Broken: An Extraordinary Story of Survival by One of Australia’s Forgotten Children

by Sandi Gamble

An Extraordinary Story of Survival by One of Australia’s Forgotten Children.

Be prepared to be shocked. Broken is candid and raw.

When Sandi Gamble heard the Australian prime minister on TV apologizing to 500,000 Forgotten Australians for the abuse and neglect they had endured as children in “care” in the post-World War II era, something within her cracked and she began to cry. The former Magdalene laundry orphanage inmate, who never felt she fitted in, realized she was a Forgotten Australian.

Thus began Sandi’s journey back to her broken past.

She had to reacquaint herself with Beverley, the girl she had left behind when she changed her name to Sandi. The painful memories started flooding in; the memories that held the key to her life-long struggles with depression, alienation, anxiety, suicidal tendency, obsessive compulsiveness, and passivity when dealing with manipulative or authoritative people.

Broken began as a diary to process the memories of the little girl who was abandoned by her gambling, spendthrift father, and then her mother. Left at home for hours unattended while her mother worked and drank her misery away, little Beverley was left to her own devices to survive.

This is the story of how one woman faced her shattered past, looking it squarely in the eye. Sandi Gamble shares her story for all Forgotten Australians, their families, and those seeking to be inspired by an extraordinary story.

Australian author Sandi Gamble reveals the struggles and triumphs as one of the many forgotten Australian stories in Australian history.

426 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 23, 2013

About the author

‘It is my wish to teach others how to be the best they can be.’ – Sandi Gamble - Author

I am a public speaker, retired life coach and author who is passionate about assisting other people to rise above past traumas and issues that confront them daily.

My memoir Broken is the soundtrack of my life, it is a raw conversational style book that covers the trauma and abuse that I suffered as a child and eventually proves that if you remain resilient and hold on to hope that you can overcome adversity and rise above it.

I endured and overcame some of the worst abuse that a child and young adult could go through, at the hands of many trusted adults until one day, I said “Enough”! And then, I pursued positive ways to change my life.

My mission is to offer you the strategies that I use in the hope that you too can experience the best life you can. To do this I share and connect regularly with my followers through my website and Facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/AuthorSandiG...

My driving force is the need to find other children who lived at St Aidan's Orphanage in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia, and to assist them to reunite with the many of us who have already sought each other out. I maintain a list of children, now adults, known as Forgotten Australians who were placed in this orphanage, and I’m still looking for you if you are one of them.

I organise a reunion in Melbourne every year for us, so if you are out there or know of someone who grew up at St Aidan’s, please feel free to message me at slg@outlook.com.au. Or tell them to get in touch with me.

I hope you get the chance to read and understand my story. If it helps you, great, it has done what I set out to do.

Thank you for taking the time to read my Bio. I wish you nothing but beautiful tomorrows.

Sandi

Reviews

[Janalyn, the blind reviewer]

I am not a big fan of memoirs and first person narrative. I find in describing certain situations the narrator comes off as conceded when telling stories about how everyone thought they were so cute blah blah blah and other such situations where I’m used to hearing it from a third person, but for the life of me I cannot come up with a good example. Having said that this is a very heroic lady Sandy was put through the paces and came out a superstar. She turned out to be a great and loving mother and wife a steady worker despite have been going through situations that are unthinkable. Where other people crumble at that impression of in the dignity she suffered many and came out wonder us I wish I knew her I wish she was my friend I would be proud to have her as an acquaintance what a great person. What makes me really proud of this woman I feel I know now is that she took a total negative and turned it around not just for her but for tens of thousands of others! If only we were all like that. But then again if we were all like that, we wouldn’t need to be like that. LOL! This is a great book very inspiring and I usually dislike the use of that word but I cannot thinka more appropriate one.