Phoebe Smith, a Wellington-raised contemporary dancer now in her 30s, was adopted at two weeks old by a Kiwi couple already raising two children of their own. The family later adopted two more children, each from a different background — a Fijian-Indian sister and a Samoan brother. Smith describes them all as "Liquorice Allsorts": a deliberately mixed bunch that has only grown more multicultural as partners and kids have joined.
While her siblings had ties to their birth families, Smith did not. On her 18th birthday, her parents handed her an envelope holding everything from the adoption — a letter and a birth certificate listing her birth mother, though not her birth father. They had always spoken warmly of her birth mother, recalling a loving woman who seemed to have little choice in giving her up.
Her search stalled until social media did what years of effort couldn't. Smith posted a dance performance to Facebook, and a stranger shared it. Something caught her eye: that woman's birthday matched her birth mother's. She messaged her directly — "are you who I think you are?" — and woke the next morning to a reply: "Hi my beautiful. Yes, it's me." The woman, Siulioamoa Julie Va'ai Tanuvasa, turned out to have known about Smith for years, having spotted a newspaper article about her becoming head girl at Wellington East Girls' College, then quietly following her online.
The two met in January 2019, on Va'ai Tanuvasa's birthday. The reunion was light and happy — her mother's main question was whether Smith had been loved. She had hesitated to reach out herself, fearing Smith wouldn't want to know her. The pair met four times that year. Then, two weeks after their final meeting on Smith's birthday, Va'ai Tanuvasa died unexpectedly after a short illness.
Her funeral opened the door to the family Smith never knew she had: aunts, uncles, cousins and a half-brother she remains close to. She has since learned about her village roots in Samoa and travelled there to meet her birth mother's brothers. She's still searching for her birth father, but says the welcome she received from her extended aiga, the Samoan family unit, challenged every fear she'd held about what she might find.
So why is this on a travel site? Because stories like this show how family roots, not guidebooks, often lead people across the world. Smith has shared hers in the online documentary series An Adoption Story, by Aucklander Alex Gilbert — a useful watch for anyone considering tracing their own origins, particularly adoptees from New Zealand's large Pacific diaspora. Her message: the power of love, and the right connection at the right time, can reshape an entire family tree.
Story reported by Vaimoana Mase for NZ Herald Travel.
