It Didn't Matter. Until It Did.

For twenty-three years I told myself being donor conceived didn't really matter. Then that story slowly stopped fitting.

Earlier this year I found myself sitting in a committee room in NSW Parliament, giving evidence about donor conception, identity and the importance of biological information.

At some point during the day I suddenly realised I'd sat in that same room nine years earlier. Back then I was there talking about why multiple birth families need support from government. At first those two things seem entirely unrelated; one conversation was about raising twins and triplets while the other was about donor conception, identity and access to information.

But I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since.

I found out I was donor conceived when I was twenty-one. It was a slightly dramatic revelation for me. I found out accidentally and, if I'm honest, I didn't really know what to do with the information. So I mostly did nothing with it. I didn't talk about it with my parents or with my brother. It became one of those things that existed quietly in the background of my life, creating tension and questions I wasn't quite prepared to ask.

Then life moved on and, somehow, twenty-three years passed. During those years I became one of those people who said, "But Mum and Dad loved me and I was so wanted." I cringe a little when I think about it now, not because either of those things are untrue, but because I'd somehow convinced myself they answered a completely different question. At the time, I genuinely believed it didn't matter.

Then, entirely separately, I became the mother of identical twins and I became very involved with the Australian Multiple Birth Association. Over time, I found myself learning things I'd never previously given much thought to. Zygosity; genetics; why identical twins are so valuable in research; why understanding biological relationships can tell us important things about health and human development. These things became genuinely fascinating to me. I attended conferences and listened to researchers and medical professionals talk about identical twins and the unique ability to use their shared DNA to answer questions that would otherwise be impossible to answer. I bought books on twin studies. I became increasingly interested in genetics, identity and the role biological information plays in understanding who we are.

I thought I was simply learning about my children, the identical twins.

I also remember introducing the World Health Organisation's definition of health into discussions about AMBA's strategy and purpose. A complete state of physical, mental and social wellbeing, not merely the absence of disease. We were, at our core, a peer support organisation and had been for more than forty years. Families found friendship, understanding and belonging through people who had lived the same experience. It always astounded me that this was sometimes viewed as somehow secondary to health, rather than part of it.

Relationships matter. Identity matters. Social and emotional wellbeing matter too. Back then, I don't think I saw any connection between those ideas and my own story. The timing, when I look back on it now, feels almost absurd.

By 2020 my twins were ten and we were talking about sex education, genetics and inherited traits. Every now and then someone would suggest the girls had inherited a particular characteristic from my dad.

The thing was, they hadn't. They couldn't have. Those comments weren't malicious and they weren't intended to hurt. They were simply the kind of things families say all the time. But they suddenly felt different to me and I found myself sitting with those comments in a way I never had before. By then I had spent years learning about genetics and biological relationships while carrying this unresolved piece of my own story that I'd never properly dealt with.

Around the same time I was pushing hard for greater awareness of zygosity and the importance of biological information for multiple birth families for Multiple Birth Awareness Week. Around the same time I bought Nancy Segal's book on twin studies. And around the same time, I bought a DNA test.

Then I put it in a cupboard. One sat on my bedside table and the other sat untouched in a cupboard.

Looking back now, that feels almost ridiculous. A book about genetics and identity on the bedside table. A DNA test hidden in a cupboard. Apparently I was interested in biological information, just not quite ready for my own.

I left the test there for months because, despite carrying this piece of information about myself for more than two decades, I wasn't entirely sure I wanted answers. I sometimes wonder whether the story I'd been telling myself for twenty-three years had already started to unravel long before I realised it. I had spent years saying it didn't really matter, yet I was becoming increasingly fascinated by exactly the things I was supposedly indifferent about.

I could explain why biological information mattered in theory. I was becoming less convinced it only mattered in theory. I think I also wanted answers for my children. I wanted to be able to answer questions about inherited traits and family characteristics without quietly wondering about my own. I eventually did the test in October 2021 and, two months later, I had siblings, a biological father and an entirely new understanding of my own story.

It recently occurred to me that I may have been advocating for the importance of biological information years before I was prepared to fully acknowledge why it mattered so much to me. I don't think any of this was conscious. If you'd asked me at the time whether my work in the multiple birth world had anything to do with being donor conceived, I would have said absolutely not. Even now, I'm not entirely sure what to make of it.

Maybe these things are connected. Maybe they aren't. Maybe I'm simply joining dots that only became visible in hindsight.

The strange thing about ideas is that they don't always arrive in one neat moment. Sometimes they follow you around for years, popping up in conference presentations, old university lectures, conversations with your children and even movies you've seen before, until one day you realise they've all been pointing in roughly the same direction. Perhaps that's what happened here.

I do find it strange that I spent years immersed in these ideas, and even talking about wellbeing in ways that clearly made room for them, while somehow keeping my own questions at arm's length. I find it even stranger that I walked back into that same committee room in NSW Parliament nine years later and found myself talking about something that sits underneath both experiences; that biological relationships matter to people; that understanding where we come from isn't a trivial curiosity. And that perhaps the slow collapse of the story I'd been telling myself for twenty-three years had been happening long before I realised it.

I still don't entirely understand why these parts of my life have become so intertwined. I just can't unsee it now.