When My Father and My Mother Forsook Me, God Took Me Up: A Memoir of Betrayal, Resilience, and Unshakable Faith

Some children grow up loved. I grew up learning how to survive.

I did not grow up protected.

I grew up surviving.

This book is my true story.

I was raised in prayer by my grandmother, but wounded in the place that should have been safest. I faced abuse as a child, rejection within my own family, and silence when I needed protection. As a teenager, I was falsely accused and expelled from school, almost losing my future. As a young woman, I lost a child, lost income, and carried the heavy weight of poverty and despair.

Many times, I asked the same question many people are afraid to say out loud:

Why me?

This memoir is not written from a place of perfection. It is written from the floor. From broken moments. From tears cried in silence. From days when faith felt thin and hope felt far away.

Yet this is also a story of how God carried me when people failed me. How love showed up through small kindness, through friendship, through laughter, and through writing. How forgiveness freed my heart. How faith grew slowly, honestly, and deeply. How I learned that pain does not have the final word.

Writing became my voice when I had none.

Faith became my anchor when life pressed me down. God became my covering when my father and my mother forsook me.

When My Father and My Mother Forsook Me, God Took Me Up, a memoir of betrayal, resilience, and unshakable faith by Mfon James, is for anyone who has felt abandoned.

• For anyone who has been betrayed by family.
• For anyone who has lost a child, a future, or their sense of worth.
• For anyone who wonders if God still sees them.

If you are reading this and your heart feels heavy, this book was written for you.

If you have been carrying pain in silence, you are not alone.

If God could take me up, He can take you up too.

Open these pages.

Read my story.

And let hope meet you where you are.