From Pain to the Page. The Sacred Return is the healing love letter my broken heart has been waiting a lifetime for.
- vernamlisa
- 7 days ago
- 3 min read
Why I Wrote The Sacred Return
May 5, 2025
Writing this book was not a pretty process.
It wasn’t born from theory or even inspiration.
It was born out of necessity.
From the deep ache of a 57-year-old woman who has been carrying way too much for way too long.
My body had been quietly breaking down for years, until it wasn’t quiet anymore.
The signs became impossible to ignore. Pain that lingered. Fatigue that no amount of rest could soothe. Symptoms that felt like whispers at first… eventually turned into screams. Very loud, very serious screams...
And then came the brutal truth.
I was carrying too much.
Too much anger.
Too much grief
Too many unspoken words are buried deep within.
I realized that if I didn’t begin releasing what I had stuffed down inside,
I might lose my voice altogether.
Not just figuratively… but literally.
That was my wake-up call. The moment I knew I couldn’t keep pushing it down.
It was time to take radical, sacred action. To stop abandoning myself.
To return.
I’ve been doing real, raw, relentless work around self-love, forgiveness, and what it means to be free from the chains of anger and resentment.
Some of that anger has roots in childhood wounds, moments when I felt invisible, unsafe, and unworthy.
Some comes from broken relationships, betrayals, and the dysfunction that often passes for family.
But a huge part of the weight I’ve carried came from July 4th, 2015, the day a drunk driver violently disrupted my life.
He died.
But somehow, that wasn’t enough.
Because I lived.
And in surviving, I inherited the trauma, the surgeries, the chronic pain, the daily reminders of what was taken from me without warning or consent.
And I was angry.
Righteously, furiously angry at a dead man.
And for a long time, I believed that holding onto that anger was the only justice I had left.
But anger, while valid, is heavy.
It takes up space where peace is meant to grow.
And so, little by little, I started to ask:
What would freedom feel like?
What would it mean to choose softness, without pretending the pain didn’t happen?
That’s how this journey began.
Not as a project.
Not as a plan.
But as an act of survival.
And then something unexpected happened.
As I healed, I felt a pull to share the process, not because I had it all figured out, but because I knew I wasn’t the only one.
The only one aching to feel whole again.
The only one still waiting for the apology, still wondering if it’s possible to live unburdened.
That’s where the idea for The Sacred Return was born.
Not from a place of expertise, but from a place of shared humanity.
This book isn’t a blueprint for perfection.
It’s a companion for those learning how to love themselves again.
The ones shedding old skin.
The ones asking, "Is it safe to trust life again?”
I wrote it for me.
But I published it for you.
Because maybe the whole point of healing isn’t just to be free…
But to turn around and leave the door open for someone else...
With love,
Vee
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