South West Adoption Group Supporting Survivors

09/06/2026

07/06/2026

There is something I wish more people understood about us mothers who lost our babies to forced adoption.

The loss did not end when we walked out of the hospital. It did not disappear after a few years, or when we married, had other children, built careers or grew older.

Many of us have lived with that grief every day of our lives.

Even now, more than 50 years after my son’s birth, I still find myself explaining what happened to the child I was not allowed to keep. I still encounter the belief that we simply "gave our babies away" as though it was a free and informed choice.

For many young mothers, it was anything but.

We were often teenagers or very young women, raised in a time when you did what parents, social workers, doctors, clergy and other authority figures told you to do. We were vulnerable, powerless and frequently given little real choice or support to keep our children.

The loss of a child to adoption leaves an empty space that never completely disappears. Birthdays, anniversaries, family gatherings, milestones and quiet moments can all bring that loss back into focus, no matter how many decades have passed.

I also want to acknowledge something important. Too often there is an expectation that we must compare pain - that the suffering of mothers and the suffering of adopted people somehow compete with each other.

They do not.

Adopted people live with the loss of their mothers, families, identity, history and connection. Mothers live with the loss of their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. Both losses are profound and lifelong. Neither diminishes the other.

Grief is not a competition. Loss cannot be measured on a scale.

What unites us is not whose pain is greater, but the reality that forced adoption created wounds many of us carry for a lifetime.

Some losses are never forgotten. Some loves never fade. And some mothers never stop wondering about the child they were forced to leave behind.

07/06/2026

Something I have been thinking about lately…

In Western Australia, donor-conceived people are increasingly being recognised as having a right to know the truth about their origins. This is based on the understanding that every person has a right to know where they come from, their genetic history, their ancestry and their identity.

I completely support that.

What I struggle to understand is why the same principle is not being applied to adopted people.

Recommendation 36, “The Right to Know”, calls for adopted people to be informed of their adoption status. Yet governments remain unwilling to implement this recommendation, meaning there are still people who may not know they were adopted.

How can it be considered ethical to withhold such fundamental information from a person about their own identity?

This is not about blaming adoptive families. It is not about disrupting lives. It is about recognising that every person has a right to the truth about themselves.

If we acknowledge that donor-conceived people have a right to know their origins, then surely adopted people have an equal right to know they were adopted.

Identity rights should not depend on how a person came into their family.

Truth, transparency and informed identity should be rights afforded to all, not just some.

I’d be interested to hear others’ thoughts on this apparent inconsistency.

05/06/2026

I am so truly honoured to have a father who is willing to speak about the painful loss of his first born daughter to the forced adoption era and an adopted man who lost his entire family to forced adoption. Thank you for standing with adopted women and mothers who so bravely shared their truth in order to educate the general public to the truth of what happened to us at the hands of the government. We all continue to live with the pain and the scars of what you the government did to us and we will not forget!

02/06/2026

I want to say something that has been weighing heavily on me.

Many of us in the adoption and forced adoption community carry deep trauma. We have lived through separation, loss, grief, identity issues, rejection, and decades of silence. We know better than most what pain feels like.

That is why it saddens me when people choose to troll, attack, or publicly criticise others within our own community. We don’t all have to agree. We can have different opinions, challenge ideas, and have respectful discussions. But attacking each other helps no one.

Every bit of energy spent tearing down another mother, adoptee, father, or family member is energy that could be spent educating the public, raising awareness, advocating for change, and telling the truth about what happened to us.

The real issue is not fellow survivors. The real issue is that many people still do not understand the realities of the forced adoption era, the lifelong impacts of family separation, or the suffering that continues today.

I would love to see us stand together more often. We are stronger when we support one another, even when we don’t agree on everything. Our shared experiences should unite us, not divide us.

We’ve already lost enough to separation. Let’s not lose each other too.

01/06/2026

I am looking forward to my interview with Jo Sparrow at Jigsaw Queensland tomorrow 🤗 I’ll let you know when you can listen to the interview on line asap 🥰