Sally Donovan is cooking when a paper plane flies across the kitchen and lands at her feet. She picks it up, unfolds it and finds a child's sketch   of a tear-stained face with a speech bubble saying: "I'm sorry I was naughty--I'm a bad person." Sally, 42, draws a big smiley face on the back of the paper with "I love you, Rose, and we're always going to look after you." Then she folds it up and launches the plane back into the living room where her nine-year-old daughter is watching TV with brother Jamie, 13 and dad Rod, 40. Jamie often makes pictures for his parents too--like the one showing a swift river with them on one side and him trapped on the other side. It's one of the many unusual ways that Sally and Rob have learned to communicate emotionally with their abused children in an astonishing eight-year journey of hope, healing and love. Jamie was just four and half--sister Rose one when they were adopted by the Donovans in 2005. The youngsters had been taken from their natural mother and placed in foster care after a series of cruelty and neglect. They were left alone, hungry, and witnessed home violence on a regular basis. Sally and Rob spent three years trying for a baby before deciding to adopt, and were well aware of the youngsters' poor background. But they were still unprepared for raising a child permanently scared by abuse or the lack of support on offer. But now Sally has written a brilliant and heart-touching account of their family struggle in a book called "No Matter What".  Sally said: "These kids come to you with a story that what happened to them was their fault--because they are bad and unlovable. To show them they are loveable and none of it was their fault takes a lot of time. They both still say "I'm bad". Jamie is less stuck on it now but whenever life deals him a knock, he will fall back into 'that happened because I am stupid, I'm rubbish, I'm bad'." Sally's book is humorous, heart-touching and so wildly honest that academics, charity bosses, parents and adoptees are praising it as a major contribution to child welfare work. Why did the two adopted children still say "I'm bad" ?
They know clearly they are not lovable enough. They often put the situation in an embarrassment. What they suffered rooted deep in their minds. They are honest of what they have done.