I was adopted as a baby in 1945, and grew up happy in the love of my wonderful parents. I didn’t think I would ever know the identity of my birth parents, but I wondered about them, especially my mother. As I had my own children later, I thought of her more and more.

In 2000, I learnt her name. She still lived in California, where I was born. I’ve lived in England since 1968 (married to the love of my life at age 23). After months of indecision, I phoned her in September 2000. I hoped that that might be more private for her than a letter that would have to be explained. But that was a big mistake. She said I had got the wrong name. She sounded decisive and youthful and intelligent. She was 75 years old — 19 at the time of my birth.

I got information that proved she was my mother and tried to find an intermediary to contact her, hoping that that would be less stressful. With no knowledge of resources that might have been available, I chose the wrong person. After this fiasco, I wrote a short letter apologising for what had happened, saying I wouldn’t write again. She replied, saying that the “grief, pain and despair” of 1945 had all been reawakened.

Then I began the search for my father, knowing only his name and an approximate year of birth in Virginia. In August 2001, I spoke to a man who told me he’d been hoping all his life to find his lost daughter. He told me that I had been conceived “in love”, and spoke of his wish to marry my mother. His family knew about the lost daughter and wholeheartedly welcomed me. I’m proud to be part of this fine family; it has filled a space in my heart that I didn’t even know was empty.

My father died in November 2004. He’d mentioned to my half-brother that he and my mother had had a pact that the other would be informed in the event of death. After his death, my father’s widow gave me a book of poems written by my mother, and sent to him as part of a correspondence in the late Seventies. There was also a wistful letter from my mother from 1982: “Haven’t heard from you for a long time . . . I hope you’re well.” It seemed the connection between my birth parents hadn’t ended in 1945.

I spent a long time thinking, then in May I wrote a long letter to my mother, explaining why it is important to an adopted person to know their background, about what I understood of the relationship of my birth parents, and how I valued my father.

A month later, the shocking reply came. In a nutshell, she had been raped by my father, who was an alcoholic and a bad person. I had compounded the criminal act by my threatening phone call. The poems were sent at the instigation of her therapist. She used the term post-traumatic stress disorder, and I could see that her pain, despair and anger were still very much alive.

I have regained my own balance after reading that letter, though it has taken a while. I feel I must write again to correct the errors of fact. But most of all, I would like to find a way to speak to her that will make her feel less bad, that will be in some way positive for her. There’s no chance of a relationship with her, I know. I have made some notes for a letter, but I feel what I’ve written reads like self-justification. Could you advise how to write a letter that will help, instead of making things worse?

Suzanne

I wonder if you think they could be much worse? Your birth mother is clearly very, very upset — perhaps she has been since 1945, but maybe not. She might successfully have “buried” what happened (that can be true — for all our modern passion for openness) only to receive the shocking hand grenade of your phone call. I know it’s too late, and you are aware that you jumped in too quickly, but anyone reading this who is considering trying to trace a birth mother should surely tread a little more carefully. She must have felt terrified, as if punched in the stomach by fate. Yet equally, I can sympathise with your fantasy of a welcoming, warm voice on the other end of the line: the first step in squaring the circle of your identity. This is all so painful, so sad.

Why do contented people (as you are) want to search for their birth parents? The author of Roots, Alex Haley, wrote: “In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage — to know who we are and where we came from. Without this enriching knowledge there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness.” This is the “space” inside that you speak of. Yet the loving people who brought you up are surely the key part of the adult you have become? You don’t mention what your adoptive parents thought of your pursuit of the truth (or even if they are still alive) but it might have been upsetting for them too. Do take care of that.

In stories like this there is a clash of “rights”. Radical adoptees feel they have the right to “own” their past by discovering everything there is to know about their identity, but those who gave them up for adoption may also feel they have the right to privacy. Look at the internet; there are so many sites set up to help people trace their birth parents that I can imagine some of those people living in a permanent state of fear, wanting to hide. It seems significant to me that one such site, in North Carolina, has been given the unfortunate name of When the Bough Breaks, which quotes the old nursery rhyme Rock a bye, baby in which the cradle and the baby end up tumbling to the ground, because the bough isn’t strong enough. It is a good metaphor for human vulnerability and for wrong choices, too.

You have been given two opposing narratives, one positive, one negative. Therefore when you say you want to write to your mother again “to correct some errors of fact” you must be very careful. Your father is dead; he will have told his family one version, as he told you, but you have no way of knowing if that is true. You liked him, and he said you were a love child. She maintains that the man you bonded with was a monster and you were the product of force. It’s obvious which you would prefer to be true, but you will never know, and so in self-preservation it might be better to think the truth lies somewhere in between. Maybe they had too much to drink and it was what we would now call a date rape. Maybe she harboured feelings of bitterness towards him which are not encompassed by the poems and letter you have been given. Perhaps they both ran in terror from what they had done.

Is truth an absolute? No, which is why the art of memoir always attracts such attention, with its partial and sometimes fictionalised version of personal history. The truth hides along an ill-lit corridor, crying behind a closed door. But certainly one can deduce that your existence, and giving you up for adoption, was no trauma for the man in the case. Make of that what you will; what matters now is that your birth mother has suffered greatly, and you do not want go on adding to that pain.

I agree that you should write to her one last time, but not to correct any errors of “fact” or revisit your errors — or hers. Sitting in California is the woman who gave birth to you, and you have disturbed her peace. Perhaps in this letter you can seek to give it back to her by thanking her for giving you up to a blessed existence. The genes you inherited from your birth mother and father enabled you to seize the happiness two loving adoptive parents nurtured within you, to win the lasting love of the man you married, and to feel able to bring new life into the world. That is a considerable achievement, you know. So I suggest you simply paint her a word-picture of your days, tell her you will always be at the end of a phone call or letter should she want to make contact, but say you are raising a quiet glass to her across the miles, in gratitude that she gave you life.

Do you need advice?

E-mail your problems to: bel.mooney@thetimes.co.uk or write to her at: times2, 1 Pennington Street, London E98 1TT. Details such as your age are helpful. Please include your real name, but we will use your chosen pseudonym if you wish. Bel Mooney reads all letters but regrets that she cannot enter into personal correspondence.

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