Imagine discovering your mother’s secret past just days after she died.
B105 Newsreader Amelia Oberheardt did. And she’s now produced a brand new podcast about her experiences.
Amelia spoke to Stav, Abby and Matt on Tuesday, telling them how she was at her mum’s wake when she first saw a photo of her mother as a teenager, wearing a wedding ring, standing beside her apparent husband and cuddling an unknown baby.
She said she was determined to find out more and to understand what the photograph represented for her family. This led Amelia on a journey that led to the hidden secrets of 1950-1970s Australia.
Think shotgun weddings, forced adoption and backstreet abortions.
Secrets We Keep: Shame, Lies & Family, the new original audio docuseries from the LiSTNR News team, tells this story.
“I have been on this journey to find answers to my own family secrets for more than a decade. In that process, I found out so much more about the time that my mum was coming of age. It wasn’t easy to be a young woman in Australia through the 1960s and 1970s.”
“What surprised me during the making of this series is just how common this story is for so many families and how many are still impacted today. I really hope this series can help to heal these families because it certainly helped change the way I feel about my mum.”
Listen to The Secrets We Keep: Shame Lies & Family on the LiSTNR app or wherever you get your podcasts.