Wendy Redroad is a free-spirited content writer, teacher, and survivor of childhood exploitation. With great warmth and a bit of wit she colors the bleakest of circumstances with hope, unexpected laughter, and tangible steps towards recognizing the nearness of God in human frailty and suffering 

She is the creative member of Mission EDIFY, LLC and founder of The Wilderness Initiative, a charitable teaching initiative and “wrap around service” for small non-profit organizations supporting adults 18 and older as they learn to navigate the impact of adverse childhood experiences, also known as ACE’s.

Wendy serves as a lay ministry leader in her parish, women’s outreach group facilitator, and maintains an affiliate membership with the Catholic Psychotherapy Association. Her signature talk, How to Forgive What You Will Never Forget, reframes the choice to forgive through the lens of trauma.

Like many adults the abuse Wendy endured as a child forged a dysfunctional template for adulthood. Homelessness, a teen pregnancy with a former high school teacher, infidelity, divorce, single motherhood, toxic relationships, and complex post traumatic stress disorder were the rhythmic constraints in her life. Hurt in church, at age fourteen she bid Christianity adieu, vowing never to speak the name Jesus again.

Twenty-three years later she was too weary to hate and too weak to blame. Wendy broke her vow of silence and spoke the “J” word. Midway through a year-long commitment to group therapy for survivors of childhood sexual abuse, she purchased her first women’s Bible Study. This marked the beginning of countless ten-week studies that often stretched into twenty weeks as she jotted down tough questions, additional Scripture, and witticisms along the sides of every page. A decade later, when her marriage came to an abrupt and brutal end, she could not help but wonder, Where is the Bible study for THIS?

Her message is simple. “God does not minimize the effects of trauma. We do when we deny him access to the pain. Her mission is substantial. Only Love can smooth the jagged edges of a heart too broken to forgive.”