After retiring from swimming, the Paralympian began researching her origins. This led her to her birth family – and to uncover the shocking difficulties facing other disabled children
As a child, Ellie Simmonds would fantasise about what her birth mother might be like. In her wildest visions, maybe her birth mother was a rock star, or famous, or extraordinary in some other way. “You never think as a seven-, eight-year-old, that you’re actually going to meet your birth mum,” she says. It turns out that the woman knew exactly who the baby she had given up was – and that the child was the famous and extraordinary one. When Simmonds, then just 13, competed at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics, and won two gold medals for swimming, her birth mother put the pieces together: her name, her age, the details of her life that were becoming public. In February this year, they met for the first time.
Simmonds has made a powerful and very moving documentary – I sobbed throughout – about tracing her birth family, which also highlights the shocking difficulties faced by disabled children waiting to be adopted. Thankfully, this wasn’t the case for Simmonds, who has achondroplasia, or dwarfism – she was adopted within months of being born – but it remains the reality for many other children.
