- 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, […]
- Adoptees’ Experiences of Counselling This article is a summary of my thesis on adoptees and counselling. The thesis was entitled ‘Adoptees’ Perceptions of Their Counselling Experiences and Suggestions for Counsellors’. It was submitted as part of the requirements of the Masters in Psychology Counselling at Monash University in January 2017. Adoptees’ Experiences of Counselling Counsellors are not usually provided […]
- ADOPTED Adoption as a social and legal construct is an uncomfortable wedge that splits and secures the tenuous identities of adopted people. Split from their original kin they are shifted to stranger families to become stuck on the threshold of never really being let in or truly left out. Familial doors are left ajar, leaving ongoing […]
- Lion Cub in Search of his Original Pride The life story of Saroo Brierley is characterised by some extraordinary events since he was lost in India and subsequently adopted by an Australian couple in Tasmania. His memoir A Long Way Home became an international best seller when first published in 2012 and the recent release of Lion, the feature film adapted from his […]
- Adoption In Crisis Or Time To Accept Other Options First We are led to believe that adoption in Australia is in crisis. Nationally, adoption rates are at an all time low, the process to finalise an adoption allegedly takes too long, slowed by red tape and driven by an anti-adoption culture and lack of resources. Simply, the adoption system is broken. Adoption, it is said, […]
- In conversation with … Catherine Lynch … adoptee activist, mother, lawyer Catherine I have been looking forward to our interview. Let’s get straight into it. Adopted people, after decades of invisibility and being relegated to the silent party in adoption, are finding their voice and speaking out about what it is like to live with the legacy of adoption and even to question the practice of […]
- 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 […]
- Writing as Therapy I was one of three guest authors invited to talk at a recent Speakers Forum hosted by Counsellors Tricia Dearden and Brooke Bengston at the Post Adoption Resource Centre, Sydney. Alongside Margaret Watson who spoke about her book Surviving Secrets, and Gwen Wilson who reflected on her memoir I Belong to No One, I talked […]
- 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 […]
- Taking Adoption to the Big Screen Based in South Australia, Waters Productions started by Heather Waters, creates films which stir the soul and provoke the senses. Primarily they focus on adoption issues including the short film, The Lost Souls, set in the 1960s about the closed adoption era that was released in 2013. Current projects include a developing feature film, Primal […]
