I’m looking in Dad’s shaving mirror when something suddenly clicks. I realise I look nothing like my five brothers – two older, three younger. They all have fair skin, blue eyes and blond hair, while I’m mixed race with dark skin and dark hair.

Two years ago Dad sat me down and explained that I’m adopted. He told me that my real parents couldn’t look after me and that he and my mum, Thelma, had taken me in because they wanted to help a baby in need.

I remember confessing all to my friend the next day. She had looked at me oddly and said: “Of course you’re adopted, we all knew that.”

I can see what she means now. You can see there’s no way we’re related.

May 1987 – age 15

I’m so busy with my studies and music lessons I don’t stop to think about my birth parents.

All I’ve been told is that they were both teenagers when I was born, and that my mum is white and my dad is black – which explains my mixed-race looks. I could never cope with a baby at my age, so I don’t resent them for giving me up.

October 1991 – age 19

I’ve moved to Manchester to study music composition. People keep asking if I’m Indian or Malaysian. It’s a bit frustrating having to keep telling new people that I’m adopted and I don’t actually know where I come from.

May 2007 – age 35

I’m tearing open a letter on the way to my job as a professional cellist. At first I think it’s a bill, but all the sheet of white paper says is: “Are you Anwen Lewis, who was born in 1972?” with a return envelope for me to send back my reply.

I instantly know it’s something to do with my biological parents. Do they want to find me after all this time? I shove the reply in the return envelope and post it.

June 2007

A few days later, a woman rings me from an adoption agency.

“Your mother wants to contact you,” she explains. “And I have some information about her.”

Going through my file she tells me that after they gave me away, my birth parents married each other and had three daughters and a son.

For hours I sit on the sofa, trying to take it all in. I’d always assumed my parents had split up. Staying together and having more children makes the fact that they gave me up a hundred times harder to take.
But quickly I realise there’s an upside. I’ve got four full-blood siblings – and after dreaming of having sisters as a child, I now have three of them!

A few days later I’m in the office of the adoption agency with one of the officials, leafing through my documents. They show that I was four weeks old when I was given up by my birth mum.

She divorced my dad in the early ’90s and they originally named me Lorraine. My adopted parents renamed me and gave me my mother’s maiden name, Hannaford, as a middle name.

There’s a letter written to me from Jan, my birth mum, too. I can’t even touch it, so the official offers to read it for me.

“If you do no more than read this letter, it is more than I can ask for,” it says. “But I’ve been looking for you, my oldest child, for more than 30 years.”

I burst into tears at the thought of her trying for so long to make contact with me and how frustrated she must have been not knowing if I was safe and happy.

I can’t wait to meet her so I can put her out of her misery and tell her I’ve been OK.

July 2007

I want my mum and dad’s blessing before I meet my birth mum. They are my family and I love them and don’t want them to feel excluded.

I’d kept it all to myself until now because I wasn’t sure what would happen, but now I’m planning to meet Jan, I want them to know. I needn’t have worried though.

Dad just says: “Whatever happens, can we come too?”
It’s so typical of him. He’s always been so kind and supportive, even now when they are apprehensive about me meeting my birth mum.

They are worried I might get hurt.

August 20, 2007

I’ve agreed to meet Jan, 53, in the café at Southwark Cathedral.

I feel queasy all the way down to London on the train. I’ve bought a new outfit and had my hair done specially – I’ve never felt more pressure in my life to look pretty. It’s not every day you meet your mum for the first time.

Waiting in the café my hands are shaking so much, I keep dropping my coffee mug. Then I spot the agency worker with a woman who has to be my birth mum. She’s brunette and petite.

I go over and we don’t hug or kiss, we just shake hands stiffly. I don’t know how to act. It all feels unreal and I keep taking sideways glances at her. She doesn’t look anything like me.

After an hour, I start to relax as we talk about the adoption and Jan apologises tearfully for giving me up.
“It’s not an excuse,” she sobs. “But back then it was socially hard for an unmarried teenager to bring up a baby.

“I never stopped thinking about you, Anwen, and I am just so relieved that you went to a kind family.”

She tells me a bit about her other children. Then she explains that if I want to meet one of them, my brother Christopher, 25, is only round the corner and would love to say hello.

I don’t have to be asked twice. When he walks in, I’m floored. For the first time in my life I’m looking at someone who looks just like me. The bond between us is instant.

August 24, 2007

Mum, Jan and I all meet up in Winchester for cream tea. They are uncannily similar and they get on really well, sharing stories of bringing up big, lively families.

Mum brings out the baby photos of me to show Jan. “You were such a beautiful baby,” Jan says, wiping away her tears.

It all feels so natural to be with them both.

As we walk back to the train station they call out for me to slow down because I’m walking too fast, and I stop and start laughing as I realise that two mums means twice the nagging – but I couldn’t be happier with that!

September 2007

I’m in the living room of Jan’s house, stiff with fear.
I’m just about to meet my three sisters –Gemma, 29, Debbie, 28, and Laura, 23. They burst in and throw their arms around me and all my nerves disappear.

No one can believe how much I look like Gemma. We’ve got the same profile exactly. Debbie is quiet, like me – we’re both middle children and have really similar personalities.

And Laura, the baby of the family, is just a sweetheart. They are all musical too, and I realise that a love of music is something we share by nature, despite growing up apart.

Seeing them laughing, joking and teasing each other, I realise how much I’ve missed out on and for the first time I feel gutted about having been adopted.

But on the way home I start to feel excited about having the rest of my life to get to know my birth family.

January 2008

I meet my birth dad for the first time. He’s been out of contact with the family for a couple of years. He is darker than me and shorter than I’d expected. We meet at a family party and there are so many people around I end up bewildered. I can’t believe I’ve got such a huge family. It’s going to take years to get to know everyone. Mitch, my boyfriend of a year, is so supportive and jokes about taking on twice as many in-laws than he’d bargained for.

August 2008 – age 36

I’m pregnant! I phone round all the family to break the news.

Then it hits me that, had I found out I was pregnant a year ago, all sorts of issues would have arisen.

I would probably have begun to wonder about my medical history and also my own mother, and how she must have felt when she gave me up for adoption.

Now though, I have all the answers I could ever need and two mothers who are already drawing up rotas for helping me look after the baby!

For help with life after adoption, visit Afteradoption.org.uk or call 0800 056 8578.

Were you adopted? If you were, would you consider searching for your birth parents? Do you think it’s worth the emotional rollercoaster that goes with the searching? Would you be happy never knowing your birth parents?

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As told to: boudicca fox-leonard Photography: peter byrne Hair & make-up: sue marshall at nemesis