Last year losing my grandchildren through adoption after an extensive battle with social services was a very difficult time not only for me but for all my family. In trying to deal with losing my grandchildren, I tried to rationalise it and during this period I remembered a programme I watched many years ago on families who had a loved one go missing and the emotional effect it had on them. I felt the families of missing people, families separated by divorce or separation, were experiencing the similar feelings just by a different situation.
I have never experienced someone going missing. But remember quite vividly the emotional turmoil the families felt from the Missing programme. Unlike Adoption, separation or divorce.
The families of a missing person are left in limbo as they do not know the where about’s of the person, but also the reason why they left or even if the person is alive.
Your message board creates a timeline for the absent person to find and decide if they want to reconnect with you. We are aiming to achieve a worldwide website that helps families through difficult times and allows anyone who is absent from their family to search for them. If there is a message board the person has the opportunity to get information about how their family felt and even the possibility of reconnecting with them.
Missing but never Forgotten
Leisl Smith
Australia
My daughter Leisl Alaxandra was born on the 2nd of April… labour started on the 1st, but I wasn’t going to give her THAT birthday . She was a quiet achiever who loved the company of animals to people . She had many pets, and the love of her life was her horse, Molly… Molly had trouble carrying foals, so when Molly was pregnant and was due to foal, Leisl was overjoyed. Many locals would call on her to calm their horses, and she was known locally as the ” horse whisper ” .
On the 19th of August, she left her fathers home and said she would be back around 5pm to feed the animals, she did not return . Her father didn’t ask where she was going, or who she was meeting . He reported her missing a few days later. I wasn’t informed until weeks later, her car was found in the car park at Tuggerah railway station, but CCTV shows her not getting a train, but getting into a males car . This person of interest has been interrogated and denies anything to do with her disappearance. The other person of interest was found in the hunter river, drowned . The current person of interest has had numerous properties he has owned. These have been dug up and gone over with cadaver dogs, even his parents place has been investigated. Every time bones or a body is found, my heart skips a beat, hoping it is her, but hoping it isn’t . Living with a part of your heart missing is hard every day . I lost my dad to cancer over 30 years ago, and I miss him terribly, but at least I know where he is. Not knowing where She is or what happened to her, is a mental mind f£€k ( can’t think of another word for here). People have possible scenarios, but the things this mother has imagined, no parent should have to . I am in a club I didn’t want to join, the missing persons club .
My heart goes out to all across the miles who have missing loved ones …
Thank you to Leisl mother Sandi Harvey for writing this article and providing the photographs and allowing me to include it on this website.