Anyone seeing Mum and me walking arm in arm in the autumn sunshine, a curly-haired child bounding ahead of us, would imagine we are the perfect multi-generational family.
And in many ways we are perfect. Yet our family is very different from yours. In fact, we may be the only such family in the UK.
That’s because all three of us – Mum, my son and I – are adopted.
Despite not sharing a drop of DNA, our bond is every bit as deep and loving as if we were genetically connected.
On the phone, my mum Veronica, 85, and I sound so alike that people often confuse us.
 Samantha and her mother Veronica, 85, and son Albert, 12, may not be genetically connected but they share a deep and loving bond
Albert, the son, now 12, I adopted with my partner, meanwhile, has my love of the outdoors and we have the same inquisitive minds and sensitive nature.
Yet while we three have all experienced adoption, our history shows just how much the process has changed since my mother was born in 1939.
Then adoption – or, more specifically, the illegitimacy that led to it – carried such a stigma that my grandparents, Olive and Frank, who adopted Mum after losing a baby of their own, never discussed her past.
All Mum was told was that her mother had died in childbirth.
There was no information about her father and no photos or documents that would have let her learn more about her birth family.
Still, Mum grew up happy with her little brother, who was born a few years after the adoption, and never questioned her own background.
Like most women, Mum assumed that she would have her own children. She met my dad, Keith, at her local tennis club in Bromley, Kent, when she was 22 and he 31.
As soon as they married in 1961, they started trying for a baby. But a medical issue – one that could easily be rectified these days – meant Mum couldn’t conceive. Although they were both disappointed, given her own background, Mum had no qualms about adoption.
Dad was equally open to the idea. So too, of course, were Olive and Frank, who were the most loving, kind grandparents anyone could wish for.
Having made the decision to adopt, everything happened at lightning speed. My parents approached the Catholic Children’s Society in 1964.
In February 1965, they were ushered into a house in Hove, East Sussex, where I was being cared for by a foster mother. I was just six weeks old.
My parents walked out of the door with me plus a change of clothes and a tin of condensed milk.
Wandering down to the beach, they were sitting on a bench when a passer-by stopped to admire me and ask my age. My poor mother, then 26, was so startled she couldn’t remember.
My parents never hid the fact I was adopted. When they adopted my baby sister Gabby when I was two, they took me along to meet her.
Veronica with Samantha as a baby. She was just six weeks old when they adopted her
 Becoming a mum at 48 was taxing, but Albert has completed me. I adore this quirky little person who’s inquisitive and full of fun, says Samantha
I assumed everyone collected their siblings like this, and was six years old before I understood the implications.
A friend at primary school had asked me if I was adopted – I expect her parents had been gossiping.
It was so normal in our family that I just answered: ‘Yes, of course.’
She fixed me with a pitying stare. ‘That means you didn’t come out of your mummy’s tummy,’ she said.
For the first time I felt like an outsider. It was a horrible feeling.
Back home, Mum tried to explain that there was nothing wrong with being adopted. In our family, she said, Dad was the odd one out.
Even so, suddenly I felt different to all my friends. Unlike Mum, who had been content to accept that her birth mother was dead, as I grew up I needed to know where I came from.
Although my parents told me all they knew, that information was woefully limited. I had been born in Brighton to a young career woman who had fallen pregnant in New York. Obliged to come home to give birth, she had disappeared to Barbados for work as soon as the adoption was formalised.
Picturing someone who had put her career before me was hard to come to terms with and, all through my teens, I struggled with anxiety and a sense of disconnection.
Acting was my outlet and, at 21, I went to drama school, before taking a succession of jobs – aromatherapist, nanny, saleswoman – as I travelled around the world.
My love life was every bit as chaotic. I desperately wanted children who would have my genes running through them.
But, conversely, I kept men at a distance; like many adopted children,
I struggled with the fear of rejection.
I often toyed with the idea of tracking down my birth mother. However, Mum was worried that I might uncover something painful and admitted she found the thought of me hunting for another mother upsetting. So rather than risk hurting her, I put it on the back burner.
But by the time I was 33, I realised my feelings of rootlessness would never go away unless I learned the truth. I loved my parents but I also had to know where I came from. So, in 1998, I contacted the Catholic Children’s Society and asked to see my file.
Samantha’s biological father Daniel was American and never knew about her
Samantha says, My mother Elizabeth – Liz – was 26 when she met my dad aboard the SS France sailing to New York to start a new job
All my life I’d thought my birth mother had put herself and her job first. The truth was infinitely sadder.
My mother Elizabeth – Liz – was 26 when she met my American dad, Daniel, 36, aboard the SS France sailing to New York, where she’d secured a job at a publishing company. They carried on dating in Manhattan and there were even plans for him to move in with my mother, but her flatmate was worried that their boss would disapprove.
With nowhere to live, my father left New York and they lost contact before my mother discovered she was pregnant. He never knew about me.
It’s hard to imagine how she must have felt, watching the future she’d planned implode.
Seven months pregnant, she returned to her parents in England, who had retired to Hove.
She told the Catholic Children’s Society that, with no partner and no job, she felt her only option was to give me to a couple who could provide a better life.
The social worker described her as ‘an intelligent, attractive girl from a good family who knows the difficulties that lie ahead’.
Just a few days after I was born at Brighton Hospital in January 1965, Liz – who had named me Jacqueline – handed me to my foster mother.
She must have been traumatised. When the social worker asked her to be at the final handover and meet my parents, I read she begged to be excused. Seeing me again would be too overwhelming.
I felt immensely moved by what I had discovered and very excited about finding Liz, who would still only be 60.
Yet the next document I was able to find was Liz’s death certificate; she had died of lung cancer three years earlier, aged just 57.
I have never felt more devastated. I had been yearning to meet my biological mother for so long. Now I would never hear her voice or touch her.
I held it together on the train home, then burst into tears in Mum’s arms. She understood, as only someone who has been adopted can. But eventually, from that great sadness, came something wonderful. Liz’s death had been registered by her sister Jenny and there was an address.
I contacted Jenny through the Catholic Children’s Society, who sent her a carefully worded letter saying that someone wanted to be in touch.
Cautiously, we started corresponding – she had known about my birth – and, after a few weeks, we met at a cafe in London.
It was the strangest sensation. She felt instantly familiar and we talked for five hours.
Jenny said it was like getting her sister back – we share identical curly hair and the same mannerisms – while I felt I had connected with Liz.
I discovered my biological mum was kind and thoughtful, loyal to her friends and a great traveller like me.
Although she had a brief marriage, she never had more children. Very private, she rarely talked about my birth. While Mum was thrilled I had found Jenny, she admitted that she found it easier to accept an aunt than a mother. Since adopting Albert, I understand her anxiety.
Around the same time, Mum was unearthing revelations about her own origins. My grandparents died when Mum was in her 60s, and while we were cleaning out their house I came across her birth certificate buried in a cardboard box in the attic.
Far from dying in childbirth, it turned out her mother was a young unmarried woman who had no means to keep her baby. There was no information about her birth father.
Mum was devastated. The story she’d lived with was a fantasy.
While she didn’t blame her parents for hiding the truth, as she knew they had done it to protect her from the stigma of illegitimacy, it left her feeling destabilised, as though her foundations had been ripped away.
Although her birth mother may still have been alive at that point – something I felt very excited about – Mum was anxious about what other dark secrets were lurking, so made the decision not to probe any further. She’s never regretted her decision.
Yet due to my inquisitive nature, I have taken a different approach with my own birth family.
I was so overjoyed to find Jenny that I’ve since used an ancestry website’s DNA testing kit that led me to cousins in America. Although, like my dad, they had no inkling that I existed, they were delighted to hear from me. They told me that, like my mother, my father – an accomplished photographer and writer – never had more children.
I wrote to him asking to be in contact but he told my cousins he wasn’t interested.
After losing the chance to meet Liz, it was particularly wounding, even though my cousins explained it wasn’t me, that he was something of a loner.
He died aged 93 in 2022. Though we never met, shortly before he died my cousins took a video of him. By then he was weak and frail. But just from watching him chat, I could tell what a fascinating character he had been. I really treasure the video.
After I’d discovered the truth about my origins, I felt much calmer and more settled.
Like Mum, I’d always wanted to give birth to a baby who shared my genes but the circumstances were never right.
Then, at 42, I met Steve, a teacher, through friends and knew that, at last, I had found a life partner. However, I was fast approaching the menopause and, when we started trying to conceive, nothing happened.
At 46, a London fertility clinic confirmed I would never get pregnant. Once I realised it was impossible, I knew instantly I’d be happy to adopt.
Steve, who is ten years younger than me, took longer to think about it. He was acutely aware it was a serious step. I was thrilled when he said he was ready.
Samantha, with her adoptive mum Veronica and sister Gabby, have a close connection
Samantha’s adoptive mum Veronica as a baby with her adoptive mother Olive
Mum was also enthusiastic. While she would have been delighted if I’d had a baby of my own, having a child via adoption brought us even closer. But both of us were surprised at what lay ahead. Suffice to say, the adoption process is now very different than when my parents adopted me.
Then they only had to sign up to an agency and have a brief interview before being presented with a baby. Now, over the course of a year, every aspect of our lives, home and finances was picked over.
Steve and I attended courses, had regular meetings with social workers and did mountains of paperwork. We learnt about the psychological impact on children who are adopted and the importance of early bonding – something that was never considered in the 1960s, let alone the 1930s.
For me, it was particularly illuminating given my own feelings of insecurity and those of my sister Gabby, who is still contemplating whether to look for her own birth mother. In fact, I feel so passionately about the issues thrown up by adoption, I now work as a learning support assistant concentrating on adopted children.
After an agonising year waiting to be matched, one crisp cold day in late 2012 I found myself meeting a baby with an enormous smile – just as my mum had done almost 50 years earlier.
Not quite a year old, Albert had been living with foster parents since his birth, when it was obvious his mother couldn’t cope.
But while Steve’s heart melted, I took longer to bond. Expecting an instant sense of connection – especially given my own background – I panicked.
My social worker reassured me this was normal, and Mum – who had experienced the same thing – promised me that love would come.
Of course, she was right. After a few visits to the foster carer, I took Albert, strapped to my chest, for a walk. Feeling his little heart against mine, I fell in love.
A few weeks later, we took him home before formally adopting him six months later. Becoming a mum at 48 was taxing, but Albert has completed me. I adore this quirky little person who’s inquisitive and full of fun.
In contrast to Mum and me, we know all about Albert’s background. He has a book detailing his life story and photos of his birth family. By agreement, he also has occasional ‘letterbox’ contact – an exchange of letters and cards – with his birth family.
I think it strikes the right balance. He knows he has, in me and Steve, parents who will always love him. But unlike me and Mum, there is no secrecy about his roots. I think it helps make him happy and well-adjusted.
I feel so strongly that we show you don’t need to be related to be a family. Families can be built as well as birthed. Albert tells people that he plans to adopt one day, too. For him, it’s the most normal thing in the world.
■Some names have been changed. As told to Tessa Cunningham.
 This National Adoption Week, Samantha is supporting You Can Adopt’s campaign ‘The Journey’ to highlight that the road to a family doesn’t have to be a traditional one, and that families come in all shapes and sizes. To find out more about adoption or starting your adoption journey, visit youcanadopt.co.uk/nawÂ
