Lori Penner
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Winnipeg Sun
In the days following her disappearance on Nov. 30, 1984, and the devastating discovery of her body seven weeks later, the couple clung to the only concept that made sense in the chaos: Forgiveness.
Now, nearly 40 years later, Derksen has written Impossible: Forgiveness to the Power of Five, a book that finally gives shape and structure to the choice they made in the darkest days of their lives.
“It’s essentially how I found a way to organize forgiveness,” she says. “I had a real tough time all my life trying to figure it out. I want to give the world something that I needed at the time. We were so confused when we used the word forgiveness.”
That confusion began the night they returned from identifying Candice’s body. The house was full of friends offering comfort, but it was a stranger who showed up later who left the most lasting impression — a man who had also lost a child to murder. “We welcomed him in, and for the next two hours, he told us what to expect,” she recalls. “He told us how he’d lost everything — his ability to concentrate, to work, his family relationships, even the memory of his daughter. He was traumatized.”
Later that night, they were unable to sleep, or even climb into bed. “It’s common with parents of murdered children—they can’t sleep that first night. There was a presence in the room, and a decision had to be made if our lives were even going to resemble anything normal going forward,” Derksen says. “The word forgiveness came into our minds. We didn’t really know what that would look like in this situation, but we said we will forgive, and the presence on the bed left.”
They spoke about it the next morning. They didn’t know how to forgive — but they knew they had to try. The next day, during a press conference, the word emerged again. “We said we had chosen to forgive.”
That statement would go on to define their story. “That comment went viral. There were a lot of misconceptions about our use of that word,” she says. “And so, then we had to defend it, when we didn’t really understand how it would work ourselves.”
Over the years, forgiveness became both their anchor and their question mark. Wilma explored it in her writing, her speaking, and her life. “We went to it, and we were constantly talking about it. I wrote five books on it, talked about it, explored it with people and acted on it as best we could.”
But something was missing.
“I had two audiences — the spiritual or religious, and the secular. Most of them believed in forgiveness, while others had trouble with it or didn’t believe in it at all. I couldn’t organize it in a way that worked for both.”
That changed when Derksen attended a meditation circle and was introduced to the Indigenous concept of the medicine wheel. The elder leading the session explained that the human experience could be divided into four parts: body, heart, mind, and spirit.
“He asked, ‘Where do you live?’ And that exercise was absolutely brilliant,” she recalls. “Even though we live in all four parts, one tends to dominate and shapes who we are. It became a simple way to organize life and the inner self.”
She added a fifth component — the collective — representing external forces like justice systems, communities, and support networks that shape our experience of forgiveness. In that moment, a new paradigm was born.
“I finally had an organization. A spiritual one, a secular one. One that could be understood by both worlds.”
Each sphere, she explains, responds to forgiveness in its own way. The body is where trauma, fear, and panic settle. The mind struggles with chaos, searching for language and meaning. The heart bears the brunt of broken trust and blame. The spirit seeks connection with something greater — what some might call God, others a higher power. And the collective represents the systems we turn to for justice, fairness, and community validation.
“I used my story to illustrate these five parts of the human experience. And wow, was it cathartic,” she says. “I realized I had done a lot of the forgiveness work already. This is kind of my legacy book.”
She emphasizes that forgiveness is not a one-time act but a deliberate, ongoing process.
“Each time we felt fear, anger, self-blame — even resentment toward the justice system or God — we would intentionally choose a different way. That is forgiveness.”
Importantly, Derksen doesn’t see her book as an inspirational tool designed to push others into forgiving.
“It’s not to get people to forgive,” she says. “It’s to share. To explain it.”
That nuance matters.
“I resented anyone who said, ‘Just forgive,’ as if it were that easy,” she adds. Forgiveness, she says, isn’t something you impose on others. It’s something you live through.
Reflecting on the long road that brought her here, she admits her understanding has evolved, but her commitment remained constant.
“We kept saying, ‘We’re going to forgive.’ That was our way of doing it. But this book is more about order — about the organization of it.”
The process, she now sees, is a lot like marriage.
“You go public, you commit to each other. Then you have to learn how to do it,” she says with a small smile. “That’s what this was. My whole story was kind of a platform. And now, it’s given me huge satisfaction that I can finally say: This is it. This is how I can explain it.”
Derksen doesn’t claim to have all the answers. But through decades of pain, reflection, and deep soul-searching, she’s found a way to give shape to something once intangible.
In sharing her story and this framework, she offers a compassionate guide for those navigating their own journeys toward forgiveness.
