Adoption Trauma, Identity & Reunion | An Adopted Adult’s Experience | Clare Cochrane

Adoption trauma, adoption identity, and adoption reunion are lifelong experiences for many adopted adults.

In this episode of Adopt Perspective, Clare Cochrane shares her lived experience of adoption, reunion, and dual belonging.

Clare was born in Perth in 1966 and adopted at just two weeks of age. She grew up knowing she was adopted and describes her experience as a “good adoption.” Yet, like many adopted adults, Clare has come to understand that good does not mean uncomplicated - and it does not mean without cost.

Raised as the youngest of four children and the only adopted child in her family, Clare speaks about growing up feeling different, living across continents and cultures, and carrying both belonging and loss. As an adult, Clare experienced adoption reunion with her biological parents, who had married and raised other children...revealing the complex reality of biological connection without shared history, and shared history without biology.

This conversation explores adoption trauma beyond simplified narratives, the shaping of adoption identity across the lifespan, and why reunion is a process rather than a moment. Clare reflects on guilt, divided loyalties, emotional walls built for survival, and the deep work of learning later in life to feel safe enough to be vulnerable.

This episode will resonate with adopted adults, parents who lost children to adoption, siblings, adoptive parents, practitioners, and anyone seeking a deeper, more honest understanding of the lifelong impacts of adoption.

Episode Chapters:

00:00 The Journey of Adoption and Identity

10:02 Navigating Dual Belonging and Family Dynamics

20:10 Reunion and the Complexity of Relationships

29:55 The Emotional Landscape of Adoption

40:09 Finding Self and Healing Through Vulnerability

🎧 If this conversation resonates, subscribe for more honest discussions about adoption, identity and the lived experience of adopted adults, mothers and fathers who lost children to adoption and therapists, researchers and policy makers in this space.

This episode discusses adult themes and listener discretion is advised. For more information go to http://www.jigsawqueensland.com/podcast

To be considered for interview on the podcast, fill in the prospective guest form you'll find on the podcast page of the website.

Your host is Dr Jo-Ann Sparrow - President of Jigsaw Queensland (www.jigsawqueensland.com)

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If you are looking for support and reside in Queensland, Australia, you can reach Jigsaw Queensland's Forced Adoption Support Service on toll-free 1800 21 03 13, or you can call Jigsaw on 07 3358 6666. If you live in another state of Australia, you can still call the Forced Adoption Support Service in the state that you're calling from. In every other state of Australia, Relationships Australia operates this service.

A big thank you to Matt Sparrow for composing and recording our original theme music.

We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we work and the many lands that our clients now live on and we wish to acknowledge and show our respects to Elders past and present for their continuing connection to culture and the contributions they make to community. We acknowledge how much we have to learn from them and their unique understanding of connection and adoption and their recognition that at the base of every change is truth telling and healing.