The featured image for May on Researching Reform is by Paul Brian Tovey, an adult adoptee who was abused by his adoptive parents as a child.
Paul now campaigns for adoptees to have the legal right to revert back to their birth identities.
Paul’s paintings reflect his experiences as an adoptee including the loss of identity he suffered as a result of being forcibly adopted.
The painting is titled, “Meeting Scriffyjannibiter.” Speaking to Researching Reform, Paul said:
“I found a first (birth) cousin who had punk rock hair and we talked a lot on the phone. Really it made me weep afterwards. So I realised I had to do a picture to make the fondness come alive and be cheeky too. The picture was for her (my cousin) to smile at for her having wonderful mad hair.
Her name is Jane Ann and she has a wonderful sister named Lynn. They are my birth father’s twin sister’s daughters, so that’s a wonderful plus for me to find. It hurts to find people who were alive for years when I was so isolated. So it’s a blessing by the Tragic Spirits of Fate, paid for in tears and wisdoms. Silvered grief.
She only had punk rock spiky hair back in the 1980’s now she has gone really sensible like me. Time does not matter to me though. I live in all of it for the sake of collecting up my identity, here and there. In my bucket.”
Paul is our “artist in residence,” and we are very grateful to him for allowing us to share his unique and brilliant work.
Researching Reform 
Ironically beautiful when you know a piece of your story behind it.
LikeLike
As a mother of loss to adoption, 55 years next week. I always had this image, and wished yi had the artist brush to paint. I am crying from the top of a mountain thousands of tears of unfathomable loss, they lustre all the colours of the rainbow as they fall, causing the most beautiful rainbow arora, and clouds with silver lining. I so wanted my baby, I so wanted a reunion where we could be FAMILY, adoption destroyed that, and sapped the marrow from my bones, leaving, a bottomless abyss of sorrow. Mara.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m so sorry Mara. Sending you all my love xxxxx
LikeLike
Oh poor Mara …. Such sheer sided images of deep sorrow ..You make me weep and feel so much. I so understand from the other side of this sad equation of Adoption .. Adoption presents a thousand different stories – so many are full of pains ..
I try my best to give a landscape for pains and grief .. I’ve been in therapy over 30 years to survive the losses and abuses ..I need to do Art for the sake of split off parts in me and retrieving childhood grief properly I could not cry out so long ago ..
Like you I will go to sleep with some aches and pains that life cheated me out of a fuller promise of itself ..Life forces some of us into courage and bravery . We do it because we do it as our lives, though we mourn endlessly .. One way or another .. Anguish drives us to have voice and make reform for other lives ….
Many flowers from the heart to you … xxxx
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you. I have terminal cancer. Just to have a day, half a day,with my son, would be like a diamond tear, coming alive. Yet, the crumbs from the adoption table, I give thanks for. We the teenage unmarried mothers of yesteryear, the Forgotten
Mothers, the Forgotten Nation within our nation, our crime, NO WEDDING RING, one of the worst human rights abuses known, FORCED ADOPTION. Kindest regards. Mara
LikeLiked by 1 person
I am so sorry for your pain, I wish I had the words to stop it. I admire your courage and your strength.
LikeLiked by 1 person
We have campaigned in Scotland for an Adoption Apology, that will herald in REFORM, Forced Adoption Scotland, also MAA. Trusting a new era, where children needing to be separated, will have kinship care, legal guardianship, or total adoption reform , where mothers,father,sons,daughter’s of loss to adoption, can contribute to a centre of excellence for child-care, that encapsulates, all relevant service. No longer spearheaded by unprofessional’s only those trained in this 1field, ie child psychologist, adoption psychologist’s, deeming untrained social work null and void in this field.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Love and kindness sent from an old Adoptee that lost mommy too in 1957 – 60 …
LikeLike
((((((((((( warm tartan hugs Paul-Brian) )))))))) I am so sorry for All of your losses. Yet, what you have brought to the world, is your wonderful gift of expression through your artistic excellence, borne from such deep pain we see strokes of genius, fun,forboding,joy,sadness. Thank you (((((( double tartan hugs))))))
LikeLike
Special Relativity :
I so loved meeting her with her 80’s mad punk hair
Finding her too on my Adoptee road of long despair
Two years after the Angel of Cancer came for me
Took away parts of me yet gave back some family
It’s so hard to come from the blue blacks of mind
To be the one that had to find you are left behind
To scream at the stars with un-belonging infant fright
To beg for witness, family, and show it all in artistic sight.
x
LikeLike
‘ tae awe the seas gang dry, and the rock’s melt wae the sun, forever etched upon your heart is the day you saw yer mum.
LikeLike
Thats a nice image.
LikeLike