A Rose is Still a Rose: Overcoming Your Past to Walk in Freedom

By Grace Onuegbu

A Rose is Still a Rose: Overcoming Your Past to Walk in Freedom is a memoir that illustrates God's redemption and faithfulness. This transparent and vulnerable book highlights the story of Grace Onuegbu, and her process of transformation from a prodigal daughter to a bold and unapologetic voice of healing and transformation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ELOHAI International Publishing & Media
• Release date: Nov 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781953535320

Grace Onuegbu

GRACE ONUEGBU is the CEO of SMILEBIZ LLC, a personal development company where she teaches high-performing women how to live a balanced lifestyle to gain peace, prestige, purpose, and prosperity. She is a board-certified mental health nurse practitioner, transformational coach, speaker, and published author. Grace is a master at teaching women strategies to reach their goals. Visit Grace online at smilebizllc.com.

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GRACE ONUEGBU



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A ROSE IS STILL A ROSE

Copyright 2021 by Grace Onuegbu

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts.

Send all copyright inquiries to:

Smilebiz LLC

Silver Spring, MD

www.smilebizllc.com

Published by ELOHAI International Publishing & Media

P.O. Box 1883

Cypress, Texas 77410

www.elohaiintl.com

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright© 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™

Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Scriptures marked NKJV are taken from the NEW KING JAMES VERSION (NKJV): Scripture taken from the NEW KING JAMES VERSION®.

Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-953535-32-0

Dedication

First, I want to give thanks to my Father in heaven for not  giving up on me and for His everlasting love. I want to thank my wonderful son for being my ray of sonshine and always encouraging me. Also, I want to thank my family and friends for supporting my purpose and holding me accountable to my becoming process.

I want to dedicate this book to those who feel lost in this world and have lost faith. I want you to know that God has not forgotten about you, and it is not too late to turn your life around by giving your life to Him. Forgive yourself of your past mistakes because you have already been forgiven. God is waiting for you with an open embrace, so come home. He loves you and so do I.

Foreword

"Just like the rose holds

her beauty among the thorns,

we can gather our strength from

the most unlikely places."

— Christine Evangelou,

Rocks Into Roses: Life Lessons and Inspiration for Personal Growth

I am incredibly honored and humbled to write this foreword for my good friend Grace. Where I am shy and reserved, Grace is full of spunk, life, and a love for fashion. I fondly think of us as opposites that complement. Grace has such a bubbly personality that you would never know the path she journeyed just by seeing her or interacting with her. Many times when we meet people, we subconsciously believe that who they are in that moment is who they have always been. The raw truth is many of us walk around wearing masks, too afraid to show the world our true selves and the battle wounds received in this journey of life.

Grace, in her desire to help others heal, bares it all. In her courageous transparency, Grace shakes off the chains of her past and invites us to do the same. She shatters the façade of the perfect Christian and truly shows the goodness of the Lord. He does not come for the perfect. He comes for the broken, the hurting, and the lost. This book is a story of mistakes, misplaced identity, and the journey to finding herself—a stone-cold testimony of God’s grace, mercy, and unconditional love.

We all have pieces of our story that we hate, hide from, and wonder how it will work out—life experiences so impactful that they almost become our identity. We spend so much time running from memories, failures, and traumas that we do not run toward our future. A Rose Is Still A Rose changes that narrative. In these pages, we get to see both the wins and losses that helped Grace develop into the phenomenal woman she is today. Each chapter holds high and low moments that prompted me to reflect on my own life and see just how far I, too, have come. To not just stare at the valleys that I was ashamed of but look forward in hope to the hills from where my help comes. To really understand that nothing can stop the purposes of God in my life or your life. And what we do not understand in the present moment of our journeying is revealed as we grow and mature. Grace leaves no stone unturned: finance, romances, family, career, and relationships—she shares it all.

. . . all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. Romans 8:28 NKJV

All seeds produce some type of fruit, and this book reminds us that no matter what life looks like, we truly still are roses. All the dirt, the tears, and the joy are tools used by God to help us become more than we thought we could ever be. It is time to bloom.

Crystal Antoinette Johnson

Identity Coach, Crystal Antoinette LLC

Table of Contents

Dedication

Foreword

Table of Contents

P A R T  1

The Roots

C H A P T E R  1

The Cycle Began

C H A P T E R    2

The Yellow House

P A R T    2

The Stem Rises

C H A P T E R  3

Moving On Up

C H A P T E R  4

Lust, the Silent Killer

C H A P T E R  5

Death Strikes

P A R T  3

The Rose Prickle Defense

C H A P T E R  6

Reckless Living

C H A P T E R  7

Broken Trust

C H A P T E R  8

My First Apartment

C H A P T E R  9

Series of Bad Roommates

C H A P T E R  1 0

Repeated Cycles

P A R T  4

The Leaves

C H A P T E R  1 1

Birth

C H A P T E R  1 2

The Big Move

C H A P T E R  1 3

Old Habits Die Hard

C H A P T E R  1 4

Unexpected Love

P A R T  5

Buds are Awakened

C H A P T E R  1 5

Transition into the New

C H A P T E R  1 6

New Chapter, Same Storyline

C H A P T E R  1 7

Bye Bye Baltimore, Hello Silver Spring

CH A P T E R  1 8

On to the Next Adventure

C H A P T E R  1 9

The White Picket Fence

P A R T  6

The Rose Blossoms

C H A P T E R  2 0

The Shift

C H A P T E R  2 1

Expanding my Territory

Breakthrough Prayer

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Connect and Share

P A R T 1

The Roots

"His roots dry below and

his branches wither above."

Job 18:16

C H A P T E R 1

The Cycle Began

AS THE CROWD SURROUNDED US, I looked out of my mom’s gray vintage car in shock. So many emotions ran through me, but as a kid, how could I put those emotions into words?

All I knew then was my siblings and I were being taken away from everything we knew. I just could not believe what was happening at that very moment. But as I came out of my trance, it was surreal.

My mother was leaving my father and taking us with her. While growing up, I did not have the best example of what a healthy relationship looked like. From the outside looking in, you saw a perfect family. Both of my parents worked, and my paternal grandmother lived with us.

you did not see the constant bickering like I did. I never witnessed my father get physical with my mom, but I heard many hurtful exchanges between them. And many of those exchanges were because my paternal grandmother would meddle in my parents’ business.

My mother and my grandmother did not have the best relationship. In fact, my grandmother would treat us unfairly because of how she felt about my mom. I never felt that my grandmother loved me and felt rejected by her. So, you see, my first encounter with relationships was dysfunctional. It guided my mindset and many of my decisions ever since, but I will talk about that later.

As I mentioned, I never saw my father get violent, but I saw a different side of him that day. Unbeknownst to my mother, my grandmother called my father at his job.

As my mother was trying to get us in the car, some of our close neighbors tried to get my mom to stay. We lived in an apartment complex in North Carolina with other Nigerians. One thing about the Nigerian community is you cannot hide anything and everybody knows your business.

The neighbors could not convince my mother to stay, and she got us into the car. While I was buckling my siblings in the car, I saw my father. He banged on the top of my mom’s car, pulled on the door handles, and was screaming at my mother to get out of the car. My eyes were like saucers, in shock about everything I was witnessing. Tears were dripping from my eyes down my face, where I could taste the salt of my tears and hear my siblings crying loudly in the backseat with me.

I knew my father was angry, and that was the first time I felt fear. It was a dreadful feeling because I did not know what would happen next. There was a knot in the pit of my stomach, and all I could do was watch from the backseat of my mother’s car.

Out of nowhere, my mother started yelling for us to duck down. Fear was replaced by confusion; nevertheless, I listened to my mom. Even if I wanted to ask why, my voice was stuck inside of my throat. As I ducked down, shards of glass started flying everywhere. I found out after the fact that my dad kicked out the driver’s side window. The glass had cut my mother’s eyelids, and as I looked up, I saw her trying to reach back to protect us.

It was a traumatic and lasting experience to witness my father so enraged to the point he violently kicked out the car window just to keep us from leaving. It did not stop my mother from pressing the gas pedal to get out of dodge, and she left my father standing in the middle of the street with us crying in the backseat.

I cannot remember if we went anywhere right after that, but I do remember going to the pastor’s house. There was so much fuss over my mother’s face because she had cuts from the glass above her eyelids and was in distress. As I looked at my mother, I felt like it was a dream. Just the day before, I was carefree, as a child should be, but today, I was introduced to experiences that would have a lasting impact on my life more than I could have ever imagined.

They took pictures of my mother’s face, but I did not recall my mother ever calling the police on my father. We stayed with the pastor’s family for a few days, but it was time to move on. Little did I know the next transition in my life would be an added layer to the cycle of dysfunction.

C H A P T E R 2

The Yellow House

AS I WALKED UP THE STEPS, all I could think of was how huge and bright yellow this house was. If you have ever seen the movie Gone with the Wind, then you understand what a plantation house looks like. My siblings and I called our new home The yellow House, but it was a shelter for battered women and their children. I do not have many memories of our time there; maybe they are repressed.

However, I did remember that I could not talk to my father. I was not allowed to call him, and he could not know where we were. In the beginning, I could not understand why. He was my father. Shouldn’t he have known where his kids were?

It was explained to me that this was where women went to get away from men who wanted to hurt them, so my father could never know where we were. I saw how angry my father was, but I was not convinced that he could ever hurt us.

Even at a young age, I realized that my father could never hurt us, but some kids were there whose dads could hurt them. Although I accepted the reality, I was angry at my dad. Rejection rooted in my heart even deeper. In a twisted way, I felt my dad did not even try to look for us and had given up on his family.

I carried that bitterness and rejection for many years to come. But let me not get ahead of myself. It was interesting living in the yellow house. Each family had their own rooms, but we shared common areas like the kitchen and the living room. We shared chores, and for the first time, it hit me that my mom was now a single mother. I know for a fact this is where my passion for women, specifically single moms and their children, came from.

Building friendships in the house was challenging because once you made a friend, they would move out of the house. They either found their own home, or with the help of the staff, they found a home. I was so used to people leaving my life it became normalized in my mind. So many patterns of dysfunction were in my life that they started to take root in my mind and heart.

The shelter was a safe place to live. During Christmas, each family had to submit a list of things they wanted. I received many gifts from different donors. Even though I experienced things no child should have had to witness, I was still a child, gleeful over gifts.

It never dawned on me to question my mom about how she felt. Honestly, I have never asked her until today. We lived in the shelter for so long, I thought it would be our permanent home.

But my mother got back on her feet, and we moved to an apartment in Garner, North Carolina, outside of Raleigh. I was in the fifth grade when we moved into our new home.

Many of the apartments down south were huge in comparison to living up north. Our apartment had three bedrooms with a separate living room and a balcony. It was massive because only four apartments were in the building.

My mom worked and went to school, which left me responsible for my younger siblings. On the weekends, my mother would send us to the neighbors right across the hall from us. Some weekends we would spend time with them at their grandmother’s house in the hood.

The hood in that area did not look like the hood in Baltimore, Maryland. Nevertheless, it was not Beverly Hills nor The Hamptons, but I do remember summertime was fun.

Kids would be outside until the streetlights came on, the ice cream truck would roll through, and you constantly heard screen doors being slammed. Those distractions kept me from thinking about my dad not being there. But my father soon reappeared. My parents were still separated, but he would come to visit us from Maryland.

His role now was more for show because he would come visit but never spend time with us. During one visit, my father was supposed to pick me up from school after a field trip. I waited and waited, but he never showed up.

My teacher had to take me home, and it was the most embarrassing experience I had ever encountered. But I had not lived long enough then because I experienced way worse than that since then. At that time, my maternal grandfather had moved in with us, and my maternal grandmother was still in Nigeria.

When I was younger, my grandfather was the closest person I had to a father figure. I never knew my father’s dad. I was told he had many wives and was never there for my father. As I got older, it certainly explained my father’s inability to be a dad. The roots of parental abandonment went