Long Lost Family itv 9pm tonight

Feel very lucky and blessed. Both son and I had DNA done to find younger sister with no success. Found anomalies though which resulted in finding out that my father wasn’t my father. Found who he was ( now departed) and have made contact with lovely family members. Then got contacted by niece who had had DNA test done about six months after us. Again very successful. Of course this means met my sister. Again lovely new family. Found out many other things. Could write a book! Two sides of family found. Found famous brothers like Brunel. etc etc. Did find original father a little bit strange. What did he know. I took it well because of my bringing up. It too nice.So lucky

NanaDana

travelsafar

Watching at the moment and Davina delivering the news about Chris' parents. She is really annoying with the long delays in telling the poor man.

Absolutely. All done for dramatic effect, to make "better TV", just like some of those programmes which are competitions and in which people are eliminated. I was not impressed.

I thought I was the only one feeling like that about her. The long pauses and faces put the emphasis on her which she has always enjoyed rather than the poor man. I was surprised she didn't offer him a bottle of Hair colour as a consolation prize when she told him his parents were dead.
At least his older siblings seemed a cheery friendly lot and wanted to include him.

For

I enjoy reading stories about reunions and this is probably one of the best.

More Than Just Coincidence by Julie Wassmer.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/oct/30/met-adopted-daughter-by-chance

I read it when it first came out and reread it recently and it still amazes me that they literally “found” each other so suddenly.

JW writes stories based in Whitstable, Kent (The Pearl Mysteries) and I think I am right in saying she has also written to Eastenders.

I thought Davina was better than usual last night. Perhaps something had been said. Also, she was hardly in the first part at all.

Can't help feeling that the "happy ending" stories which are usually shown may not be truly representative of what may happen when a DNA match is pursued in order to find lost relatives. A close friend went down this route 2 or 3 years ago now, to the extent that he travelled to Australia to meet 2 surviving half siblings from his Maternal side. His birth Mother had passed away some 10 years previously. Although his initial contact via the internet seemed very positive, when the actual meet-up took place it did not go well, and in effect, he suffered a second rejection. He was devastated, travelled home early, and ended up going for counselling. So I wish that the programme would spend more time emphasising the risks involved, as they are very real. On another tack entirely, I deplore Davina McCall's attempts to create "dramatic TV entertainment" by hanging out the vulnerable subjects by drip feeding crucial information to them. I don't think for a moment it's to give them time to process it. It's a cynical, heartless ploy to jack up the tension. Not impressed.

Dorrain, I do so hope you find your birth father and am so sorry for the terrible way your own mother treated you.
The tiny babies abandoned on doorsteps etc in freezing weather is heartbreaking, to just have father and mother unknown on their birth certificate, how chilling is that. So pleased some of these people are getting answers, a few years ago even it wouldn’t have been possible..I find myself in tears with all of them and I know some of them go on to have a good relationship with their birth families, awful for the ones that don’t work out though and at least they tried and know their story.
When I think how much I loved my two, still do, it breaks my heart that my first child my daughter, who I thought loved me back, cut me off and I’m dead to her. Tried so many times to find out why and told her how much she was loved, but she just said I got on her nerves, never to write or contact her, she wasn’t going to help me in my old age., so I don’t, I have to respect her wishes, she just doesn’t care.

I've just joined Ancestry.com and ordered the DNA kit so I can find my biological father.

My mother lied to her husband, my adopted father, for years saying she had told me about my situation when she had not. It wasn't until I was aged 20, after applying for a passport so I could travel, that she told me a few details. It was my then boyfriends mother who contacted her and told her that my application had to be redone due to the adoption process. Had I not applied for the passport I probably would have never known my dear adopted father wasn't my true birth parent.
When my adopted dad told he only had a few months to live did we talk about the when and how I came to know about my past. This caused a huge rift with my mother, my poor dad wanted a divorce he was so angry about the lies and deceit. It was such a horrible way for him to spend his last couple of months. The positive thing though was that we became very close and I got to tell him how grateful I was/am for his love and the life he provided.

When my mother passed I found photos of me as a toddler, she had changed the year on most of these photographs so as to align with her marriage dates.
Emotionally and mentally it was the lies which caused me more pain than the fact I was illegitimate. She spitefully told me I wasn't the first child my birth father had abandoned so I'm hoping to find half siblings.
I have watched Stacey Dooley do a similar show to the one mentioned above, and I always enjoyed them. Finding out in such a public way is not the way I'd like to find my birth father but I am keen to get a handle on his family in order to make sense of my own past.
I recently found out between 5 and 10 percent of people are in fact illegitimate, I guess that is why these shows are popular.

someone whom i knew had had her daughter adopted shortly after the birth.
about 30 years later she thought about trying to find her, had no idea of how to do that, so wrote a letter to the local magistrates court.
guess who opened it in the post room that morning.
her daughter.
she glanced at all the incoming mail to send it to the right section/officer.
she didn't usually do that task but someone was off.
she read the details and recognised it was about her.
she didn't bother forwarding it to any section.
she picked up the phone and said hello mum.
they got on well, and with her younger brother and sister.
it sounds unbelievable, but is true.

My neighbour, from years ago, was forced by her parents to give up her baby girl for adoption when she was 17.
She sent lots of letters to social services when the girl was 18 but was sadly told her daughter wasn't interested in any contact. Broke her heart but nothing she could do about it.

Adopted as a young teenager, I never lived with my birth parents for more than a few months, I feel I partly understand the willingness of the participants to appear on the show. I appreciate the sensitive way Davina and Nicky deal with the unusual family situations. The BBC version, I thought, was crass over several issues, including telling the participants in front of the camera that their parents had died or when they told two men they could be brothers and then a week later told them they weren’t. I prefer to watch the UK. version of LLF than the American or Australian ones.

Davina spoils the programme - same as she spoils 'The Masked Singer' where she acts like a demented teenager!

Yes a good story x

What a lovely story, Suzejp

Have a lovely visit in September and treasure each moment 🙂

I was adopted at 6weeks old and in 2018 did my DNA and found my birth dad in America. He had been based in North Wales in 1957. They closed the base and he returned to America not knowing he had fathered a child.
He was so pleased once he realised he had his own blood daughter, grandson ,granddaughter and great grandsons
He didn't have any of his own children only stepchildren.
I was so pleased to have found him as at 64 I found someone I looked like and I flew over in 2019 and felt right at home.
He came over here in the autumn of 2019 and I went over twice last year, my son ,who looks like him, took his family over last year as did my daughter.
He came over here in march and unfortunately had a stroke stayed in hospital here for 6weeks and had his 89th birthday here.he us now back at home getting better every day, I'm going to see him in September.
It was the best thing I did and it's turned out well

Ninjana2 thanks for posting. Your experience is more common x

Sorry …in not it

I feel the pauses are to enable the person to take things it …it’s all a big shock …😕

I was reunited with my brother after 30 years it didn’t go well. Because we had spent all that time apart we had nothing in common and no usual sibling connection. He also was very resentful of me and my own family and I had a couple of drunken abusive phone calls from him. Sadly he passed away a couple of years ago with our ever having resolved anything. So no it doesn’t always have a happy ending.

I think Davina McCall is maddening in this. She leaves those ludicrously long gaps in the hope people will cry - so manipulative

I don't watch this one but find all these types of programmes involving emotions and responses are often handled insensitively and sometimes manipulatively. The obligatory long silence is both tedious and unnecessary. Questions are asked can be too intrusive and audience driven.

I like the program but Davina is not good on it. She needs to take leaf out of the Aussie and American programs.
Its like pulling teeth to get the info out of her.

I met my father for the very first time when I was 48. He had left my mother and sister when she was six months pregnant with me and we came back to the uk from Canada, and they subsequently divorced. We had no contact or maintenance with him at all even though he was a successful barrister and my mother had a struggle to cope. After she died my sister tracked him down and made contact, and he invited us to go and stay with him and his third wife. I felt no animosity to him at all as I’d had a very happy childhood and had really thought of myself as an immaculate conception! Not so much my sister thought, as she had some vague memories of him.

I’m posting this as I really can’t understand how family members fall into each other’s arms, because although we were made very welcome, he was just always a stranger. We went to stay with him three times before he died. He never apologised as he wasn’t that sort of man, but he did say that he’d regretted some things that he had done, and some things that he hadn’t done. His life had not been very happy. His second marriage was a disaster although the step mother we met was just lovely and reminded my sister and I very much of our mother. Full circle!

I wonder why anyone would want to take part in such a programme?

I can fully understand that if a family member or a good friend goes missing, you would try to trace them through the Salvation Army and whoever else is good at finding people.

But let's face it: People go missing or decide not to have contact with family and friends for a reason,

The reason may not seem good to the people "left" but surely the situation can only be made worse by publishing a version of it to all and sundry?

I don't think anyone is justified in making entertainment out of circumstances like these, especially as it is usually on the one party's version we hear.

Maya that must have been horrible for you. Sending hugs.

My DS and DBiL adopted 2 boys both of whom have now searched for and found their birth mothers. Neither was very satisfactory but at least it gave them a bit of closure. I don't think either of them discovered their birth fathers.
Their adoptive parents have been and are great people though DSis still occasionally wonders if she did the right thing .
Both boys are mixed race and nowadays they wouldn't have been placed with white parents.
I reassure them that those boys have had an infinitely better life than they'd have had if they'd been left in the orphanages.