‘I was 10 years old when I first sensed that something wasn’t right’: The trauma of a family secret

A decade ago, an extraordinary and unexpected event set Fiona Chesterton on the path to writing a book about being an illegitimate child

Fiona Chesterton’s experience has led her to support women who suffered forced adoptions and are now campaigning for justice (Fiona Chesterton/Getty/The Independent)

You learn to live with secrets. After you’ve harboured one for the best part of 30 years, as I did, it gets easier to keep it locked up inside. My mother, who kept the same secrets until her dying day, believed that it was for the best to keep – well – mum. No doubt her family, who I have only recently discovered also knew the truth, thought it for the best not to talk to me about it, believing they were respecting mum’s wishes too.

It took an extraordinary and totally unexpected event 10 years ago to set me on the path to writing a book, talking on the radio, and now writing this essay, unlocking those secrets at last. I am already learning of a remarkable outcome – that talking about my experience of being an illegitimate child and the terrible impact on my mother’s life is opening up a lot more conversations than I anticipated.

I know from the response I am getting from readers and listeners that there are many people with similar experiences of secrets, shame, elaborate deceptions and cover-ups – and in the worst cases, cruelty and emotional abuse – all because they bore children out of wedlock, were themselves illegitimate, or witnessed something at close hand in their own family.