When I sat down to write After the Hurt: Moving On with Grace, I thought I knew what I was getting into. I had written a book before—Lemonade Tough, a project born out of resilience, grief, and learning how to stand back up when life knocks you down. But what I quickly discovered is that writing about forgiveness, about letting go, about truly moving on—it’s a different kind of challenge. A quieter one. But no less demanding.
This wasn’t just another book project. This was personal in a way that felt heavier, more complicated, and—at times—almost too close.
Why Write About Moving On?
There’s a truth I’ve come to learn both through my own life and through decades of working in healthcare, particularly in trauma settings: everyone is carrying something. Some of it is visible—loss, betrayal, heartbreak. Much of it isn’t.
I’ve watched people survive unspeakable things. I’ve witnessed resilience in its rawest form. But I’ve also watched what happens when the hurt lingers long after the crisis ends. When resentment becomes a permanent companion. When the past isn’t just something that happened—but something that still owns a person’s peace.
I’ve also lived it.
That’s what made this book both necessary and incredibly difficult to write. Because forgiveness, release, and healing aren’t tidy concepts. They’re messy. They’re layered. And they come with no guarantee that the people who hurt you will ever change, apologize, or even care.
The Hardest Part Was Being Honest
The first challenge wasn’t the writing itself—it was the honesty required to write something meaningful. I didn’t want to offer hollow advice or platitudes about “letting go” when I know firsthand that letting go can feel impossible some days.
There were moments when I sat at my desk, staring at the cursor blinking on a blank page, asking myself, “Who am I to write this? Am I really past this? Do I even believe what I’m saying today?”
Some days the answer was clear: yes. Other days, the doubts crept in. Because healing isn’t linear. There are days when you feel free. There are days when the old anger shows up like an unwelcome visitor.
And that’s the truth I had to wrestle with while writing this book: forgiveness isn’t a finish line. It’s a practice. A devotion to your own peace more than anything else.
Balancing Personal Truth Without Bleeding on the Page
One of the hardest decisions in writing After the Hurt was choosing how personal to make it. While my first book included stories from my own life, this time I felt a deeper need for privacy—not just for myself, but because some wounds were still tender, still in process.
I realized that the power of this book wouldn’t come from retelling the exact details of my own experiences, but from offering something bigger—something that others could step into. Frameworks. Practices. Reflections. Universal truths that hold up no matter the specifics of the hurt.
This choice wasn’t easy. Writing vulnerably without reopening old wounds was a constant balancing act. But it became a boundary that allowed me to be both honest and whole at the same time.
The Reward of Doing This Work
For all the struggle, there was a parallel sense of reward that made every difficult writing session worth it. Something happens when you spend months—years, really—immersed in the work of understanding release, practicing forgiveness, and redefining what it means to move on.
You start living it.
The truth is, writing this book helped me heal in ways I didn’t realize were still needed. The process forced me to revisit not the people who hurt me, but the parts of myself that were still holding onto pain out of habit, out of fear, or out of a misguided belief that letting go somehow invalidates what happened.
It doesn’t.
Letting go doesn’t erase the truth. It simply means you stop letting that truth shape who you get to become.
There’s a deep kind of freedom that comes with finally understanding that. And it’s a freedom I hope this book offers every person who picks it up.
What I Hope Readers Take Away
This isn’t a book that promises overnight transformation. It’s not about magical thinking. It’s about real, steady, grounded work. Work that asks, “What if I no longer let this hurt decide how I show up today?”
My hope is that readers will walk away with three things:
- Validation – You’re not weak, broken, or failing because you’re struggling to let go. It’s hard because it matters.
- Practical Tools – This book is filled with exercises, journal prompts, and frameworks designed to help readers not just think about healing, but experience it in real time.
- A Sense of Permission – Permission to move on—not with bitterness, not with denial, but with grace. Permission to build a life that doesn’t revolve around what happened, but around what’s possible now.
The Unexpected Joy
What surprised me the most was how much joy lives on the other side of this work. I think, for a long time, I unconsciously believed that healing was about getting back to neutral—about not hurting anymore.
But it’s so much more than that.
It’s about expansion. About rediscovering parts of yourself that were quieted during the years spent surviving. It’s about realizing that peace isn’t just the absence of pain—it’s the presence of possibility, creativity, laughter, and connection.
Writing this book taught me that we are allowed to have lives that feel soft, beautiful, and spacious—even if there were years when that felt out of reach.
A Final Reflection
If writing Lemonade Tough was about surviving, then After the Hurt is about thriving. It’s about what comes next—not because the past didn’t matter, but because it doesn’t get to own the future.
To anyone reading this—whether you’re at the beginning of your healing, in the messy middle, or further down the road—I hope this book feels like an invitation. Not to pretend the past never happened. But to remember that what happened does not get to have the final word.
That word belongs to you now.