The Way of Letting Go: One Woman's Walk toward Forgiveness

Maybe it was the sting of remarks from a relative or friend. Maybe a miscarriage ended your hopes for a family. For all of your heartbreaks, maybe you wished there was someone to help you through. For Wilma Derksen, letting go of the 15 misconceptions about grief led her back to hope. In this book she tells how you can do the same. Wilma’s world collapsed when her teenage daughter, Candace, was taken hostage and murdered. Wilma now shares her choices to “let go” of heartbreak, which gave her the courage to navigate through the dark waters of sorrow. Like Wilma, maybe your heartbreak forced you to retreat from happy expectations, of believing that life is fair, of finding closure for every circumstance. She encourages patiently: let go of the happy ending, let go of perfect justice, let go of fear, and let go of closure. Wilma's wisdom will help you overcome your broken heart, and her advice will enable you to break free of pain to live a life of true joy.

About the Author :
Wilma Derksen is an international speaker and consultant on victimization and criminal justice. She has told her story and facilitated support groups of survivors of homicide, organized dialogues between victims and inmates in prison, conducted trainings, given lectures, participated in panel discussions, presented her insights to the justice system, and addressed victims’ needs at restorative justice conferences throughout the United States and Canada.      

Review :
I have followed Wilma’s journey for years. It has been incredibly difficult, incredibly moving, and her insights incredibly profound. She has much to teach us all. In The Way of Letting Go Wilma Derksen demonstrates how the healing process is to pass from the narrative of trauma as overwhelming grief into the narrative of trauma as an experience of deep and meaningful significance. Bringing together all her experience and learning following the agony of her daughter’s murder, here over thirty years later Derksen is able to give voice to a humanity born out of suffering. There are few who have given as much thought to the transformative power of forgiveness---she has defined, refined, probed, and reevaluated one of the most difficult, complex, but never more relevant forces in the world today. The answer is love and compassion for all of humanity. When the Nazarene said that we should forgive seventy times seven, he was telling us that forgiveness should be a habit, a way of life. Forgiveness is not for the person who has wronged us; it is for us---it sets us free. Wilma’s story is proof of this. Wilma Derksen’s powerful book highlights a profound paradox---to achieve some degree of control over one’s life and emotions in the face of grief and trauma, one has to do the opposite---let go of control. With this book Wilma Derksen has found a way to redeem the seemingly irredeemable. After living through a parent’s worst nightmare, she devoted herself to the hard work of forgiveness, dissecting each stage with a surgeon’s skill. The practical wisdom that has emerged could only come from someone who strained to forgive the unforgivable---and somehow succeeded. What she learned along the way brings hope to all of us who struggle with this most difficult, yet most necessary task.