A biography of Stephanie Slater.

I was born on the 9^th November 1966 at Dudley Road Hospital in Birmingham.  I was born to Roger & Audrey who were un-married, young and had an unstable relationship.  It was a hard decision for Audrey but she did what she thought was best and gave me up for adoption.  So there was I, 6 weeks old and in a Harborne children’s home.  Not long after I was adopted by Betty and Warren Slater, a childless Birmingham couple and I went to live with them in Great Barr Birmingham.

I had a good upbringing, Dad worked in the motor trade and Mom in a supermarket.

We were a normal family and by the time I was in my teens mom and I drew further apart, all she wanted was for me to get married and have kids. Dad never said much.

I always got the feeling that mom was trying to live her life through me and sadly when I look back at my life then I can honestly say that we rarely got on.

I guess I was quite an unusual child.  I distinctly remember seeing a ghost at the age of about eleven. I hated not having any siblings and spent a lot of time alone.  I did have many friends though, and on winter evenings we would play Rounders in the fields opposite my house until it got so dark we couldn’t see the ball anymore.

They were fun times. 

By the early eighties I went through my ‘Goth’ era, mom hated it.  I loved ‘Toyah’ and ‘The Damned’ and would follow them all over the country in concert.  My hair was always dyed black and I wore the heavy make up and ‘Dracula’ style clothing with pride.  I remember bumping into mom one day when she was out shopping in Sutton Coldfield; she reeled in horror when she saw me.  We travelled home at the same time, me walking ten paces behind her and then sitting upstairs on the bus whilst she sat down below, her instructions not mine!   Looking back I think that my ‘Goth years’ probably stood me in good stead for my inevitable future.

In the early 80’s I began working for an Estate Agents in West Bromwich.  I started as a receptionist and loved it.  My mother felt she could also now hold her head up high, her daughter was no longer on a YTS but with a proper job – something she thought I’d never have.

It was around this time, I can’t remember dates so much now, but my relationship with my mom was pretty bad. It seemed she would have a go at me for the slightest thing.  I tried to take no notice, for as long as I could remember she was on what she called her ‘Junkie Pills’ for her nerves.  She would scream and shout about the slightest thing, her head would shake violently and her neck would go bright red.  I was now in my early twenties and was a senior negotiator/lister at work with a company car.  I was proud of what I had achieved so far in my life but my mom didn’t see that.  I had no husband or children, so in her eyes that made me useless.  I had boyfriends of course, they came and went and I still had a large circle of friends but my home life was far from comfortable.  Dad still never interfered.

So I contacted my real mother Audrey, it was difficult back then.  Several interviews with Social services and loads of paperwork and counselling, but I had to find her. I was her daughter and I wanted to know my history and the details of why she had given me up. 

I did meet her about a year later, outside the Birmingham Odeon.  She was as nervous as I, but we had lunch and she told me about her pain in giving me up.  It was a tearful re-union but I didn’t blame her – and still don’t.  Her life was hard back then.  I will always love her and completely understand.

I was still working for the same Estate Agents in the late 80’s when the big property boom crashed; millions were lost.  The Agency had been taken over by a large insurance company a few years earlier and the crash hit us all badly, our wages were slashed and myself and many other members of staff left.

At the age of twenty five I went to work for ‘Shipways’ Estate Agents on 16^th December 1991.

The rest, they say, is history………