This story was originally published on January 26. It was updated on May 26, for National Sorry Day – a day that remembers and acknowledges the mistreatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who were forcibly removed from their families and communities.
1966 was the year my mother was illegally taken from her mother. Or at least we think it was.
Government documents aren’t able to confirm my mother’s year of birth (or her father’s) but we do know that she was placed into a foster home at the age of three here in Sydney. My mother was my grandmother’s third stolen child, but not the last. All 12 of her children were forcibly removed from her care and love during the 1960s and 1970s.
You see, my mother was born in Bourke, NSW. What should have a been a simple life living on Gamilaroi Country where her ancestors and family had always called home instead turned into a life of trauma, hopelessness and mental health issues.
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My mother, who should have grown up knowing her mother, siblings, culture, language, who should have had a happy life, was given anything but.
This severely impacted her ability to parent and love my sister and I.
A week before my mother was to be reunited with her mother at the age of 19, her foster father sat her down and told her that her mother was tragically murdered by her ex-partner over an opal. Yes, an opal. Something that would have been worth next to nothing today.
My grandmother was murdered in the most horrific way and I hate that I found out by reading a report from Link Up when I was 10 years old.
Although I knew better than to read the report, I was desperate to know more about my family. You can’t prepare yourself to learn of a traumatic family history at any age.
Top Comments
In response to a male commenting on this story, shared to my wall - I wrote the following...
"Please bear with my random example here...
To set the scene, may I ask;
Did you grow up with two parents?
Are you a father?
How would a man know how to be a father - when he only has a woman telling him how to behave?
How do you imagine the resulting individual might turn out?
How about, a man who runs around doing everything his wife and daughters want, having no life of his own, whilst being criticised for his every masculine trait, need and desire that falls out of alignment with their perception of what he ought to be?
Can you conceive what it feels like to be a man who is figuratively dressed up in dolls clothes made to play "dollhouse families" with an overgrown child who never had a father of her own to know what a man is, and all she knows how to do is shout and berate her 'man'?
Can you imagine extended families, and social pressures all being guided by her disgruntled, unappreciative representation of him?
Can you imagine this shadow of a man being told what to do by every one, at every turn, looking forward to nothing in his life but a wooden box in 6 foot hole?
What sort of a man will this guy feel like he is? Capable? Strong? Worthy?
And then in all that noise, successfully having what would be considered to be a 'normal' family - stepping out boldly into the world and appearing confident, strong and determined... Worthy of success?
I see this woman as being no different - being shamed for being 'like her mother', told not to be and condemned for her whole life for every part of her that reminds the haters of her mother.. She's constantly berated and shamed for being like her mother, and for the large part, probably grew up believing it! Such shaming is a great way to manipulate and control a person's behaviour! Don't be like your parent! You look so much like your parent! You're just like your parent! Yes, that's the parent, the one that everyone hates and has removed from the loving graces of society and that's what's gonna happen to you if our opinion aren't satisfied!
Like, how much of HER fault is the fact that she's borne to a socially unacceptable woman? She's HALF her mother from the start to the end of her life, no matter what anyone says, and then, she becomes a mother herself! What sort of torment can that be like... Not is she half her mother, she IS a mother to boot! How hard ia it to live with herself and stand up tall and proud? Certainly not where anyone else can see a mark to cut her down!
Sadly, I see little difference between her and the broken families we have scattered elsewhere, the parents whom tell their children to not be like their parent and then those children becoming parents themselves.
Telling this woman to suck it up is like telling one of the most endemic problems in the world today - Black and white - to go away. The only advantage that being black and female gives her, is a platform to speak out against it. Try being a white male and doing the same thing... No one wants to know!
It takes TWO exceptional people to make a normal family.
For the rest of the mere mortals whom have to say "there is a limit to our tolerance" - these people may be considered 'failures' by everyone else whom hasn't clue what goes on behind closed doors in the efforts to scale these enormous intrinsic challenges.
These people just have to wear their 'failure' with pride, in the face of all of the judges and carry on with attempting to have real and meaningful familial relationships, regardless of the opinions and ostracism that serves only to underline the irrelevance of the people whom make them."
Signed, a white male from a broken home of an ostracised father whom has had the same of his own, and is furious about and societies ignorant response to the mess this is making of our world.