Adoptee Sandra D Moon is taking back her birth name and reclaiming her lost identity

When I found out I had a different name to the one I grew up with, my life story began to change.

As an adopted person I had only ever seen my amended birth certificate which was written 'as if I was born to' my adoptive parents.

But when I was 18 years old the laws around closed adoptions changed and allowed me to apply for my original birth certificate.

So I did.

It was like reading a front page news story about myself that I had no idea about.

Seeing my original name was powerful because it was evidence I existed before my adoption.

The 'me' adoption erased

To reconcile what my past identity means to my present one has been challenging, complicated and complex.

Over the past three decades I have spent countless hours filling out forms to apply for information about me held by various organisations and agencies.

I collected documents from St Margaret's Hospital and St Anthony's Home in Croydon (which have since closed), the Catholic Adoption Agency and the Department of Families and Community Services.

I discovered that I am a survivor of forced adoption practices. I spent time in a children's home before I was adopted, have family and siblings on both paternal and maternal sides, and am of Maltese-Sicilian heritage.

Gaslit by society

Growing up as an adopted person in the 1970s, in a regional NSW town, was lonely.

And the many messages I received about being adopted and how I should feel — all from non-adopted people — were hurtful and confusing.

Some said I was unwanted and abandoned, and others that I was lucky, chosen and better off.

Sarah Burn, team leader of The Benevolent Society's Post Adoption Resource Centre has extensive experience with thousands of adopted persons who access the service and attend their events.

She says adopted persons are not living a better life — "it's just a different life".

It's one built on "a myriad of losses".

"To separate a baby and mother at birth is a massive trauma to both and is the beginning of the losses," Ms Burn says.

"An adopted person has lost a connection to both maternal and paternal families, to the family history, to the family story, to the medical information, even to the basics like 'Who do I look like?'"

Dismantling adoption myths

Growing up I felt the losses as a soul-deep bewildering sadness.

In adoption communities some people refer to their realisations as "coming out of the fog".

Ms Burn describes it as shaking off the narrative of adoption as "the be-all-and-end-all and wholly good".

I began to come out of the fog in March 2013 when I watched then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard deliver the National Apology to people affected by forced adoption practices.

After that I visited the "Without Consent" exhibition at the National Archives of Australia in 2015.

It educated me on past practices of forced adoption — mothers (often young and unwed) had been pressured, coerced and sometimes even drugged to supply babies to adoption agencies.

I began to understand what had happened in Australia and what had happened to me.

Integrating my identities

The first time I saw my name on my original birth certificate, I felt incredible surprise that I had been named.

Someone cared enough about me to give me a name, which flung in the face of the whole unwanted child narrative around adoption.

As I approached 50 years of age, I knew I wanted to acknowledge and honour the person I had lost by reclaiming my original name.

According to Ms Burn it's a powerful and healing move because it helps adopted persons regain not only their identity but also control.

Besides, I like my original name.

Free integrated birth certificates for adopted persons were introduced in 2020.

But it simply collates information from both birth certificates into a single document.

It does not have the capacity to legally change an adopted person's name from their amended one back to their birth name or any combination thereof.

So I have to apply for a name change, pay a fee close to $200, provide a compelling reason and cross my fingers it will be approved.

Ms Burns says comparatively: "Twelve-year-old children in foster care can now consent to their own adoption and choose their name."

I want some of that self-determination.

And I'm going to get it by writing the next chapters of my life as Toni Michelle.

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