a bus to the station. Nobody was in when I eventually arrived home. For reasons I can’t explain I hadn’t wanted to phone in advance to warn my mum I was leaving. I went into my bedroom to unpack.
A brown envelope fell out of my bag, along with the rest of my college post. I ripped the envelope open and found a tape inside. It was a choral classic collection sung by the choir of King’s College, Cambridge. There was no note or explanation, just the tape. Intrigued, I decided to play it and as soon as the first track began I recognized the song I had heard in my dream. The singing sounded more grounded than the tones I had heard in my dream but the piece was almost the same. It was called ‘Miserere Mei, Deus’. (If you’ve never heard this choral piece you’re missing out on something very special. It’s incredibly inspiring and uplifting.)
I realized then that the angels had sent me this dream to remind me that I had been given a wonderful opportunity to study. I shouldn’t let low self-esteem or fear of failure blow my chances. I repacked my bag and travelled back that same day.
It took a good term or two to find my feet but I stayed strong even when I found my belief in the afterlife seriously challenged by academics and men and women of learning. Eventually, though I began to feel as if I belonged and the next few years of my life were a blur of study and more study – and the odd party, debate, play and drink or two. But I did finish my degree and it helped me land my first job working as an editorial assistant for the Mandala imprint of Unwin Hyman books, now owned by HarperCollins; by happy coincidence the publishers of this book! I was in heaven. My job was to work on books that explored everything that fascinated me: new age, astrology and spirituality. I met a bunch of fascinating authors, attended countless workshops, seminars and lectures and learned a great deal. I nearly didn’t get the job, though, but for yet another heaven-sent coincidence.
When I left university I applied for numerous jobs and didn’t get any of them. Each rejection set me back a great deal. I loved books and knew I wanted to work in the publishing industry but doors didn’t seem to be opening. I’d clam up in interviews; my lack of self-confidence was really working against me. I also wasn’t terribly good at details and failed basic editing assessments. It makes me laugh now as I often spend days speed typing but back then I was truly hopeless; even being asked to type up a basic letter freaked me out.
One Monday afternoon I was travelling home from London after yet another unsuccessful interview. There were big delays on the railways – nothing much has changed, has it! Anyway, my train was cancelled and there wouldn’t be another one for an hour. I wandered around Waterloo station for a while feeling a bit lost. Back in those days stations weren’t such great places to hang out, but I did find a cold bench to sit on.
I was soon joined by a couple of guys with some delicious-smelling fish and chips. I shuffled to the end of the bench, trying to ignore my rumbling stomach, and started reading my newspaper. The guys were quite noisy talkers and I couldn’t help but overhear that they were students at the London College of Publishing and Printing. Like me, it seemed they were in the process of applying for jobs in the publishing industry. One of them was excited about an interview his tutor had fixed him up for next week at Unwin Hyman books. He said the only drawback was that he had to pretend he was into all that psychic stuff but he’d read a few books in the next few days to get clued up. My ears pricked up and I took mental note. I phoned the publisher the next day and asked for application forms. Needless to say I got the job because I didn’t need to pretend I was into that ‘psychic stuff’.
If my train hadn’t been delayed that day I might never have got the job that was perfect for me. Remember, this was back in the eighties and books about the psychic world and jobs working with them were far rarer than they are today. If I’d got any of the other jobs I applied for in publishing it wouldn’t have worked out because the subject matter would not have engrossed me. At the time I took all these coincidences for granted but looking back, I truly feel that I was being guided in the right direction.
It was when I was working as an editorial assistant that I discovered what I really wanted to do with my life. I wanted to write the kind of books I was working on. I loved writing the blurbs on the backs of the books and the authors were always so pleased with what I had done. I enrolled on an evening course in writing and journalism and started to get a steady trickle of small jobs for mind body spirit and healthy living magazines.
Several twists and turns of fate later I ended up living in Dallas, Texas. I wasn’t writing books yet but I had got the process started by working in journalism. I was also very happily married by then with a baby boy complicating my life in a delicious way.
It was while I was living and working in Dallas that a psychic doorway opened – I heard my mother actually speak to me in my dreams. As anyone who has lost a loved one knows, it’s one thing helping other people cope with the loss of a loved one but a whole new ball game when that person is you. I’m 43 years old now. I’ve had my heart and my bones broken and lost close friends, but nothing will ever compare to the pain I felt when my mother died after a year-long battle with colon cancer that spread to her liver.
I was 25 when she died and the pain was deep, wrenching and unbearable. I would have given anything for a sign from her that she was still with me, watching over me, but nothing came. I cursed my lack of ability to see, hear or touch her or make contact in any way. I felt like a failure. My brother tried to ease my suffering by telling me he sensed her presence constantly around us both but that didn’t help much. Why didn’t she make contact with me? Why wouldn’t the angels speak to me?
I got very disillusioned. I questioned my assumptions about the afterlife. I challenged my mum to prove to me that she hadn’t gone but all I got was silence. What I didn’t realize in the years that followed was that she was sending me gifts from the afterlife all the time but I wasn’t ready to see them. My radar was tuned too low and I questioned what I should have instinctively known. My mother was constantly whispering to me. I just wasn’t listening.
For several years after she died I would for no apparent reason tear through my house, desperately trying to find a photograph of her. I was terrified that I had forgotten what she looked like. I needed to remember. Then at night she would visit my dreams. She seemed so real. She walked, talked and laughed. She didn’t speak to me directly but she had all the endearing mannerisms I loved. She also appeared healthy, happy and whole. The last few weeks of her life as she battled cancer she had lost her glow, but in my dreams she was vibrant again.
But dreams weren’t enough for me! I wanted my mother to talk to me, to appear to me, to give me advice like she always used to. I wanted her to show me there was an afterlife. I didn’t recognize their impact on my life at the time but the dreams I had of my mother were a great gift from the afterlife. They were so regular and frequent that they did unconsciously give me the strength I needed to keep moving forward with my life. Dreams, along with coincidences, are perhaps the easiest ways for spirits to communicate with those of us still in the physical world. They are also the form of communication least likely to alarm or cause fear for the dreamer. With my nervous disposition, that’s probably why my mother chose dreams as her first way to keep in touch with me.
It wasn’t until eight years after she had died, when I’d done some growing up and calming down, that my mother actually made contact with me in a night vision. It wasn’t like the dreams I’d had of her before when she didn’t seem to be aware of me. In this dream I wasn’t witnessing her, she was aware of me. She was interacting with me. She was speaking to me. The full story is in the introduction but, to briefly recap, she told me to take the right path and because I followed her advice the following day my life was saved. This dream unlocked a psychic door and a few months later that door was flung wide open when I heard the voice of my mother at the birth of my daughter. This time she wasn’t speaking to me in dreams, she was speaking to me when I was fully conscious. I couldn’t see her but I could feel her and hear her so clearly it was as if she was standing
