'I was proud to be adopted. Then I found a secret box of letters that blew up my life.'

Whenever someone discovers I'm adopted, they're surprised.

The statistics show exactly why: between 1971 and 1972, Australia recorded 9,798 adoptions. In 2023-2024, there were just 207.

In a country of 27 million people, my story might be rare, but the discovery I made is not. And this discovery impacts us all.

As a child, I loved being adopted. It made me unique, and I often received special attention and kindness from adults as a result.

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Later, I discovered all of the adults around me knew something I didn't. They'd spoken of it in hushed tones so quiet I never even noticed — and to steer me away from curiosity, they told me half-truths.

I knew I was adopted. I knew the woman who gave birth to me was not married. I knew she had been unwell. And I had seen photographs of myself pre-adoption aged four-weeks, three-months, and the day I was adopted at five-and-a-half-months-old.

By sharing parts of the narrative, it quenched my thirst for real knowledge. If someone asked why my hair was not blonde, like my parents, I knew how to reply. I could tell people I had "Greek origins" and that I had been "adopted from the north of NSW".

I could even whip out the baby photos that my mum kept in the kitchen, with an array of other documents that I never took much notice of…

But this wasn't the full story.

And, when I discovered this at age 18, I felt deceived. My family had intentionally told me a lot of information, so I would not go hunting for the truth. This is a timeless story for families around the world.

How I discovered the truth.

On my 18th birthday, I was midway through my Year 12 exams. I woke up, unwrapped presents, had a celebratory breakfast, and then — uncharacteristically — my mum demanded that I get dressed and go with her to the car.

Honestly, I was excited. I thought she was going to give me a gift. American movies had set me up to believe that the gift may have been a car wrapped in a red ribbon.

So, the disappointment of her driving me to the local council offices was not particularly fun.

But I loved — and continue to love — my mum. So, I swallowed the disappointment and did what she asked. She took me into an office I'd never seen before, and we waited. She said we were there to do some paperwork that was important because it was my birthday.

What happened next would break the heart of a 20-year-old girl living just 45 minutes away, on the other side of the city.

The receptionist ushered us to her desk and presented me with an application my mum had pre-filled, days earlier. She asked me to sign it. My mum told me it was to protect me "because you're adopted."

And honestly, this was the first time I had ever felt like my mum was hiding anything about my adoption. She had always seemed to be transparent about it.

Until that moment, she made me proud to be adopted. Confident.

But what was happening in this council office didn't feel right. I was, reluctantly, signing what is known as a "Contact Veto".

In NSW, the Contact Veto Register enables a birth parent or an adopted person to prevent another party to the adoption from making contact with them. You may only lodge a Contact Veto if the adoption order was made before 26 October 1990. And a Contact Veto remains in force unless the applicant decides to remove it or is deceased.

On my 18th birthday, 45 minutes away from me, my biological half-sister waited for what she hoped would be her first-ever phone call from me.

Instead, she received notification from the council office that I had signed a Contact Veto.

And I still didn't know she even existed.

That night, I finally read the paperwork my mum had kept in clear view, in the pantry cupboard for my entire life. It did not reveal that I had two sisters and a brother. It did not reveal that I had been born with a different name.

That I had been taken against my birth mother's wishes or that the reason it took five months for me to be adopted was because so many families — including all my biological family, and a number of other families seeking to adopt… had rejected me.

Image: Supplied.

But it did include one piece of information that would unravel all of these secrets: my (replacement) birth certificate had not been lodged until I was six. The year my name was changed, and my adoption was finalised.

Weeks later, when my exams ended, I went back to the council office. This time I was alone.

I had never kept secrets from my mum. We just weren't that kind of family. Or, so I thought. I had always felt lucky that we had an open-door, open-book family policy.

We talked about sex, smoking and alcohol. My mum helped me to get on the pill when I was 17. She bought me four bottles of 'alcopops' every time I attended a party in my late teens, so I wouldn't drink goon. She never read my locked diary. Always knocked before she entered my room. I trusted her entirely.

And yet, all along, every adult in my family had been keeping the biggest secret of all from me: that in the same city, raised in three separate families, were my sisters and my brother.

At the council office, the receptionist was in on the ruse. She offered to call my mum "for support." I declined this offer. It was the first time in my life that I wanted to be alone. I did not trust my mother's support.

What followed was a messy, month-long battle to get what should have been handed over right there and then: a big, chaotic box of letters, cards and presents from my sisters, their families, and my birth mother — as well as documents covering the past 18 years of my life. A Pandora's box of secrets.

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On the day that the box was finally handed to me at the council office, I called my older sister for the first time. I explained that I had only just learnt she existed.

I cried through my apology for signing the Contact Veto. And she forgave me. She understood. We've been close friends and family ever since.

Adoption is not common.

But deceiving children is.

Every day, parents use the excuse of "protecting them" and "shielding them from the truth" … But I'll tell you from experience — the truth has never hurt me. Only the lies.

Feature image: Supplied.