Winnipeg mom whose kids were kidnapped to Mexico tells all in new book

Emily Cablek knows a little something about hope.

The Winnipeg mother experienced every parent’s worst nightmare when her two children, Dominic and Abby, were abducted by her ex-partner – their father – and taken to Mexico in 2008.

Cablek didn’t see them again for almost four years. Their father, Kevin Maryk, was sent to jail in 2014.

Reunited with her kids for the past six years, Cablek has now written a book, Holding on to Hope, about her experience.

“It was very hard,” she told 680 CJOB Tuesday about working on the book, which was published this fall.

“I ended up remembering a lot of stuff I had buried and sometimes wish I had kept buried, but I think it’s good to face everything too.

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“It was hard, just never knowing,” she said. “I’d go so long without hearing anything, without feeling a connection to the case, to my kids at all.

“You think, ‘Is this going to be my life? Is this the way it’s going to be?'”

While the kidnapping ordeal made national headlines and has been written about at length, Cablek said one of the biggest challenges of writing Holding on to Hope was discussing her own abuse she said she suffered while involved with Maryk.

Coming to terms with that, she said, was what sparked her desire to help other women in abusive relationships.

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“That was the one thing about the book,” she said. “Even though it did focus on the abduction, I wanted to write about everything I’d gone through so that people understood all of it.

“If you’re being abused, no matter what, you have to stand up for yourself, you have to find help, and you have to leave.

“That can seem like the scariest thing in the world, because you’re so used to where you are, you’re so used to hiding it, and you’re so used to telling everyone it’s OK when it’s not.”

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "That can seem like the scariest thing in the world, because you're so used to where you are, you're so used to hiding it, and you're so used to telling everyone it's OK when it's not."

Cablek’s advocacy on behalf of abused women has earned her a spot Dec. 6 at the Manitoba Legislature alongside status of women minister Rochelle Squires for the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.

WATCH: Maryk sentenced for child abduction (2014)