It Is No Secret

At the age of five, Donna Meehan was taken away from her natural family and sent to a foster family in Newcastle. In It is No Secret, Donna reflects back on her childhood memories of living in the bush with her brothers and her removal to the city, becoming an only child in a white family. She recalls her struggle with her identity - remembering traditions and customs of her old life in the outback and the adjustments she has had to make in strange city.

Donna (aged 40) retells her life story with stark simplicity and honesty. She openly discusses the pain and isolation she has felt at not belonging or feeling at home with the society she has been brought up in. Her desperation took her close to suicide. This is a powerfully sad yet also uplifting story - sad because of Donna's long struggle to re-establish her family and culture and coming to terms with her own views about Aboriginal people; and uplifting because of Donna's deep faith, her own strong family ties with her foster mother and her husband and sons. Donna's story is retold with passion but with an absence of bitterness as she tells of the strangeness, and heartbreak of her experiences, and of the kindness of her adoptive family.