Getting my story out to those who need to hear it—our community of Empowered Survivors—began about one year into my healing journey. Around this time, I began to realize the power of my story. This understanding came through self-discovery to clarify my purpose and what I’m meant to do with my power. My life’s purpose has included suffering as a victim of trauma and abuse, surviving, and healing—ultimately so that I can teach others about the power of healing and the joy and love available when anyone chooses to heal. Stepping through the process to find my voice—from speaking my truth for the first time to writing Becoming an Empowered Survivor–has been an extraordinary part of my journey to discover my purpose and find my voice to now live that purpose.
My journey to find my voice began the day I told two dear friends about what I had discovered during a hypnotherapy session a couple of weeks earlier about having been sexually abused by my grandfather when I was five years old. The day I told them it may have been the first time I uttered the words as if I owned them and as if that was my truth. Out of an innate need to begin what became the intense and focused part of my healing journey, I had to tell someone what I had discovered about my truth.
My dear friends, Sally and Kate, were the first people I told, along with the sobering reality I had become aware of that I didn’t think I knew myself. Which turned out to be true.
And if I didn’t know myself, no one could truly know me. That realization terrified me.
Some nine months later, after coming through an excruciating time as my healing progressed with trauma therapy, I began to have the pulling urge to speak up about how liberating healing had been for me. I wanted to shout at the top of my voice the good news that survivors can heal and find freedom from unhealthy survivorship. But I had trouble finding the right words. So, I would simply tell people I would “find my voice.”
One day, I reconnected with a friend I hadn’t talked to in around five years. I told him what I knew by then about my abuse and how I had survived.
“You know, I need to introduce you to my fourth-grade girlfriend because I think you have a lot in common,” he replied.
Boy, do we ever! She has been through similar abuse to mine; she is also a survivor; she is a Texas girl who lived in Singapore for a while, and… she wrote her story in a book titled Finding Your Voice: A Path to Recovery for Survivors of Abuse by Mannette Morgan. Do you think I’ve read it?! Indeed, I have! I couldn’t get my hands on it fast enough after he told me about her!
Since then, finding my voice has been about developing my message to teach and mentor others based on my experiences. That all began with a wonderful organization called Lightbeamers, which I found through social media while looking for direction. The founder of Lightbeamers is a master storyteller, encouraging people to use the power of their personal stories to amplify their brands, grow their businesses, and shine their lights to bring good to the world. For this last reason, I was drawn to see whether she could help me harness the power of my story.
I spent a day with this woman, pouring out the details of my life as I understood it then. Disjointed and unorganized, word vomit is what came out of me. Yet, she urged, “You have an incredible story that belongs in this book I’m going to publish next year, full of inspirational stories just like yours. You’ve been so brave, and the world needs to hear this. We’re beginning work early next year, so your timing is impeccable!”
And so, I did. I stepped into my brave and wrote the CliffsNotes version of my story.
Step Into Your Brave: Uplifting Stories to Inspire Courage, Strength, and Growth, by April Adams Pertuis (“SIYB”), was published in October 2022. April is the founder of Lightbeamers. April is also my fraternity sister, whom I have known for thirty-five years. Before that day we spent together post-hypnotherapy, we had only superficial contact with one another through social media. When we first met all those years ago, we were just two silly college girls doing what college girls do. Neither of us dreamed back then that all these years later, our paths would cross again in such a profound way.
Finding Lightbeamers and publishing in SIYB helped me harness the power of my story and dip my toe into sharing my experiences—some of which are difficult to speak and hear about—in a public forum. I intended to engage with people who needed to know my story, but at the time, writing one chapter in SIYB was enough for me. One. And. Done!
Fast-forward nine months from the launch of SIYB, and I started talking to my trauma therapist about forgiveness. Her curiosity about my thinking on this concept started our conversations. She likes to pick my brain from time to time, researching through me, I think! Those conversations sparked my interest—another step on my journey—in seeing what other authors said about forgiveness. So, I began researching what was written and found a few things that bothered me. I saw why there’s so much confusion about forgiveness, what it is, and how we can get it.
I found many, many books on the “steps” to forgiveness. To me, steps suggest a linear process required to arrive at forgiveness. In my experience, this isn’t accurate and is not how my healing has worked. And authors are divided on whether you must first forgive, then heal, or first heal, then forgive. Neither is true in my experience, although the latter is closer to what I believe. I don’t think healing hurtful relationships is a must/then or cause/effect principle where we must forgive the unforgivable. Instead, the process for me has been healing sufficiently to be able to let go of the negative emotions that bound my heart because of the relationship. I freed my heart from that bondage.
Being thoroughly dissatisfied with the results of my research, I began to consider writing a book about my experience to provide an alternative, and frankly more realistic, insight into how the healing process works. Finally, my discussions with my therapist converged with the unsatisfying results of my own research and my brain ideating for a book. And then, my Aunt Cheeto, to whom I dedicated Becoming an Empowered Survivor, died.
The day she died was the day that I committed to write the book. My “why” for writing the book is eternally memorialized in the book’s dedication:
Dedicated in loving memory to Amelia Jimnell Jones Garner, my “Aunt Cheeto,” whose suffering in this life ended the day I committed to writing this book. Her lifelong trials inspire me as I seek to help others find and walk their healing pathway. She never had the opportunity to heal, but in death, I hope she is at peace with her God. The day she died, my “why” for writing this book and for whom became clear. This book is dedicated, with honor, to her life.
This book is also dedicated to every trauma and abuse survivor in this world who needs to HEAL.