Some wounds seem too deep to heal. Some betrayals feel impossible to forgive.

Forgiveness is often framed as something earned after harm, extended once enough remorse has been shown, understanding has been reached, or time has passed. But for Amy Scott Rooker, forgiveness arrived in a very different way: not as something asked for or deserved, not as a step toward repair or reconciliation, but as a form of freedom.

Rooker’s debut memoir, My Mother Is a Dragonfly, traces a long interior journey shaped by early childhood sexual abuse, decades of survival, and a profound reckoning that followed the death of her mother. What emerged was not a tidy story of healing, but a hard-won insight into what forgiveness actually requires, and what it makes possible.

The Life Built on Survival

For much of her adult life, Rooker functioned at a remarkably high level. She built a successful career, maintained outward composure, and learned how to move through the world appearing intact. But that competence masked a deeper truth: something essential had been set aside.

As a teenager, Rooker experienced harm that fractured her sense of self. When she told her mother what had happened, her mother turned away from it. Rooker was left with the understanding she was on her own. 

One part of her carried the pain. Another learned how to pretend it had never happened. Like many people shaped by trauma, she did not collapse; she adapted. She learned how to perform normalcy, achievement, and control. She learned how to keep going.

Forgiveness had no place in that early chapter. Not because her heart was closed, but because the reality of what had happened felt too wrong to touch. Forgiveness, as she understood it then, seemed to imply making the harm acceptable, and that was impossible. She lived on, built a life, succeeded, and carried the weight quietly.

The Opening

Everything shifted after her mother’s death. 

Grief disrupted the structure that had allowed Rooker to keep functioning without looking back. The distance she had maintained from her inner life collapsed. What followed was not a sudden revelation, but an opening, one that led her into a deeper process of healing, inquiry, and spiritual awakening.

Through years of work, grief, psychedelic medicine, trauma healing, and embodied practices, Rooker began to reclaim parts of herself that had gone silent long ago. She found her voice again. She found presence. She found a sense of wholeness that did not depend on performance.

And still, something remained.

Despite how much had healed, Rooker noticed that her past continued to exert a pull. The story of what had happened, especially within her family, still shaped her inner life. The harm was no longer overwhelming, but it was still binding.

That was when forgiveness finally came into view.

Photo Courtesy: GFB

Seeing the Cage

Forgiveness did not arrive as an instruction or a moral imperative. It arrived as a recognition.

Rooker began to see that while she had reclaimed much of her freedom, she was still tethered to the past through grievance. Not through anger, but through attachment. Through the ongoing need for the story to be different than it was.

What she came to understand was this: Forgiveness was not about changing the past. It was about no longer living inside it.

Letting go did not mean what happened was okay. It did not mean excusing harm or pretending it had not shaped her life. It meant refusing to remain bound to it.

A Different Definition of Forgiveness

The final shift came through a spiritual realization, one that reframed forgiveness entirely.

Rooker began to see that harm and innocence could coexist. That the people who hurt her did not do so because they were evil, but because they were fractured, afraid, and shaped by their own wounds. This did not lessen the harm. But it changed how she held it.

Forgiveness, she realized, was not earned or deserved. It was not something asked for and granted. It was structural, a way of being in the world.

It was the choice to remain aligned with love, coherence, and truth even when conditions failed.

In forgiving what happened to her, Rooker did not absolve those who hurt her. She did not forget. She did not reconcile in ways that were unsafe. What she did was release herself from the prison of grievance, from the constant replay of the past that kept her anchored to a story she didn’t want to define her anymore.

Forgiveness wasn’t just something she offered to those who hurt her. It was something she claimed for herself.

Photo Courtesy: Josh Wiseman

Freedom, Not Resolution

This understanding sits at the heart of My Mother Is a Dragonfly. The book does not promise easy healing or clean endings. What it offers instead is a lived account of what becomes possible when a person tells the truth all the way through, about harm, about survival, and about the courage required to let go.

Rooker’s story resonates not because it minimizes pain, but because it refuses to let pain have the final word. It suggests that healing does not come from fixing the past, but from releasing our attachment to it. That forgiveness is not about virtue, but about freedom.

At a time when many people are questioning how to live with what has hurt them, personally, familiarly, culturally, Rooker’s journey offers a rare and honest perspective. Forgiveness, she shows, is not a demand placed on the wounded. It is an option that becomes available only when someone is ready to live unbound.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, please consult a qualified healthcare provider.