Our Story
SAME, SAME, BUT DIFFERENT
Two Good Mums is made up of two women. Laura, the first mother and Peggy the adoptive mother of our two sons. We have worked together since meeting for the first time to break the boundaries of the rules that were set in place that we felt did not serve us and our want to put the needs of the boys first. As our friendship grew we have come to realise that ours is a unique situation; but it doesn’t have to be. We want to share our story so that others can see how different it can be. Whilst we understand that every situation and adoption has different circumstances, we support and advocate for change in how adoption and contact is planned, facilitated and carried out. Vast improvements can and need to be made, where it is safe to do so for the child/children involved.
Who Are Two Good Mums?
Peggy and Laura at their very first meeting.
Laura
Laura is a mother to Ava and a birth mother to CJ and RJ. She lives in Yorkshire with her husband and daughter. Though Laura enjoys photography and content creation, she is currently putting her efforts into figuring out how she can best use her experiences with forced adoption to help other birth parents. On the back of the podcast, Laura has released her book, Baby of Mine: A Birthmother's Journey Through Forced Adoption, that takes a deeper dive into her individual story, and the aftermath. She hopes this book will help those who work in the industry to challenge their assumptions of birth parents, as well as giving those first families the courage to use their own voices to speak up too.
Peggy
Peggy is the adoptive mother of Laura’s first two children: CJ and RJ. Peggy and her husband first adopted CJ almost fourteen years ago, with RJ following soon after. During their adoption assessment and training, Social Workers espoused the positives of post-adoption contact and encouraged the couple to be open to it. However, when they tried to follow this advice, they were surprised to find the Social Workers to be implicitly, and sometimes even explicitly, negative about post-adoption contact. It took courage, and much thought, to decide to bypass Social Services and seek to establish a path towards better communications with Laura. It could have gone horribly wrong, but instead it went amazingly right.