I spoke to Sofie Gregory about her adoption experience and the short film, Loss and Connection she was involved with late last year.
Readers should watch the nine minute film first as the interview relates to the content of the short film.
Sofie you are an adopted person from the closed adoption era. Dealing with loss and connection through your adoption experience continues to have a major bearing on your adult life. Last year the ACH Group Foundation for Older Australians commissioned a short film where you reflect on your experience of adoption. How did this film come about?
Last year I was planning to go north to look for my father’s family and while waiting for the cooler months I got involved in other things. I was scanning through my unread emails and saw one about a film making course for seniors. They had three spots left. I agonised about it over the weekend.
The project was called ‘Good Lives’. I had to find an adoption story that sounded like it fitted in to the theme of seniors living a good life. I had been finding adoption issues much harder the older I got. I decided that still being alive was actually quite good, everything considered, and I phoned them.
I was told the places had all been filled, but I could go on a waiting list.
I took a deep breath and told Fiona, the organiser, I wanted to do a story on adoption; that coming to a resolution about who you are in old age as your most significant friends die was a challenging story. I also mentioned I had found some peace through art. Fiona seemed sure she would find me a place.
My confidence soared.
In telling someone outside of my adoption circles, or aboriginal circles, that I wanted to tell my story, a closed gate opened.
I asked who else was on the course and was told: a doctor, psychologist, social worker, child protection worker, teacher and a few others with occupations unspecified.
With my problems with authority figures, I felt like slamming the gate shut for myself, but I hung in there. They might be professionals in their fields I thought, but I had never got much help from any of these professions during my life. Nonetheless, I was confident that at this stage I was the professional in my own life. I had nothing to be ashamed of, and I could speak out and challenge anything they wanted to say about the ‘amazing gift of adoption’ for infertile people.
So I got into the film making group by serendipity.
It was unplanned, but a perfect and challenging part of my journey in 2015. I never went north to find my father’s family, but I stayed home and found an internal strength to speak out about something so close to, and yet, closed within my heart.
The film begins with you articulating how adopted people begin their lives with a profound loss which is seldom talked about, especially later when the adopted child has grown into an adult. Why is it important that adopted people be encouraged to talk about their adopted experience openly, freely and without sanction?
For most of my life I did not hear other people’s stories of adoption, and I did not understand how my life had unfolded around this central issue.
I felt very isolated by adoption.
When I went to the National Apology in Canberra in 2013 I realized this was not just a feeling of isolation for me; it was the very real experience of many adoptees.
Since that time I have connected with many other adoptees and we give each other encouragement to understand our lives through the lens of adoption.
We share resources that help us.
It is a sad truth that it is left up to us to educate ourselves, the community and our therapists about our issues that are tied to our adoption. There are very few people who seem able to understand the loss a baby experiences when losing its mother at birth and the ongoing effect this has on our lives. For me that loss was experienced as death. At birth I experienced the loss of the only person I knew – my mother.
Throughout the film you work on completing an artwork using the Aboriginal technique of dot painting. What importance does painting have in your life as a means of finding connection, something adopted people often find missing in their lives?
There is quite a lot of research showing the value of the arts in healing trauma, especially rhythmic sounds and movements such as singing and dancing and drumming and other percussions. I’ve used them all at different times.
Painting is a meditative experience for me and honestly I needed to do it while being interviewed to stay focussed, but also to keep some distance from what is for me, a very painful topic.
My education was in the sciences dealing with cold hard facts, so it was a challenge to move into the ‘touchy-feely’ world.
But that is where I had to go to understand my inner being which was hidden from me.
I began just using colours when in therapy, then later took a few art classes. I never thought of myself as an artist until I took part in a course called ‘Re-Union to Self’ which finished just before the film making course started. It was that course that gave me the confidence to join the film making course.
You have found an anchor in mother earth. In the film you note that when all else fails you its the connection to mother earth that prevails. Could you expand on this and in what way has the richness of your Aboriginal ancestry contributed to this strong connection with the earth?
Although I always wondered who I was, I never thought about ‘ancestry’ while growing up. I was always an outdoor person with what I now see as inherent traits.
I think connecting with nature is healing for anyone; it is how indigenous people the world over stay strong in the face of colonisation.
There is a healing energy in the earth and the waters, in getting your hands wet and dirty, in standing barefoot on the ground, and having the sun on your back and the wind in your hair. Many people can feel that sigh of relief when they get out of the city and walk on the sand by the water at the beach.
The energy of the natural environment has replenished me since my youngest days. I was a walker, a cyclist and a swimmer.
I have been trying to enrich soils and put trees back into the landscape all my adult life and to find the indigenous plants and fruits for the areas in which I have lived.
I developed an eye for art through photography, using trees and patterns in the landscape to tell stories. It is about being in the moment and respecting the source of life and its bounty, rather than chasing the future or the unattainable. It is about connecting to all those who have walked this land and gone before us, and wanting to provide for those yet to come.
The ongoing impacts of adoption are generally misunderstood by people who are unaffected by adoption thinking once a child is rescued and given a new family and home all will be good. As a mature adult who lives with your adoption on a daily basis what message would you like to leave people to help them understand that adoption is a legacy that is not only confined to one’s childhood?
Adoption creates a new identity for a child which lasts forever in my adult life and the lives of my descendants.
If a child needs care away from its genetic ancestral family that does not mean the first identity should to be abolished as if it never existed. The adopted child will always have at least two families, and it is the experience of many of us that we do not feel like we fit into either family.
I always wondered about my absent mother and it would have helped me in my adult life if there had been acknowledgement of the loss of my primary mother.
As an adult, I find challenges to my identity with understanding my own children and grandchildren. But at least their presence in my life is a source of joy in my life.
The hardest part I find in ageing as an adoptee is losing close friends. I have never been good at establishing relationships, but some older people put in the effort to show a belief in me. They enriched my life greatly. It was almost unbearable for me when they died. But once I began to understand how the grief was related to my original loss of my mother at birth, I came out of a state of shock which virtually immobilised me.
The saddest thing for me now is knowing that I could have come out of these intense grief reactions earlier and made different decisions at significant times when I was younger if someone had helped me understand what that early separation had done to me.
Ageing also brings about some deterioration in health for many people. I had cancer a few years ago. The doctor asked if there was any family history, and I had to answer that there was no family, therefore no history. It distresses me to be asked this question.
Recently I got my DNA data and had it analysed, so now I have a printout of my genetic inherited medical conditions. I have since shown it to two doctors who have been quite interested in it. It’s funny how ‘something’ – some information – feels so much better than ‘nothing’ when you have never had the ancestral family album or the gallery of photos to compare yourself to.
Ancestry is a pre-occupation with many older people. I believe it is one of the fastest growing hobbies. I wonder if this is because western society has favoured ‘nuclear families’ so everyone in them feels cut off from their roots to some extent, and ready to explode like a nuclear bomb.
For me, I wonder about birth and death certificates. Tracing ancestry depends on the accuracy in recordings about Births, Deaths and Marriages.
My birth certificate is fraudulent as it states my adopters gave birth to me when this is not true.
What do I want on my death certificate: my name at birth or my name through adoption? These names locate me in different family trees and only one is ancestral. The other one is the legal name only, and this is a problem for many adoptees, including me.
There are similar problems with death certificates of our two sets of parents. How are we (adoptees) to be recorded on the death certificates of our two mothers? Even though some people do this, I shouldn’t be recorded on the death certificate of my birth mother as her child because even though she gave birth to me, legally she is not seen as my mother. On the other hand, I could be recorded on the death certificate of my adoptive mother as legally she is seen to be my mother, ‘as if I was born to her’, even though this is untrue. These situations are unsettling for adoptees, and other family members, as they distort the truth of our identity. No one assumes the law wants to hide a person’s true identity, yet this is what the law does to adoptees and many who construct their family trees.
You started an adoption support group in Adelaide along with others. Tell us about this group and its importance to you and its members.
IdentityRites was formed after the National Apology for Forced Adoptions. I felt isolated at the event because our state service had not organised any group activity for us on the day.
The first people I spoke to were mothers, and they expressed surprise, ‘Oh that’s right adoptees were invited too!’ Adoptees often have a poor sense of ‘belonging’ and I felt like I was out of place. It really spurred me into action wanting to find my ‘adoptee voice’.
On return from this event I found others from South Australia who also wanted to be politically active, so we got together and began talking about living with adoption. The group developed from there.
As a group we have explored various ways of going forward, and spend most of our time putting words to paper and writing submissions.
We operate as a support and advocacy group and recently set up a Facebook page to keep in touch. It has been especially important in Adelaide because there is only one funded service provider which it is not able to offer support for adoptee activism because it also continues to be involved in adoptions.
At times we are invisible in their service which was evident when a memorial was being discussed for those affected by forced adoption. Adelaide would have had a memorial only to the mothers’ loss through adoption if we had not become involved and shouted, ‘what about us – adult adoptees? We were directly impacted too!’ We were told the mothers had been working for this for a very long time. We announced we would approach the government to have a memorial of our own. That brought some action from the service provider and while it took some time, eventually we were included, so there will now only be one memorial for all those affected.
I was recently asked if the memorial was about fathers’ loss as well. I had to say – I don’t think fathers have a group in South Australia to represent them with the service provider. That is the importance of a group; it is the only way you can make yourself visible and heard.
Thank you for your insights into the background of the short film, Loss and Connection and telling us some of your experiences with living with adoption. Would you like the final word?
The film has been shown to a number of groups in Adelaide who have expressed interest in using it to educate others. It is the intention of IdentityRites to use the film to begin discussions about adult adoptees with groups who have programs that are involved in mental health, grief and loss.
More about Sofie
I was born and adopted in 1949. I identify as part of the closed adoption era because that is how the government treated my adoption, but in fact the adoption was arranged by the family doctor of both my mothers. It was before the formal ‘closed adoption’ era. So my adoptive family knew the identity of my birth family.
My adoptive mother had her sister’s family living in the house. Aunty was 5 months pregnant, and I seem to have attached to her more so than my mother. Her child and I grew up as sisters – almost twins for nearly three years. When that family left I became seriously ill and spent most of the next year in bed, diagnosed with various things including ‘bronchial asthma’. But I now have no doubt it was my first overwhelming experience of grief.
I have very little memory of the rest of my childhood until a teacher rescued me from obvious neglect. She arranged for me to join a Girl Guides group which was a significant turning point in my life.
By high school, I started to establish an identity for myself built on my outdoor pursuits and sports life, changed my name and began to apply myself to studies. I spent three years as a Medical Student before my adoption experiences got the better of me again.
I married and had three children before I found it impossible to sustain an adult relationship and divorced while the children were still young. So not only was my life affected by adoption, but my husband and the three children suffered as well.
Now I see them all managing their lives well, yet I am bereft by my inability to sustain a family life. I live alone, with free ranging lizards and birds but I have good relationships with friends, and value the groups of people I think of as ‘family’.
I try to make sense of my life through photography, art and writing, and activism. I stay grounded in my vegetable garden and bushy overgrown front yard. I have a camper van and get away from the city as often as I can, and park among the trees in places where I can still feel the presence of the ancestor spirits.
I’m thankful that I had a relatively successful working life that enables me to sustain this level of comfort in retirement.
Thank you for your courage Sofie.