Tuesdays With The Angels-Angel Stories on YouTube

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In my latest novella, New Angel In Town, I’ve taken most of the angel stories told to me and combined them in a fictional storyline. These encounters feature my own encounters, encounters from family and friends, and some angel encounters from the many who have opened their hearts to me at book fairs.

I treasure each story which inspirationally have added to my belief in heaven and angels.  Contained in my novella with their fictional spin, all of the stories are true and changed each person’s life. To me, I was meant to write novellas, a children’s book, and a memoir to let all who read my work know that our guides and angels are here for us at all times. They may just change us for the better and place hope in our hearts. Wrapped for readers in my blogs and YouTube, I will start with the very first encounter that changed my life,  setting me on a course of creativity, gratitude and knowing  for sure love never dies and we go on.

Tuesdays With The Angels-Angels Butterflies & Little Miracles

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Eleven years ago on my birthday, I flew to California to be with my son. My husband had passed away a few months before. I stayed at a hotel by the freeway and the wall of the freeway was just outside my room. The wall was covered in vines and summer flowers. As I settled in, a myriad of butterflies caught my attention. I’ve always loved butterflies. I sat by the window and began writing about grief, butterflies and angels.

That night, my son took me to dinner on the patio of a lovely restaurant. In the cool of the California evening, I read his card with a butterfly on it. “Mom, You will get your wings and fly again soon. Love Mike.”  It was a meant-to-be moment. Butterflies on the wall and in the card and sentiment. 

In the years that have followed,  I have written more books in the Mystic Bay Series and then a children’s book called, When The Angel Sent Butterflies.

However, months after my book was published, a little miracle happened. My daughter, her husband, son, and new baby girl, sat on the steps of their apartment building in New York City. A butterfly landed on my son-in-law’s finger first and then fluttered to the shoulder of my daughter. Then surprisingly, the butterfly landed on my baby granddaughter’s  shoulder too! They captured each moment with their cell phones.

I believe angels are always around us. Sometimes we  see butterflies at just the right moment to give us the light of hope in our hearts.

In my Mystic Bay Series, my character, Angel Ken, sends calming love on the wings of butterflies. I believe angels send us butterflies  at the very moments we need them like on a birthday card or  miraculously to land on our fingers and shoulders. This to me is heaven’s way to  remind us of God’s love.

& This beautiful saying:

          Just When The Caterpillar Thought It’s Life Was Over It Became A  Butterfly. CoverAngelsButterfliesCMYK

Tuesdays With The Angels-Special Needs Children-Angels Unaware

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My life would change years ago while in high school. It was  during the days when kids with special needs weren’t allowed in public schools. My gym teacher asked me to monitor four girls with special needs because they had swimming lessons at our high school. I was to help them get ready for their lessons. Why was I asked? I was a teenager with low self esteem and an underachiever academically. But the teacher asked me and I obliged. Did my teacher find a way to help me feel good about myself? Did she see something caring in me  I didn’t see? I had a heart for the kids ever since I was little and saw a child bullied outside of the school.

After college I had two thoughts. One was  to pursue acting and the other was teaching kids with special needs. I decided acting wasn’t for me  but I didn’t have a degree in education. But miraculously or shall I say with synchronicity, I was given an opportunity to work with the children again in a private school setting in a church.

I loved my job. I learned by interacting with the children as I had no training. I was blessed with two fantastic assistants who knew more than I did about the diagnoses and behavior. But I learned. As I went  on,  I learned more by getting a masters degree then by raising my own children. I went  back to work when my kids were in school.

Instinctively, I knew the children were my teachers. They were like angels to me. Their love was uncondiditonal. There was never an agenda but mostly kind souls navigating their own lives. Some had supportive families while other did not. I found they brought out a gentle nature in me, a calmness. There was always a  kindred spirit  feeling when I was with them. I knew they were the most important teachers I would ever have.

When sadness came and my daughter passed away, these children with special needs were kind and empathetic . Like my own children, they needed me and I needed them. They were comforting, caring and seemed to have a wisdom about the needs of the emotions of others. 

Years later, my sister encouraged me to write a memoir about my experience teaching them. I realize I am the mother and grandmother I am now because they  taught me about life, loving  the now, forgiveness and finding joy in all  accomplishments as well as the little things. The students embraced learning and loved succeeding. They seemed to know instinctively who were their advocates.

It is with such gratitude toward heaven that their grace glowed around me. The shy girl with self esteem issues changed the day when I first volunteered. I thrived, and had goals for the future. Helping them helped me mature and grow.  For twenty-five years I was blessed to have the privilege of teaching Special Needs Children The Angels on my Shoulder.

 

 

Tuesdays With The Angels-Be The Light

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‘Be The Light‘ is a simple phrase with oh so much meaning. Here I am, a writer for many years now, and with books to share I’ve not had the forethought  to use these very words that mean so much to me.

To me being kind to all and being the light for those you love in as many ways as you can means everything. It’s like my other favorite phrase, ‘Random Acts of Kindness‘. Kindness is a theme in all my books. It is in my thoughts each day if I talk to my husband, children, grandchildren and friends. But it is also  the perfect way to speak to a stranger. A kind word, a nod, a smile are rays of light for someone else’s day. It’s a way to show gratefulness to God and the angels that we get how precious our lives and the lives of others are to humanity.

Being the light in other’s lives brings hope, peace, and joy to the world. But also we must remember to bring light to ourselves. The older I get, the longer I live, I know this to be true.

Years ago, a homeless man ran up to me in New York City as  I walked to my daughter’s apartment. “I need six dollars for medicine,” he said as he tried to keep up with my fast walking. Never closing my handbag, a habit of mine, I reached in and gave him a twenty dollar bill. He said, “Thanks,” and ran on ahead but abruptly turned around and said, “You’re an angel.”  He then ran on and I didn’t question he really needed the medicine. I pictured him going into the drug store to get what he needed. I was pleased with myself.  I knew I was a light for him that day.

But now years later I wonder,  maybe he was an angel, teaching me how showing random kindness is such an intregal part of love. How being the light helps me grow into all I can be. Being The Light is forever in my hopes for a good day. The character, Madam Norma, who is in all my books always says, “Kindness is the first ingredient of love.”

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Tuesdays With The Angels-Message From Above

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Kate, my late daughter, was the sunshine of my life. She passed away years ago but her memory is embedded in my heart. I dream of her upon occasion, yet it one dream she spoke to me.

She  was sitting on the couch with her twin brother and sister. I had been worried that day about whatever problem  had come up. In fact I was ruminating about it. But love has no boundries between heaven and earth. Kate looked up at me and said, “Just live.”

Wasn’t this a voice of reason for me to ponder at just the right moment?  I woke up  realizing that today, the now, is all we ever have. We can look back with regret on many decisions or happenings or we can look forward and believe in today.

I have precious memories of her that no one can take away. She was the sweetest little girl and welcomed her twin brother and sister with love, caring for them calling them, our babies and then, our twins. She lived a life full of love for her family knowing we loved her and she knows that still. Kate is in heaven’s realm with angels by her side. I feel her with me every day. I’ve written ten books with angel themes. My latest, ‘New Angel In Town‘, reflects all the true angel encounters  family, friends, and those I meet at book signings have told me. I treasure her memory and go on. I have people to love and animals to care for and hope for the future. “Just live,” Kate said. It was a beautiful message for everyday from my heavenly daughter.

Tuesdays With The Angels-Messages From Heaven

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My latest novella, New Angel In Town, as in all my ten books, is  filled with messages from heaven. These messages of my own or told to me from family, friends and people I meet at book fairs, keeps me resilient and writing onward. The following recent story is one of my own.

On my late daughter, Kate’s birthday, a while ago heaven sent me a  message. Was it from Kate or the angels who I trust are near me each day? In the house I lived in for twenty one years after she passed away, geese would fly over head each day. I would go outside loving the sound of their calling  to each other. I loved their joy in the way they formed a perfect v. There  was always a straggler, a goose that had to catch up as if  he or she was a child on a schoolyard  catching up to his friends. I would always count the number flying over head. Why? I  wanted them to reach the number seventeen for that was Kate’s birthday date. Once in a while there would be seventeen geese and I would feel they had been sent to me to remember my joy at being her mother.

Recently, on the week of Kate’s birthday,  while looking at the sky in my new backyard, there they were again  very high in the sky. Amazingly, I’ve never seen them above this house I’ve lived in for a few years because there are no lakes near our home. But there they were greeting me high, closer to heaven as they moved towards a lake somewhere. Seventeen of them graced the air in perfect formation. As always there the straggler was catching up to the others.

I receive  so many messages from heaven and the angels.  Nature’s beauty surrounds us. I write about kindness and love, about thwarting bullies and helping others. I know I write with help from above. Maybe my writing can help others see the world as I do. There is profound heavenly strength in love and kindness. These are the foundations to awaken the spirit. Loving and helping others keeps my own humble life moving forward toward joy.  Everyday I  find signs filled with love like me running out of my back door again in total surprise to watch the majesty of geese flying overhead. In my latest novel the eight angels of Mystic Bay fly forming a perfect v as they fly to help a family somewhere in need. 

 

 

Tuesdays With The Angels- New Mystic Bay Series New Angel In Town

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My latest novella, New Angel In Town, is a labor of love as all my books are. However, this one is different from the others in the Mystic Bay Series. This book has a compilation of all the angel stories ever told to me from family members, friends, and people at book fairs. These are true accounts of  real encounters people have experienced in their lifetimes.  I decided to write a  book in the series  bringing all the characters,  townsfolk and the angels living as humans together telling their angel stories. The secret is known to a few but the angels have their own favorite stories of helping those in need in Mystic Bay. These stories told to a filmmaker will  become a film to inspire humanity.

How did writing the Mystic Series start? Thirty years ago, my  treasured first child, Kate tragically passed away.  I was beyond hope yet found heaven had a plan for me. An angel was sent to me  to comfort me. He appeared as a human undexpectedly as a friend took me on a girl’s trip to help my grief. He was at a department store and spoke to us then appeared again the next day walking up to Nancy and me again in a tiny store forty miles away. I can see his face in my mind. It seemed an unlikely and miraculous encounter. He told us he’d see us at the airport. Then Nancy and I turned away for a moment and turned back and he was gone. We looked for him up and down the street but he was nowhere. Believing he is my guardian angel, I started writing stories about angels living as humans in a town where the secret is kept that angels are all around us guiding us, sometimes appearing as humans. 

And so it is an honor to write the stories I’ve been told by friends, family and people I met at book fairs. These are true stories from their hearts, their encounters that changed their own lives. I ask them, ‘Tell me your angel stories’ and people do.

Writing this book was a labor of love and hopefully readers will see the humanity, the soul searching, the honesty and vulnerability many have shared with me. The themes involve child advocacy, friendship, bullying, romance with magical scenes of flying angels and visions of their missions. The storyline weaves it all together in a tapestry of hope. I’m sure that meeting my angel long ago gave me  hope to keep going and to ultimately write angel stories to inspire hearts. Tell me your angel story if you can. This novella is filled with encounters from the hearts of many who confidied in me their precious miraculous stories. I’ve put them into a fictional novella to radiate kindness and love. Angels are everywhere.

Tuesdays With The Angels-Hopes and Dreams

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As a child I never dreamed I could become a writer. I was a shy girl who loved to write little stories and poems and yet this evolved  years later through moments of hope through dreams of a better future.

When my daughter, Kate, passed away years ago I thought I couldn’t go on. But hope sometimes comes in dreams and one dream weeks after Kate’s death changed the course of my life.

A dream,came unexpectedly to read the book, Charlotte’s Web, a children’s book. There would be a message in it. Never having a message like this before during sleep and with hope in my heart, I bought the book. The message at the end of the book was clear. Just as Wilbur the pig would go on without his friend, Charlotte, the spider, I would go on with my life, loving those left for me to care for, my surviving childen, my husband, my friends and students.

When I met a  man I know was an angel months later, I felt compelled to write about angels, grief, loss, forgiveness, over coming bullying and moving forward with kindness in my heart and hope for the future. This culminated in years now of writing stories from the heart. 

Over the years, my writing has evolved with a memoir, Special Needs Children The Angels On My Shoulder,  my children’s book, When The Angel Sent Butterflies, and many heartfelt stories in my Mystic Bay Series.  My tenth book coming this new year, will surround the same themes and angel stories with a new character, an angel in town.

So many hopes and dreams have come true for me. Grief and loss happened but how I’ve handled it is thanks to my belief in angels and God. I believe the ability to write came from above. Some readers feel my books bring hope for a more kind tomorrow. It’s happening all around us now, a change, a love for our fellow man, an awareness, a spiritual awakening of the gratitude for our earth, our lives, and each other. I had my spiritual awakening years ago once upon a dream, a dream which came true. 

Tuesdays With The Angels-If I Were An Angel I’d Whisper, “Kindness Stays”

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Why do I write books about angels? Is it because I think I met an angel once or is it because kindness has stayed with me  even through the darkest times?  I remember all the kindnesses others have bestowed on me, those I know and strangers passing through the moments of my life. Being kind helps my life with an indescribable feeling of love.

When I see the daily hurt others in our world inflict on those less fortunate or troubled, I realize the energy of  hate and bullying never can match the gift of life and ability to love we’ve been given. Why doesn’t everyone see this? When I write myMystic Bay novels  kindness is always a main theme in the fictional town of Mystic Bay.

If  I were an angel, I would whisper all  to remember kindness is a gift that can be shared. It is a holy thing sent to us from above. Having a heart full of kindness for others with an avenue to forgive has seen me through the losses in my life, the hard times, the restless nights of solving problems. To be kind brings joy to my life. Kindness stays.

 Madam Norma, the wonderful character in all my books, is based on my dear friend of forty years who passed away at ninety-four. She was always the dearest friend, a surrogate mother to me. She lost both her children and her husband yet she continued to be kind to others, loving her life while creating joy for others. So in my books, I impart a phrase of wisdom that must have come from an angel’s whisper. My character Madam Norma always says, “Kindness is the first ingredient of love.” 

Tuesdays With The Angels-It’s A Wonderful Life & My Very Own Angel

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It was Christmas time a few years ago. I  met a man outside a grocery store. We were putting our carts back in the proper place assigned for them but others had put their carts on the sidewalk or in front of other cars or in handicapped spaces. I remember this man said, “Everybody is acting like a Mr. Potter,” He was referring the film,  It’s A Wonderful Life. I was surprised he mentioned the old film but he and I briefly exchanged our disappointment in others. As we left, I wondered how he knew I had watched the 1946 classic film. Was it a coincidence? Or was he a messenger from above?

The themes in my Mystic Bay Series have  always been inspired by the iconic  Christmas film, It’s A Wonderful Life.  Set during World War II, the theme resonates today as bullies around the globe try to bring us down to our knees. In the film, George Bailey, a kind son, has to take over the family business when his father dies. Now he can’t follow his dreams of seeing the world.  The bully in town, Mr. Potter,   tries to destroy George’s family business and takeover the town. George  becomes despondent and decides the world would be better off without him. Yet, heaven and Clarence, his guardian angel, have a lesson for him. His angel, appearing as an older gentleman, comes from heaven and  shows George what life would be like in the town if he’d never been born. George saved his brother’s life as a child by pulling him from an icy pond. That would have never happened if George had never been born.  At the hands of  Mr. Potter, George’s wife would have never married and    the town would be ruined by Mr. Potter’s cruelty and greed.

The theme resonates with me as I write my soon to be eighth book in the Mystic Bay Series where angels live as humans guiding the townsfolk with love. In the film, George changes his attitude and handles the bully as he realizes his wonderful life. The town comes together to help him thwart the bully with their friendship. 

Long ago, after my daughter died, I met an angel of my own.  My friend, Nancy, took me on a girl’s trip. The distinguished man was standing by the cash register in a department store.  We exhanged pleasantries as  he said he was on business and we explained we were on a girl’s trip. I think now his business  really was showing me that he was my guardian angel.

Surprising us, we encountered him the very next day as he walked up and greeted us in a small gift store miles away. He smiled at the coincidence of us meeting again. He told us we would see him at the airport. We turned away to look at some items a little taken aback at the coincidence that he was there. Then we  looked back to find he had disappeared. His   presence had been surreal and it  comforted me. My fear of flying had escalated since my daughter’s passing. We had met him twice in a twenty-four hour time period. I suddenly wasn’t afraid to fly anymore. Nancy and I decided right then that he must have been an angel sent to comfort me.

This theme is in all my books. My Christmas novel is typical of the love I try to create in my themes. Finding joy with the help of friends and family and helping others is key to having our own wonderful life.  Counting on the fact that our angels are all around guiding us helps me daily. I believe the bully never wins and love is always triumphant. Angels are with us. Was that man at the grocery store parking lot sent from above to remind me of the thought  that we have a wonderful life? Nancy and I still speak of the man angel we met years ago.  That day, he changed my life. I met my very own Clarence. I thank him everyday.