You'd expect that by the age of 56 you'd have got over it.

But waking up on the eve of my birthday to reports that Melbourne's Royal Women's Hospital had apologised to the thousands of young women pressured into handing over their babies brought it all back.

That these mothers were forced to do so without the opportunity to even hold their child added a particularly cruel torment to institutionalised child stealing.

I was born in western Victoria rather than the Royal Women's, but the story is the same as it was around the country - except in one respect.

When I finally met my mother, 35 years after she was shamed and badgered into giving me up, she took great pains to assure me that despite the threats, she refused to hand over the child she had just given birth to until she'd held him.

At just 17, and with the world accusing her, she was tough enough to stand her ground on that.

Of course the rationale was that without physical contact the separation was easier. Doctor knows best!

The only comfort for my mother, as I'm sure it was for others, was the hope of better opportunities for me through adoption than the prospect of life with a single mother in a small country town.

In that she was right, as I was adopted by a wonderful couple who could not have loved me more if I was their own.

But she wasn't allowed to know that until I found her three and a half decades later, because once the papers were signed a legal wall crashed into place to stop either of us knowing anything about the other.

For her that meant years of peering into the face of any child of roughly similar age, who she didn't know, for some hint of familiarity.

For me, even though my parents told me from an early age that I was adopted, it meant yawning gaps; family medical history - don't know; birth certificate - just a date, no names, no place of birth.

Eventually when it came time to get a passport my parents revealed I was born in Ararat, but that was the extent of the information they offered. The detail of my adoption was an obvious, if unspoken, taboo.

And that created its own issue for me as any desire to find information was swamped by the debt of gratitude I felt to them and the sense that they would see it as a betrayal.

Of course, like any adoptee, I harboured the Oliver Twist-like fantasies that my real parents were rich and would ultimately find me. The reality was much better.

This inability to seek information was a curious contradiction to my career as a journalist since I was incapable of researching my own story.

That changed when my elder daughter was born. When I eventually left my wife and baby girl in the hospital that night, through the swirling emotions the question that kept nagging at me was: How can you give a child away?

So I started the search.

It took me first to a small building in South Melbourne where I joined about 15 other people who were either adoptees, relinquishing mothers or relatives of either.

We were given a briefing on what information we would get - adoptees everything available, relinquishing mothers and others only part - and told how to write to the person in question, once we'd found them, using language that would be innocuous to any third party who might read the letter.

Then they handed out the envelopes - big brown ones that fulfilled some dreams and shattered others.

In my career, only in the aftermath of some awful tragedy have I been in a room filled with so much pain and loss.

Adoptees who arrived too late and found parents dead or, in one case, a young woman who discovered her father was the best friend of her adopted father - a man she'd known all her life, but not known.

For me the shock came with the knowledge that the system that had taken me had also taken my name.

I discovered that with the stroke of a pen a County Court judge had decreed that Roger Outtram no longer existed and Shane Castleman would replace him.

When I eventually staggered home in shock and revealed this news, my wife nervously channelled Monty Python's Life of Brian with a pithy: "Welease Woger!"

Armed with my information I went to the registry of births, deaths and marriages assuming, correctly, that she would have married.

And since her maiden and married names were uncommon, a few phone calls found an unsuspecting relative who told me where she lived.

I wrote the letter asking for help to find a lost relative and giving my place and date of birth... and waited.

When the phone call eventually came it was from a woman who was emotionally distraught and I felt terrible. She was married with four other children - none of whom knew anything about me.

I assured her I did not want to barge into her life; that I was just looking for my history.

She told me she had expected the day would come and gave me some information about the circumstances of my birth. How she had been viewed with anger and shame by her mother and sent away for the final stages of her pregnancy.

I told her about myself and my life and reassured her that I did not want to cause her any embarrassment.

We hung up, but minutes later the phone rang again and it spilled out - the pain, the loss, the anger.

My wife had always complained that I never cried. That changed.

We kept in touch, even though she kept the secret from her family, and ultimately we arranged to meet in a country town. I kept the secret from my parents as well.

When I opened the motel door I was confronted by a stunning resemblance and a sense of self.

Eventually she found the courage to tell her family who accepted the news, and me, with great warmth.

She even arranged for me to meet my natural father, which I think was no small achievement.

For the few years we had before cancer took her she became part of my family, got to know her granddaughters and tried to make up for lost time. But you can't.

At least she died at peace while many others haven't and an apology is long overdue.

Shane Castleman is the ABC's Victorian news editor. View his full profile here.