a developing resource and we want to explore the ways in which it can be most useful to the wider 'adoption community'. If any person from the adoption community wishes to add their own story please feel free to contact NEPAS for further details (or press "Add Stories" link). Hopefully as the NUNA archive expands some collective identity may be formed through the sharing of the narratives. People who feel that their story is unknowable or untellable may find a beginning here, by listening to those who share, however distantly, some part of the same story.

These audio narratives have been anonomysed by altering all personal details and places so as to safeguard the identities of the respondents and third parties. We wish to thank all those who have generously offered narratives over the last six months. Some of which have not been used as yet. Should you wish to contribute to, participate in, or comment on the NEPAS archive project please get in touch through the link on our Home Page.

Steve Beveridge Project Leader

Maureen