Jonathon Moran: How I tracked down my family on Facebook

Entertainment journalist Jonathon Moran has long struggled with his fear of rejection. Connecting with the siblings who hadn’t known of his existence has helped.

Entertainment journalist Jonathan Moran tracked down his long-lost family on Facebook. Picture: Rohan Kelly

My mother and my biological father weren’t together when I was born. They were dating when Mum fell pregnant with my sister and I (we are twins), and we understood from an early age that he had left her when he found out.

Of course, this is just my mum’s side of the story. I am well aware that there are three sides to every story – his, hers, and the truth.

Mum was around 23 years old at the time, and she always said there was no chance she was going to have an abortion. She was pro-choice but wanted us, and so we were born on February 27, 1978.

Mental as Anyone by Jonathan Moran

Being a single parent in the 1970s was far less common than it is now, and I know Mum did her best. She had been a teacher before we were born, working with high school kids in Canberra. We moved to Sydney when we were nine to be closer to family, and so she could study for her PhD in Women’s Studies at Sydney University.

We lived a basic life in a small house in Balmain, which is affluent now, but back then there were many working-class families in the area. Mum made sure we had everything we needed but we didn’t have cash to burn. We didn’t have name-brand clothes or expensive toys, but we never wanted for anything and she gave us all the love that we needed.

Her parenting style was to treat my sister and I as friends. We could speak about anything, and we did. Even when I was overseas for work or on holiday as an adult, we would speak nearly every day, and when I was at home in Sydney, we would chat on average twice a day, sometimes more.

Jonathan Moran is a successful entertainment journalist. Picture: Rohan Kelly

She has been gone for 15 years now, but I still know her phone number by heart.

My mother never made my father out to be a monster or a bad person – he just wasn’t in our lives. In fact, I saw him only three times when I was young: once, when we were just toddlers, he came over to meet us for the first time, and gave each of us a toy. I don’t remember what the toy was. The second time we all saw each other was when I was about 10 or 11, and we were at our local shops one day. It was a school day. Getting out of the car, we awkwardly bumped into him. He turned the other way and went about his business.

We – well, Mum – had recognised him, but had he recognised us? I didn’t know.

The third time I saw him, I was 17. I was preparing to go on a six-month student exchange to Hanover in Germany, and because his name was on my birth certificate, I had to get his sign-off on the paperwork so I could go. It was beyond crazy given we hardly knew each other, but that was the way it was and there was no way around it.

I made an appointment and met him at his work. I recall our meeting being for roughly 10 to 15 minutes. We exchanged pleasantries and he signed the form, and that was the third time I ever saw him.

My sister, Alison, tried again when her baby Olivia was born in 2003. She sent him some photographs (we believed she was his firstborn granddaughter.) The gesture clearly wasn’t appreciated. He rang Alison and told her he wasn’t interested in any contact, not then, and not at any time.

Ouch, that hurt.

Author Jonathan Moran pictured ahead of his book launch. Picture: Rohan Kelly

Looking back now, I can see that having no relationship with my father has played a huge part in my mental health battles over the course of my life.

I have always had a fear of rejection, feeling that I am not good enough. It comes up constantly in counselling sessions, and it is at the back of my mind most of the time. It has been a common theme when speaking to guests on my Mental As Anyone podcast too.

In any case, in December 2008, nine months before our mother died, while I was down the south coast of NSW, where we had often spent Christmas holidays, I decided to go looking for my ­father again, this time online.

It was the early days of Facebook – Mark Zuckerberg had launched the website just four years earlier – but I quickly found him, and I found what I believed to be two biological half-­brothers, Matt and Paul (names have been changed).

I mulled over what to do, and decided to contact them.. This is the message I sent:

Hi Matt/Paul,

This is totally out of the blue … I am not sure what you know about me and my twin sister Alison … Your father is also our father. We are 30 years old. We have had no ongoing relationship with him, having only met him a few times … We’d love to meet you at some point although totally understand that you may have no interest. As I have said, I don’t even know if you are aware we exist.

I guess the next step, if any, is yours.

Cheers,

Jonathon

In good conscience, I also decided to let my father know what I’d done. The response from him was swift. He blocked me and Alison on Facebook. One of my brothers, Matt, didn’t respond – but the other, Paul, did. He was living in the UK at the time and was eight years younger than us, so in his early 20s.

We were right – our father hadn’t told them about my sister and me.

He was shocked. We exchanged a few messages and he was going to speak to his father about us. And then he blocked us. I wasn’t angry but I felt like there was a chapter in the book of my life that I couldn’t close.

I couldn’t fathom finding out I had a blood relative, and not wanting to meet them, regardless of the backstory. So I continued to hope that one day a Facebook message would pop into my inbox and it would be from one of my half-brothers.

And then it happened: on 15 January 2024, at around 10:30am – sixteen years after my first contact – I was working from home in my little office in the garage shed when my phone pinged:

Hi Jonathon, happy new year!

I’m sorry for not responding to you and shutting you and Alison out all these years. Hope you both are really well

(smiley face emoji).

How are you going?

It was from Matt.

To say I was shocked is a complete understatement. I’ve never been good at keeping it cool, so I didn’t hesitate and immediately responded:

Hey mate, this is such an incredible surprise.

I’m doing really well. I’m just got back from three weeks in Thailand on Saturday and dread being back at work today. I want you to know I don’t want to cause you any pain or make things difficult, it’s just that life is short and you are biologically our half-brother.

I’d love to know more about you.

How are you?

I then sent a thumbs-up emoji and, just as quickly and awkwardly, added, “Sorry, didn’t mean to send a random thumbs up.” Wow, I was playing my cards well here … cool as a cucumber!

Matt responded:

I agree! I know things haven’t been easy for Alison and you and there has been pain. I would like to get to know you both …

We were off and running.

Matt and I messaged back and forth for a while after that. He explained that when I’d messaged originally, he and Paul had spoken and decided it was all too much for them in their early 20s. Understandable. We agreed on a future phone call, and I rang Alison, and before long, we had set up a WhatsApp chat group where the four of us could message.

A month later, we agreed on a place to meet, in Canberra.

Alison and I were both anxious: what if they changed their minds and weren’t interested in meeting up? But we had nothing to worry about – Paul and Matt were already there waiting for us, when we arrived.

We sat for well over an hour talking about everything – our childhoods, our family situation, Alison’s four daughters (Matt and Paul didn’t just get us, they were suddenly uncles for the first time), school, work, partners … it felt very natural, like we’d known each other our whole lives.

I sat fascinated, examining their facial features, comparing our likenesses.

I know for certain now that I must look very much like my biological father. I was pretty stoked when we asked a woman at the table next to us if she could take a photo of the four of us, and she noted: “You look alike.”

We were all quietly happy to hear it, so we told them we were related but we were only just meeting for the first time.

It was a moment I will remember forever and it has helped bring an end to years of pain and feelings of abandonment.

Our brothers do not hate us. They do want to know us. I remember an overwhelming feeling of joy coming over me – a heavy weight had been lifted, and while of course I will always wish we had met earlier, I am ready to carpe diem.

This is an edited extract from Mental As Anyone: A Toolkit for Surviving and Thriving on the ­Chaotic Rollercoaster of Life by entertainment journalist Jonathon “JMo” Moran.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Mental As Anyone is an account of the author’s own experiences with trauma, anxiety, depression and identity, woven together with expert insights from psychologist Dr Jodie Lowinger, founder of The Anxiety Clinic. Accompanying the book is the Mental As Anyone podcast, where Moran speaks with notable Australians about their own mental health journeys.