I was four years old when I was adopted from the orphanage I'd been left at as a baby. My new parents told me my birth parents had died but I was somehow convinced my mother was still alive.
Being part of a 'proper' family wasn’t how I had imagined it; my adoptive mother had wanted me as a 'sister' for her daughter and struggled to show me any real affection, while my sister was quickly jealous of any attention I received at home. When I finished school, I trained as a nurse, married and started a new life of my own, but I still wanted to know the truth about my birth parents. I still felt as though my own life story was unfinished.
In 1979, after some help from local authorities, my mother, Bridget, was found. She was alive and amazingly lived only three miles from me in Birmingham. Known locally as 'Tipperary Mary', she was using her middle name to avoid detection from the police. She was an eccentric character – and also an alcoholic. I was delighted to know that she really was alive, as I'd always believed, and I had expected her life to be complicated.
Isn't that why she gave me up? I wasn't shocked. I met people in all sorts of situations through my job as a nurse, and I had learned not to judge, but there was still a part of me that, despite longing to meet her, was more than a little nervous about what she might be like.
I decided that my training could be the key to me coping with such an emotional situation. My ability to switch on a professional attitude might help me to deal with whatever meeting my mother could bring. In 1981 I had my first baby, a boy. I decided that when I returned to work as a district nurse, I would (unofficially) add Bridget to my rounds, as a gentle way of getting to know her. I would be able to use my job as a reason to visit.
The first time I knocked on her door I was sweating with anxiety and trying to keep calm. Before I had time to change my mind, there she stood. I couldn't believe it. I was staring into the face of my mother. I was determined to recognise her and searched her face for some similarity, some sign of myself. I thought I could see some likeness - the cheekbones perhaps, the way she tilted her chin.
Half of her face was swollen and badly bruised, and her left eye was black. Her hair was grey and smelled of stale alcohol and tobacco. She was wearing a semitransparent, short, nylon nightdress and her fingernails were filthy.
The way she looked was a clear indication of the chaos that her life was in. I wanted to know more about her, spend more time with her, ask her questions – but there were warning bells ringing in my head. I had a young family of my own, and this woman was not in a position to just slot into a 'normal' family life.
I cleaned her up, treated her bruises, and told her I'd be back soon. As I was leaving, Bridget stroked my hair and attempted to move it from my eyes, the type of thing a mother might do. She seemed affectionate towards me. Maybe it was because I took the time to listen to her but we somehow seemed to make a connection. Maybe, somewhere deep down, she recognised me?
I wanted to tell her who I was, but I kept thinking of my little boy at home and I couldn't do it. I was glad I seemed to be important to her, though. For better or worse, at last, I had finally met my mother.
Over the next nine years, I continued to take her clean clothes, bathe her wounds and listen to her talk about the five children she had given away, including me, when I was eight months old. Alcohol completely controlled her life; she was tortured by her past. I felt no anger towards her at all. She did what she felt was best for us, and for her.
I was a mum of three, though, and I couldn't let Bridget disrupt my family. I couldn't let the chaos of her life into my own. She wasn't the fairy tale figure I had imagined, but she was still my mother.
Eventually, in 1989, knowing her health was deteriorating, I finally told her the truth. I told her that I hadn't told her earlier because I felt the time wasn't right. I knew that time was slipping away from us and that although we'd got to know each other, she still didn’t know who I truly was – or that I was OK. That she had done the right thing.
But Bridget just stared silently at me. She was in the early stages of dementia and I'd left it too late. There never would be a right moment now. I'd lost the mother I'd found, and I was devastated. I continued to see her, but her condition became worse, she became more difficult to deal with – and she died in 2003. Although I had stayed with her for as long as I could, and continued to care for her, she died never knowing I was her daughter.
Phyllis Whitsell's story is told in her book, Finding Tipperary Mary. We have one copy to give away on Twitter, find us on @MumsnetBloggers to enter before Monday July 4.