Barbara Sumner Barbara Sumner

The baby or the fridge

1960 was a big year for my adopting parents. First came the infertility diagnosis. Then a new baby arrived with little warning and no fanfare. Followed within days by a new refrigerator.

I was one of over 103,000 New Zealand babies forcibly removed from my single mother. Her dying mother sent her to the doctor’s house with a couple of months to spare. The generous Dr Gerald Gleeson put her to work cleaning and scrubbing. Weeks before I was born he promised me away to the “an attractive young couple who belong to the Church of England."

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Barbara Sumner Barbara Sumner

I'm So Special

How special do you feel? What factors make up your sense of special – or otherwise?
Many adopted people remember being told they were ‘special.’  “We chose you,” is a standard phrase for adopted people.
At the same time, it is implied there is no difference between you and the non-adopted.
The law backs this up, stating the child is “as if” born to the adopters.

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Barbara Sumner Barbara Sumner

Why I hate biographies

I have a friend who loves biographies. She’s always telling me to read accounts of dire lives turned around, the fall and rise of a star or a tragedy overcome.
But I can’t. Biographies and especially autobiographies unsettle me. It is not the sweep of grand lives that leaves me undone. It is the minutiae.

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