Lisa Preston: Tracing the Threads of Me | Sharing Stories Changing Lives
After decades of unanswered questions, Lisa Preston recounts the stress and hope of her long search for her biological parents in the UK, ultimately demonstrating the resilience needed to uncover where you come from.
Dive Deeper: The Full Conversation with Lisa Preston
The Core Story: Finding Home After 54 Years
Lisa Preston’s story is a testament to the resilience required to find the missing pieces of your past. Adopted in the UK and raised in Australia, Lisa shares her lifelong quest to connect with her biological parents. She speaks openly about the recognized trauma of adoption and the pain of feeling like the "water boy"—always on the outside. This episode takes you through decades of searching, the detective work, the heartbreaking initial rejection, and the profound, long-awaited moment of meeting her birth mother. This is an unfiltered narrative about what it takes to reclaim your life story.
Time-Stamped Breakthrough Moments
For easy navigation, listen to the key moments from Lisa’s journey:
[00:03:00] – Growing up adopted: The feeling of being the "water boy" and the impact of having your "slate wiped clean."
[00:04:45] – Why adoption is considered a trauma: Lisa shares statistics on high addiction and suicide rates among adoptees due to lack of biological bonding.
[00:06:00] – Trigger points: When the search for biological parents becomes inevitable (pregnancy and medical questions).
[00:07:30] – The Breakthrough: How Lisa found her birth mother’s marriage certificate in the Sydney State Library and hired a detective.
[00:08:20] – The Detective’s Success: Finding her mother in Scotland in just five days after 30 years of searching.
[00:09:30] – The Initial Rejection: Why her birth mother, who had a husband and three half-siblings who didn't know about Lisa, was "angry and frightened" when found.
[00:10:35] – Wise Counsel: The detective's life-changing advice to "poke the bear" by sending a Christmas card every year for 24 years.
[00:12:00] – The Catalyst: The emotional, tragic, yet hopeful story of Lisa’s adopted brother’s search for his own birth mother.
[00:16:00] – Time is of the Essence: Waking up and deciding to fly to the UK, fearing she would end up like her brother.
[00:17:30] – The Risky Email: Lisa’s final, brave email to her mother (titled "It's Time") warning her about DNA testing.
[00:20:50] – A Sign from Above: Hearing "Here Comes The Sun" (her adoptive father’s funeral song) in the pub just before the crucial call.
[00:22:00] – The Negotiation: How Lisa’s husband, Rod, stepped in to convince her guarded mother to agree to a "once only contact" meeting.
[00:25:00] – The Reunion: The moment Lisa finally saw her mother in a foyer—the hugs, the tears, and the intense emotions.
[00:30:00] – The Aftermath: Why the meeting was "hard," and the painful conversation about bonding and shame.
[00:33:00] – The Polar Opposite Experience: The open-hearted, immediate acceptance by her biological father, a relationship that continues today.
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Full Episode Transcript
Voice over CW: [00:00:00] Welcome to Sharing stories, changing Lives, A Story Room Global production, presented by Karen Sander, A collection of authentic voices, real moments. And conversations that open hearts and shift perspectives. When we listen deeply, stories have the power to change how we see ourselves and the world through a new lens.
This is where real stories meet real change.
Karen: Sometimes the stories that shape us most are the ones we can't see, the missing pieces of the puzzle, the unanswered questions that sits in our heart. Today I am joined by Lisa Preston. The story begins in the UK with an adoption that suit her on a [00:01:00] lifelong quest. Growing up in Australia, she had what many would call a normal life, but underneath the surface, she felt the ache.
Of something unfinished. This is a story of searching and waiting of loss and discovery of hope carried across decades. Above all, it's a story of Reunion and what it takes to get there. Welcome, Lisa. Hey,
Lisa: Karen. How are you? So lovely to be here with you today.
Karen: I'm really excited because a few months ago, last year, in fact, you came to Story Room Global.
You shared your story and honestly there was 120, 130 people in the room, and you could have heard a pin drop, and you just took that room and you shared this journey that filled them up. I had people calling me going, I can't stop thinking about that story and all that. Lisa has been [00:02:00] through. To find her biological parent.
It's one of the most memorable stories we've had at the Story Room Global. Well, thank you. It's really nice to hear that feedback. And let's share your story today on sharing stories, changing lives. Oh, I'm looking forward to it. So on the outside, Lisa's childhood looked ordinary, cool friends, family life, but inside she often felt like the water boy, never part of a team.
She didn't look like anyone in the family. She didn't share their traits and always wondered where she belonged. Take us back to those years. What was it like growing up in Australia as an adopted child? Always carrying that sense of difference.
Lisa: I always felt I was different. I always felt like I was the water boy.
I was never quite part of the team. And like we were saying, I don't look like anybody. I don't have traits like anybody, so you live in a void. You're just not part [00:03:00] of anything. And I knew that I had a story. I knew that I had a past and I'd always known I was adopted, but it wasn't particularly talked about a lot.
You just expected to get on with your life, and life to be normal. You're born and you know you had a story, but your slate has been wiped clean. You've been given a new birth certificate and there you go. Go and get on with your life.
Karen: And it's really hard. I can't imagine what it's like to have that memory erased of what was your life.
It's a known fact. Adoption is a trauma because you start life with the loss of your mother. You've been with her for nine months and then all of a sudden she's gone. Adoption doesn't happen straight away. I was adopted when I was six weeks old, so I spent some time in a hospital and who knows how often I was picked up and cuddled and looked after, and then I went to a foster mom through a few weeks as well, until I was adopted.
Speaker 2: So that is a long process and lots happens in our lives that. [00:04:00] Building our memories and the way we are. I'm not a psychologist, but we do know that those things affect us long term or can affect us long term.
Speaker 3: Oh, that they certainly do. And it is also a known fact that adoptees, a huge proportion of them have addiction issues and that's really sad.
And also adoption has a high suicide rate as well. Because people haven't got that bonding and that connection with their biological family, and they spend their whole lives searching for it, and they spend their whole lives feeling not good enough. Mm. So
Speaker 2: FEA life often felt like a jigsaw puzzle. Only the big important pieces were missing.
Deep down, she knew she couldn't feel whole until she found the beginning of her story. When did you first feel that pool to search for your biological family? And what set you on this mission?
Speaker 3: So I guess being a teenager, and I think it's [00:05:00] probably pretty normal for most teenagers, you don't want to listen to your parents.
I knew I was different and I wanted to know where I came from. And you walk down the street and you look at people and you think, God, I wonder if that's my mom. My mom was very into horses and she's a British horse show society judge. And so I'd go to a horse show and I'd think, oh, is that her? So, you just spend your whole life wondering and wishing and hoping, and praying that you could find your birth mother.
I think when you're a teenager, you build a bit of a fairy tale around it, but it's not always a fairy tale.
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Lisa's search stretched across decades at times. It was heartbreaking, filled with rejections, bad depression, even moments where she wanted to give up. And then came the breakthrough. Lisa found a detective, a woman who not only helped Lisa practically, she offered wisdom that carried her through.
What was it like working with the detective [00:06:00] and can you share the advice? That helped you change everything in your mind and get moving?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so with adoption, there's always trigger points in your life that cause you to want to pick up a search again. It's a pretty standard thing for women. When you're pregnant and you are creating a life, it makes you look back and wonder what you know about your life.
And also when I was pregnant, you get asked a million medical questions and I couldn't answer any questions. I'd be like, I don't know. That's when I decided that I would engage a detective. So, I went to the post-adoption resource center in Sydney to start my search. In the UK, if you're adopted between certain years, you have to have three counselling sessions to receive non-identifying information.
So I did those counselling sessions and I had told them that I'd done a lot of research myself in my twenties, but I kept on hitting a brick wall. By the time I did start my search with the [00:07:00] detective, I was 30 and pregnant with my first son. The state library in Sydney holds the birth deaths and marriages for the uk.
So they told me that I could go there and search for a marriage certificate or any other information I could find about my birth mother, 'cause I knew her name. I knew the hospital where I was born and I knew the village that she came from. I did that and I found her marriage certificates. The people at the post-adoption resource center were quite amazed that I actually found that.
They said it's like finding a needle in a haystack. But I went back and I worked out roughly how old women back in the 1970s were when they got married generally, and I picked a year and I started in the quarters and I found her marriage certificate quite quickly. But then I couldn't find any more information.
So when I went back to the post-adoption resource centre, they said to me, we highly recommend now that you hire a detective. So they gave me three names of three detectives, but they said, we particularly recommend this lady because she's in the uk. She's a social [00:08:00] worker, and she will be a great person to be the middleman and make the contact.
So I rang her and I gave her the information that I had. And she said, easy. Wherever your mother is in the world, whether she's alive or dead, I will find her. And she found her in five days and I'd been looking in England and she had moved to Scotland and that's why I couldn't find her.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.
This is just. This is a mammoth job that you've taken on all that research you had to do. Then the detective, so after 24 years in 2024, Lisa finally had a chance to meet her mom, but when she arrived in the UK, there was a lot of unknown factors and Lisa. Didn't know if she would even meet her. The reunion was hanging on by a thread, so to speak.
Lisa, can you take us into the days leading up to the meeting? [00:09:00] What was going through your mind and what happened when the time finally came to see your mum for the first time?
Speaker 3: So I'll just take you back a little bit before that, when the detective found my birth mother 24 years ago. She wrote my birth mother a letter, and the letter was a very clever letter.
It said, I'm researching a family tree on behalf of a client. My client believes they're related to you, and this person was born in blah, blah, blah. It wasn't gonna blow her cover. And the man that my mother is married to, she's been married to him for 51 years and he doesn't know I exist. She has three children.
So I've got three half siblings. They don't know I exist. So when she eventually contacted the detective, my birth mother was really angry and really frightened that she'd been found. She was not happy, and so the detective had to ring me and say to me that actually a birth mother doesn't want to meet you.
That was a really tough, sad thing [00:10:00] to have to get my head around, and it took me a long time to get over it. But I'm so glad that I chose that detective because she gave me very wise counsel. She said to me, I know that you are sad now, but I have had cases that have taken 10, 15, and 20 years to resolve themselves.
And she said, your job now is to send her a Christmas card every year. To poke the bear and let her know that you're not going away. She said to me, you're gonna have to go with her and grow with her through her life. She said, everybody has chapters in their lives and she said when her children grow up and move away from work and I'll maybe go to university, she'll feel that she's got more freedom and she might feel at some point she can come back round to you.
I did eventually have the opportunity to go over to the uk. My brother is the catalyst at about why I took up my search again, because of what happened to [00:11:00] him. I spent 24 years sending my mother Christmas cards and the detective was very careful to tell me not to blow my mother's cover, and she said, your mother runs a farm.
I've seen photos of it. It is absolutely beautiful. She said to me, so I want you to pretend like you've been a guest and write a very brief chatty Christmas card and just say, the kids will go to the beach for Christmas. Leave it at that and sign it your name, and that's all that you have to do. So I spent 24 years doing that and she didn't ever respond to me.
Not once, but I'm sure it probably freaked her out every time she got a Christmas card from Australia. But there was no interaction. So during COVID, my brother who was also adopted, and he's adopted from a different family, he's also from the UK as well, and my parents, Helen and Mike, that adopted us. They lived in the UK for 10 years and they realized that they couldn't have children and that's why they adopted us.
But then they went on to have a [00:12:00] biological daughter as well. When we moved to Australia when I was two, and it was about four and a half when my sister came along. So anyway, during COVID, my brother all of a sudden became hell bent on finding his birth mother. So one day he rang me and he said, what's that detective's name and how much does it cost?
And what's the process? So I gave him all the details and the same letter was sent to his birth mother and the detective found her living in Spain and that letter arrived to her home one day, and then the next day she died. So it was just horrendous. Like my brother will never ever get over it and he berates himself for taking so long and he used to always say, I've got a family, and he had that sense of rejection.
She didn't want me, so why would I look for her? So I dunno what changed in his head that made him want to go and search for her. But for my brother. His mother [00:13:00] has three sisters, and one of the sisters reached out to my brother via the detective. And those three sisters, his aunts, have been so welcoming to him and have really taken him under their wing, and they've shown him photographs of her and talked a lot about her life and they've really welcomed him into the family and he's since been over to meet them and they've been just wonderful people.
My brother came from a very aristocratic family. His uncle was the Marcus of Bath and lived in Long Lake Castle in the Safari Park, and that uncle died of COVID during COVID. When my parents got my brother, he came with the most beautiful suitcase full of Herod's clothes. His mother gave him up and got him back three times before she eventually relinquished him.
Because in those days when my brother and I were born in the late sixties and seventies, there was no single mother's pension. Her father said to her, if you don't do something about this, I'll cut you out of [00:14:00] everything, being part of the this family and the money that's involved. So she didn't really feel she had a choice, but she never went on to marry, never had any more children.
She just was devastated all her life When they cleaned up Harriet's home after a year when the estate had been wound up. One of the aunts wrote to my brother and she said, your mother didn't leave you anything in her will because she didn't know if you knew you were adopted. She said, I've inherited everything from your mother's estate.
And she said, I think it's only just and right and fair that I gift you your mother's estate, which was quite substantial. And she gifted everything to my brother, which was just unbelievably generous 'cause she said. We knew how much your mother loved you, and when they were cleaning up her home, they got into her safe.
And in her safe, they found a letter that she had written to him over the years about how much she'd loved him, about the [00:15:00] circumstances, and that she too had used a detectives to find my brother and whoever that detective was 'cause it was all before the internet. It was very clever because when my brother was born, he was given a name the same as me.
Our birth mothers named us, and then Helen and Mike adopted us and changed our names, and then we moved countries to Australia. And then my brother, when he was older, joined the Navy and he changed his name by Depo. Whoever that detective was that found him was very clever. They found him living in Sydney, but his birth mother got cold feet because she didn't know if he knew he was adopted.
His story has a bit of sadness, but it's got happiness as well. And it really struck a chord with me. What happened to my brother? And so after COVID, people start going back to work and life rolls on. One morning I woke up and I said to my husband, if I don't get on a plane and go and seek out my birth parents, I'm gonna end up [00:16:00] like my brother.
I said, I'll never meet them, they'll die. And I said, aging. They're aging and, and time is of the essence. And my husband said, if that's what you wanna do, we'll we'll make it happen. We'll do it. I just welled up when you were talking
Speaker 2: about your brother, and especially the arts, contacting him and being so generous, it pulls your heartstrings.
So then you go on this search now for your mom, and that's a rocky road. So let's go through, you are in Australia. What happened next that you ended up meeting your mom?
Speaker 3: I said to my husband, I'm going to write to my birth mother, and I wrote her an email and that was a very dangerous thing to do because I don't have a personal email to her.
I only have a business email and she is in business with her husband who doesn't know I exist, and two of her three children that also dunno I exist. So it was a very risky thing to do to send her an email. And I [00:17:00] wrote her an email and the email was titled It's Time. And I said, I told her briefly what had happened to my brother, and I said, I don't want that to be me.
I said to her, I've done a DNA test and I appear on two extensive family trees with her husband and with her three children. And I said, so all it's gonna take is one of your adult children or your teenage grandchildren. A lot of kids do DNA testing for family trees at school. I said, the cat will be out of the bag and it'll come straight to your email.
And I told her that I was gonna come to the UK and look her up. And I heard nothing like deathly silence. So as you do, my husband and I went on and we booked our tickets, and here we are in Australia thinking about how we're going to do this and make this trip and make this contact. Three weeks before we were due to go, I said to my husband, I'm going to write to her again because she hasn't acknowledged my [00:18:00] email.
So I wrote to her again and I said, the tickets are booked, the trip's imminent. We'll be there at the end of October. I didn't wanna give her an exact date 'cause I didn't want her to book a flight and head off to Spain somewhere and not be around three days before we were leaving Australia. I got an email from her, the first email I had ever had.
First connection ever. And it didn't even say, dear Lisa, and it was about five words and it said, do not use this email. She gave me a mobile number and said, call after 11:00 AM and she didn't even sign it off either. So for the next three days, my husband stepped in as my intermediary because he is an emotionally attached to this story.
So he was able to step out and call her. So for the next three days at 11:00 AM her time, rod called her and she just didn't pick up. So we got on a plane, on a wing and a prayer, not knowing whether she was saying, for God's sake, don't come. I'm not gonna see you. [00:19:00] We just didn't know what was gonna happen.
In my email to her, I said, I know that I'm a secret and I promise I won't turn up at your home, but I will be contacting you. So right now,
Speaker 2: Lisa is about to get on a plane with her husband Rod to fly to the UK to try and have that one meeting with her mother.
Speaker 3: So we arrived at Heathrow and we stayed in London for a couple of nights to get over our jet lag.
Then we went back out to Heathrow Airport and we hired a car, and our only strategy was that we were going to drive to Scotland, drive to her village and contact her. And we decided that on the way to her village, that we would pull over at a petrol station at 11:00 AM. Rod would call her. So we pulled over at a petrol station at 11 o'clock and I got out of the car to give Rod some privacy and I'm walking around the car park while people are trying to sell me Apple watches and hot televisions and things.
It was terrible and he's [00:20:00] calling and he got no response, but the next thing I get a message on my phone saying Call at three 30. I got back into the car and I said to Rod, she's messaged us, she said to call at 3:30 PM. We kept on driving. It was a beautiful drive, but it was a long drive and it was a stressful drive, and it was so stressful because it was becoming real.
I didn't know if I was looking at another rejection in the face. I didn't know what was gonna happen, but we were just sticking our necks out and being very brave. So we drove all the way into her village. She doesn't live in the village. She lives out on a farm. There's just a little tiny general store and a little tiny pub, and the pub was like going into somebody's front living room.
We went to the pub and there was no one else in the pub, and we had a couple of hours to kill before three 30, so we had a pot of tea and we just waited and I was just so nervous. At three 30, rod stood up to go outside to sit in the car and call her, and just as he stood up. [00:21:00] The song that we had at my adoptive dad's funeral started playing in the pub and there had been no music in the pub at all.
Nothing. And you know that song, the Beatles song, here Comes The Sun. So that started playing in the pub and I was crying my eyes out and I knew that my dad was there to help. I knew that things were gonna be okay, that he was gonna guide this along.
Speaker 2: Wow, Lisa, I can't imagine the emotions at this point in that buildup to meeting your mom, hearing your dad's song from his funeral.
Here comes the son. So the next moments are really crucial When Rod goes out to make this phone call to your mom after three 30, let's go down that road.
Speaker 3: So I stayed in the pub and I could see Rod sitting in the car through the pub window, and I could tell by his body language that the conversation he was having with her was pretty tough.
And he [00:22:00] was out there for 40 minutes and he said she picked up straight away and straight away she tried to duck and weave out of a meeting. She said, we are farmers. We work seven days a week. I'm busy. I can't come. Rod said to her, he said, we've just flown from Australia. He said, I run five companies. He said, this is the worst time of year for me to be away in the rundown to Christmas.
He said, let's just get the job done. He said, you've got the opportunity to meet a really beautiful person. He said the more he spoke to her, the more she softened, and she said, if I do this, if I meet Lisa, I want to put some boundaries in place. Rod said, what do you want to do? And she said. I'll meet you for an hour.
It's a once only contact and I don't wanna talk about the past. So we had to accept whatever she was gonna offer and when I would occasionally look at Rod through the window of the pub, he eventually gave me the thumbs [00:23:00] up to, we've got a meeting. We've got a meeting. She's agreed. So that was on a Friday.
She didn't wanna meet us until a Monday. And because it's such a small village, because it was a Friday, because it's the only pub, because the detective had shown me photographs of my mother. I look so like her. I'd look like her daughter, Sophie, that she has. We knew that we had to leave the town. We knew we couldn't stay in that village because we'd give the game away.
Speaker 2: So Lisa, you're about to meet your mom for the first time, but you've got a whole weekend to wait. I'm sure those feelings and emotions over that weekend, were just out of this world. I couldn't think to describe them, but let's go to the Monday. What happened?
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Speaker 3: So we had stayed in Edinburgh for the weekend and she gave us a meeting place. I don't know how my husband put up with me. I was just a complete basket case. Honestly, I lived on coffee and m and msms for days. That's just about all I could cope with. And he loves you. Oh, lucky that he does. So we drove out of Scotland over the border back into England.
We drove for quite some hours to a meeting place that she had told us where nobody would know her. No one would recognize her. I said to my husband, I wanna get to this place early. And I was really nervous. My birth mother is an only child. Her husband doesn't know I exist. Her kids dunno I exist. She's got no one to tell, no one to confide in.
And I was really worried [00:25:00] that she wasn't gonna turn up because it was a pretty brave, gutsy thing to do to drive all that way and not be able to tell anybody or get that support. I've got Rod with me to support me. So we got to the car park and we were sitting in the car for a while and I said to my husband, I cannot sit here any longer.
I said, I have to go to the loo. So we went into this beautiful building and there was a big foyer and Rod said to me, I'll wait for you here in the foyer. So I went to the bathroom, came out, and as I was walking back out towards Rod, I could see him standing there with her. And it was just so emotional and so lovely to see her.
And we both cried and cried and she just, oh, hugged me and she said to Rod, you are right. She, this is beautiful.
Speaker 2: So Lisa, you know me as well. I cried at the story and I welled up again. I [00:26:00] can see you moving in slow motion towards Rod that all that time. Yeah, you've had that. The big hug, the kiss, the cries.
What's next?
Speaker 3: So we went into this cafe and we had a cup of tea with her. She was really guarded in her conversation. She was very nervous, as you would imagine. She has pushed this whole me aside for 54 years, pushed it aside, not able to deal with it. I think it must have been very confronting for her. I think it was very hard, and I admire her bravery for doing what she did, and I had made a photograph album on my phone of my family because I thought that she would be interested to see.
Who raised me because she was very specific in asking the adoption agency that I go to, a certain type of family that I went to, a Catholic family, that I went to, an outdoorsy family, that I went to, an educated family, all those things. So I thought she'd be interested to [00:27:00] see my family, my brother, my sister, and did you go to university and all that.
But it was too painful for her. She didn't wanna see it at all. So we mostly spoke about her life on her farm and how she ended up in Scotland. She was not forthcoming really about much. I got no medical information, but I think the most joyous thing about it was to be able to sit opposite her and to look at her and to smell her perfume and to look into her eyes and look at her hands and just listen to her speak.
Just to be in her presence. And when I had got my adoption file years ago, 'cause I had always thought it said the old-fashioned words in there that nobody knew she was pregnant till the day of her confinement. And so I had always thought that she must have been a big build like me because I'm a bigger female and I've got size 11 feet and big hands and gorgeous.[00:28:00]
Thank you. But I just thought, oh, maybe she might've been carrying a lot of weight and was able to hide the baby. But when I met her, she was the tiniest little person ever and I'd always thought she must've been my build. 'cause I'm a big person for a female. I've got size 11 feet and she has size five feet.
She is tiny. I'm like an Amazon next to her and she's a little fit pocket rocket. She works her farm. They have a massive herd of Angus cattle. They have thousands of organic chickens, so she's a hard worker, very fit. I liked what I saw. I thought, God, I'd like to be like her when I grow up, but she was still very guarded, didn't give away much at all.
I have an aunt that lives in Australia who funnily enough, looks more like my mother than anybody, and she used to be a jeweller and I was at her house before I left Australia and she was making some beautiful Australian pearls, stud [00:29:00] earrings. And I asked her to make me some to give as a gift to my birth mother.
And so I had written my birth mother a card and I thanked her for being so brave to come and meet me. I said, these are some beautiful pearl hearings made by my aunt in Australia. And I said, no, when you wear these, you'll always be in my heart and my thoughts. And I wrapped up the pearls in tissue paper and I put them inside the envelope with the card.
We ended up getting an hour and a half with my birth mother, and it was just lovely just to be with her. And, I think what adopted children miss out on is. Having that mother's love reflected back through her eyes to you. So just to look into her eyes and feel that connection with her was so important.
And I was so grateful that she was brave enough to turn up. And she's a very elegant woman, very stiff, upper lip, British. Yeah. She was not going to let her guard down [00:30:00] whatsoever. And she did say to me, which was quite awful, she said, I didn't bond with you at all. I thought that was really sad because I have two sons, and when I had my children, it really sent me into a lot of emotional turmoil.
It was a complete emotional rollercoaster, and I ended up staying in hospital with my first son for 10 days only for the reason that I was so upset, and I just couldn't understand how a mother could give a baby away. I would hate to have been in that position, and I ended up with really bad postnatal depression.
It was just terrible. That was a bit of a, a knife in the heart for her to say that.
Speaker 2: So after you've had this meeting, what happened? As you say goodbye?
Speaker 3: My husband and I walked her out to her car, and I have to say the meeting wasn't exciting. It actually was really hard. It was hard to know what to say. It was hard to draw her out and to ask her [00:31:00] questions because she.
Wasn't really forthcoming with anything in particular. So we mostly spoke about her farm and her horses and her dogs and that sort of thing. She wasn't gonna tell me much about anything else, but I just had to accept that's what it was and that it was a once only contact. So we walked her to her car and I gave her the card.
When she got into her car, she didn't open it before she got in her car. She let my husband take a couple of photographs of her, which was brave of her as well. Then she got in her car, she just lent over the steering wheel and cried and she watched her. Rod and I walk to our car and I think it probably was quite healing for her as well, to know that I'm okay, that I've had a good life, that I've respected her privacy.
It is sad because it is a rejection, really, like she doesn't want me in her life and she can't tell anyone about me even though she was telling me. Her husband is very unwell and he's on his way out. Lots of people say to me. Like the detective said, but she's had cases that have [00:32:00] taken 10, 15, and 20 years to resolve themselves.
When he goes, people say, oh, that'll be another chapter of her life that she'll be living without him, and she might come back round, but somehow, I just don't think so. She said to me, which was also a bit of a stab in the heart, she would take the shame and the stigma of it to her grave. I said to her, we live in a world now where men marry men.
Women marry women. Babies come into the world in all sorts of ways. And I said, I would be so surprised if anybody judged you because no one cares, no one's interested. And I said, your children are younger than me and I'd be surprised if they judged you, but she said, I'll never get over it. So it's obviously a very painful, very sad time for her.
So she was very brave to turn up a polar opposite experience
Speaker 2: from your dad. There was no secrecy, no hiding, no fear of being found out. He opened the door and in doing so, opened his heart. [00:33:00] Elisa was welcomed, not as a problem to manage, but as a daughter to embrace. Conversations flow. Connection grew and a relationship began to take root one that continues today.
Lisa, polar opposite, as I said, journey with your dad. Please share it.
Speaker 3: So, 25 years ago, I found my birth mother using the detective, and I also had at that time got my adoption file. In my file was the name of my said father. So, it wasn't guaranteed that it was him, but the said father. So, it had his name, it had his age and it had where he lived.
It had the farm where he lived, and I thought a lot of Brits don't travel and a lot of farmers don't travel particularly. So all those years ago, 25 years ago, I got onto the white pages for his area, found his phone number, and as you do, you're not supposed to. I rang him up and he was over the [00:34:00] moon to think that he had a daughter.
He was so thrilled. But in life, the timing is everything. And his wife wasn't so thrilled that I had turned up. She knew somewhere in the background that I existed but wasn't so excited that I came along. And he and his wife have been married for 50 years. She brought three children into the marriage, and they never had any children together.
I'm his only biological child. Beautiful. And he's never been a fan of children. So, during the same time that I wrote an email to my birth mother, I wrote a letter. My birth father's not into technology, so I wrote in the letter, and I put some photographs in it of myself and of my two sons. To see whether he could see any likeness and told him that we were coming on a trip and that I would like to meet him.
I told him what had happened to my brother, and he said when he saw the photos, he said, I can't see any likeness at [00:35:00] all, but he did agree that he would meet me, and I said, once I'm there, I will contact you. So we decided we'd do my mom first because we knew that she was going to be hard and that he was more.
Open to a meeting. I rang him and not 24 hours later, I met my birth father and his wife in their local pub, and right up to the 11th hour, he's saying to me, I don't think that I'm your father. Well, actually underneath it all, I think he knew so well that he was. He was trying to save face with his wife and keep the peace.
And I said to him, that's okay. I said, DNA tests are really easy to do. I said, we'll meet and if we think we need to do a DNA test, we can do it. So anyway, we get to his pub and they had got there before us. We walked in and as soon as I saw him, I could have laughed and cried all at the same time. It was like looking in the mirror.
There was absolutely no doubt who the father was. Did he have [00:36:00] size 11 feet? He has size 15 feet. He has the biggest hands I have ever seen. He is a massive man, like huge. I thought, yeah, I did say to him, thanks for my build,
Speaker 2: Lisa. You're very fortunate because being an Amazonian type woman is very glamorous.
Speaker 3: I didn't always love it and I still struggle with it 'cause I'm not the petite person I wanted to be. As I
Speaker 2: said, on stage, you just look amazing with your glasses, with your hair, with back. Beautiful brimming, smile. Wow, you got the right jeans. Lisa, obviously now this more of the pieces of the puzzle are in place.
Your dad, you met him. Tell us now, have you been in touch again?
Lisa: Oh, absolutely. So the lunch [00:37:00] that we had with him and his wife was really hard. And because the wife was a little bit displeased, she could see clear as day like everybody else that were quite obviously related. And so she sat a lot of the lunch with her arms folded, just looking at me.
And eventually towards the end of the lunch, my husband had engaged her in looking at the ancestry, DNA app on his phone and what you can learn from it. And they were chatting about it. And finally, Richard, my birth father, could see that she was engaged in another conversation and he. Lent over to me and he held my hand and he whispered to me, he said, I can see that you are mine.
And I said, Richard, have a look at us. I said, there is no doubt. I said, do you still wanna do a DNA test? And he said, no, no need. And so after the lunch, we went outside and we took a couple of photographs and we got into the car and I said to Rod, two out of two, we've done what we set out [00:38:00] to do. We were driving off in totally the opposite direction from where he lived to go and stay with Rod's sister.
And then we drove for a few hours, and we stayed in a little village that night and I was just an emotional wreck. I was just exhausted. So, we slept in the next morning, got up, went to a cafe and had some breakfast and my phone started to ring and I said to my husband, oh, I wonder who's ringing me because everyone in Australia is asleep.
I hope everyone's okay. And it was his wife. She said we’ve been awake till three in the morning. She said Richard couldn't sleep. He's just so emotional, and she said, he's so emotional he can't speak to you, and he wanted me to call you and ask you if you and Rod would come back to our farm and spend the day with us and have lunch.
And so, I was just so over the moon. I was crying my eyes out because all the years that I had Google Earthed his farm and gone all the way up his driveway and around his [00:39:00] farm, I never thought in my whole life that I would be invited there to have lunch and spend the day with him. And I went to his house, and he held my hand, and he sat next to me all day.
He just couldn't stop looking at me like it was. He was just so thrilled when I met him, he had a really old phone, like he's 20 years behind in technology. It was one of those old Nokia flip phones. It was almost kerosene powered. And by the time I got back to Australia, he had bought the latest, greatest phone.
That's the lovely thing about living in the village in his small community, which is an amazing community. A lady helped him to learn how to WhatsApp, how to FaceTime, how to send photos and videos. And I speak to him now every day, and I've spoken to him every day now for the last 18 months. Oh, stop it Lisa.
We just have the loveliest connection.
Speaker 2: Lisa described her life before the reunion as blackness [00:40:00] emptiness, but when she finally knew her story, when the puzzles clicked into place, everything changed. Lisa, how's finding your biological parents changed you and how do you feel now compared to those years of searching?
Speaker 3: My husband tells everybody that he came home with a very different wife. I feel just totally at peace. I feel very happy to be in my own skin. I can see where I've come from in my tribe, and you can see why they try to keep Aboriginal children with aboriginal people, because that's their people. And I have found my people.
And my father has been so welcoming and so loving towards me that it's just changed my whole life. It's just made me feel really happy and peaceful, and I've gone from living in a void, bouncing around in nothingness to being able to live my life now with more purpose and joy, and now I [00:41:00] can live my life in color.
Speaker 2: Lisa's story and her brother's stories are stories of courage and persistence and the need to know who we are at our core. Lisa, what do you hope others take from your journey, especially those searching for their beginnings?
Speaker 3: I'd like to share my story because if it hadn't been for the wise words and the wise counsel of the detective all those 25 years ago when she told me that my birth mother didn't want to meet me, I would've just shut the door on the whole thing.
But because she was so experienced and she just said. People have different chapters in their lives, you're going to have to go with her and grow with her and hope that at some point she can find the courage to come around. She said, there's one thing I can guarantee you. And she said, people's lives always changing.
People get divorced, people get ill, people get old and what tie up loose ends? And she said, just [00:42:00] stick with it. Just however long it takes, just stick with it. And to give me the idea to send the Christmas cards. To give me something to do to poke the beer. She was very wise and if it hadn't been for her, I would never have con continued to do it.
And so that's what I want to pass on to other people. That a no doesn't always mean a no. And also I would say don't ever do it unsupported yet. Help with doing it 'cause it's such an emotional rollercoaster.
Speaker 2: Lisa's journey reminds us that hope isn't passive. It's something we live. Even when the waiting stretches across decades, it's sending a card every Christmas.
It's holding on when you feel rejected. It's trusting that love will eventually find its moment. Lisa, thank you so much for your story today. It is a testament to your resilience and patience and the human need to know where we come from. Thank [00:43:00] you, Karen. I really enjoyed sharing my story with you. I could listen to it over and over again.
It needs to be a film. We've heard a few people say that, oh my God, I can see it all. I can't write film, but someone needs to write this. If today's story touched you, please share it with someone who might need a reminder. There is always hope. Stories connect us, and as Lisa shows, they can also heal us.
I'm Karen Sander. Join us again soon. So, Lisa Cheerio. Thank you so much again. This is priceless. Thanks, Karen.
Voice Over CW: Thank you for listening to sharing stories, changing lives. If a story today moved you, made you think. Or opened a new lens on life. Share it with a friend because when stories travel, [00:44:00] their impact grows. To explore more, visit the story room global.com and step inside the backstage path. Where you'll find exclusive conversations, workshops, and moments from our live events.
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