'Circle of Secrets' and other images can now be ordered from Reunite Cards!

This image and others from my book are now available to order as a print or card format from reunite cards website listed on this blog. 
Reunite have a range of adoption related cards and images that can help express those difficult emotions when it comes to making contact with a lost child or parent from the past.

Survey request on post adoption practices from Child Protection Agency

 child.protection@fahcsia.gov.au

Hello

As you know, on 30 August Minister Macklin made an announcement about the Government’s intention to apologise to Forgotten Australians and Lost Innocents and to begin a dialogue with mothers and children separated by past adoption practices.  We would now like to seek you views on the apology, key stakeholders and the event. 

To help we have developed a broad range of questions as attached.  It would be appreciated if your response to these questions could be provided back to the child.protection@fahcsia.gov.au email address or posted to:  Children’s Policy Branch, JH2, PO Box 7576, Canberra Business Centre  ACT  2610  by 1 October 2009.

regards

Child Protection

RELEASE OF MY FIRST BOOK -"Touched by Adoption - Journeys Toward Wholeness"

Hi! I am an artist who loves to paint stories and have combined a series of works that explored the theme of adoption after talking with many different people whose lives had been affected by adoption in one way or another.

As I grew to know more about my birth mum, I realised some of the stresses she must have been under and although the whole reunion experience was fraught with complications, I was still glad to have some insight into where I fit into the scheme of things. There were people I resembled and I finally had a sense of history and connection and knew, even if superficially, that I had been loved and wanted as a baby...not as a child tells themselves, unwanted or useless.

It's amazing how we hold on to those early impressions which sear into our very souls and how many years it takes to 'unlearn' the early lessons of rejection.

Slowly, through both loving relationships reflected back and a growing understanding that I was created by a loving heavenly Father, have these impressions been faded back and a sense of value and self worth has eventually replaced those scars. It is surely, a lifelong journey, bit by bit.

So to make a long story a little shorter, I embarked upon a journey of my own to investigate the depths to which many people like myself are affected by these things, in order to express some of these emotions & thoughts in paint.

This I have attempted in a series of around 20 works which have been exhibited twice here on the Sunshine Coast and now 15 of them are featured in my new book alongside other fellow adoptees and a couple of mums who have bravely shared their own journeys, including singer David Campbell and actor Ian Smith from Neighbours, as well as the Professor and Head of the School of Theology for Charles Sturt University. Adoption really does touch a variety of lives!

I hope that as people s read these stories and reflect on these images, that it may help them discover some measure of comfort or connection, to know that we are not alone in struggling through these things. Many feelings such as abandonment, isolation, depression, inferiority are certainly not unique to being adopted.

It is part of being human to experience these emotions, but it's about the choices we make with them and what we can learn from these experiences that can make a difference in the person we become.