Pam's Story (the actual, proper romantic story)

Adoption is not an easy process. I know of couples in the last 5 years that have moved interstate because one state's adoption laws prohibited them from adopting at their age. Deborah-Lee Furness and Hugh Jackman moved to America so they could adopt.

And then there are women like Angelina Jolie and Madonna, who make it look so easy to adopt, like you just 'make it happen' but they wouldn't be able to do that if it wasn't for those parents that have paved the way before her. People like my Mum and Dad who waded through red tape and redneck-like suspicion of the unknown.

I asked Mum to share her side of the story which she graciously wrote down for me. I will now cut and paste, graciously:

"The whole idea came from Michael. When we were in our late teens and just about to be married, he sprung it on me that it had always been a dream of his to adopt a child from a country with a lot of poverty.

We got married and had our three children with that thought in mind. He broached the subject again after Melanie was born in 1971 and so we approached child welfare in Hobart where we were told we may have a chance to be allocated a child from Vietnam. And so we waded through our first round of red tape (paper work, health checks, references and more paperwork). This part of the procedure took 4 months. After another 6 months and extensive interviews, we were finally approved for a child from Vietnam and our approved papers sent to the Vietnamese government. We went about living our lives as normal, as now all we could do was play the waiting game.

The war in Vietnam escalated and while many babies were airlifted out, our names were still not high enough on the list for consideration. In early 1976 the North Vietnamese government had taken control and stopped more any children from leaving the country.

And so we went back to our welfare officer for advice and luckily found a delightful woman who suggested we change our elected country. India and Thailand were out because they did not allocate children to families with two or more children but she suggested we try Sri Lanka as Australia had just made a commitment with them on adoption. More interviews. More paper work (it feels never ending). Our papers were finally sent to Colombo in 1979 approving us for a female child between the ages of 3 and 5 years. Again, all we could do was wait.

You need to understand that intercountry adoption was very rare in Australia, especially Tasmania. Some children had already come from Bangladesh, India and Thailand but none had come to Tassie from Sri Lanka. The government in Tasmania were very suspicious of procedure from other countries and made it very difficult for families, to be quite honest.

So we waited (again) and while we did, Michael and I joined an adoption group called ASIAC (http://www.asiac.org.au/).* The Tasmanian branch was affiliated with Victoria and we had a great deal of support from those members who had been through the process. ASIAC held fundraisers to assist orphanages directly and so we sent goods as well as money to one of the orphanages in Sri Lanka, the Good Shepherd Convent in Mankalum. I had already sent information about our family and had asked for their assistance in finding a child for us.

Because of ASIAC's generosity, one of the sisters (Sr Judith, the nun in the picture) wrote to the president of ASIAC in Victoria (At that time it was Dorothy Prevot) wanting to allocate a baby girl to a Tasmanian family with maybe two or more children. We had FINALLY been chosen!!!! Because our previous approval stated a 3-4 year old girl, we had to approach welfare without disclosing the possibility of a baby. After a lot of crawling (there really is no other word for it), we finally received the letter changing the country of approval.

We didn't tell welfare in Hobart about the allocation from Mankalum. Once before we had been given the opportunity of a little girl but they had put a stop to it as they were not happy with dealing with the Salvation Army home. So Dot in Melbourne and Sr Judith in Sri Lanka helped us to arrange everything to travel and stay in Colombo.

The government in Sri Lanka expected us to stay, have interviews with their child welfare departments and go to court. A process that would last 28 days. We wrote a letter to welfare in Hobart and informed them that we had travelled. They were not happy as they had not approved the Good Shepherd Convent for adoption. Nevertheless, we had already seen a lawyer in Tasmania and he told us to continue as we had done everything within the guidelines.

We had to be insane to leave our 3 kids at home and go to another country, not sure what was going to happen to us. We ended up being gone for six weeks. Weeks that were filled with a tonne of anxious moments but having the opportunity to add to our already beautiful family was like a dream come true. It has always been worth every step we took."

So that's Mum's story. Dad's is slightly different and explains that it all started when he was a kid and obsessed with (what was then) Ceylon. Now do you see why I know I'm so lucky? :)

*If you're interested in supporting kids via sponsorship, please consider ASIAC. They do amazing hands on work and you can sponsor a child for $20 a month.

For more information, please visit http://www.asiac.org.au/sponsorship.html
(For the record, World Vision's website states that you can sponsor a child through them -from- $43 per month. I'll let you draw your own conclusions as to why it's so expensive.)

Some of the questions I get in my head (and why I'm doing this)

Well, it's kind of simple really. I have always wanted to know about my Mama. The older I get, it seems the more I need to know. I feel like I should know about her, for the sake of Miss E. What if she wants to know about where I come from? "Mummy was adopted" just doesn't seem like a good enough answer to give to her.

I have avoided it because for the most part, it's been so dangerous in Sri Lanka over the past 10+ years and I wanted to wait until it was safe to go wandering through the countryside.

It's the Nature Vs Nurture thing too. I am like Mel and Pam. There is no doubt about it. People have trouble telling us all apart on the phone and my sister and I walk the same. But there are certain things that seemingly come from no one. So the most reasonable conclusion is that it comes from my Mama. I want to know if I'm like her. I think I look like her but I just don't know. I want to know if she knows about my real father and if she still sees him, if I have brothers or sisters.

I need to know if she's okay. I think about her every day. I wonder where she is and what she does and if her husband treats her right (sadly, the answer is probably no).

Most of all I want to know if she misses me as much as I think about her. I don't remember a time not having her in my mind. I wonder if the last 30 years of her life have been the same. I can hardly stand being away from Miss E for more than 24 hours, I can't imagine what it must be like to be without your baby for almost 30 years. Maybe she doesn't care at all. Maybe I'm being too romantic about the whole thing. I have to remind myself that it's adoption and there's nothing really that romantic about it. At least not from the side where you lose your child.

At the moment I am guessing. Knowing for sure has got to be better than guessing, right?

Me and My Family (a very good place to start)

I'll give you a brief run down of things so far. I don't want to bore you, so will keep it super short, just the players and such.

My name is Sarojini. I was born in Mankalum, Sri Lanka in 1981 to a young unmarried Tamil girl and not surprisingly, she was given little choice but to give me up for adoption. Which is fine. The alternatives don't bear thinking about. I am grateful every day that I have this life. I know that sounds like a bad cliche but it's true. Unless you have the chance to really contemplate what life 'could have been like' you do spend a little of each day silently thanking the people that adopted you for the life you have. I don't know if all kids who are adopted feel that way, but that is certainly the way I feel about my family.

I have an amazing family who love me and support me and have never treated me any differently to how they treated each other (no matter how special I wanted to be). I grew up in Kingston, a small suburb south of Hobart in Tasmania, one in a family of six.

Mum and Dad are Pam and Michael Jacobson. They are amazing people who gave us everything we needed growing up and always supported our decisions and guided us through the good and nasty bits to help shape who we are now. Pam has given me her version of events to share here. It's an amazing story and not just because it's about me. I will post very soon.

My siblings are amazing and because of the age gap (brothers Craig and David are 43 and 42, sister Melanie is 38) it was almost like having extra parents. My sister was my idol growing up. I wanted to be just like her. She is still the coolest and most beautiful person I know. My brothers were the reason I know why it's so important to be there for your mates. Craig and David were best friends growing up and their solidarity to each other was admirable to say the least. We lost David 6 years ago this March after 10 years of mental illness, the only blip on the radar of my almost perfect family.

Now we are all grown up, my parents have seven grandchildren, one of them being my daughter The Divine Miss E. I live in Melbourne away from the rest of my family which kills me a bit, but I am married to a great guy (Martin) who loves me and supports me just like my parents and siblings do. I have a wonderful group of friends who are my extended family. I miss being around my sister and brother and their kids, but holidays are great and they are never more than a phone call away. We have always been close, distance doesn't change that.

So that's who we are. Not extremely exciting I know, but it's a place to start... If you want to know more (like, really need to pry) just ask