If you find yourself lucky enough on life’s journey there will come along that rare moment when someone special walks into your life. Someone who you instantly feel so natural being around, so much so, that you feel yourself opening up about anything and everything like you never have before. That person will be loving, caring, funny, thoughtful, but most importantly, a trustworthy confidante. When you realise that you have found one of these very rare gems in life - hold them close and never let them go. This sums up my wonderful friendship with Susan Vickers. I recall the first time Susan and I met. It was two years ago but feels like yesterday. We had been initially introduced by a mutual friend. We were meeting to talk about the opportunity available for me to speak on Susan’s show on a local radio station. I was asked to speak about Wolverhampton being a Fairtrade City and the campaigning work myself and others do across the city to achieve this status. We had arranged to meet at what is colloquially referred to as the ‘Man on the Oss’, a statue of Prince Albert on horseback in the middle of Wolverhampton City Centre. As Susan approached me, I first noticed her beautiful face and a beaming smile and the walk of a confident woman. We instantly felt comfortable with each other and at ease. We talked non-stop over lunch as if we had known each other for years. We felt like kindred spirits. We felt we had so much in common, in particular our experiences of bullying during times in our lives and the trust issues that had been left behind; which had scarred us; feelings that were lasting a lifetime. And, like Susan, my late Mum was named Freda and she too had been adopted. Little did I know at the time of our first meeting that underneath the surface of this successful career women who had achieved so much, the body language was hiding a multitude of psychological ‘traumas’. An undercurrent of raw emotions deep inside. And as I would later find out as our friendship grew, this was a woman crying out for answers and closure. In this new book ‘Love Susan’ we will follow Susan’s personal journey from the standpoint of being an adoptee. When we hear about adoption Susan feels it is often from the viewpoint of the people who are adopting. Susan wanted to address the balance and in doing so has allowed us a rare and privileged insight into her personal life. A refreshingly honest account, written with integrity and from the heart, it catalogues her journey from childhood into adult life. This book follows on from the success of Susan’s debut autobiography ‘I’m not a Paki’. A refreshingly honest insight, and an oftentimes, harrowing account of Susan’s life growing up in an adopted white family against a backdrop of racism in 1970’s Wolverhampton, if you have not read it, you are truly missing out! So be prepared to read words within these pages evoked by those raw passions and deep-set feelings held within. And I hope that by writing this book there may be some catharsis and feelings of closure for the incredible women I first met those few years back. A woman I am immensely proud to call my friend.
Julia Farrell BA (Hons)
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