No filters. No fancy words. Just the honest take of people who finished the last page and needed to speak.
I picked up this book because I could not sleep. Then I could not put it down. Joanie does not preach at you. She just tells you what happened. And what happened is brutal and beautiful at the same time. The part about forgiving her uncle but never reconciling with him hit me hard. I needed someone to say that out loud. Thank you for that.
I am not a religious person. But this book made me think differently about faith. Joanie does not shove anything down your throat. She shares her journey and lets you decide. The Hebrew letter thing was new to me. I never knew truth had three letters that mean beginning, middle, and end. That stuck with me for days.
The juniper tree chapter wrecked me. I have had my own kitchen moments. Not with morphine, but with that same feeling of just wanting everything to stop. Joanie does not pretend she was strong. She admits she broke. And then she shows how God did not punish her for breaking. He fed her. He let her sleep. That gave me permission to be honest about my own exhaustion.
I grew up in a church that taught forgive and forget. Forgive and reconcile. Forgive and pretend nothing happened. Joanie blew that up for me. She shows from the Bible itself that forgiveness is for your own freedom. Reconciliation requires the other person to actually change. I wish someone had told me this twenty years ago. This book is a lifeline for survivors.
What I loved most was how Joanie writes about her daughter. Laura Faith. The way she connects her daughter's initials to the Hebrew letter Resh. Refined. Redeemed. Resurrected. I teared up at that part. This is not a sad book. It is a hopeful book. Bad things happened. But the story does not end there. It ends with a garden and cherry trees, and a little girl running.
I read a lot of memoirs. Most of them feel polished and edited within an inch of their life. This one feels different. It feels like Joanie is sitting across from me at a kitchen table, telling me her story over coffee. Raw. Honest. Sometimes funny in the middle of the hard parts. She does not pretend to have all the answers. That is exactly why I trusted her.
The part about the Freedom Convoy surprised me. I did not expect a book about trauma and faith to also cover politics. But Joanie handled it with grace. She did not scream. She did not rage. She documented everything and moved in quiet confidence. That is a lesson for anyone who feels like they have to shout to be heard. Quiet truth is still truth.