Today, at TRB Lounge, we are hosting author Emily Stroia, author of Into The Light.

Presenting Emily Stroia…

Forgiving The Unforgivable

For the longest time I didn’t know how I could forgive my parents. All I ever wanted from them was to have a loving healthy relationship. I couldn’t understand why or how they became the way they did.

Growing up in an abusive home showed me experiences that I didn’t need to see. Experiencing sexual abuse from my Father destroyed any last hope that things could truly be different.

I hoped that every time we talked it would be different and that miraculously he would be the Father I always dreamed of. My hope turned slowly into resentment and anger.

There simply wasn’t anything left in me to forgive a man who kept repeating the same behaviors.

In turn it only made me worse in my relationships with partners, friends, myself. My pride in my own beauty and integrity started to fade. The woman I’d wake up to in the mirror I didn’t know.

I’m not sure I ever truly knew her then.

I harbored a resentment so grand that it blocked me from trusting other people and from trusting myself. I wanted to believe that the world wouldn’t hurt me but my thought process was “If my Father could do this to me then anyone most definitely can”.

So life went by and I had armor around my heart and a cynical mindset that just wouldn’t budge.

I knew I wanted to heal this but I just didn’t know how so I tried nearly everything. I went to hypnotherapy, studied with meditation gurus, explored healing through intuition and spirituality.

The one thing that was missing was me; me allowing my pain to have a voice.

I felt ashamed about the sexual abuse. I felt like it was my fault and that everyone would see it that way.

Only through years of intense therapy, transformational workshops and yoga training did I finally allow what was buried inside of me to have a voice.

The more I screamed and cried about it the better I felt. The more I began to understand who my parents were as people not just as two people who raised me.

The word forgiveness creeped into my mind and for the first time I could feel myself feeling true forgiveness in my heart towards them.

I could feel myself freed from a lifetime of pain and nightmares that haunted me.

We can read a million quotes, books and take enough trainings to save our life on forgiveness but it truly comes down to willingness.

Are you willing to forgive the unforgivable?

If the answer is ‘No’, then let it be no without shame, without judgment.

Own your feelings and slowly freedom will find you through this process.

I wasn’t willing.

Until I realized that I was suffering more than I needed to.

Living a fulfilled and happy life was more important to me than holding resentment and anger in my heart towards someone who is simply living life their way.

Could things have been different?

Sure.

But it wasn’t. This is the story I was born into but it definitely doesn’t have to be the ending.

A poem from my new book, Into the Light:

Forgiveness is letting go

Of the story of how it should be.

Accept what was,

Surrender the fight,

Loving the dark & the light.

By freeing ourselves from the attachment that this experience or this person could have been any other way we take our power back.

I know that is what my heart desires.

About the author:

About the book:

Into the Light is a memoir-inspired poetry collection in seven parts. The book shares the author’s life from a transformative perspective of experiencing trauma & darkness to finding hope, miracles and light.

In the final part, there are notes to the reader and finding one’s inner peace after adversity and healing through brokenness. This book explores trauma, abuse, sexual abuse, mental illness, loss, healing, spirituality, meditation, inspiration and empowerment. This book is for anyone who has ever experienced loss, grief, brokenness, depression, abuse, trauma and heartbreak.

Book Links:

Book site: http://www.emilystroia.com/intothelight 
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Into-Light-Emily-Stroia-ebook/dp/B0765VJGJ2/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36365956-into-the-light

If you are an author and wish to be featured as our guest or if you are a publicist and want to get your author’s guest post on TRB, then please get in touch through email at thereadingbud@gmail.com