Lemons may make lemonade, their blossoms may smell sweet, but bite beneath their raw skins and they're impossible to eat. Such is Barbara Docherty's memoir.
"My father said I'd talk to anything, even a cornflake..." And indeed, Barbara strongly conveys her zest for living and adventure, her ability to connect with people, and talent for recognising opportunity when it knocks.
Her life has been full of 'firsts'. First health nurse to host a radio talkback show; first to see the need for a general practice nurses manual, and write it; first to develop a programme to teach health professionals how to encourage patients to choose healthy lifestyles; first to teach society that yes, heterosexual women do marry homosexual men, often before their men really know themselves. But, there were times when the trauma in her life was great, and unable to unravel this, she buried the anguish only for it to manifest later as post-traumatic stress.
Key among those experiences was the forced adoption of her babies - twice. Many forced-adoption birth mothers of the notorious 'baby scoop era' will viscerally feel the systematic dehumanisation of Barbara's childbirth experiences and the illegal kidnapping of her infants. And for decades she persistently hounded authorities for information about her children, which fell on deaf ears. It was not until 2024 that New Zealand politicians offered brief apologies for the abuse, but, "...we still [await] a much wider acknowledgement and redress."
This is an unfinished story... but a plethora of women who were there too, who work in healthcare services, and who care about the lives of women who are fighting to redress this history. This is a must-read book for all women, health professionals, government officials and religious leaders.
Table of Contents:
Contents
Preface
PART 1
1: Early beginnings
2: Family life
3: Living in paradise
PART 2
4: Making my way in the world
5: Never again whole
6: Flying high
7: Nobody's child
PART 3
8: The call of the wild
9: At sea and on land
10: An unexpected turn
PART 4
11: Life on the Mainland
12: Out of the blue
13: The closet opens
14: Life after separation
PART 5
15: Facing death and illness
16: Finding Jason
17: Return to Rekohu
18: Reconstruction
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Selected references
Notes to the story
About the Author :
Barbara Docherty is a retired nurse, blogger and university lecturer who has worked widely in the fields of primary health care nursing and the media. She has special expertise in training health professionals to assist patients to make healthy lifestyle choices.
Barbara was also a member of several New Zealand Health Boards, and in 1997 received a New Zealand Nurses Organisation award for services to nursing and midwifery.
Born in Auckland, she spent many years in Christchurch and the remote Chatham Islands, but now resides in Wellington.
She is a long-time daily swimmer and a proud mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.
Review :
Barbara Docherty's life is one of light and shadow: loss and resilience, silence and truth. In Secrets and Lemons, she tells it all, with clarity and courage.... In these pages you will encounter honesty of a rare and affecting kind. The kind that exposes things most of us would keep buried. This is how it was, and this is what it was like to live it.
~ Paula Penfold
