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Forever Me – Here I Stand
A raw memoir of survival, addiction, healing, and finding the strength to stand
FOREVER ME
Here I Stand
A powerful memoir by Angel Harden
A true story of survival, addiction, trauma, healing, and hope.
This is not a polished version of pain.
It is the truth of what it took to survive
— and what it means to finally stand in your own life.
About the Book
Forever Me – Here I Stand is a deeply personal memoir that walks through the realities of trauma, addiction, loss, survival, and recovery.
It is written for anyone who has lived through darkness, anyone who has had to rebuild themselves from the ground up, and anyone who needs proof that it is possible to keep going.
This book does not look away from the hard parts. It tells the truth plainly, with heart, grit, and honesty.
At its core, this is a story about survival.
But more than that, it is a story about reclaiming voice, identity, and strength.
Inside these pages
- Honest and unfiltered storytelling
- Real experiences of addiction and recovery
- Survival through abuse, trauma, and loss
- Healing, courage, and personal transformation
- A voice that is raw, grounded, and deeply human
“This is not just a story about what happened to me. It is a story about what it took to survive it.”
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Meet Angel
Angel Harden is an author, healer, and founder of Rongoa Angel – Healing Hands.
Her work is grounded in lived experience, survival, and healing. Through both her writing and her work with others, she brings honesty, compassion, and strength to the realities many people carry in silence.
Forever Me – Here I Stand is her memoir — a deeply personal account of addiction, trauma, resilience, and the long road back to herself.
Her voice is direct, heartfelt, and unafraid to tell the truth.
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 18
The Body
In 2008, everything changed in a different way.
I was diagnosed with BRCA1.
A gene.
A risk.
A ticking clock sitting quietly in the background of my life.
But I already knew what it meant before they ever explained it to me.
I had watched the women in my family die from breast cancer for most of my life.
My grandmother had survived it once in her thirties, only for it to come back later and spread everywhere. By the end, it had taken over her entire body. Bones. Organs. Everything. Watching her die was horrific.
That was the first real funeral I remember.
Dad walked me up to the coffin. I leaned forward to kiss her forehead goodbye, and he gently put his hand on me and said, “She’s going to be cold.”
I heard him.
But I didn’t understand him.
I kissed her forehead anyway.
And I still remember that feeling.
It was like the cold went through my lips and into my bones. Every part of me chilled instantly. Like death itself had touched me.
I never forgot it.
Then my aunt got it too.
Eventually she took her own life in unimaginably painful circumstances.
She was the one who pushed me to get tested.
Most of my family did not want me to.
They wanted me to live my life. Not sit under the shadow of probabilities and percentages and fear.
But Aunty Lynn told me something that stayed with me.
She said if I knew early enough, maybe I would not have to suffer the way the other women had.
And when the results came back, I understood immediately how serious it was.
There was nothing abstract about it to me.
I had already seen the ending.
From that point on, I was monitored constantly.
Every four months.
Mammograms.
Scans.
Waiting rooms.
And more often than not…
they found something.
A shadow.
A spot.
Something suspicious enough to investigate.
But every single time, it came back benign.
People assume that should feel reassuring.
It didn’t.
Because every time they found something, I had to live through the fear all over again.
Biopsies.
Needles.
Waiting for phone calls.
Waiting for results.
Sitting on the edge of my seat wondering if this was finally the moment everything changed.
Living like that exhausts you.
Always waiting for the next thing to go wrong.
Always bracing.
I had already disconnected from my body long before any of this.
Probably when I was eleven.
By then my weight had climbed dramatically, and I lived mostly outside myself anyway. My body was something I dragged around. Something that absorbed damage. Something that survived things.
Not something I really lived inside.
So when the time came for surgery in 2014, I did not grieve my breasts.
I just wanted it done.
A bilateral mastectomy.
Preventative.
Controlled.
A way to get ahead of what I thought was eventually coming for me anyway.
I went into surgery weighing around 186 kilos.
Two surgical teams worked on me at the same time trying to keep the operation under six hours.
I told myself I was strong enough to stay awake.
Epidural.
Light ketamine sedation.
I thought I could handle it.
I couldn’t.
I do not really remember opening my eyes afterward.
I just remember screaming.
Over and over.
Pain so intense it did not even feel survivable.
Voices trying to calm me.
Hands touching me.
Then the drugs pulling me back under again.
Then waking into pain again.
Over and over.
But that was only the beginning.
One of the surgical teams missed an allergy note.
On the left side, they placed an adhesive dressing I was severely allergic to over the base dressing.
And it stayed there for four days.
That was all it took.
A couple of weeks later, I was back in clinic.
By then I knew something was very wrong.
They drained a litre of fluid from the left side.
A full litre.
Then they debrided the wound right back to the ribs.
Right back to the bone.
I remember lying there in the open surgical field while Michael tried to take a photo.
At one point he dropped the phone directly into the wound.
The surgeons threw their hands up in horror.
“What the fuck?”
Everything stopped while they re-sterilised the field.
And I just lay there through all of it.
Too overwhelmed to even react properly anymore.
That was the moment I realised this was not normal recovery.
This was something else entirely.
The wound would not heal.
It kept breaking down.
Again and again.
Eight months.
Of infection.
Of debridement.
Cleaning dead tissue out over and over.
So I did the testing.
Trying to stay ahead of something that constantly wanted to get worse.
I had a suction machine attached almost constantly.
Pulling.
Draining.
The whole house smelled like infection.
Like decay.
I smelled like a dying body no matter how much I washed.
The nurses came almost every day.
I had an entire suitcase on wheels filled with dressings and medical supplies because carrying enough back and forth became impossible.
And somehow, through all of it, I still kept sponsoring women.
Women from recovery would come sit beside me on the bed while I counselled them through their own crises.
Sometimes I would spend hours on the phone helping other people survive while my own body was literally falling apart around me.
Helping people was the only thing that still made sense to me.
Then, about a week after one of the surgeries, I stood up from a chair while talking to the breast care team on the phone.
I did not realise my leg had gone numb.
I stood on the side of my foot and heard a crack.
A spiral fracture through my fifth metatarsal.
I collapsed straight onto the floor.
Michael came out, looked at me, and I said, “I think I’ve broken my foot.”
He replied, “Fuck off. No. I’m not dealing with this.”
Then he walked away and got into the shower.
Like it was just another inconvenience.
I dragged myself up off the floor.
Got myself into the car.
Drove myself to Peter MacCallum with a broken foot while actively dealing with surgical infection.
I handled the breast clinic first.
Then afterward casually said, “By the way, I think I broke my foot.”
They brought someone in for imaging.
Sure enough, I had fractured it badly enough to need a cast.
The cast lasted three days.
I could not use crutches after a mastectomy.
The cast was too heavy.
Everything hurt.
Everything was impossible.
So they removed it and put me into a moon boot I could at least take off while resting.
By then I was mostly confined to bed anyway.
I rebuilt the bathroom during that period.
Grab rails.
Disabled shower.
Fold-down seat.
Support bars around the toilet.
Practical things.
Necessary things.
But emotionally, it felt like surrender.
Like I was quietly preparing to live that way forever.
Like maybe I was never actually going to recover.
And still…
somewhere inside all of that…
something in me kept fighting.
Once I was finally mobile enough, I started warm water exercise classes.
The first forty-five minute session nearly killed me.
The second one probably came close.
I do not think my heart had worked that hard in years.
But something happened in the water.
It did not feel like punishment.
It did not feel like discipline.
It felt like freedom.
Ten classes in, I added a second class every day.
Twenty classes in, I started swimming laps afterward too.
Then suddenly twenty-five kilos were gone.
And for the first time in years, I felt power in my body again.
Not shame.
Not disgust.
Power.
I pushed hard after that.
Swimming.
Classes.
Lap after lap.
Twice a day.
Every day.
For six months.
I lost around a hundred kilos.
And the strange thing was…
the smaller I became, the more visible I became to the world again.
Men yelled things from cars less.
Strangers treated me differently.
Kinder.
Softer.
Like my value had changed with my size.
I noticed all of it.
And by the time I eventually hit my goal weight — around seventy kilos — I sat down and cried.
Because by then, my life was collapsing again anyway.
I had relapsed.
I was using meth again.
And suddenly I realised the truth.
What was the point of finally having the perfect body…
if everything else was still broken?
The body had changed.
But the story hadn’t.
Not yet.
The Missing Chapter
Somewhere between trauma, memory, editing, expansion, and healing… Chapter 18 vanished.
I didn’t realise until after 10 copies of the 5th edition had already gone out to bookshops and libraries.
At first I was horrified.
Then I realised something strange:
this book has always been about missing pieces.
About fragmented memories.
About trying to reconstruct a life from what survived.
So instead of hiding it…
I’m turning it into part of the story.
“The Missing Chapter 18” is now officially a thing.
If you own one of the rare early 5th edition copies missing Chapter 18, you own part of the evolution of Forever Me.
Maybe the missing chapter ended up exactly where it was supposed to.
Rotten.
Pure evil.
And he just laughed.
“Oh, what bullshit.”
Then he said—
“Here’s how we’re going to change that.”
Mirror work.
Stand there.
Look at yourself.
Say—
“I am a beautiful person, and I deserve happiness.”
Twice a day.
At first, I laughed.
Then I got angry.
Because it wasn’t true.
I wanted to smash that mirror.
Because all I saw…
was someone old.
Used up.
A broken picture.
Where did my childhood go?
Where were my teenage years?
I was supposed to be in my prime.
Instead…
I felt like an old maid.
And barren to boot.
But I kept doing it.
And slowly…
something changed.
Six weeks in…
on a train home from St Kilda…
a man called me a fat bitch.
And without thinking…
I turned and said—
“Excuse me. I am a beautiful person, and I deserve happiness.”
And I meant it.
That’s when I knew something had shifted.
My inner voice started to change.
More and more.
I started to believe I was worth saving.
And if that was true…
then I needed a new future.
That’s why I went back to school.
We both did.
He did computers.
I did dual diagnosis — Alcohol, Other Drugs, and Mental Health.
It wasn’t just a course.
It was a way to understand my brain.
My behaviour.
My life.
And I was good at it.
High distinctions.
All of it.
For the first time…
I felt proud.
That’s where I met Mike.
He was in the Odyssey program too.
Steady.
Quiet.
Real.
We connected.
Not chaos.
Just calm.
At six months clean, I went to an NA meeting.
On the outside, I was doing everything right.
But inside…
I was waking up every day wanting to die.
I made a plan.
Go to the meeting.
Get the six-month keyring.
Send it to Mum.
End it.
Just a plastic keyring.
I had no idea how much that little piece of plastic would come to mean to me.
By the time I had collected the whole set…
I was whole.
When I spoke…
I broke.
Told them everything.
And every head nodded.
They understood.
And in that moment…
I felt something I had never felt before.
Belonging.
And hope.
Four women took me to McDonald’s.
Sat with me all night.
Didn’t let me go.
Then took me to psych services.
Got me help.
That…
was the start of real healing.
When Mike and I got together, we were careful.
We told the office.
Went to counselling.
Set boundaries.
One night a week.
The rest…
simple.
Beach.
Bikes.
His son Cooper.
A real connection.
Something I had never had.
After the program, we moved in together.
Started building a life.
He was learning to be a cable technician.
But he was colour blind.
So I helped.
Labelling wires.
Tiny tags.
Quiet moments.
Just us.
Then one day…
I found a gram of speed in my wallet.
After everything.
Still there.
I went straight to Mike.
“We need to flush this.”
And we did.
Gone.
He hugged me.
Told me he was proud.
And we laughed.
Because that was my life now.
Choosing different.
Around that time, I got a sponsor.
Started praying.
At first… just words.
God, thank you for helping me not use today.
Please take my will and my life and guide me in your wisdom and show me how to live.
Care over my family and friends and make the world a safe place to live in.
Amen.
I didn’t feel it.
But I kept going.
And slowly…
something changed.
I wasn’t alone anymore.
And for the first time…
I knew I wasn’t doing it alone.
God had my back.
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🎧 NOW AVAILABLE AS AN AUDIOBOOK 🎧
Forever Me – Here I Stand
By Angel Harden
Some stories are written for success.
This one was written for survival.
My raw and honest journey through addiction, trauma, motherhood, healing, faith, and rebuilding a life from the ground up.
If you’ve ever had to start again… this story is for you.
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#ForeverMeHereIStand #AngelHarden #Audiobook #HealingJourney #Memoir #Recovery #Hope #WomenRising
Reader Reviews
What readers are saying about Forever Me – Here I Stand.
Karen Payne
“Wahine toa. Inspiring and empowering. Angel has given a raw and real account of a womens strength. A message to all men who try and stamp out our fire. You can never put out our flame!!.”
Tarlia Lynn
“Reading your book broke my heart in ways I can’t fully explain.
Reading this book felt like stepping into the heart of someone I have loved and looked up to for so long.
I have always loved you, but after reading your story, I love you in a way that feels even deeper — with a kind of ache, gratitude, and admiration that words almost can’t hold. To see everything you carried, everything you endured, and everything you survived laid bare on those pages was overwhelming. The addiction, the abuse, the fear, the surgeries, the grief of losing babies, the pain of rebuilding yourself again and again — it is almost impossible to comprehend how much one person can be asked to carry in a lifetime.
Knowing your story personally made every page hit even harder. I’ve always known pieces of what you survived, but seeing it all laid out so honestly — the addiction, the pain, the abuse, the grief of loss, the surgeries, the miscarriages, and every battle you fought just to keep going — gave me an even deeper respect for the strength you carry.
What makes this book so powerful is not just what you’ve been through, but the way you chose to tell it. There is so much raw honesty in your words. You didn’t hide the ugly parts, you didn’t soften the truth, and that kind of vulnerability is something not many people are brave enough to give. It takes incredible courage to revisit the darkest parts of your life and turn them into something that could help someone else feel less alone.
What hit me the hardest was knowing that while you were living through some of the darkest and most painful parts of your life, you were still loving me.
You were still protecting me.
You were still making sure I felt safe.
As a child in your home, I never saw the abuse. I never knew the fear you must have been living with behind closed doors. I never felt the weight you were carrying because you never let it touch me. You somehow took all of that pain on your own shoulders and still created a home that felt warm, safe, and full of love. Looking back now, that kind of strength feels almost impossible to understand.
As someone who was lucky enough to be loved by you and welcomed into your home, this book meant even more to me. To read about the things you were carrying while still opening your heart and your home to others — while still choosing to nurture, protect, and love — was deeply emotional. Even in the middle of your own pain, trauma, and fear, you still gave people safety. You still gave me safety. That says everything about the kind of woman you are.
You gave me shelter when I needed it most. You gave me comfort, stability, and care at a time in my life when those things meant everything. You made space for me in your life when you already had more than enough on your plate. You gave so much of yourself, even when you were already running on empty. That kind of love — selfless, fierce, and protective — is something I will never forget for as long as I live.
Reading your book made me realise just how much you shielded me from. While I was safe in your care, feeling loved and protected, you were fighting battles I was too young to even understand. You were surviving things no one should ever have to survive, yet somehow you still found softness for me. You still found patience. You still found the strength to mother, to nurture, and to protect.
That is the kind of woman you are.
Not just strong in the way people casually use that word, but truly strong in the deepest sense — the kind of strength that survives hell and still chooses love. The kind of strength that keeps going when everything is trying to break you. The kind of strength that turns pain into compassion instead of bitterness.
You are one of the strongest women I have ever known. Not because life was kind to you, but because it wasn’t — and you still found a way to survive. More than that, you found a way to heal, to rebuild, and to become someone who could turn pain into purpose.
Your story is devastating, beautiful, heartbreaking, and inspiring all at once. But more than anything, it is a testament to who you are: resilient, brave, loving, and extraordinary. This is not just a story about survival. It is a story about sacrifice. About motherhood in every form. About protecting others even when you yourself needed saving.
This book is heartbreaking, inspiring, confronting, and beautiful all at once. It is a story of survival, but more than that, it is a story of resilience, love, and what it means to keep fighting when life gives you every reason not to.
I am so proud of you for telling your story. I know how much strength it must have taken to relive so many painful memories, but I also know this book is going to help people. It will make people feel seen. It will make people feel less alone. It will show people that even after unimaginable pain, there can still be healing, hope, and light.
I don’t think I will ever be able to fully thank you for what you gave me. For the home you gave me. For the love you gave me. For the safety you gave me without ever letting me see what it cost you.
You carried pain so I could feel peace.
You held fear so I could feel safe.
You were hurting, and somehow you still chose to be gentle with me.
That kind of love changes a person forever.
Thank you for telling your story so honestly. Thank you for surviving. Thank you for letting people see the truth of what strength really looks like. And thank you — most of all — for everything you were to me when I needed you most.
Thank you for trusting the world with your truth. Thank you for being the woman you are. And thank you for being such an important part of my life. This book is more than just a story — it is proof of your courage, your heart, and the incredible person you have always been.
This book made me cry, made me ache, and made me understand even more deeply just how incredible you are. I will never stop being grateful for you. I will never stop admiring you. And I will never forget what you did for me.
I will always admire you, and I will always be grateful for the love and care you gave me. This book only made me love and respect you even more.
You didn’t just help raise me.
You helped save parts of me too.”
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Contact
For media, interviews, speaking, collaboration, or book-related enquiries:
Angel Harden
Rongoa Angel – Healing Hands
Email: info@rongoaangel.com
Email: info@rongoaangel.com
Forever Me – Here I Stand by Angel Harden
A memoir of survival, healing, and hope.
Copyright © Angel Harden. All rights reserved.
Introducing a new author who packs a punch. 