Adoptee’s 33-year journey to ‘right’ name
Gus McCubbing |
Penny Mackieson finally has the name that feels right to her, nearly 60 years after she was for unknown reasons swapped with another baby when the two infants were placed for adoption.
The Melbourne woman spent two decades getting to know and love a mother and family that records indicated were her biological relatives.
But gnawing doubts, spurred by the fact she resembled no one in the family or their photos, led her and her believed-to-be mother to take DNA tests, which brutally revealed they were not in fact related.
Adoption Information Services then connected with an elderly Greek woman – Penny’s real biological mother.
And after a 15-minute court hearing before the Victorian County Court on Tuesday, her 33-year search for the truth was finalised.
Penny was allowed to correct her birth records and integrate her Greek mother’s name with the one given to her by her adoptive parents.
“It’s just a huge relief,” Penny told AAP.
“It feels like this is the first day of the rest of my life. I feel much more optimistic and I feel freer – this is who I am.
“It’s not just vindication … I never felt right and like I belonged. But I feel anchored now.”
Born at Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Hospital in 1963, Penny always knew she was adopted.
She was raised in a nurturing and loving family, but never knew who her biological parents were.
Penny applied for her adoption records in 1989 and obtained what was thought to have been her birth name and mother’s identity in 1990.
She sat on this information for several years.
But then in 1997, following the tragic premature death of her twins, she felt motivated to approach VANISH, a Melbourne-based adoption support network, in order to contact this woman.
“VANISH were instrumental – they provided wonderful help and support for me,” Penny said.
The woman agreed to have contact with Penny, who then spent nearly 20 years forming a rapport with her family.
But something never seemed right and out of sheer desperation Penny took an Ancestry DNA test in 2016, revealing she had a 70 per cent Greek ethnicity and zero Irish-English-Welsh ancestry, putting her at odds with the Anglo family she was supposedly related to.
After plucking up the courage to ask the woman she thought was her mother to take a DNA test, it was confirmed in 2019 they were not genetically related.
Penny notified the state government’s Adoption Information Services and they soon identified a Greek mother who delivered a girl at Queen Victoria Hospital the same day she was born.
The two babies, it became clear, must have been somehow swapped and incorrectly identified.
The Greek woman told AIS, through interpreters, she was glad to hear Penny had lived a happy and healthy life.
But she did not want want further contact with them or Penny.
The social worker and Demons AFL tragic will in July visit Greece for the first time in her life, travelling with a passport bearing her integrated name, something she describes as “magical”.
Penny will visit the Peloponnese region, where her mother is from, with her husband and son.
But they are not planning a Greek family reunion.
“I won’t get to meet my mother because she said she doesn’t want contact,” Penny said.
“And that will be very, very sad. But who wants to be the person who stresses out an 80-something-year-old woman so much she has a heart attack.
“I couldn’t live with that either.”
AAP
