COULD THINGS HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT?  by Fay Giddings

Co-ordinator of Sunraysia Adoption Support Group

Abstract
Since reading the flyer for the 1st National Conference on Mental Health of Persons Affected by Family Separation, it seems my mind is a kaleidoscope of thoughts and memories, memories so painful that they overwhelm me, yet again. . They keep jumping from one to another, in no real order except for the fact that they are all true, these memories are real, they all happened to me.

I wish to tell my story of being separated from my family as a child, then at thirteen being placed into foster care, at fourteen being made a Ward of the State, as well as having an aboriginal foster brother who was adopted by my foster parents at the same time.

At eighteen, being forced to give up my daughter for Adoption

Becoming a victim of domestic violence and sexual abuse within my first marriage, a nervous breakdown, then divorce. Remarriage then another nervous breakdown. PMT sufferer and depression for many years. Having cancer cells in the uterus and bowel and a subsequent hysterectomy.

Being reunited with my adult daughter in 1988, followed by a slight nervous breakdown again, then a second divorce. Remarriage for the third time and being diagnosed with Bilateral Meniere's Disease and being completely deaf in one ear and only 30% hearing in the other.

Thinking back on what has happened in my life, I feel overwhelmed with sadness of the loss of all that could have been, should have been and has not been. . . . but most of all, the physical and mental effect these events have had on me, my life and the impact all this has had on my family

Family Separation, Foster Care, Wardship and Adoption

COULD THINGS HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT? 

(My Personal Journey - 15 mins)

I remember when I first saw the flyer on this 1st National Conference on Mental Health of Persons Affected by Family Separation. It seemed to me at the time my mind became a kaleidoscope of thoughts and memories ... memories so painful they overwhelmed me “yet again” ... as they always do when I “go down that track” in my head.

Thinking back on my life at that moment, I felt overcome with a deep sadness, but at the same time wondering if things “could had been different”, would I have become the person I believe I am now.

I am not here to place blame or judge anyone, although at times it may seem that way. This is not about blame, this is about me, the mental health issues I have had, and how I have endeavoured to cope with them and put them into prospective. I try very hard not to be negative anymore, because I now know what impact it has on my mental state of mind and physical health when I am.

Before I continue, I wish to thank and acknowledged those closest to me who have supported, encouraged and stood by me these last few years of my journey. If it were not for my husband, my sole-mate, sister at heart, Raelene,  and my wonderful friend Greg, I would not have had the courage to be the person I am now, let alone be standing here today;  thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

I want you to now think back with me, to a time when an experience you have had in your life has had a profound impact on you. Something that you have never really been able to put out of your mind, even if you don’t think of it all the time.

From my earliest memories of childhood of about 5yrs old, having been surrounded by what I thought was a wonderful, loving family, a mum and dad and eight siblings, all living happily with our Uncle on our dairy farm.

Little was I to know then, how our lives would alter, suddenly (or so it seemed to me then) without warning, it all changed.... When I was six, my Uncle took over the farm, we moved to a rented property which later burnt down, and within a few months, dad was gone, leaving mum and nine children living in a big army tent...

From that time on, one after the other, my siblings disappeared, till there was only a younger sister and I, and when I was eight, we were sent to dad, ... and mum, well she just vanished ... gone, who knows where.

Our family was scattered everywhere but where we should have been ... It affected every aspect of my life, and I became stubborn and surly, I still have the frown to prove it.

Dad fought with the Welfare Authorities for two years, trying to get his children back but was constantly told “not until you have someone to look after them”...

And so  enter’s the lady who we have always referred to as the wicked and cruel housekeeper, who belted my sister and I with the ironing cord the first day she came to live with us telling us “our mother was a wicked, evil person, leaving all us kids like she did”.... all because we wouldn’t call her “mum”... More changes, more trauma …

The word “MUM” words still make me profoundly sad. I seemed to have collected all these surrogate mothers, but none of them were MY mother... where was she, why wasn’t she with us, what had we done that was so bad that she needed to run away, why didn’t she come back and take us with her ... she couldn’t possibly love us anymore, why? There are still so many whys, but we will never know now as she died at 60, committing suicide from an overdose of tablets.

These were hard days for us. The housekeeper had six of her own eight children with her. She was and still is 40 yrs on, a very nervy, anxious, nasty and spiteful person, who is now our stepmother.

She used to yell and scream at us all the time, flogging us for the slightest thing with the ironing cord, the strap or whatever she could find and she would strike all over our bodies, little wonder we hated her, ...strong words, yes, maybe, but if you had to experience what we did, (and I’m sure some of you did) you may have felt the same.

Time has mellowed me now though, time heals but you never forget.

One incident that none of us will ever forget is when two of my brothers, aged nine and six, were forced to strip naked then flogged and made run around the outside of the house, then tied to the cloths line still naked ... they were called rude, wicked and sinful, all because they walked into the kitchen when she was bathing her baby daughter ... and yes, that incident did have a profound effect on all of us, but especially my brothers ... now you tell me who the wicked and evil person was. The person who did that to those innocent little children.... How could any mother treat a child like this?

Several times over the next few years, she and her children would pack up and leave, leaving us to be there as our own little family, coping quite well but she would always come back....

Till one time she didn’t, then there was the police, questioning my sister’s and I, trying to put words in our mouth, to get us to admit that our dad came into the bathroom while we bathed, telling us “your dad does rude things to you, he puts his finger and penis to your vagina’s, doesn’t he ...good god! At the age of twelve in those days, what the hell was a penis and vagina anyway? .... And us girls desperately trying to tell them, “NO! 

Our dad did not do these things.

Once again, our family was scattered every where, and me, a month before my thirteenth birthday, I was placed into foster care. Why? Who knows, I didn’t, except that I felt somehow it must have all been my fault ... All I knew for certain was that “yet again” we were all separated, I was alone, feeling abandoned, forgotten, and very confused ... being told “to make a new life with my new family” (and questioning ... in my mind, but why, I have a family..?)

I was made a “Ward of the State”; because “they said” it was in my best interest. “WHO’S BEST INTEREST?” Nobody asked me. I was thirteen, don’t you think I should have been able to express “how I felt” if someone had asked.

To add to my foster care experience is my foster brother ... “James Savage”,

Russell Moore, the Australian Aboriginal who has been in jail in Florida, USA, for 15 years so far, serving a life sentences for having murdered a white woman while high on drugs and alcohol.

I remember from the time he was a toddler, he was always wandering off (now I recognize it as going walkabout (smile) and one time in particular when he was three years old, half the town went in search for him. Eventually it was me who found him...in our own backyard, behind the shed, sitting between mallee stumps, with a fist full of witchety grubs, his beautiful bright brown eyes smiling at me, but the thing I vividly recall the most about that incident was me, sitting down with him, cuddling him into my chest, crying, and saying “ you poor little mite, you don’t belong here anymore than I do, why are we here...where are our own people (and of course not realizing at that age, not knowing the full impact of what was happening to us, but especially him)  And I still ask and still lobby today, to get him back where he belongs, here with his family.

 At 17.... Being told “the truth” ...finding out “why I was in foster care”. My father had sexually abused the housekeeper’s twelve-year-old daughter.  Yes, this was a very traumatic time for me, those feelings of shock, horror, disbelief, anger, sorrow, sadness, resentment ... I believed from that day on that everyone must have though I must have been the victim ... why, because, out of all those children, I was the one who was put into foster care, I was the only one who was made a Ward of the State, why? I was never sexually abused.

Also at 17, unbeknownst to me, my first boyfriend having a bet with his mate, betting him he “could get into my pants, after all, she is her father’s daughter....”

Being “released from Wardship at 18."  I received a congratulation letter from the Welfare Department. “Dear Fay, you’re on your own now ...we’ve done our bit” (well, not quite written like that but that’s how I saw it at the time)

Where to now ...guess what ... straight back to where I belonged, with my family ...but the housekeeper was back too. Hmm ...I wonder where the welfare was then, certainly not checking up on this family were they...

Have you ever tried to “slot back in where you thought you should be? Only to find you feel you no longer belong. None of us coped ... “who are you to come back with all that anger and resentment, asking lot’s of questions”. Always searching, for what was taken from you and now you can never take back, your family, the years you have all lost. My feelings of loss were enormous.

Getting pregnant with my daughter at 18. Being told by her father “well, whose is it, it can’t be mine” ... Then my own father saying, “Well you can’t stay here, you will spoil our good name”.... Yeah, right, his good name was what landed me in foster care.... And remembering that the housekeeper’s eldest daughter had come home some years before to live with us because she was pregnant. What about me and my baby?

I was placed in the “Methodist Girls Home for unmarried mothers” in Station Street, Fairfield, Victoria. The shame and guilt I was made to feel, to carry, after all I was a Sunday School Teacher, a Youth Group Leader and in the church choir.

My pregnancy was difficult, and at eight months I gave birth to my daughter. The Social Worker, doctors, nurses, my father, all telling me it was in my best interest to give my child up for adoption.  Whose best interest?  I’ve heard those words before somewhere...

Those feelings of overwhelming grief and loss in the following months, years, the burden of that loss always with me. It never leaves a birth mother; it will always be there. (Nobody told us that at the time it would be like this, did they)  No, the pain, grief and loss don’t get easier, for me it gets harder as I get older. It never goes away. Please God, make it stop, make my pain go away. And why do I keep calling myself a birth mother? I am her mother, simple as that.

As soon as I could after this, I decided to find my own mother, how I needed her, but when I did find her, I realized that I didn’t particularly like her as a person, and so therefore it was difficult to re –establishing that mother daughter bond. She said she would have looked after my daughter for me, why should she, she didn’t even want me!

I tried to get on with my life, two years later at 21 I married, had two son’s, but did not cope very well as a young mum, (now recognized as Post Natal Depression) and being told I was having a nervous break down.

Domestic Violence ... and constantly being told “well you deserve to be treated that way anyway, after all, your mother left you, you were in foster care, your father went to jail and you had a kid out of wedlock.... You are not a fit mother, what fit mother would give a child up for adoption, especially when her own mother walked out on her”...

By 1974, at 23 yrs old and four separations, I went back to my husband who by then lived in Darwin, and at the time thinking, “this is it, finally living as a family, in harmony, this is the best Christmas! Then, BANG! Being hit by Cyclone Tracy ... but at least this time “Tracy” did me a few favors!! I learned a lot about survival in a few days I can tell you! , but knowing it is all happening again, the loss of all we owned, more trauma, marriage separation.   After being evacuated, I lived in a Migrant Hostel for 12mths while I worked with Cyclone Tracy victims.

At 27yrs of age, remarriage ...then all that excess baggage coming to the surface again, being told “get on with your life, you have a good husband, two children, a good job, a beautiful home, what’s wrong with you.”, a roller coaster of issues, going on and on.   That sadness, that pain, the guilt, it is all still there.

Another breakdown, then Psychotherapy for two years.  I recall the chap saying to me, “Fay, there are things there I can’t tap into, your pain is so deep I can no longer help you, I’m sorry”.

After living in Sri-Lanka from 1983 to 1986, surrounded by civil war, curfews and shot guns in your face, getting Amebic Hepatitis and almost dying, we came home and my mother was the first person to contact me. I then begin to realize I could accept her as she was, I could love her, she did love and care about me in her own way, just not the way I wanted her to. My perception of what a mother should be was not hers, and who was I to judge her, after all, I gave my daughter up for adoption didn’t I.  So it was then I began to love my mother without condition, without judgment ...simply because she was MY MUM.

And so the healing begins....

 I was 38 when my mother committed suicide all those same feelings come to the surface again. “How could she do this, she screwed us up as kids and she has done it again.  But, at least I had my memories of those final two years.  If only we had had the time to talk about things I thought needed to be said.

When I was told that same year I would need a hysterectomy because of cancer cells etc, my doctor told me my PMT symptoms were amongst the worst she had dealt with. She said the hysterectomy would only help my body, not my mind and if I didn’t search for my daughter, she believed the cancer would eventually come back and take me, if I let it.

So I registered, NOT to find my daughter, I still believed I did not have that right, after all I had been told so many times I did not!  I truly believed that my daughter would NEVER WANT TO MEET ME THAT SHE WOULD NEVER FORGIVE ME FOR GIVING HER UP FOR ADOPTION...

Three months later being told “your daughter is looking for you, do you want contact” Again, a roller coast of emotions ... I could go on and on.

And then finally meeting her.... God!  The memories, the pain, the guilt, all rushing back!   Will it ever stop?  NO …

It was then I saw a real need for some kind of support for those involved with the Adoption triangle, thus the formation of the Sunraysia Adoption Support Group in 1988.

And so, at 39, I could feel myself begin to change and for the first time in my life I seemed to become a very affectionate person, and the issues this created with and for my other two growing up teenagers, my then husband, him not being able to cope with the “new me” and inside me yelling, “NO! Not the new me, this is the real me.  I knew then that the real me was the person who has hidden inside this shell ever since the loss of my daughter, probably much, and much earlier.

This period of time became very difficult for us all, I had reached a point where I knew I had to become myself, I wanted to stand on my own feet, I wanted to be strong, I needed to be ME ...so, consequently, another marriage break up, another divorce.

My daughters 21^st birthday and wedding, those split second thoughts “it’s not fair, this should have been my moment” but quickly brushing them aside because “you are a birth mother, you are not allowed to think like that.

A new life, a new man, and a strange feeling of  “ I am finally getting my life in order”, I now have some degree of peace with myself, of happiness, of security, of knowing that someone is finally listening to me, want’s  to listen to me ... how good that felt.

In later years I became a Child Protection Officer, working with physically and sexually abused children. I became passionate about “Family Support”; about helping keep families together, not pulling them apart, especially within our local aboriginal community.

I learned so much from their people, their elders, their culture, what has happened to them over two hundred years and how ashamed I at times feel to be called Australian.

In September 1998, at the age of 49, I was diagnosed with Bilateral Meniere’s Disease. Over night went deaf, left only with forty percent of hearing in one ear.  All this of course made it extremely difficult to do my job, and subsequently I was medically retired.

The shock of all this happening in such a short time sent me into depression again, isolation, not wanting to leave my own home, withdrawing from friends, not answering the phone. It took me two years to come to term with it all but then I realized I had to get back control of my life.

When my daughter became pregnant with her first child little did I know then, how I would go on to suffer. I was afraid to tell her.  For Mothers Day I told her in the only way I knew best, I made her a card with a poem I’d written just for her ... she cried when she read it, and said “why didn’t you tell me, I would have understood”.

I will conclude this paper with that poem...

When her son was born in September 2000, I remember walking down that hospital corridor, thinking to myself, “I can’t do this, its too hard, too many memories”. How I prayed for God to give me the strength to get through that first visit.  Then I was handed my first grandchild to nurse and again I thought, “I cant do this, please God, don’t make me do this” but, somehow I did, and the memories of my tiny daughter in that cradle at the hospital all came flooding back and I just had to get out of that room, to go outside, to be alone.

Last year I a bad fall last year and had many weeks almost bedridden before I had back surgery, I was told they could not operate, that if they did, I had less that a 5 % chance of ever walking again. I insisted they operate.

Five hours after surgery I walked to the toilet and have walked miles almost every day since. I know I will always have some chronic pain, but at least I have my physical strength back, and this has enabled me to become more positive about life.   When I visit my friend in hospital, knowing she is dying of cancer, all due to back problems too, I thank God for my life, for what I have.

For me, the Mental Health issues surrounding my family separation, my foster placement, my Wardship and Adoption experience will be there forever, there is nothing I can do to change that, nothing nor what happened my family, but I have learned to deal with it differently and I now like who I am, who I have become.   It is important to me now to move on and heal within, even though I know those scars will always be there.

I have learned that it is just too hard, too painful and I use too much and mental physical energy “going down that track again”. I know at times I will still have to deal with it all, but at least now I believe I can deal with it in a positive, non-destructive way ...as I said before, this is my journey and this is how I cope. “Could things have been different? Who knows, I don’t, all I know is I am who I am now ... and I’m okey

(c) Fay Giddings: October 2002

A Mothers Wish”

As I sit in my garden and look all around,                              

I see some reflections, of you and of me,                             

I’m not sure at this time just what it does mean.

I find more and more, as time passes on

My thoughts wandering back, then freezing in time.                         

I wish I could tell you just how I do feel,

But it’s not for me to say ... I‘ve not got the right.

There’s so much to say but it’s just not okey,

Maybe, some day...

The reflections I see, they are vivid and real

It’s all coming back and the pain; it is just as great

It still ties me in knots, then for a moment I can’t feel.

My mind try’s to go blank but it keeps rushing in

Those days are now gone, it’s time to go on...

I struggle, I beg, but it just won’t go away

So I try to capture, in these widest of dreams

What it could have be like, to fondle and hold

The one thing in life, that I can’t say is mine.

Oh God, please, make the pain go away,

Give me some peace, so the reflections I see

Are as powerful, as painless, as it really should be.

As you become the mother I know you will be

Be everything you can, as a mum. That I could not be.

Feel all that I can’t, but want so desperately,

Love your child; give it all that you’ve got, as I could not.

Remember the way that your mum helped you grow up

The things she has taught you, the things she has known.

The love she has given you, it will always be there,

It will help guide you through; it will help you to dare,

To be a mother, so you must prepare.

Can I just say, as one mum to another?

At times it won’t be easy; you’ll wonder what to do

But go by your instinct, it’ll be all right

Be patient, be kind, be all that you are

You will be okey; you’ll know what to do,

Just be yourself it will all follow through,

Love your child as your mother and I do you....

(c) Fay Giddings May 2000   (written for my daughter Julie, who was adopted in 1968) 

(Family Separation, Foster Care, Wardship and Adoption)

Presented by Fay Giddings (c) 2002

Co-coordinator of Sunraysia Adoption Support Group (13yrs)

PO Box 287, Gol Gol, NSW, 2738

Phone: (03) 50248892, Email: fayeg@ncable.com.au