Episode 44 - Alison: "The Childhood She Carried"

Today, I’m sitting down with someone whose story is layered, confronting, courageous, and deeply human.

Alison was adopted in 1965, just two weeks old, into a family that would grow to include three more adopted children. From the outside, it looked like a home built on love and opportunity. But inside those walls, Ali lived through things no child should ever have to carry — fear, silence, confusion, and trauma that shaped every part of her early life.

In this first part of our conversation, Ali takes us back to her beginnings: the moment she realised her family looked different to others, the questions that started forming in her mind as a little girl, and the home life that was anything but safe. She speaks about her mum’s warmth, her dad’s volatility, and the heartbreaking experiences she endured at the hands of someone who should have protected her.

We also explore the ripple effects of adoption on her siblings — the mental health struggles, the lack of medical history, the behaviours no one understood at the time — and how all of them were left to navigate trauma without the support they desperately needed.

This first half of Ali’s story is about survival. It’s about a little girl trying to make sense of a world that didn’t make sense. And it’s about the beginnings of patterns that would follow her into adulthood — patterns she wouldn’t fully understand until much later.

Part One ends at a turning point: the breakdown of her marriage, and the moment she walked into a counsellor’s office thinking she was there to talk about her relationship… only to realise she was finally ready to unpack her entire childhood.

This is Ali’s story — raw, brave, and told with extraordinary honesty.

Let’s begin.