Chris found out he was adopted when he was thirteen. It took a health scare almost thirty years later and support from VANISH’s intermediary service before he went looking for answers.
Finding out
When Chris was thirteen, his parents told him and his younger brother that they were both adopted from different families. Like many adoptees who find out later in adolescence or adulthood, the information arrived without context and the space to process what it really meant.
“I can almost picture it back in ’98, sitting on the couch in the living room. It was a long time ago, but it felt like, ‘Here’s a letter from your birth mother and a photo of your sisters and brother, you’re adopted.’ ‘What does that mean?’ ‘Oh, you’ve got other parents.’ So who are these parents that I’ve known my whole childhood, who’ve raised me? And that’s kind of how the conversation went,” Chris recalls.
“There was no mediator, counsellor, there was nothing around. We talked about it together but there was so much shock and so many unknown things that we just had to take it on and deal with it. I didn’t feel like I could talk to anyone, I just sat there. It was the longest, loneliest and most confused night I had ever had while trying to sleep. I didn’t know how to normalise things or life.”
Growing up with questions
Looking back, Chris can see how much that moment shaped his teenage years.
“You start to look at things 180 degrees differently. You lived every second of that moment and every moment since, you walked through that and just tried to make it through. I was in those emotions of going, well, you guys aren’t really my parents – where’s my mum, my dad, where are my brothers and sisters? Why can’t I just pick up the phone and call them? Why was it me who was placed for adoption [out of six children in his birth family]?”
Over time, those questions turned inward.
“I was 16 or 17 when I had to see a psychiatrist. There were suicidal thoughts and stuff like that. I always got along with classmates and had some family friends, but no one is really with you through it. I had a very negative headspace and mixed with both a good crowd and a bad crowd. I balanced the friendships based on wherever my head was at. If I was in a good mood, not dwelling on my inner thoughts, I would be helpful, positive, caring, etc. But most days I was filled with too much ‘grey’ space and that meant I was bullying people, huge mood swings, not caring for others and just being constantly on edge. I never felt like I could express myself because no one around me ever truly felt the hole or abandonment I was feeling. I just never felt like I was accepted or like I fit in. You had so many questions that weren’t answered.”
At the same time, Chris was growing up in a military family who moved around a lot, which compounded the sense of instability and disconnection. “You knew it was only for a short amount of time; it would pass. There was no point letting people get close or know how I felt because they would just leave or we would move on. When I would get close to people, I felt like it was getting to a positive space, but we would move and then it was like the door shut or the rug was pulled out.”
Even within his own home, relationships were strained.
“My brother and I have never really been the same since then. We just grew further and further apart. Throughout high school my younger brother would vent his troubles to me for years, saying ‘You’re not my brother, who are you? Just leave.’ He was working through his own mental health, but after years of dealing with it, I closed the door and have kept it locked. There was just not a lot of love for a really long time. Not saying any family is perfect, but I felt like we didn’t have any connection.”
Choosing not to look
Despite everything, Chris didn’t go looking for answers. For decades, he accepted his life as it was. He played sports, was supported by his adoptive parents, finished Year 12, and continued to learn more about photography, film and music. He had dreams of going to America to ride BMX professionally like some of his friends were starting to do. The years all blurred into one.
Chris says that the most positive thing that’s happened in his life was meeting his soulmate Kate – someone he could open up to and be himself with. He finally started to feel like he was in a safe place mentally. After getting married, they started a family together built on a foundation of what they believe a family to be: positivity, love, openness, safety and support. During those years, Chris never felt like he needed to know more about his past as he was finally happy. He knew eventually he should do the right thing and find out, but life was finally moving into a chapter that he hadn’t quite experienced.
“It’s not that I didn’t want to know, I just never really had a need to. I figured my birth family could’ve come looking for me the past 30 years. They must be happy, moved on. It was like not looking for a fight or disappointment. Why would I make myself feel worse or more lost?” Underneath that reasoning, he admits now, was a fear of the unknown. “I guess part of that comes from maybe feeling a bit anxious, like, do I really want to go down the rabbit hole?”
The turning point
For Chris, the decision to search didn’t come from curiosity alone. It came from a health crisis.
About two years ago, he suddenly found himself struggling with severe brain fog, blanking out for days at a time and not knowing where he was. Doctors initially suspected seizures, possibly epilepsy. He undertook various tests, couldn’t drive for six months, and started to prepare himself for a very different life.
In the end, his symptoms were the impacts of stress. But the experience pushed him to finally start searching, particularly to obtain medical history for himself and his kids.
“It got rid of ambiguity and going around in circles and not really committing to things, to just going, just do it. Not so much for myself, but for my kids.”
It also forced him to reflect on how he had been living.
“I probably just didn’t look after myself, to be completely honest. I just stopped doing the things that were good for me – working out, journalling, meditating, focusing on balance. Things went downhill very quickly after I had spent nearly five years getting into the best mental and physical shape. I missed riding my dirt bike, BMX, and listening to music which has always been a good outlet for me. I wasn’t in a good place. Now that I had my best friend and kids in my life, I was trying to do everything for my family to avoid going through what my younger years had been like.”
Taking the first step
After contacting the Victorian Government’s Adoption Information Service, Chris found additional letters from his birth mother sitting in his adoption file, including one written on the night he was born which explains how he came to be adopted. “They’re not pretty, they’re a little confronting, just full on,” Chris says. He showed the letters to the parents who raised him, who had never seen them either. “Both of them were almost in tears thinking, ‘We’ve never seen that. We didn’t know anything like that,’” he says.
Looking back, he’s glad the fuller story didn’t reach him at thirteen. “I think that might have spiralled me a bit out of control back then. If I knew the reason and what my birth father was like, I think I would have been more distant from my adoptive parents and I hate to think what life might have been like.”
The Adoption Information Service advised him to reach out to VANISH. Chris sent a general enquiry through the website, and a VANISH search and support worker, Adelaide, took it from there.
“None of it would have been possible if it wasn’t for Adelaide,” Chris says. “Adelaide has helped me every step of the way since then.”
Even so, reaching out to his birth family wasn’t easy. Like many adoptees, Chris worried about disrupting other people’s lives. “I remember saying to Adelaide, ‘Is there even much point in reaching out? It’s been forty years. Am I gonna rock the boat? What if I make it worse?’ And am I ready to know? Am I ready for the potential negativity or being let down if no one wants me?”
With Adelaide’s support, he started to reframe that thinking. “You’ve got to look after yourself and put yourself first,” she told him. It’s a line that’s stayed with him. “Eventually I was able to say to myself, this is the right thing to do. I’ve got every right to ask the question.”
Preparing to make contact was a process in itself: working through what might happen on the other end, sitting with uncertainty, and getting into the right headspace before he sent anything. “You’re at a pivot point,” he says. “You can open the box if you want, but if there’s nothing in there, there’s nothing in there. So you’ve got to manage your expectations.” He and Adelaide talked through the various possibilities a couple of times before reaching out, including that his birth mother may not want contact.
Chris wrote the first letter himself, in the same direct way he approached this interview. “I was very open, had nothing to hold back,” he says. “I’ve learnt to just be myself and I just told it how it is from my perspective”.
When he finally reached out, the response was really positive.
“I’m forever grateful I’ve done it now,” Chris says.
New pieces of an old story
Growing up, Chris’s adoptive family always wondered where his darker olive skin came from. “Maybe it’s Italian was kind of a running joke,” he says. “When you don’t know, your mind can run crazy.”
“My adoptive parents would say, ‘You eat a lot of pasta and pizza, it’s gotta be the Italian in you coming out.’”
Through contact with his birth mother, Chris has discovered his Aboriginal heritage, which comes from both his mother’s and father’s sides. He is currently in the process of getting formal confirmation, not just for himself, but for his children. One of his sisters has already received hers.
Learning the truth has settled something for him, whatever the paperwork eventually confirms. “It just gives me some foundation and some facts, which I’ve never had,” he says.
Now 42, Chris has been mapping out a family tree with his birth mother and birth brother, with help from Kate, comparing records from Births, Deaths and Marriages as they go. His brother had spent years trying to track down Chris himself but didn’t have the information his birth mother may have had.
Other parts of the story have been harder to hear. His family history involves trauma, loss and estrangement. But Chris is approaching it step by step.
Even after his birth mother responded warmly, Chris opted for Adelaide to relay messages in between for a while. “I think I made the right call not to rush into it too quickly. There’s forty years of emotion there, for both of us, so I thought I just need a helping hand to get through it. And it’s been nice to build the relationship slowly.”
Learning to ask for help
One of the biggest changes for Chris has been learning not to do everything alone, after decades of thinking that asking for help was a burden on other people.
“I’m used to doing things by myself, but it’s nice knowing that there’s a huge support network around. That’s what I’ve never had.”
His adoptive parents were actually the ones who pushed him to search for his birth family during the health scare, and Chris describes his relationship with them as closer than ever. “They really kicked it off,” he says. “It’s funny how it goes full circle in a short amount of time. After having kids of my own and being a lot older, your perspective changes. I don’t know what or how I would do things if I had to tell my kids they were adopted. I feel for my adoptive parents, there is no ideal way to start such a change, but I admit they have always been there for me. I will always be grateful for the places I have been, things I have experienced and all the opportunities this life has given me.”
His wife has also been “extremely supportive”, helping him process a lot of new information and pull together paperwork for the Confirmation of Aboriginality application. “She’s been on the journey just as much. Not just with VANISH but for over twenty years.” Chris says. “She is my rock, my best friend and I will forever be grateful for her.”
Moving forward
Now Chris is navigating how to share his full story with his children, who are around the age he was when he found out he was adopted. Having the right information for them is largely driving the Confirmation of Aboriginality process.
“I’m just thinking more of my kids,” he says. “I just want to have an answer for them, so they know who they are, as well as myself. I might not have all the answers, but I can understand what they may be thinking and feeling. I see that as a positive I can bring – to help them and turn the negative I felt into something much better.”
His approach is shaped by his own experience of not having support. “I can’t control how the kids are going to feel about it, but at least I can be there for them and support them. I just want them to say how they feel.”
Meanwhile Chris is gradually getting to know his birth mother through text messages and photos every week. “She’s kind of everything I thought she would be, to be honest, in a very positive sense,” he says. “So when I first started talking to her I was thinking, why the hell didn’t I do this earlier?”
He’s hoping to move to phone calls once he’s shared his whole story with his children, and eventually to meet in person. “I’d love to meet my birth mother and brother and hug and just make it more of a family,” he says.
When asked how he’d sum up the last two years, Chris laughs. “It’s been a rollercoaster. Some days I wanted to go around again and others I just wanted to get off!”
But ultimately, he sees it as growth.
“I’m proud of the journey that I’ve been on and where I’m going,” he says. “I look at it a bit more positively now, that I’ve gone through more than some people would, and I’ve come out better for it.”
If you’re interested in searching for family or reaching out for the first time, VANISH is here to support you. To learn more about our search and intermediary services, please contact us.
*VANISH recognises that people impacted by adoption prefer to use different terms to describe their family members. The language used in this article is Chris’s own.