Be careful what you ask for @PeppyPatti, it's quite the story. 😁 Nothing like I ever expected, that's for sure. Plus when I tell them, they're always long so apologies in advance.
I'd always desperately wanted to find my biological parents but was always too afraid to try in case I was rejected again. I was about to turn 50 and had and realised I'm not getting and younger and either would me parents be so I was probably running out of time if I didn't try to find them soon. So in a moment of desperation I applied online for my adoption records after a bit of googling on how to even do it.
About 8 months later I had completely forgotten about it when I received a phone call. A woman asked if I was me, I said yes and she said she was calling about my application for my adoption records. It all came back! Oh god! What had I done?! I had originally convinced myself to go through with it by convincing myself I could get the records, I would then hopefully know my birth parents names and I could leave it at that. Now it all seemed a bit too real. 50 years of so much thinking about it was finally here... it was surreal to say the least.
She then told me they like to go through what is in the files before they give them out so that the person doesn't just have all this information dumped on them to deal with. I guess they like to 'ease you in'. The first thing she told me was my original birth name. I wasn't expecting this and it was so strange to know I had a different name when I was born. It makes perfect sense of course but hearing it was... I can't really describe it.
She then told me I had 5 siblings, 3 were adopted out and 2 were kept. I hadn't really ever though about this, but to know I had all these siblings and I was the 2nd youngest took me a while to take in. Then she told me my mothers name, and that did get to me quite a bit. She told me my fathers name but said he sort of left the picture around the time I was born so there's no more information on him. It was all a lot to take in. After a bit of a chat she said I would then be emailed a link to download all the files.
The files I got had all the birth records of all the siblings and a few extra files including a complaint made when I was about 3 about my parents keeping me at home and apparently I had used "undesirable language" around someone. The file was just this man's final report after chatting to my adoptive parents. Nothing was done and the report ended that the chat with my parents would be warning enough and shouldn't affect their current application to adopt a 2nd child... which they did 5 years after I was born. There was also a letter back from the department after my parents had writing to them saying they found a letter in their letterbox saying it was from my birth mother asking to see me. I must have been about 12-18 months going by the dates. They replied by saying my birth mother would have no idea where my adoptive parents lived, so it was probably a hoax, so just throw it away. I still don't know what to make of that.
There was also a letter from 2001 where my mother had applied to get the adoption information on me and my younger brother (also adopted out). It was odd though because it said the records were to go to my sister (the one that was kept) and to I assumed me because the name listed was my first and 2nd names followed by my birth surname. I found out later, that name was my older brother (also not adopted out) and we actually had the same first and second names... weird.
I was told to go talk to PASS (Post Adoption Support Services) who are part of Relationships SA here in Adelaide. They would help me track them down and make contact if I wished, but they they would do it gradually as that was regarded as the best way for everyone involved. This was on a Thursday afternoon. I spent all that evening and Friday searching the internet for these names without much success. Apart from a facebook page of a woman whose name matched, she was listed as living in the ACT but 'from Adelaide'. She looked about the right age from the profile photo to be my mother and sort of looked a bit like me. So I saved it as a possibility. I also found a primary school class reunion facebook page that listed a woman with my oldest sister's adopted name. Someone in the background had a tshirt with the reunion year. It matched the school grade and year she would have been at that time based on the date of birth on her record. The school was also just down the road from the address listed in record of her adoptive parents. I also found this woman's facebook page. This did feel like it was getting a bit 'stalky'. I filed this away as another possibility.
I thought I would give this information to the people at PASS when I saw them and that was all I could do for now. The thing is, it's really hard to let these things go. I kept going back and looking at these facebook pages of these 2 women. They certain looked a little bit like me, but hardly enough to be sure. I couldn't stop going back to them.
I continues this on the Saturday and i was looking at my mothers page. There was nothing on it, but 5 likes of her profile photo. From the photo she looked to be in a wheel chair and in a nursing home. But i looked at the 5 names that had liked the photo and thought they probably worked at the home or at least knew her. I still couldn't just let things go so I sent a message to the first name, just saying I was trying to get in contact with a woman with this same name who lived in Adelaide in 1970. What's the harm in that I thought. I could be trying to find her for any number of reasons. I clicked send.
That's when I looked at the name of the woman I had sent the message to a bit closer. It was hyphenated. The last bit was my birth surname. I looked at her friends list. The woman who I had found from the school reunion page was listed as a friend. I wasn't supposed to make contact! It was supposed to be a gradual thing! I started to worry about what I had done when there was a ding. This woman had replied. She said hi and said she was happy to hear from me and that the family had been waiting for quite a while to hear from me. She sent me links to her father's facebook page (my brother) and her aunt (my sister) and said she'd let them know I had made contact.
So I heard from the both fairly quickly and we exchanged messages and my oldest sister contacted me (the woman from the school reunion page) and over the next month or so I met my brother and oldest sister who both lived here in Adelaide. My other sister lived in the ACT, which is why my mother was there as it was a better idea to have my sister close by her than my brother, so they moved her to a nursing more in Canberra. I went to Canberra for a few days later in the year (this was all in February) an met my sister and her family and my mother... after going through all the covid screening and testing to get in to the nursing home.
I still remember the first time I spoke to my mother. I hadn't met her yet but I was on the phone to my sister who was on her way to visit mum and we had talked for so long that she made it there while we were talking and she just said "Do you want to talk to her?" and handed me the phone. At least I didn't have time overthink things 😁
So that's basically it. I had another older sister who was also adopted out, but had apparently died from cot death when she was about 6 months. That was really hard to hear. The PASS woman in the original phone cal had told me that. I had a younger brother who they had contacted his adoptive mother as a result of that letter from 2001 I mentioned. His mother wrote back saying he didn't want contact but she had sent them some photos. I found out a letter was sent to my adoptive mother as well but I had never known about it. Maybe it got lost in the post... who knows. But knowing her as I did, if she got a letter from my birth family she would have been to threatened to ever tell me about it. In 2001 I still lived at the same house my parents live in when I was born, so the address on my adoption record was still current. My brother and sister said they had both driven up to the house to check it out, but never made contact. I understand that, but knowing they were in a car outside the house 23 years ago still troubles me... what could have been. My oldest sister had also told me she had made contact with the family 35 years ago but wasn't that close to them as she considered her adoptive family as her real family. This was very hard to hear as it instantly made me think of all the years with them I had lost.
So that's pretty much the story. Sorry for being so long but I don't really do short, concise stories 😁
