Karen:

Karen is an Aboriginal woman, but a white Australian family adopted her and they move to New Zealand when Karen was 6 month old. When she grew up, she didn’t know anything about her birth family. The only information Karen had about her natural family was hers mothers surname.



This is not a picture of Karen, but it looked like a Karen.

She guess that she had a quiet good relationship to her adopted family though her adopted mother said that she kept a lot to her self when she was growing up.

It was first when she get older she noticed that her skin colour was different from her adopted family, then her adopted mother tells her she was adopted from Australian and therefore a part aboriginal.

When she was a teens she was mixed up about where she belong because she was adopted. A result of that she started to have some psychiatric problems.

When she get an adult she get married to a New Zealander, and together there have 2 boys. One of her boys was black like herself and also was interesting in his heritage but she was unable to tell him about it because she didn’t know anything about it herself.

For 7 years ago took her and her family to Melbourne for a working holiday for like 10 weeks. In Melbourne she took to an officer for talking with a social worker and then she had bring a copy of her birth certificate. On the birth certificate was her birth mothers name on. The social worker got touch with her aunty, and then she got her birth mothers phone number.

She got contact with her birth mother and then they meet each other. She got information’s about the mother’s family. She knows now that she had 2 half brothers and her birth parents never get married.

She put an article in the local newspaper of her and her mom hope she finds her father.

The father recognized her mother and get in touch with her but the mother wouldn’t give the father her address in New Zealand and therefore the father took to the officer and from there the father got contact with her. She meet her father first time when she was going to a wedding in Melbourne, that was shortly after she got in contact with him.

Karen and her birth mother and father still have contact with each other today but she never will be able to make up the time she have lost because she live in New Zealand and her birth parents live in Australia.

Today she stills confused about where she belongs, and that have been very emotional for her. The result of that sometimes she get nervous breakdown. She’s on medication daily today and she sees a counsellor they’re trying to help her with accepting the situation. Her adopted family don’t want to know much about her birth family and that just make it’s harder for her.