The author of a book giving a unique perspective on adoption has close links with Fermoy.

Aoife Curran (nee McNamara) spent many happy times in Fermoy, visiting her aunt and uncle, Lillian and Dave Fleming on the Rathealy Road, first with her mum and dad, and later, as a teenager with friends. Lillian is Aoife's adoptive mum Maria's sister.

Aoife's book - Searching For Me, My Adoption Story - tells the story of her journey to find her birth mother and father, her life with her adopted parents, whom she describes as "absolutely brilliant" and the story of how she and her husband, when they married, had to go through the adoption process themselves in respect of her eldest child.

HAPPY MEMORIES

Aoife was 10 weeks old when she was adopted. She grew up with her adoptive parents in Rathfarmham in Dublin. They had another adopted child, their son Carl, who is two years older than Aoife and has different birth parents. She had a happy childhood and has nothing but praise for Michael and Maria. "I did struggle at times though to deal with my adoption," Aoife told The Avondhu this week. During those years she'd visit her aunt and uncle and cousins in Fermoy. She remembers those as happy times.

At the age of 18 she started, with the encouragement of her adoptive parents, to search for her birth mother. "I had to wait two years. I had to go through the adoption agency, sending letters through them," she explains. The response wasn't encouraging and Aoife says the adoption agency advised her to drop it. It was her adoptive dad that suggested she try to trace her birth mother herself. She did, using what information she had about her.

Not only did she find her, she discovered that she had been living all along less than five minutes drive from her own home! Aoife even discovered she had her phone number in her phone. It had been the landline number of her best friend. When she gave up the phone the number was reassigned to her birth mother. She had kept the number in her phone, not knowing.

Aoife's adoptive mother accompanied her when she went to meet her birth mother for the first time. Her mother was married when she met her and had two small children. They got on well. Two months later Aoife found herself in the same position as her mother had years before, alone and pregnant. "She really helped me through that process," Aoife recalls.

With the support of her birth mother, Aoife set out to trace her birth father. She turned to Facebook and through it made contact with members of his family in the west of Ireland who told her of his whereabouts. He was in mainland Europe. He was estranged from them too. Having heard about the contact made, he rang Aoife, telling her he thought he might be her father. Her mother hadn't told him about her. Theirs had been an on-off relationship. She had planned to tell him, but found out he was with another woman and so she decided to go it alone.

Aoife says he was very keen to meet her. He arranged to visit. Her birth mother went with her. The meeting took place in a pub and was a disaster. His friend was drunk and threw up on her, her father was the worse for wear. Her mother cut the meeting short, taking her for a meal to get away.

Aoife says her father kept up contact but she grew uncomfortable. "He'd come to Ireland and not tell me but would ring me late at night, not saying who it was. He became obsessive," she recalls.

GOOD RELATIONSHIP

She discontinued contact and got on with her life. Aoife continues to have a good relationship with her birth mother and she is also very close to the adoptive parents she still calls 'Mum and Dad'. She married and had two little girls, Jessica, who is five and two-year-old Grace. She and her husband Daniel now live in Newbridge. They found that to regularise things legally, they both had to adopt her first child, son Jack, who is 10. "So I had that perspective on adoption too, to write about in the book," she explains.

Aoife, who is 31 now, was encouraged by her adoptive mother to write her feelings in a journal when she was a teenager and conflicted about feelings over her adoption. She found it a good way to express her feelings and believes it's what led to her writing the book - 'Searching for Me - My Adoption Story'.

Her aunt Lillian in Fermoy is delighted to see Aoife's book come to fruition. "She was very diligent about it and kept at it," she says. Lillian says her sister Maria and her husband Michael were "extremely giving. They were so open to her finding her birth parents, they felt it was part of her history."

The book is published by the independent publishing company Emu Ink and is available on www.emuink.ie, Amazon and in bookstores in and around Newbridge and Dublin. Locally, it's available from Hanley's Newsagents in Fermoy.

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