[chickwithvision]

I am 42 years old, and at 3 weeks of age I was adopted. I’ve always known that I was adopted; as a young child, my adoptee parents would tell me stories about a little princess who was so loved that she was taken in by a King and Queen where she would live happily every after.

As I got older, the details of my adoption became more elaborate such as the hospital where I was born and the reasons I was given up, but was only offered in snippets. As a preteen I became obsessed with knowing who my real mother was, who I was and where I fit in with it all. I had begun to feel out of place in the world, misunderstood, and different to others; others who had ‘real’ mums and dads and brothers and sisters. My feelings ran deep, but any exploration of these feelings was met with a casual brush-off by my emotionally distant mother and father.

Then at fifteen I discovered the real reason for years of avoidance around the subject of my origins. The reason behind unspoken words and pushed down feelings. My adoptive mother disclosed a family secret, a secret that if it had been exposed earlier could have prevented years of anguish and depression as I had felt increasingly dispossessed during my early teens. This feeling was to continue well into my adult years. The truth was so simple. My natural mother had given birth to me in New Zealand when she was fourteen years old and alone. Her sister, thirteen years her senior and unable to bare children, was living in Australia with her new husband. As a tiny baby, just 21 days old, I made my maiden journey across the Tasman to Australia in the arms of an air stewardess, to be met by my new parents at the airport. I was taken home, loved and provided for and subsequently my adoption was completed in the Family Court of Australia.

30 years later I attended the wedding of my 81 year old grandmother to the second love of her life. It was here that I was able to share a face to face moment with the women who had given me life. On that special day, I stood beside my natural mother and her 6 sons – my half brothers, to pose for a photograph that would be etched in my memory for the rest of my life. At that moment I belonged. There were others who looked like me, shared traits good and bad just like me, at last I felt that I fitted somewhere. I no longer felt different. Instead I felt special. I belonged.