About Karen Chaston
Loss has shaped my life in ways I never could have imagined.
For over 25 years, I worked as a senior manager, CPA, and CFO, holding a master’s in accounting from Bond University and thriving in the corporate world. I believed success was measured by profits, performance, and productivity—until loss changed everything.
In July 2011, my world shattered when my 27-year-old son, Dan, suddenly passed away. Just 18 months later, I was made redundant, forcing me to STOP for the first time and truly reflect on what mattered most.
That moment of stopping changed everything. Searching for meaning, I left my corporate career to become a life coach and immersed myself in the study of loss, personal transformation, and emotional healing. I began to see loss from a new perspective—not just as an event, but as an emotional imprint that shapes our identity, relationships, and sense of belonging.
At the same time, I was still navigating the emotional impact of placing my daughter for adoption decades earlier. In 1973, at just 16 years old, I had believed I was doing what was best for her. When we reunited in 2001, I thought it would be a moment of reconnection and healing. Instead, it became a nearly 20-year journey of emotional turmoil, misunderstandings, and unspoken wounds.
My Natural Progression into Adoption Loss
Through my work exploring Beyond Loss Intelligence, I began to see how all loss leaves an emotional fingerprint. However, I soon realised that adoption loss is one of the most complex and lifelong imprints; often misunderstood and dismissed by society. The dominant narrative surrounding adoption; the idea that it is solely a beautiful, selfless act—ignores the deep, lasting emotional impact on both adoptees and their biological family, especially their mother.
As I gained a deeper understanding of grief, healing, and identity, I recognised that my own greatest longing was to build a deep and loving relationship with my daughter. This realisation led me to examine the adoption wound not just as a biological mother, but as a loss specialist.
After years of struggle, Kim and I made a conscious decision to stop hurting each other and start loving each other. We realised that our tumultuous journey had a purpose—to help others navigate their adoption experience with greater awareness, understanding, and connection.
This is why we co-created The Emotional Fingerprint of an Adoptee: to provide adoptees and families with the understanding, tools, and healing strategies that we both so desperately needed.
My Approach
I am not a counsellor or psychologist. I am a life coach with lived experience, including the journey of being a biological mother who spent nearly 50 years longing for a deep and loving relationship with her daughter. Kim is an adoptee with lived experience. Together, we offer a unique and transformational perspective on adoption loss, reunion, and identity.
At The Emotional Fingerprint of an Adoptee, I do not offer traditional therapy. Instead, I provide resources, insights, and a trauma-informed approach to adoption loss—helping individuals understand how their emotional fingerprint was formed across the eight key life stages of an adoptee. Each stage leaves its mark on identity, relationships, and emotional well-being.
One of the greatest barriers to a successful reunion is the lack of understanding of the emotional fingerprint of an adoptee. Many biological parents and adoptees enter reunion hoping for a seamless connection, only to find themselves navigating unexpected emotional minefields. When these emotions remain unspoken or misunderstood, they create invisible walls that prevent what could have been a deep and loving relationship from ever fully developing.
My Mission Today
Today, I guide adoptees, biological parents, adoptive and extended families, their partners, and friends through this complex journey. My mission is to provide the awareness, tools, and strategies needed to help them rewrite their narratives—ones built on connection, understanding, and self-acceptance.
I am also the author of nine books, including the international bestseller Demystifying Loss, and an international speaker and advocate for a trauma-informed approach to adoption and reunion. Through The Emotional Fingerprint of an Adoptee’s offerings; The Eight Essential Lessons, retreats, and resources, I provide the education, insights, and healing frameworks needed to support the unique emotional and psychological journey of adoptees.
Areas of Focus
Adoptee Emotional Intelligence
Adoption Trauma & Healing
Identity & Belonging in Adoption
Loss & Grief in the Adoption Triad
Navigating Reunion & Connection
Let’s challenge the adoption myth together.
About Kimberley Rankin
Co-Creator | Educator on Adoption Healing | Adoptee Advocate
I am an adult adoptee born in 1973 in Australia. Raised in a closed adoption during the forced adoption era. Finding out I was adopted, at three years.
I have been in reunion with my biological mother, Karen Chaston, since 2001; a journey that began with hope and apprehension which has unfolded over more than two decades.
Together, we have co-created The Emotional Fingerprint of an Adoptee to share the insights and knowledge that we wish we had known before embarking on our reunion journey.
Growing up, my adoption was never hidden, however the loss and trauma was never acknowledged or spoken about. My feelings were silent and internalised. Unseen. Unacknowledged. Unvalidated. Even by me.
There has always been something missing from my life, which I now recognise as attunement and emotional synchrony. I experienced a deep yearning and pull towards my mother. Searching for her in crowds, longing for a reflection of myself, needing her presence to feel that primal connection that had been severed too soon.
Society has shone the light on adoption through the lens of what has been gained for the adoptive family. Celebrated and thought of as a joyous new beginning, as a child is welcomed into their family. Given a new name, along with an altered birth certificate.
But few acknowledge the profound loss at its core. Losing your mother, whether through death or separation, is life-altering. It leaves an imprint, an emotional fingerprint, that does not fade with time or distance.
When I received my mother’s first letter in 1996, I was initially excited then didn’t know how to respond. Drafting and rewriting numerous replies, leaving them unsent for years, believing I hadn’t done enough, achieved enough, wasn’t enough. It was not until five years later; six months after giving birth to my first child, a daughter, that I finally wrote back.
Without guidance or adoption-aware support, we began navigating our reunion journey. Which provided its own challenges far beyond the first meeting. Learning to form a relationship as two strangers, who share a primal bond, though both carry the wounds of separation, is not easy. The years have- been filled with misunderstandings, struggles, tears, and pain.
Thankfully in 2019, we made a conscious and intentional choice; to stop hurting each other. To sit in our vulnerability. To listen deeply and hear fully. That shift changed everything. Slowly, intentionally, we began to co-create the mother–daughter bond we had both longed for.
The past five years of our relationship have been deeply meaningful, grounded in openness, compassion, clarification, and mutual understanding. Like any relationship, it’s a work in progress, but one rooted in truth, love, and shared intentions.
Had we understood how relinquishment shapes an adoptee’s identity, relationships, and self-worth, our journey would have looked very different. This realisation became the foundation of our work together co-creating The Emotional Fingerprint of an Adoptee.
Today, my philosophies, understanding and knowledge does not come from textbooks. It comes from lived experience. I am not a therapist. I am not an academic. My insights have been shaped from walking this path from feeling unseen, unheard, and misunderstood, and continually embracing the hard inner work required to heal, on this life-long journey.
My mission is to shine a light on the inner world of adoptees, giving voice to our experiences which have been left unspoken. Through The Emotional Fingerprint of an Adoptee, we explore the lasting impact of adoption, offering pathways to healing, connection, and belonging.
We translate complex emotions and experiences into relatable, meaningful insights and lessons that resonate; for adoptees, biological parents, adoptive families, and those who walk alongside them.
Through writing, speaking, sharing and community engagement, I am committed to bringing awareness and validation to the adoptee experience. One that has been overlooked for far too long.
Because I believe:
When adoptees are truly seen, we can finally begin to heal and dare to be our authentic self.