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Identity Returned, Dignity Restored
Being told you only have months to live due to terminal lung cancer that has spread to other parts of your body is confronting. It focuses attention. Raises expectations. Opens questions. What’s important to do before my life passes on? For an adopted person finding them self in this challenging, irreversible position exposes unfinished business, […]
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Original Colours Matter
The Colour of Time provides twenty-eight intercountry and transracial adoptees an opportunity to reflect on their adoptive experience as adults. The Colour Palette The publication is a sequel to The Colour of Difference which was published in 2001. Of the 28 participants featured in The Colour of Time 13 contributed to the first publication and 15 are […]
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My Invisible Mother – Short Film
Pascal, your short film My Invisible Mother combines animation and interview to give a glimpse of the long term impacts of adoption. The film has won a number of awards this year including the Best Documentary Award at the recent Canberra Short Film Festival. In just over three minutes you introduce the viewer to adopted […]
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Living with Adoption: A Quest for Hope, Healing and Happiness
I acknowledge the mothers, fathers, adopted persons and their family members who are directly affected by adoption. I acknowledge your loss, separation, pain, and the associated uncertainty you may live with. We all carry and have to deal with our emotional wounds. I offer you strength and patience in doing so. My focus today is […]
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The Space Between
Spits of rain pierce dappled sun under the tall pines. A white marquee, a podium, three huge black rocks wrapped with a very long yellow ribbon, a pack of media, a crowd of mostly women, milling, meeting old friends being introduced to others. A day that had been waited for… Grundy Gardens is behind Adelaide’s […]
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Removing Anonymity Does Not Reduce Donor Numbers
Sperm donation in Australia was once shrouded in secrecy and donors were forced to be anonymous, even if they did not want to. After learning some of the lessons from adoption, as well as listening to the voices of the donor conceived, practice and policy regarding donor conception began to change. No longer would donors […]
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Begin Again – A Workshop for Adult Adoptees
I spoke with Sherry Hearn about her counselling / coaching business and the one day workshop she is offering to adopted people at Relationships Australia on 17 September 2016, in Adelaide. Sherry, you are an adopted person, born in New Zealand, in the 1970s. You grew up in Christchurch and Hawaii before studying at […]
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Reconnecting Heartlines to Bloodlines
Heartlines – The Year I Met My Other Mother is a new memoir exploring the adoption legacy of Robin and Susannah, mother and daughter separated at birth – at Robin’s choosing – who meet again half a century later – at Susannah’s choosing. Their reunion occurring fairly recently, and rapidly, once locating each other in […]
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Reflecting on Adoption – Interview with Sofie Gregory about short film Loss and Connection
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 […]
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Adoption Revivialists – Recreating a Shameful Past?
Adoption is often seen as the panacea for social ills. For much of the latter half of the 20th Century adoption was used to forcibly remove children from young mothers to shield society from the shame of having children out of wedlock. The mothers, fathers and their children often deserted in their time of greatest […]