‘I burst into tears, I’d thought about her all the time...’
A MOTHER and daughter separated almost 40 years ago were reunited in time for Christmas.
Sue Davies, 58, was forced to give up her baby daughter, Vicky, in difficult circumstances in 1980.
Sue, 19 at the time, already had a one-year-old son and feared she’d lose both children if she didn’t give Vicky up.
She’d been threatened with being kicked out of her Stockport home by her ‘strict and domineering’ stepfather, who has since died, if she kept the baby.
So, after giving birth in July, 1980, Sue made the heartbreaking decision to give up Vicky, who was just six-weeks-old at the time.
Sue, from Cheadle, always hoped she would one day be reunited with her daughter, but previous attempts to find her had been unsuccessful.
She feared the worst, worrying that Vicky had died or had moved far away.
But on December 8, Sue received a message out of the blue on Facebook saying that her daughter wanted to make contact.
“I burst into tears,” Sue said.
“I never stopped loving her. I thought about her all the time. Every birthday, every Christmas. I had tried to find her before but I’d never managed to get anywhere.
“And then I got this message.” It turned out that Sue’s daughter, Vicky Blackwood, had been adopted by a family in Buxton, where she still lives with her own family. Raised as an only child, Vicky Blackwood, 39, found out she was adopted at the age of 12 and had felt ‘a void’ for many years. Now a mumof-two, she had searched for her biological family on
Sue Davies and off since she was 18. It was only by getting hold of her adoption file and seeking the assistance of the ‘Find My Family UK’ Facebook page that Vicky managed to track her mum and brother, Stewart, down.
“I was fearful that they might not want anything to do with me,” Vicky said.
“Even if I ended up heartbroken at the end of it, I still wanted to at least try. I’d wondered for so many years what they were like and where they were from. And all that time they were only down the road in Stockport.”
Vicky, Sue and Stewart made contact and agreed to meet later that day.
“It was weird”, Vicky said. “When I saw Stewart in the car park, we recognised each other straight away. As a little girl I’d dreamed of having an older brother and now my dream has come true.”
Sue, who lives in Cheadle with her husband of eight years, Ray, describes finding her daughter – and gaining two more grandaughters – as ‘the best Christmas present ever.’
“In some ways it’s surreal,” said Sue.
“My son Stewart is over the moon and I am too. It’s been wonderful.”