Adopted.

Meet Amy as she delves into her life experiences after being adopted at 8 months. 

She shares her insight into struggles with mental health, identity crisis, meeting her biological family and finding the connection and love she was seeking with the birth of her daughter. 

It is a privilege to share your story.

Thank you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:05

Welcome beautiful mamas, I am your host Shea Harrison. This podcast is a place for Springfield and local surrounding area mamas to share their stories about life, motherhood and everything in between, completely judgement free. I am so excited to be able to share these stories with you and give women an opportunity to be heard. So if you're ready to laugh, open your mind and be part of a supportive sharing community, let's crack on. Welcome beautiful mamas, I am your host Shea Harrison. This podcast is a place for Springfield and local surrounding area mamas to share their stories about life, motherhood and everything in between, completely judgement free. Hello and welcome to the podcast. How are you feeling? nervous. How are you? I am good. This will be good. I'm really, I'm really, really excited to tell your, as we've just said, your story, but

SPEAKER_00: 0:52

it's not really a story, but I'm excited to share your journey today. I'm sure that I'm going to have lots of questions as we go through. So as always, I'll get you to introduce

SPEAKER_01: 1:04

yourself and then crack on with your story. Okay. So my name's Amy. I'm 34 years old. I have two kids. a almost 17 year old and a three-year-old oh that's a big age gap it is would not recommend it no no no that's fine though it's everyone everyone has a different yeah anyway let's let's tell your story i'm really excited all right um so i like i said i don't really know where to begin yeah it clearly starts at birth that's probably the best place which is 34 years ago so yeah um I guess for me the one thing I want to start off with saying is that I knew like my entire life yeah that I was adopted so it didn't just get to a point where I was 18 or something like that it was like surprise you're adopted

SPEAKER_00: 2:02

yeah um

SPEAKER_01: 2:04

some of my earliest memories of conversations with my mother so my adoptive mother yeah who I will always refer to as my mother yeah um were conversations about being adopted yeah so we would look at photos when we were kids and stuff like that. And there were no photos of me as a baby. Yes. So how old were you when you were adopted? Um, eight months. Oh yeah. Okay. So the little baby still. Yeah. Yeah. So I also have a sister who's adopted from another family. So like with my adoptive parents, they've adopted two children. You being one of them. Yes. And years older than me so there were baby photos of her and no baby photos of me she was adopted when she was only a couple of weeks old okay yeah her parents knew that they wanted to adopt her out when they were pregnant

SPEAKER_00: 3:07

yeah

SPEAKER_01: 3:08

um but with me I wasn't adopted until I was about eight months old um and there were weird photos of me at six months old in a high chair with a birthday cake and it said happy birthday no it said happy half birthday Leah on this birthday cake yeah that is the earliest photo of me that I had

SPEAKER_00: 3:34

yeah

SPEAKER_01: 3:34

so

SPEAKER_00: 3:35

who took that What's

SPEAKER_01: 3:36

that photo? Foster parents.

SPEAKER_00: 3:38

Okay, so you

SPEAKER_01: 3:38

were in the foster system before being adopted. So I was in and out of foster homes for most of that eight months to begin with. I think it was a total of six or seven stays that I had. With the same foster family? I'm pretty sure. Oh, okay then. Yeah, so... it always led me to have a lot of questions of why I was backwards and forwards

SPEAKER_00: 4:12

yeah

SPEAKER_01: 4:12

did my parents actually want to give me up

SPEAKER_00: 4:15

didn't

SPEAKER_01: 4:15

they were

SPEAKER_00: 4:16

they

SPEAKER_01: 4:17

having problems um was someone intervening but the older I got there are a lot of those questions yeah why was it so backwards and forwards and because I had known my sister and that she like her story was so straightforward

SPEAKER_00: 4:32

yeah

SPEAKER_01: 4:33

her parents were young they wanted to give her up for adoption

SPEAKER_00: 4:35

yeah

SPEAKER_01: 4:36

and that was that

SPEAKER_00: 4:37

yeah

SPEAKER_01: 4:38

um but my story wasn't yeah clearly straightforward

SPEAKER_00: 4:43

yeah

SPEAKER_01: 4:44

um I had found a file of all my adoption history not my adoption history sorry my foster history so in all that time that I had stayed with them going backwards and forwards for seven um different days they had to document everything about me and they wrote a lot of stuff about me having even as a baby like weird anxiety issues or they often had to restrain my hands at bath time because I would just scratch myself until I was bleeding yeah I wasn't a very happy kind of normal baby I guess like I don't want to say not a normal baby that sounds a bit weird but it's a really disruptive yeah early

SPEAKER_00: 5:40

childhood yes so you're probably not going to be well-rounded

SPEAKER_01: 5:44

yeah so there was obviously that trauma yeah that my my brain was suffering but couldn't comprehend what that trauma was. Yeah. I mean, if you think about a baby when they are with their mother and you put them down and they cry and they're crying for their mother, but if your mother never comes back, that's going to be traumatising. Yeah, that makes me want to cry. I'm sorry. Like, having little ones, that's, yeah, your poor thing. Exactly. So I'd also found a file that had explained Oh my goodness. So when I found that file, I think I was about 14 years old, and that is what started making me question was I put up for adoption because my parents were possibly junkies. Yeah. So there was a lot going on through all of my life. From being young, I knew something wasn't right with my– family upbringing like I knew I'd had time away from my parents for a substantial amount of time because there was no photos of me so is that your birth yeah sorry I knew I'd had a substantial amount of time away from my birth parents because there were no photos of me as a baby at least just the six month one yeah yeah and even after that six month photo there was still nothing yeah for a while until I think I was about one

SPEAKER_00: 7:35

yeah

SPEAKER_01: 7:36

right so um Obviously, at 14, I started asking a lot of questions. Yeah. Where did I come from? Who am I? Yeah. It was causing a lot of identity issues for me. Yeah. Made me very distracted, I guess, in my whole entire life, especially at school, because my whole mind was consumed by... Just who am I?

SPEAKER_00: 8:08

Yeah. Where

SPEAKER_01: 8:08

do I come from? Where's my parents? Who are they? What do they look like? Have I ever passed them in the street? Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. Becoming interested in boys and always wondering, like, what if that's my cousin or my brother or...

SPEAKER_00: 8:26

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_01: 8:27

Yeah. I didn't want to be one of those people that... accidentally marries my brother or something like that it did go through my head that's a serious concern but when you say it at a later date it does sound quite light-hearted yeah yeah yeah understandably is it um like sister wives and yes brother yeah yeah so when you are adopted out they do give you a little book um i think it's just called my family or something like that both me and my adoptive sister had one and you know In that it would have how old your parents were, what ethnicity they were, how tall they were, exactly how much they weighed at the time. That's interesting. Yeah. I think it even had their birthdays in there. And it would tell you if you had any brothers or sisters already. And it would have all of that kind of information. information but absolutely nothing that could give away their names yes so their identities yeah how they looked yeah yeah so oh it did have like their hair color and everything at the time oh yeah it explained all that but just nothing that would give away their names

SPEAKER_00: 9:48

yeah yeah

SPEAKER_01: 9:49

and it had stated in there that I had an older sister who was I think she's a year and a half older than me yeah so that was another thing that always bothered me because I was always kind of like why did my parents give up me and not her do

SPEAKER_00: 10:10

you know that

SPEAKER_01: 10:10

they didn't put her up for adoption so I do now oh okay then yeah at the time you it didn't stay that I had no idea yeah it just as far as I was aware they still had I really didn't know yeah I just I Presumed, I guess. I would assume if she, at that time reading that book, if she had been adopted, it would have said adopted. Yeah. So sister this age adopted. Yeah. Or I guess not. And then if it didn't say that, you would just assume, but that's what I think I would assume. Exactly. Yeah. So I just assumed that they still had her. Yeah. And I guess there was always that jealousy.

SPEAKER_00: 10:50

Yeah. Absolutely. I was

SPEAKER_01: 10:51

extremely envious.

SPEAKER_00: 10:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 10:54

Of the fact that... there could have been my family out there living happily with my sister yeah and not me

SPEAKER_00: 11:03

yeah

SPEAKER_01: 11:04

yeah so i knew i had an older sister but in terms of brothers i didn't know if i had any younger than me so when i did become interested in boys i just made sure i was never interested in any boy younger than me that was my plan that's that's a really logical like thought process for a 14 year old yeah wow so if they were my cousin well you would have to make um yeah there's no way i wanted to accidentally get with a brother that's just freaky yeah that's just mind-blowing yeah wow so um I guess for a really long time, yeah, I just had those identity issues. I did start to become just really, I don't know, I guess mentally unwell. Yeah. And I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder at 14. Wow, that's young. Yeah. That's really young to be diagnosed with that. Yeah.

UNKNOWN: 12:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 12:11

I was fairly crazy for quite a few years because of that. And I put it all down to that childhood trauma. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 12:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 12:20

Because like I said, my brain had obviously suffered that trauma, but without ever being able to comprehend what had happened.

SPEAKER_00: 12:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 12:30

Where my mum went. I mean, they say that you can, as a baby, you can smell your mum and you can smell their milk and... You hear the voice when you're in the womb. Yeah. And being that I was with... them on and off for eight months i did have that bonding time yeah so um yeah then there were lots of questions of why i was given up

SPEAKER_00: 12:57

my

SPEAKER_01: 12:57

my um adoptive parents didn't really know yeah

SPEAKER_00: 13:00

the

SPEAKER_01: 13:01

more trouble i was going through mentally from um about 14 to 17 they were telling me this is your adoptive parents yeah my adoptive parents were telling me things but things that they didn't exactly know for certain

SPEAKER_00: 13:20

okay yeah were they making that clear or were they just trying to fill in the gaps for you I

SPEAKER_01: 13:24

think they were just trying to fill in the gaps because my dad my adoptive dad had once told me um your parents your real parents just dropped you off at the hospital because you were sick and they left you there and they and they never came back for you so whether he was told that yeah and was telling me what he thought was truth yeah um it took him a long time before he told me that because I guess because if he did think it was true he knew how screwed up it sounded and he didn't exactly want to tell me like hey your parents didn't want you because you were sick um but it doesn't

SPEAKER_00: 14:02

I

SPEAKER_01: 14:02

mean

SPEAKER_00: 14:03

like not being there if they were in and out of your life um Seems unusual.

SPEAKER_01: 14:07

Yeah. I know. So that's what I mean. It doesn't... I think they were just trying to fill in the gaps

SPEAKER_00: 14:14

for me. Maybe offer you that peace of mind because they could see that you were hurting.

SPEAKER_01: 14:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 14:18

But it... wasn't helping

SPEAKER_01: 14:19

no at that point it created a big connection between being unwell and not being wanted oh no yeah because i'm a bad asthmatic and all through primary school people had teased me for being an asthmatic and then all of a sudden i was just like well that's why because people don't want people that are sick people you know bad at people that are sick and they don't want people that are different and i started hiding my asthma puffer everywhere I went and I never took it in front of everyone and I ended up having some severe asthma attacks after that that ended me in hospital because I would be somewhere like at a barbecue say and the smoke was really bad and I was too nervous to have my puffer in front of everyone yeah yeah and by the time I left the barbecue I'd be in such an asthma attack my puffer wouldn't help and I'd end up in hospital oh wow so there was just that connection between being sick and not being wanted yeah and then on top of all that with all my borderline personality symptoms my adoptive mum was struggling with me a lot and she would sometimes get really frustrated and yell at me and she'd be like you need help you need help get out get out and I'd have to leave the house and with her telling me it's because you're sick so that point it was causing me a great deal of distress because I was basically going through these feelings of another set of parents that didn't want me because I was sick

SPEAKER_00: 16:01

just reaffirming what this foundational unknown foundational belief is for you

SPEAKER_01: 16:06

yeah yeah right yeah um my adoptive parents actually split up when I was four oh wow so my dad wasn't in our lives a lot um we saw him every second weekend that kind of arrangement but he was very busy even on the weekends that he had us so we didn't really get to spend a lot of time with him um so yeah mostly it was just me and my sister and my adoptive mum

SPEAKER_00: 16:40

yeah

SPEAKER_01: 16:40

are you close with your sister not at all okay not at all so i see other people with really close um sisterly bonds sorry no you're just having a drink and i get so jealous of it yeah because i'm not close with my sister at all when we were little kids we were she would wake up in the middle of the night early on Christmas and come climb into my bed or some nights I would just go and climb into her bed and mum would find us in each other's bed and we'd get in trouble until we'd go back to our own beds but still um that that bond ended when we were fairly young yeah right and we just never got it back yeah reconnected yeah yeah um Her adoption story and how it affected her was a lot different. She seemed a lot more content with it all, I guess. It didn't seem to– I mean, I'm sure it affected her on the inside, but on the outside she didn't show

SPEAKER_00: 17:52

it,

SPEAKER_01: 17:53

whereas I was just going completely off the rails.

SPEAKER_00: 17:55

And

SPEAKER_01: 17:56

I don't think she dealt well with that either.

SPEAKER_00: 18:01

Yours does sound quite traumatic. Yeah. Not that hers wasn't, but like you've said, it does sound like it was a bit more straightforward where yours was on and off and on and off and quite triggering.

SPEAKER_01: 18:12

Yeah. Yeah. And just things like when she turned 18, she was given a letter that her parents had sent her when she was a baby and family services gave it to our adoptive parents and said, you have to give this letter to her on her 18th birthday. Yeah. And it basically just explained to her... You know, we were only 15 when we fell pregnant with you, so we knew you'd be better off with a better family. But we love you and we're just doing the right thing for you.

SPEAKER_00: 18:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 18:44

So she even had that kind of comfort. Yeah, closure, I guess.

UNKNOWN: 18:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 18:52

bit with me it was a bit different my family my real family had sent me gifts through family services throughout my life oh really yeah um the sad part is i was given them but i was never told that it was from someone else yeah and i remember having this specific mickey mouse toy that i kept for so many years it was a baby toy it was one of those ones with the rings that you stack up oh yep yep um And it had like a big Mickey Mouse head on top. And I didn't throw it out until I was, I think, about 10 years old. And it was after that that my mother had said, my adoptive mother had told me that your real grandmother had sent that to you. And I was like, why did I throw that out? I wish I'd just kept it.

SPEAKER_00: 19:42

Who did you think they were from? Or were they just gifts

SPEAKER_01: 19:45

that you had received? Yeah, they were just gifts that I'd received. I guess considering it was a baby toy, I wouldn't have known anything. anything I mean even if they told me I wouldn't have known yeah yeah yeah um so Fast forward to me being 16. I was totally off the rails, not going to school, very promiscuous, experimenting with different things, fell pregnant, decided I was going to keep my baby because the whole idea of just having that first family member. Yeah. yes was so comforting yes so comforting and um some people in my family had kind of mentioned that i was ruining my life by having a child so young but to me it was just something that i could not bear to part with

SPEAKER_00: 20:52

absolutely absolutely

SPEAKER_01: 20:54

yeah so and

SPEAKER_00: 20:57

to be honest like not being in your situation or being a family member I don't even think that it would have ruined your life I mean like it hasn't but back then I don't that's not the thought process that I would have gone down it would have been that that peace yeah absolutely

SPEAKER_01: 21:13

I think some people understood that yeah yeah but others didn't yeah which is fair everyone's gonna have their own perception and that would be from their upbringing yeah probably but that wasn't their life it was my life yeah it's what I decided to do yeah my adoptive mum was amazing support oh that's lovely yeah so i still lived with her um had my baby yeah was absolutely so in love yeah it was amazing um by the time she hit um eight months old it was really kind of stressful for me because seeing what an eight month old was I didn't know anyone else with babies so seeing what an eight month old was and having all that time to bond with her I was kind of like why would anyone give up this little bundle of joy like I don't I still just did not understand it no um I was 17 when she was born so by the time she was eight months old it was coming close to me being eight 18 yep meaning that I could start the journey of finding my parents okay so I've turned 18 and there's like a register you just put your name on it and if your real parents have put their name on a register basically just filters through all these names until eventually like they get a match and then so do parents have the option of not putting their names on it yeah okay So. no one has to put their names on it so a parent could put their name on it and then they'll never find their child because the child doesn't put their name on it

SPEAKER_00: 23:00

yeah okay

SPEAKER_01: 23:01

yeah

SPEAKER_00: 23:02

and then obviously i've never been adopted but there are adoptions where parents are involved through the whole childhood as well is that correct as far as i'm aware okay then yep so you've put your name on the the register

SPEAKER_01: 23:14

yep put my name on the register um first you find an adoption like agency yep um i went through a place called link up because they're an aboriginal agency okay and the reason my adoptive parents were able to adopt two children is because my adoptive father was aboriginal and in the 80s they had too many aboriginal babies that needed homes so they came up with A rule, like if you were married, you could only adopt if you were married and you could only adopt one child.

SPEAKER_00: 23:51

Yeah, right. But

SPEAKER_01: 23:52

if either of the parents were Aboriginal, you could adopt two children. So either birth parent was Aboriginal, then two children. Are your adoptive family Aboriginal? If one adoptive parent was Aboriginal, then that family could adopt two children if they were of Aboriginal descent. So they were trying to put the Aboriginal babies back with aboriginal families so your biological father's aboriginal and which of your adoptive parents is my dad as well dad and dad yeah okay then yeah um so i went with an aboriginal adoption agency um was this all in queensland yeah okay yeah yeah and they had told me sometimes it takes years for you to find your parents which was stressful yeah um it took a while for my sister to find hers. Yeah. So I was kind of prepared for that already. Yeah. But within a matter of weeks, they had found a lot of information on my appearance. Yeah. So first they find like a name matches up. Yep. Then they get a birth certificate. Yeah. The adoption agency lady came over to my house and she came in and she sat me down and she said, your father's name is not on your adoption papers. And for a child to be adopted out, the act at that time states that both parents need to sign the form. So usually in this instance, you're never going to find your father because it would be most likely that your mother didn't know who your father was oh is that how they would have

SPEAKER_00: 25:51

i guess waived that rule if you don't know who the father is yeah then only one parent needs to sign

SPEAKER_01: 25:57

yeah okay so that was extremely distressing for me um after she left i bawled my eyes out rung my best friend went over to her house had one of those just crying moments because i was like i'm never gonna know who my father is and very very very distressing um but that turned out it wasn't the case okay when they did actually locate my mother and speak to her directly she was still in a relationship with my dad

SPEAKER_00: 26:29

okay

SPEAKER_01: 26:30

and they still are to this day oh wow yeah so they met when my mother was i'm very surprised by that sorry so am i yeah so am i they met when my mother was 14 and my father was 21 yep and they're still together now that's an age gap of illegal proportions it is she lied to my dad at the time and he thought she was much older and it wasn't until they'd been together for a while and then he finally met her parents and it kind of all came out that she was actually underage and yeah Okay. They've had a very crazy relationship, I guess. Yeah. Interesting relationship. Yeah. So they, yeah, they told me. Your dad is still with your mother. Yeah. So that was exciting. She told me that they lived in New South Wales. So, again, that made me really upset because I was like, well, that's forever away. And you were only 18 at this point still? I was 18. Yeah. Turns out they didn't live in New South Wales at all.

SPEAKER_00: 27:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 27:54

They literally live in Logan. Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah. At the time I lived on the north side. Okay. So they lived like an hour drive away from me. Wow. Yeah. So the adoption agency, they plan like a reunion. Okay. And even if your family lives on the other side of Australia, they will– basically help with plane tickets and everything like that to go over there and they'll have um your adoptive agency caseworker will arrange that they can go over there with you so it's like a reunion and they're there to help with any emotions or anything like that

SPEAKER_00: 28:45

and you would have the option of not not you personally but like going not having

SPEAKER_01: 28:50

the reunion you found who they are and then you can make a decision from there i guess so but you just wanted to meet them yeah well it never got that far because my she had let them slip she had let my last name slip to my real family

SPEAKER_00: 29:07

your biological parents yeah and they

SPEAKER_01: 29:09

were so eager to meet me that my sister rung up everyone in the phone book with my last name so this is your birth sister yeah yeah the one who's older than you yeah wow she was so just eager to have me back that she rung up everyone in the phone book with my last name until they found me wow yeah so I remember the day perfectly I was out with my boyfriend at the time going to visit one of his friends and we were in the car and my phone started ringing and it was my adoptive mother and she was very angry okay um And she was just like, someone named Sharona who claims to be your sister just rung here and I told her you're not home. She's going to ring back in half an hour so you better be home if you want to talk to her. And then she hung up. Did your mum not know that you'd reached out? She knew that I'd reached out. Yep. However, she always struggled, I think, with the fact that she had to adopt. Okay. Yeah. She could not have biological children? She could not have kids, no. Okay. She tried for very many years and... she ended up with endometriosis really bad um and ended up having a full hysterectomy wow okay so she probably feels like her daughter is going to be taken away from her yeah yeah she never wanted to meet um any of our biological family it was just something she never wanted to do so when my sister when my adoptive sister met her biological parents our adoptive mom didn't want anything to do with it she was like Like, I will support you, whatever emotions you have when you come back from your meeting. But that's really as far as it will go. Yeah. So she was not happy that they had rung our home phone and that she had answered. Yeah. I, on the other hand, was absolutely just... Over the moon. Absolutely. I was so excited.

SPEAKER_00: 31:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 31:27

So I was like, look, we've got to turn this car around. I've got to go home. I don't care what we're doing. Tell your friend I'm sorry we're not going over there. Turn the car around immediately. We were only like 10 minutes from home. Went back there and I was just sitting beside the phone. Imagine the anxiety and the elation that you must have been processing. Yeah. I was so excited. But it was also very awkward because my adoptive mother was still in the same room while watching TV just very like yeah I can imagine like focusing on the TV but you're well aware she's listening yeah yeah just a bit of a cranky look on her face oh how uncomfortable yeah um the phone rung I answered it it was my older sister I don't even remember what we talked about at that moment it was all just like weird yeah it was all just very weird it was a quick conversation um she's a bit of a messed up person in her head so it wasn't a normal like hi how are you what have you been doing oh my god it's been so long yeah it was just really weird yeah okay i don't even know how to explain it um she ended up being a really bad drug user as well so she's not exactly all there in her head um so it was weird speaking to her um and she was like oh i've got someone here that wants to talk to you it's your mother so that was exciting and i got to speak to my real mum on the phone which was really nice I don't even remember what we talked about um I had asked if my dad was there yeah and she said he was at work um and that he was a tattooist and he was an award-winning tattooist and I was like thinking this is just so cool yeah um and then I told them that I had to go I didn't want to be on the phone for very long because it was all like extremely overwhelming yeah for me Yeah. I liked the very quick, hello, how are you? Yeah. Like, I'm alive, it's good to hear you. Yeah. But, yeah, it was very overwhelming and I remember my mum saying, look, we'll just call you back later when your dad's home. So the rest of that afternoon was just... like probably the most overwhelming few hours of my life um phone rung later that night it was my mother my real mother and she was like look your dad's home now he wants to talk to you and that was the most normal conversation that I had gotten to have was with him um I was bawling my eyes out and he was being really comforting, which was really sweet because I was like, oh my God, my dad's finally comforting me. I've never had this before. It's weird, but it's relaxing at the same time. And being that I could tell the conversation with him was the most normal compared to speaking with my sister and my mum, it was him that I had asked... why this is that night yeah yeah i was just like why why did you adopt me out i need to know yeah um he was fairly brief about it which i guess is understanding now they probably didn't want to tell me on the phone but he was just like it's not something we really wanted to do they took you from us We've wanted you back all this time. We've never stopped looking for you. We're here for you. It'll all be okay now. And, again, it was a fairly quick conversation because it was just too overwhelming for me. And then over the next couple of days there, all I could think about was, I was like ringing every tattoo shop around me because I wanted to know where he worked. I was like, maybe I should just go there and get a tattoo. Like just thinking all this stuff. Um, so you still haven't seen them by the, at this point at that point? No, but I did about, I think four days later. Yeah.

UNKNOWN: 36:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 36:23

This is the weirdest coincidence too. So the actual date that I was legally adopted was August the 15th. And the day that I went and saw them again was August the 15th.

SPEAKER_00: 36:38

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_01: 36:39

Yeah. You need to bring up that radio show that does like coincidental Tuesdays or something. Never heard of it. I think you can win money. You should do that. I should do that. Yeah, win some money or something. Because it's a pretty far out coincidence. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I had rung them on the phone again and I did feel bad about it because my adoptive mum always celebrated the 15th of August. with me. She always referred to it as my special day. Oh, that's really sweet. She was a good mum. Yeah. Yeah. And it was a day that she would let me eat whatever I wanted. So if I wanted ice cream for breakfast, I got ice cream for breakfast. And if I wanted McDonald's for lunch, she would just come to the school with McDonald's. Oh, that's so sweet. Yeah. So she was obviously always very sad that she... Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 37:48

Yeah, understandably.

SPEAKER_01: 37:52

Yeah. Yeah. And she didn't know how to spell it for quite a long time. Yeah, okay. And they didn't want me to have the same issue. Aww. And Amy's only got three letters. Yeah. They thought they were doing you a favour. Aww. So that's how I got Amy. And you wanted a longer name? It's not that I wanted a... You are short and sweet though. That's perfect. It's not that I wanted a longer name. It's just that I... When I had my identity issues through my teenage years, I struggled to understand why you would take someone's name and especially if it's only to give them a short name that they can spell. I see. I kind of thought to myself if there was something more special about the name Amy that you really wanted to use it, maybe I'd be more okay with it. Like a grandmother or... Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But just hearing that my sister... couldn't spell her name was like well that's kind of a her problem yeah not a me problem yeah Um, so I did go through a stage actually where I was like, no, I want to change my name back to Leah.

SPEAKER_00: 39:18

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 39:18

And then.

SPEAKER_00: 39:20

Was this when you were in your teens or earlier teens?

SPEAKER_01: 39:23

Yeah. And that carried through for quite a long time. So especially when I met my real parents, because they were calling me Leah. Oh, of course. Yeah. So. And you, you like that then? I do. You like that they were calling, there they are. I loved it. Yeah. It was very comforting. Yeah. Okay. So on the 15th of August. Yeah. many, many years later when I was 18. So I can't tell you what year that is.

SPEAKER_00: 39:46

No,

SPEAKER_01: 39:46

that's fine. I had gone out with my adoptive mother to celebrate my special day. Yeah. I'd come home. There was a message on the answering machine from them saying, like, hey, I just want to just call you. And I called them back and... My mother was just like, when are we going to meet you? The adoption agency is trying to arrange a meet up. That could take so long. And I just said, what about now? Yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. called my boyfriend at the time and I was just like look I want to go and meet them I'm scared can you come with me I don't want to go there by myself yeah I need that support and he's like yeah I'll come with you um left my daughter at home with my adoptive mum yeah I felt really kind of guilty about it but at the same time it's something I really needed to do yeah um I wasn't ready to take my daughter over there, obviously, because they were strangers to me, basically. Yeah, yeah. So they gave me their address. I hung up the phone immediately. Pretty much didn't even get changed. Just ran down to my car. We left. The whole drive there, I was so nervous. And we pulled up to their house. They just had, like, this big, massive... brick, well, stone fence with this big gate. And I was just so scared. Like, I couldn't even see into their yard at that point. So it was kind of like, what's behind the gate? Yeah,

SPEAKER_00: 41:53

yeah. What's going to

SPEAKER_01: 41:54

happen when I open this big gate? Like, there's a big wooden gate with a stone fence. You couldn't see through it literally at all. Yeah. So... I was quite nervous. Tried to open the gate really quietly, but it was a very squeaky gate. What? Yeah. They had it like that on purpose so they could hear from inside the house if anyone was actually entering the yard. Yeah. And I was like... Intruder alert! Intruder alert! Yeah, and I was so scared. And they had like a... It was only a very short front yard till their door and they had a pathway leading up to their door. I was walking up there and I was so nervous and I was shaking and just as I got to the door this lady has just flung the door open so fast and she just looked like this little hippie lady she had this nice pink kind of satin shirt on with this long hippie looking skirt and she just had like a gazillion gold chain necklaces and she had like kind of frizzy dark hair that sits kind of the same that my hair sits and she was really short and she just she just flung the door open and she's thrown her arms open like this and she's just said you are beautiful oh I just started to cry. It makes me want to cry. And she hugged me. Oh, you are beautiful. It was a beautiful moment. I'll never forget it. Yeah. Yeah, she just hugged me. She threw her arms over me and hugged me and I just hugged her back and I cried and shit, she probably cried too. I don't remember, but I'm sure she did. Yeah. And we just stood there for a little while, hugging. Yeah. And then she was like, come inside, meet your sister. And my sister was there and she introduced me to one of my youngest brothers. So I ended up having two brothers, both younger than me, obviously. The brother after me wasn't home at the time, but my youngest brother was. And if I remember correctly, he was only 12 or 13 at the time. So... excuse me he was still pretty young um and we just went inside and sat around their dining room table and we just talked about i guess like what my family like what my adoptive family was like and um real family was like my mother was telling me about my my grandma like her real mom but she had passed away um my sister was just talking shit because she's not quite all there um my youngest brother was He was the one asking the most questions. Kids, no filter. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess he understood the least. Yeah, of course. Because... Yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. And my mother covered head to toe in tattoos. It was just literally everywhere. And she was showing me like on her arm. She had all her kids' names in order and it had me in there. And then I think she had them somewhere else on her body and my name was in there as well. I was still a part of their family and always had been, which was so incredibly comforting. Because for so many years I was just like– these people hated me. Of course. And they just didn't want me because I'm me and they just didn't want me. Because you're sick. Yeah. Yeah. My dad wasn't home. Yeah. My mum had told me that he had started his own tattoo shop because I was like, oh, I was ringing all the tattoo shops trying to find him and I couldn't find him anywhere. Yeah, yeah. And he had opened his own tattoo shop which... He didn't ever pay for any advertising for it. That's why I couldn't find it anywhere. And he, I think, was too nervous to come home. Yeah, okay. So she was like, oh, he should be finished. And we waited a while and he never came home. And she was like, oh, we'll ring him. We tried ringing him a few times, no answer. Then eventually we did get an answer. And he just wanted to speak to me and... He did seem nervous when I spoke to him and he was just like, look, my tattoo shop is literally just around the corner from home. You would have driven past it when you drove here. Can you just come down here and I'll show you my shop? And I think he wanted me to just go there by myself, but I was way too nervous for that. So my mum came with me. I left my boyfriend behind. Good. Yeah, I left him behind with my sister and my brother. And it was just me and my mum that went there. And even when I got there, he seemed, like, just really nervous. Everyone else was just really– no one else seemed nervous. They just seemed really just chilled out, kind of. Yeah. His emotions, I felt, were the ones that reflected my emotions the most. And I remember him hugging me and we sat down on his waiting room couch and he just had his arm around me and he was just so happy and he didn't want to stop hugging me. My mum took a photo of us next to each other on the couch and we're both just happy. Um... That was the night that I met them. I'll never forget it. It was really beautiful.

SPEAKER_00: 48:57

Did you feel leaving? How did you feel? Obviously happy, but sad, okay.

SPEAKER_01: 49:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 49:04

Because you didn't want to leave? Mm-mm. Did you feel any closure or like...

SPEAKER_01: 49:09

At that moment, no, because I still... Were processing. Yeah. Yeah. And I still didn't really exactly know why. Yeah. I didn't exactly know what the story was yet. Yeah, yeah. So I had met them all. That was fantastic. Leaving them was sad. Just being that, like, my sister had a bedroom there and... Yeah. My brothers had a bedroom there. Yeah. They shared a room. It was just sad. I wanted my bedroom to be there at that point in time. There was definitely that inner child inside me that was kind of like, okay, I'm home, but why do I still not get to stay home? Yeah, okay. Why am I leaving them and then they're all just– still hanging out and watching TV and just doing family things, and I'm just leaving. So that was really hard to deal with, going home. Obviously, yeah, I was happy at the same time, but just, yeah, a lot of emotion. So after that, eventually I got to really speak to them and ask what had happened. Yep. Why did my dad say they took me off them? Mm-hmm. So the story that they told me started with the fact that both of my parents were heroin users. Mm-hmm. Mum had fallen pregnant with me. Mm-hmm. And the doctor had said, you really need to be on methadone. It's safer. It's legal. We can wean you off it. But at the moment, if you are continuing to use heroin, it's bad. illegal um you gotta do more damage and to you the fetus yeah yeah so they were like we'll put you on the methadone program it's legal we can wean you off it because you can't just they they had also said to me you can't just stop taking heroin if that's what you plan to do it's going to do more harm to the baby as well yeah so we'll put you on the methadone program we'll wean you off it um It's legal. Everything will be okay. A couple of months or whatever, you'll no longer be a drug user. Your baby will be born. Everything will be fine. She agreed that that's what she wanted to do because she felt like everything that they were saying made sense.

UNKNOWN: 52:12

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01: 52:12

My dad decided that's not what he wanted to do. Not because he wanted to keep using, but because he chose just to stop using, which he did. I think, if I remember correctly, he went on the methadone program, like he took a couple of doses, just trying to weaning himself off it kind of quicker. Because it's not something that he wanted to end up getting addicted to that. So by the time I was born, my mum was still on the program. she had me i was born addicted to methadone they had to wean me off it i was with them for a few months and she said one day when my dad was at work she had me in one of those old school net bounces that don't have the buckle you can't clip your baby in or whatever And I was on the floor in the kitchen and she was doing the dishes and my sister was running around me with one of those things that you push around and it's got the balls in it and they pop when you push it. and my mum said all of a sudden I started crying she turned around and I was on the floor and she thought either my sister has knocked into me and I've fallen out or perhaps my sister had tried to pick me up and drop me

SPEAKER_00: 53:45

really common

SPEAKER_01: 53:45

yeah so my sister was apparently quite obsessed with me when I was a baby which is fair like I was her little sister you were cute me yeah cute yeah My mum did not really know what happened. My sister wasn't old enough to tell her what happened. She probably would have thought she was just in trouble anyway. She would have been two and a half or around three. My mum said she checked me over. Everything seemed fine. So she went on with her day, thought everything was normal. My dad came home from work that day. My mum had kind of said to him, oh, you know, this is what happened today. I've checked her over. She seems all right. Dad was like, well, yeah, she still seems normal. Everything seems fine. She didn't cut herself. She's got no bruises. She's got nothing. So don't worry about it. My mum is someone who stresses a lot. So I can imagine she would have been stressed out when she told him and he would have been just reassuring like you can't see any marks on her she's not bleeding she's not bruised she's not broken she's gone back to happy she's normal now as she is every other night and then apparently when I woke up in the middle of the night for my feed my mum had noticed spots in my eye

SPEAKER_00: 55:05

and

SPEAKER_01: 55:07

she woke up my dad freaking out and was like Something's wrong with her. She's got these spots in her eye that looks like blood. Something's wrong. And my dad was like, if you're really that worried. She seems okay now. It's not bothering her. She's not any different to normal. But maybe just take her to the doctors tomorrow. So the next day, the spots are still there. Dad went off to work. Mum got me and my sister ready. Took us to the doctor. she was told by the doctor everything's fine um you can take your baby home just keep an eye on her i don't think anything's really wrong um so my mom listened she took us home went on with her day and then she said a couple of hours later there was a knock on the door and it was family services and they said we're here to take your little baby and she apparently freaked out and was like no you're not and they're like yeah we are and there's nothing you can do about it um she said they took me and left and she was like screaming at them like where are you going where am i supposed to go what am i supposed to do and they said we're going to the hospital um but you won't be able to see her anyway so there's no point um My mum didn't drive, so she said as soon as they left, she just packed up my sister's nappy bag and went straight to the bus stop.

SPEAKER_00: 56:38

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 56:40

And, of course, it was difficult back then. No mobile phone, so she couldn't call my dad and be like, hey, they're taking our baby. Can you come home? So dad's at work just thinking his day is normal. Mum said it took her a while to get to the hospital because she had to wait a while for a bus, and then by the time the bus got there, there were so many stops. And... She said she got there. She asked to see me. They refused. She stayed there all day. They would not let her see me. She was angry. She said eventually a doctor came out and said, we believe that you've shaken this baby and you're not going to get her back. So she left. So she left just totally distraught, crying the whole way home, and she said the thing that she was just so scared about was how the hell she was supposed to tell her boyfriend when he got home, like, hey, I lost one of our babies today, and they're telling me there's nothing we can do to get her back. So Dad came home from work, and that's pretty much what she told him. Lost one of our babies today, and they're saying we can't get her back, and they think we've shaken her, and... Dad was just apparently distraught, as you would be. Yeah. Of course, both of them have said... Dad said he didn't shake me. Mum said he didn't shake me. Dad believes that my mum would never have shook me. Yeah. So I guess that part of the story is a mystery. Yeah. Um... Yeah, they, from that moment on, tried really hard to fight to get me back. Dad decided he would definitely not be on the methadone program and that he was just going to be a straight person. They both smoked weed. He was just like, no, I'm literally not doing anything. I think he really believed that it was a bit of a wake-up call to him, like, wow. One minute we were just having fun experimenting with things, and now the next minute we've turned into those parents that are losing our children. Mm-hmm. So he was just like, no, fuck this. I'm just going to be the straightest person ever. And he just stopped doing everything. And even to this day now, he's so straight. He will take a quarter of a Panadol at a time.

SPEAKER_00: 59:36

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 59:37

Yeah. My mum, on the other hand, I'd say it probably made her a bit... I would say the whole experience maybe led her to even use drugs a bit more.

SPEAKER_00: 59:52

Yeah, I can be able to see why. Sorry. No, you're alright. Sorry. I couldn't imagine

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:05

having a child taken away from me. It would be so hard. Oh, my goodness. My children are everything to me. Yeah. If I lost them for any reason, it would just be

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:18

tragic. Yeah. You don't even want to go down that route in your imagination, do you?

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:25

So they were– I was put into– that's when I was put into a foster home.

UNKNOWN: 1:00:35

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:36

They kept fighting to get me back.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:40

They... My mum said my sister was always just dressed really perfectly and always well fed and they just tried to really prove with her that they weren't... They were doing a good job. Yeah. Yeah. And that they weren't necessarily bad parents. Yes, for a little while there they did like to have fun. They... But they were still... Good parents trying to do everything right. Was your sister a methadone baby? No. And your brothers weren't? Yes, they were. So... I think losing me probably did cause my mother to use more. Yeah, yeah. And it just got worse and worse and worse. So by the time my youngest brother was born, he was born addicted to more amount of drugs than me and my other two brothers put together.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:37

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:39

God, that's

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:40

tough. Yep. So... had family services coming over all the time trying to pressure my mum into signing adoption papers and my mum was just like I don't know why you're trying to do this there's no part of us that wants her to be adopted we're just trying to show you that we're doing better so that we can get her back and I was obviously going back into their care and then they were coming along for whatever reason and saying we're taking her back to foster care because it was going through court. And in the end, the lady had said to the judge, like, look, this lady is using methadone. It's not good. Like, she's clearly still a junkie and everyone can see it because she goes to the clinic every day. So it's an obvious thing. She's not even hiding it from anyone. And my mum's defence was, well... the government told me to be on this program in the beginning because it's legal and it's safer and it's supposed to be weaning me off it and in the end it was ruled by the judge we're just going to take your baby and we're just going to adopt her whether you really want it to be that way or not um And so they were supposed to sign forms at the courthouse, which my mum signed, but my dad never did. And the judge was just like, doesn't really matter at this point because they'd just taken her anyway.

SPEAKER_00: 1:03:40

Do you know why they didn't take your sister?

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:42

No idea. Obviously she wasn't expected to have been shaken or anything like that, but... I don't know. Um... In the documentation that I found when I was younger, there was a letter written by the court and it was like, blah, blah, blah, blah, we're taking this baby because we suspect that she is in grave danger. And I always used to think if you can go as far as using the word, the sentence.

UNKNOWN: 1:04:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:16

in grave danger yeah how do you leave another child yeah in that home yeah I never understood that so my dad always believed that it was just a part of them taking Aboriginal babies again and that my sister was too old for them to want to take So in 1988, dad said family services up in Queensland here was still called docs, but it was soon after that in 1989, not long after I'd been taken, that there was a massive investigation into them and that they had been found taking Aboriginal babies again. And then family, then DOCS was changed from, DOCS got shut down because of that. And then family services opened. Basically the same thing, obviously. Yeah. And then I guess that's why when they had that apology a few years back for the Stolen Generation, it did go all the way through to 1989. That's

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:29

so strange that they, if that's true, they've taken you from an Aboriginal family and put you with another

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:35

Aboriginal family, though. That doesn't make sense. I don't know if it was some kind of... ruling like okay now we've got too many aboriginal babies like we've taken too many yeah and we'd have to put them back into aboriginal families so we look like we're doing the right thing i don't know maybe it was like

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:58

one black mark against your name we're taking you because you're aboriginal i don't know speculation obviously i don't know much about it but then this family which is also aboriginal doesn't have a black mark

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:09

yeah so god i don't know so yeah that's that's this that's the story i got told of why yeah Yeah, yeah. And it never brought me the closure that I really wanted, to be honest, because now I'm just always like, well, why? Why the fuck did I have spots in my eyes? Did you shake me? Yeah, are

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:36

you lying? Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:39

Were you just one of those frustrated parents that day and... You don't remember doing it? Yeah, well, you know, did you just get back home from the clinic and you had your methadone and you were a bit high?

UNKNOWN: 1:06:51

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:53

Did you go late to the clinic and you hadn't had your methadone yet and you were angry? Yeah, okay. Yeah. Did you leave me to, you know, with some other person for a couple of hours that day while you were doing something? Yeah. And did they shake me? What happened? I still don't know. And that part is just fucked up. But even then, as the years went on, when I first met my parents, my biological parents, they called me Leah. I called them by their names. for only a couple of weeks, and it felt so wrong. So I asked if I could call them Mum and Dad, and they were like, yeah, of course you can. So I called them Mum and Dad because even after 18 years, it just felt wrong to call them by their names. Something inside my heart was like, that's not who they are. They are Mum and Dad. Yeah, yeah. But... Getting to know them over the years has been difficult because my dad, like I said, he did become very straight and he's a down-to-earth person and he's amazing and he gives some of the best fatherly advice that I ever could have imagined I could get. But my mum definitely did use drugs more and more over the years. Yeah. And she's not a well lady, I guess, in terms of the fact that she has used too many drugs. Yeah, okay. She's done stupid stuff. My sister ended up using drugs as well by the time she was 12. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Jesus. Yeah. Then the brother after me was born. He ended up seeing the effects of drugs, so didn't necessarily want to use them. Realised it was a good way to make money, so sold them. Eventually became a drug user and has been in and out of jail, so I don't know him very well. The most I've ever got to bond with him is when he has been in prison and he's called me up from prison to talk to me. It's the only time we've gotten to know each other. Yeah. In the years that I've known them, my sister's probably been in prison about five or six times.

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:53

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:54

Yeah. And my little brother got so fed up of living in a drug house that one day he climbed out his bedroom window and never returned. So you don't know where he is or anything? Nope. Wow. So for very many years, I felt like it was unfair that I didn't get to be there.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:23

And after meeting them, after a few years, I realised it was... I have ended up having the chance to have the best life. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:35

I was just thinking you're like a

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:36

little miracle. Yeah. Coming out of all of that. Yeah. It's so sad. My little brother, he has been able to draw like realistic pictures since he was like five years old. So... Being that my dad is an amazing artist as well and an award-winning tattooist, as soon as my brother was 16, my dad was like, okay, let's get you tattooing. We'll get you into an apprenticeship. You'll be able to make so much money. You'll be able to go far. You'll be able to have a great life. And that's what he did. And he was an amazing tattooist from the get-go because he was just such a good artist. And his life... Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. He was rather traumatised in his own ways. And he had told me stories of sitting at a table for breakfast before going to school and mum had taken so much methadone and she would just fall asleep face first in her cereal and he had to go and move her face out of the milk before she drowned.

SPEAKER_00: 1:12:09

Gosh.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:11

not really something you should be doing in the morning before you go to primary school so even though he had this amazing path that he could be on for his life and probably earned quite a bit of money he just yeah hopped out of his window yeah and ran away and never came back yeah um have you tried to find him

SPEAKER_00: 1:12:37

Like the Facebook group? Me,

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:39

personally, not really because... When he got older one time, he said some really nasty things to me. Oh, okay. Just about being adopted and stuff like that, which obviously is a big trigger for me. Like, you're my brother, don't make fun of me for being adopted. It's not something that I could have even helped

SPEAKER_00: 1:13:05

to begin with. Yeah, it wasn't your decision or... Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:11

They... Sometimes... they could be nasty people never my real dad but my my real sister and my real brothers and my real mother definitely i think it's all because they are so drug affected

SPEAKER_00: 1:13:25

yeah

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:27

okay um but one year on my birthday i didn't want to spend my birthday with them i wanted to go out clubbing with my friends um And halfway through the night I realised I had a bunch of missed calls and a bunch of voice messages. I went into the bathroom and my mother was just like, you are a fat piece of shit and I'm glad that I adopted you and your name's not Lear, it's Amy. Oh, my God. Yeah. And I spent the rest of my birthday just in the bathroom crying until I was able to go home.

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:00

Yeah,

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:01

yeah. So they would get into these moments where they would just be nasty Mostly because I was going through phases where I would drive over to their house every weekend and hang out with them and all of a sudden it would just get too much for me. It would be really overwhelming because I would have all those feelings of why... didn't I get to be here forever? Would you all be different if I was here forever? Yeah. Would dad be worse if I was here forever because he wouldn't have decided to stop using drugs? Yeah, yeah. And they were all a very musical family and my dad would play the guitar and my mum would be there on the drums and my other brother would be on his guitar and... Like a whole Brady Bunch is the thing I've been imagining. Drug-fueled Brady Bunch. Yeah. And they'd all be like there in the lounge room just totally rocking out. And I'd be like, well, I don't know any instruments. And when I was younger, I did want to play the drums and my adoptive mother didn't let me. And so then I'd be angry at her as well. Yeah, okay. So I'd see them every weekend and then all of a sudden it would get too much and I would– the next weekend I just wouldn't go there and then months would pass and I wouldn't have seen them and then it'd just make my mum angry and my sister angry and they'd all get angry at me and there was no understanding they just expected that one day I would come back into their lives and I would be there and as much as I wanted that In a certain way, it was too overwhelming. Yeah, yeah. Because I had all these emotions, but they never tried to understand them, I guess. They were only seeing it from their perspective. Yeah. Yeah. So that made it really hard for me. Yeah. Yeah. And I also realised things were so different. with them as a family is what I was used to as a family so our Christmases when I was a kid were just awesome and amazing and we always had a Christmas tree and then they didn't really celebrate Christmas and So all of those kind of things as well were just weird to me. I was like, okay, I still don't 100% know where I fit in because I do fit in with you guys in a certain way, but in another way I don't anymore. So I never really wanted to spend Christmas with them because Christmas was– not as exciting to me with them yeah because it's not what i was used to christmas to me is is a big deal yeah sorry yeah yeah so all of that was weird um So that's why even to this day my whole adoption personally affects me mentally because I still don't know where I fit in. I still don't know who I am. But that's my story, I guess, in the most shortest amount of time that I can tell it, which I feel like it's been a very long time.

SPEAKER_00: 1:17:50

No, that's been amazing. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your, like I said, it's like you said, it's not just a story. It's your life. It's your journey. So I really appreciate you coming on and being so open. I know that I got so much out of hearing your life and I know that so many other people will. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing.

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:15

Thank you for having me.