After spending her entire childhood trying to get her mother to show her love, April Knight, 71, finally decided to forgive her and let her go.

“My mother was an extremely cold woman and never had a kind word to say to anyone,” Knight said. “She never wanted a child and resented me. I realized one day that I needed to stop trying to get love from someone who didn’t have love to give and I felt more freedom in that moment than I’d ever felt before.”

Knight shares this story titled “I Can’t Give You What I Don’t Have” in the latest novel from the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, “The Power of Forgiveness.” The book is full of short stories about peoples’ personal experiences with forgiveness.

“This is a wonderful book about how you can get yourself to forgive the unforgivable and move forward in your life,” Knight said. “Some people don’t change; they are mean and they will stay mean and if we keep going back there and getting hurt, it’s time for us to let them go.”

Knight’s stories have been featured in several Chicken Soup series, including “Chicken Soup for the Single’s Soul.”

“One of my favorite stories Chicken Soup has published was about being single and dating at my age,” Knight said. “I’ve been a widow for 20 years and it’s tough out there.”

In the story, Knight writes about joining an online dating program and after signing up, the program told her there were 5,000 single men in her age group available in her city.

“I was really excited because that was such a large number and then a message appeared on my screen telling me that I was incompatible with all of them,” she said, laughing. “I thought to myself, ‘oh boy, I’ve just been rejected by 5,000 men.'”

Knight has had more than 50 books published and has three more coming out this year. One of her latest books is inspired by her story about being single in the Chicken Soup series. She will write about her dating experiences at an older age and plans on titling it, “If I fall in love at my age, will I break my hip?”

Knight mainly writes mystery and romance novels.

“I think I try to write what life should be not always what it is,” she said. “I like to get lost in my stories and I like them to give people hope.”

Knight considers herself a “hopeless romantic.” She collects ink wells, love letters and valentines from the 1800s.

“People use to write such beautiful lovely things,” Knight said. “We’ve lost that a bit over the years with social media and email.”

Knight uses what she collects as inspiration for her stories. She writes between six to eight hours every day.

“If I don’t write I feel sort of lost,” she said. “I’m always thinking of things to write in my head. One day I was at the grocery store and an idea for a plot came into my head. I didn’t have a pad with me, so I wrote down the plot on a Cheerio box, which I then had to buy.”

Knight said writing always came easy to her, but not everyone believed in her dream to be an author.

“When I was nine years old a school teacher asked kids what be when grow up and I said I want to be a writer, but she told me that was impossible because I was a D student,” she said. “But I really felt I would write books someday.”

Knight sold her first story to a magazine when she was 13.

“I was so thrilled to be an officially published, paid writer,” she said. “It was exciting on another level too because this proved I could do it.”

Knight wrote stories for magazines for several years before she got married and moved to Oklahoma to live on a goat farm. She had four kids, but still hadn’t lost her love of writing.

“I decided to write a book about my life and I remember I put it in a Pampers diapers box because that’s all I had and I mailed to a publisher,” she said. “Three weeks later I got a contract for it and that book became a bestseller and put my kids through a university.”

Knight encourages anyone that has an interest in writing to give it a try, no matter their educational background.

“I didn’t go to a university and I didn’t take a writing class,” she said. “Anyone can write if you have a story to tell.”

Knight recommends writing as if you’re talking to a friend and to not be self-conscious about your work.

“Some of the best books in the world have never been published because it’s sitting in someones desk,” she said. “Over the years I have had hundreds of rejections and that is normal. You can’t let that discourage you if you want to write.”

Knight settled in Federal Way six years ago after her son moved to Seattle. She has lived in many different places including Australia, Hawaii and Alaska.

“I wander a lot, my heart and feet are seldom in one place for too long,” she said. “I’m a tumbleweed.”