"At six months pregnant, my grandmother was barbarically forced to give up her daughter."

She was awoken in the middle of the night. Two police officers handcuffed her and drove her to an airport. Against her will she was dragged onto a plane, flying from Melbourne to Sydney.

The next morning, she was driven to her new home, Booth House and taken for an appointment at Bethesda House. ‘A home for bad girls,’ read the plaque on the entryway. It was 1959 and she was six months pregnant.

Three months later, on October 26, 1959, Valerie gave birth to her first and only daughter, Deborah.

She was never allowed to hold her.

This is the story of Valerie Peck, my grandmother.

You see, Deborah, my mum, was a child of the stolen generation.

My mum is a member of the 'White' Stolen Generation and this story is not that of the The Stolen Generation of which we know most about, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who were also stolen from their parents in horrific circumstances.

I feel uncomfortable distinguishing people based on the colour of their skin, but it is an important historical differentiation as the members of the indigenous stolen generation suffered other atrocities also. From 1930 to 1982, 303,000 Indigenous Australian children and 250,000 other race children were stolen from their mothers the way that my mother was.

My grandmother grew up in the leafy suburb of Heathmont, VIC.

When her parents found out she was six months pregnant, they arranged for her to be collected and sent to the Inner West of Sydney to give birth in secret. They elected to tell people that she was in juvenile detention, which was far less shameful to them than admitting that their unwed daughter had fallen pregnant.

Valerie gave birth to her daughter only to be given a paper and pen while intoxicated on medication. This paper severed her parental rights, and in an instant, this pen bled out ink that would irreversibly shape the lives of many.

Attempting to heal the scars and emptiness that having her baby stolen from her left behind, she returned home, married immediately and gave birth to another baby, this time a son.

When Valerie was 21 years old, she died in a car crash.

I wish I could tell you more about her story and who she was as a woman. But I can't. Because she never got the chance to live her life, to properly heal - if there is such a thing as healing after that experience.

There are two things listed about Valerie in the records that my mother holds.

Valerie had nice skin and was a trouble maker. She apparently led all the strikes and protests that the girls engaged in while in Booth House.

This is all the information my mum was able to learn about her own mum.

Unfortunately, as I'm sure you can guess, the heartbreak didn't end there.

These events shaped my mum in every way possible, and the pain of losing her mum has haunted her every single day. My other grandmother Jean, who was my adoptive grandmother, loved her daughter dearly. In hindsight, my mum knows that. Growing up; however, she did not see it like that and had a very strained relationship with her. Her father was very distant, indicative of the times.

Mum always knew, she tells me. She always knew that somehow she ‘didn’t belong’ in her home. Adoption was kept very hush-hush and was not something that was openly discussed.

As a young girl, my mum would run down the street and tell people she was looking to "go home."

It was this innate, primitive reaction to something inside of her that resulted in a night that occurred when my mum was three. After a nightmare, she woke up wailing, screaming and unable to be coddled or calmed by Jean, it was nearing Christmas time in the year of 1962. Valerie died on 18 December 1962. Although she was just three years old, mum recalls this as if it was yesterday and says that she just knew something within the world was wrong. She has often wondered if it is possible that this was linked to her mother’s death.

My mum has long associated adoption with her own troubled experience, an experience where she never got to truly know who she is or where she comes from.

Due to the system in place at the time, there are no records of who her father is and it took her until her 30s to find out who her mother was.

I do not mean to offend parents or children who came together through adoption, I am not attempting to in any way invalidate the legitimacy of your family. This is just a sad story of an instance where a mother did not want to give her child up for adoption but was forced by atrocities that are unimaginable in Australia today.

I want to adopt my children one day and should I be fortunate, my mum says the best thing that I can do is be open and honest with my children about who they are, in a way that her family never was with her.

When a mother whose only crime is not having a ring on her finger is forced to give up her child, the damage is irreparable. Made worse by the fact that Valerie passed away before mum was ever given the chance to meet her, there are some wounds that will never heal and no closure will ever be found.

My mum found a woman named Elizabeth who was close friends with Valerie. Elizabeth told my mum all about how Valerie had planned to run away and raise her daughter, and the devastation that found Valerie after her child was ripped from her without her permission.

This is the story of one woman whose tragedy our government tried to erase from history.

It is a short tale as we do not know much, all we know is that she was strong and tried to fight for her daughter, who she dearly wanted to keep.

This is the story of my grandmother Valerie Peck.