Jo Western

Adopted people are one of the most highly represented groups in mental health services. This isn’t because adoptees are unstable or emotionally fragile. It’s because the architecture they grew inside has never been understood. Public narratives — abandoned, unwanted, given up — shape how adoptees are spoken to and interpreted. Questions become invasive. Reassurance becomes erasure. The difficulties adoptees face are structural, created by the early architecture of severance and the frameworks...

When I think about roots and earth for adopted people, I recognise how complex these words can be, especially for those adopted in the closed‑adoption era. For most people, roots come from family lines, familiar stories, and the ground they were born into. But for adoptees, the architecture begins with a severance and a forced reconnection.