Lane Beachley

And I just remember that just heartbreak when Dad told me that she was gone.

But I guess one thing I'd really like to go back and be allowed to do is actually attend the funeral.

I never really got to have closure because they thought I'd be too young and it would be, I don't know, maybe too hard on me or too traumatic.

But not having closure is, I feel, more traumatic than being able to attend a funeral and say goodbye.

I remember sitting on the couch and the reason that he decided to tell me a year later, so I was about eight years of age by this stage, is because kids start asking questions and when kids start asking questions...

about my sense of belonging, I started to ask questions because I look very different to my family.

My brother and my dad are both over six foot.

They've got kind of pasty white skin and I've got dark olive skin.

I'm only five foot or five five because that was the goal and bright blue eyes and bright blonde hair.

So

Just the fact that I looked so different posed a series of questions.

And so when Dad sat me down on the couch at home in the lounge room, it just felt like the couch got bigger and bigger and I started getting smaller and smaller.

And my sense of self, my place in the world just was immediately shattered.

And...

When he said the words that you are adopted, I heard you've been abandoned, you've been rejected, you're worthless, you're undeserving of love.

And that's where my sense of self was rocked and destroyed in that moment in time.

And that was not because of the words he said, but because of the story I subscribe to.

And that story drove me for a very long time.

I remember when I joined the Pro Tour in 1990, there was this ferociousness about me.

There was this very cocky, arrogant tenacity about, I have to be the best in the world.