Will You be Here When I Get Home?

What is the experience of being an adopted person really like? An honest look at how adoption can affect the individual, families and partners. Why? Why was I given up for adoption?’ Claire Cashin lived with this question as a child and a young adult, and now she needs an answer. But the journey she is about to embark on is full of potential heartache and difficulties: what if her birth mother is dead, or rejects her? As a child she believed that she was adopted because her mother didn’t love her enough and she constantly sought approval from her adoptive family. She loves her family and doesn’t want to do anything that might hurt them, yet she feels that the need to seek out her birth mother is imperative if she is to find out who she really is and finally provide some answers to her questions. The consequences of search and reunion for everyone involved, from birth parents to adoptive parents, siblings to partners, are explored in this book with honesty and insight. Will You Be Here When I Get Home? offers hope and advice to all those contemplating their own search, but above all it is Claire’s story. Her search has a fairytale ending, but forming a bond with her new family might not be as easy as she had expected. Claire Cashin was adopted. In her youth, she experienced many personal challenges because her birth mother ‘gave her away’. This led her in search of her biological mother. This is a true and very honest account of adoption, search and reunion. It examines in depth how adoption can affect the individual and their loved ones. It does not shy away from the reality of what a reunion can mean and how hard it can be at times, or indeed what joy it can add to peoples lives. The story describes in fascinating detail what the reality can be like for many adopted people and what challenges their families may face as they mature and wonder about the circumstances of their adoption. It attempts to offer advice to anyone considering searching for their own answers, from someone who has gone through the process, made the mistakes, learned some lessons along the way and is still smiling. This book describes the mistakes and triumphs she made along the way and how the news of a new birth family has affected her adopted family in Cork, and changed Claire forever. It gives hope and advice to families who wish to help and understand the dynamics involved in adoption and reunion.