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Insight: March 20

Insight this week explores the untold reality of life after a reunion.

Insight this week explores the untold reality of life after a reunion.

Host Jenny Brockie asks “How do you adjust to having that person back in your life again? How does separation affect relationships? Do connections have to be rebuilt?”

In June 2008, Habon, a Somalia-born refugee living in Australia, began running through Melbourne airport. She’d spotted two of her daughters making their way through arrivals – daughters she hadn’t seen for eight years.

There were joyful hugs and tears and more reunions as Habon’s other children, Ayan and Fesal, met their missing siblings.

Umal was one of those daughters. She’d been taken from her mother at six months-old and raised by her paternal grandparents. Her memory of the reunion is very different.

“I was scared of the people around – what’s happening, what are they doing, where are we going? Who are all these people?” she tells Insight.

Ten years after reuniting with her mother, Umal still struggles to feel fully connected to her immediate family. It’s been a difficult road with her siblings, who initially spoke different languages, and themselves had experienced separation from their mother.

The program will also explore how you make a reunion work when pain underpins it, and asks whether it’s always best to reconnect.

Tuesdays at 8.30pm on SBS.

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