Here’s a 14-page melancholy comic I made about my visit to the Coram Foundling Hospital. I showcased it at the LaydeezDoComics Fair in 2025. I developed it out of a shorter comic I wrote in 2018, just after I’d just won the LDComics prize for my graphic-novel-in-progress about meeting my birth mother. I was off to London to present my winning work at an LDComics forum. It was my first time really being ‘out’ in public about my thoughts and feelings on relinquishment and my own experience as an adoptee. I decided to pop in on the Foundling Museum on the way home as my birth mother had mentioned she went there while pregnant with me. The comic reflects on some of my feelings about the legacy of Coram, and the lasting impact of Coram’s policies on my own adoption decades later.
Strangely enough, after writing the comic, I discovered that my own adoption file is currently held by Coram, who took it on from Westminster council, the council who arranged my adoption nearly 50 years ago.
To read the comic for free click here or on the image.
If you work in adoption, or at Coram, you’re welcome to use the comic as a resource. Just let me know.
I’ve also written a bunch of other zines and comics over the years, including “Space”, a mini mindful watercolour how-to zine, and “Spring in Rishikesh”, a zine made from sketches from my grief-and-travel-sketchbook-journal. Both can be bought at my etsy shop.