Читать книгу An Angel on My Shoulder - Theresa Cheung, Theresa Cheung - Страница 7

I should have felt on top of the world. OK, we weren’t rich in monetary terms, but we were rich in other ways. I had two beautiful children, a 20-month-old son and a newborn baby girl. I had a loving husband and my writing career was coming together. Not only that, but I had been comforted by the presence of my mother in spirit when things hadn’t gone to plan during my daughter’s birth. The full story is in my first book but, in brief, after years of frustration trying and failing to make contact with the world of spirit, the veil had finally lifted and I’d heard my mother’s voice in both my dreams and my waking life. My psychic development had taken a huge leap forward. I really should have been happy. But I wasn’t. I felt as if the bottom was about to fall out of my world.

Eight years later I sometimes struggle to understand what happened in those lost dark months following my daughter’s birth. Sometimes in the morning when I’m putting on my moisturizer or brushing my teeth I’ll still get a flutter of panic. I’ll remember how for several long black months I stopped using the cream and brushing my teeth. No point. No time. Then I’ll gently put the cream on my cheeks and forehead, feeling comforted by the smooth softness. My tension will ease and any panic will be replaced by a warm glow as I’ll remember how at

one of the lowest and saddest times of my life my guardian angel walked shoulder to shoulder with me every step of the way.

The first baby I ever held in my arms was my own son. I used to tell people I wasn’t very good with babies or ‘not that maternal’, but the truth was I found the responsibility of babies terrifying. I was scared of doing the wrong thing. I didn’t understand what they wanted, I didn’t know why they cried, and when I couldn’t settle them I would panic and blame myself. I made endless trips to the doctor with my son and each time I was told that he was simply tired, hungry or, in other words, perfectly normal. I read stacks of baby manuals, grateful for any advice I could get from people who seemed to know what to do. I loved and hugged my son, but I also felt sorry for him. I wasn’t much of a mother. I’d join play groups and feel that I didn’t belong. The other mothers seemed to know everything and do everything right. Nothing I did or said felt right at all.

I just about kept afloat with one child to care for, but when my daughter came along 20 months later I stumbled and slipped. I lived in flip flops, even when it was cold and rainy. There never seemed to be enough time to put proper shoes on, just as there was never time to wear make-up, phone friends or eat properly. I was constantly run down with mouth ulcers, colds and stomach upsets. I felt beaten by the simplest of things. One day my cash card was swallowed up because I’d keyed in my PIN number incorrectly three times. I remember sobbing uncontrollably on the way back home.

I was painfully conscious of my inability to enjoy my children. I’d watch them wriggling their arms and legs and then I’d look at the clock, wondering how long it would be before they napped. And whenever my daughter cried I felt myself spinning out of control. At those moments my anxiety seemed to burst out of my head and force its way into every organ and muscle in my body. Sweat poured off me, my pulse raced, I struggled to get air into my lungs and my stomach filled, as efficiently as a lavatory cistern, with acid.

Not understanding why I couldn’t soothe my crying baby or make my toddler son laugh like he did when his dad was around gradually chipped away at my confidence until I had no belief at all in my ability as a mother. I felt a complete failure. This went on for about four months after the birth of my daughter until I experienced perhaps the worst weekend of my life. Then I came crashing down like I’d never known before. I felt weak, I felt like nothing. I wanted to walk away from everything. I was convinced my children would be better off without me. It was the most desperate I had ever felt. I just wanted everything to go away. If I’d seen a truck coming towards me I would have had to fight the impulse to jump in front of it.

After limping through the day I fell into bed that night exhausted but wide awake. As I lay there with tears streaming down my cheeks I realized that for the sake of my children I had to seek help.

I fell into a deep, heavy sleep. I started to dream, but it wasn’t like any dream I’d ever had before because I actually knew I was dreaming. It was the weirdest sensation. I couldn’t wake up, but I knew I was in control of my dream. I could create anything I wanted. I could be anything I wanted. My first instinct was to fly. I rose in the air without wings. The sense of freedom was intoxicating. I did some cartwheels in the air and laughed at the tiny people below watching me open-mouthed with amazement. My next instinct was to soar. I flew over London. I flew over the ocean. I flew over Disneyland in Florida. I flew into a firework display. I flew to Africa and Egypt and Alaska. Anywhere in the world I wanted to go my dream took me.

I asked my dream to take me to my guardian angel. Curiously, instead of flying up higher to the stars and space, I started to sink down to Earth. It didn’t feel as though I was falling, it was as if someone was gently putting me down. I found myself in a field with luscious green grass. There were streams everywhere, bubbling with sparkling water. I heard the sound of a celestial choir and then I saw a figure floating over the grass towards me. Eventually it stopped in front of me, hovering at shoulder height. I think it was female, but I wasn’t sure as I couldn’t see the face properly because the light was so blinding. I did see golden curls of hair tumbling over shoulders and I also saw wings. They were dazzling blue and when they beat together I felt my whole body shake.

I tried to fly up towards the figure so I could get a better look at the face, but the nearer I tried to fly, the more distant the angel seemed to become. I tried to talk, but no words came out of my mouth. Then I heard a voice speaking. It’s hard to describe how it sounded, but the sound of a dozen rushing waterfalls springs to mind. The voice told me that words were not necessary because however far away I seemed my heart’s voice could be heard. Then it asked me why I expected motherhood to be easy. There was nothing wrong with things being hard.

Then I felt myself rising higher and higher. I wasn’t trying to fly now, I was just floating. I was floating back home, back into my bedroom, back into my sleep, with the words ‘perfectly imperfect’ echoing through my head.

It must have been about 1 o’clock in the morning when I woke up with a start. I could hear my daughter crying. For a moment I forgot my dream and the weight of sadness still hung heavy on my shoulders, but as I switched my bedside light on with heavy hands and reached for my slippers with aching feet I saw something glistening on the floor beside them. I picked it up. It was a small white feather. Instantly I remembered my dream in vivid, colourful detail. I felt a surge of energy. I went into my daughter’s room and picked her up. Her cries turned to sobs. Then I noticed my son sitting up in his bed looking lost and disorientated. I reached out my hand to him and he came running to me.

I tiptoed downstairs with my children. Ignoring all the advice I’d been given, I put my son’s favourite Thomas the Tank video on. He squealed with delight. Then I sat down on the sofa and started to feed my daughter. She was ravenous. My son nestled under my arm. As I watched little muscles behind my daughter’s ears moving with each swallow and gently stroked my son’s dark hair away from his temple I was swept away by a strange disorientating flood of emotion so strong that if I had been standing up I would have collapsed.

‘So this is what it feels like to bond with your children, ’ I thought to myself, amazed. It was as if a flash of insight from my angel dream had opened my eyes. Just because I was struggling to adjust to motherhood didn’t mean there was anything wrong with me or that I was an unfit mother. It just meant I was learning, growing up again with my children, as every mother before me had done and every mother after me will do. My angel was right. Becoming a mother, like life itself, wasn’t meant to be easy. If everything was easy, how would I ever grow and learn? How would my children ever grow and learn?

About half an hour later my son was asleep and my daughter was babbling quietly to herself. I gently tucked them both back in their beds and went back to mine. As I laid my head down on the pillow, I thanked the angels. For the last few months I’d lost sight of them, but now I could feel them around me again.

Angels. The word lit me up from the inside. It was as though I was hearing it for the first time. There was something tremendous in it, something eternal, something utterly mysterious, yet familiar and important to my life. It was like remembering an incredible secret, one that I had forgotten and shouldn’t have. Angels were the key to not just my life, but to everything.

I couldn’t sleep. I felt captivated, infatuated and bursting with energy. Out of despair I had prayed for help and out of love my guardian angel had spoken to me and given me hope. I grabbed my laptop and started to surf the internet for angel stories. To my surprise it seemed that the whole world was talking about angels. Although I openly write about the psychic world now, at that time I was still establishing myself as an author and most of my books were in the health, education and popular psychology field. For some reason, I felt I had to be low key about my fascination with the world of spirit. I’m ashamed to admit it, but a part of me was embarrassed about my background and my beliefs.

In the years that followed, whenever I had any spare time I would collect angel stories and interviews and other angel information and put it into a file I called Angel Talk. The file grew so large that I had to create another, and then another. However tired or frazzled I was after a busy day, every time I double clicked on my Angel Talk files I got a tingle of excitement. In my mind’s eye I could almost see the stories in book form, but I decided not to approach an editor about a possible book as I would normally have done for the subjects I felt compelled to research in depth. The material was so personal and so astonishing that I knew I had to put my trust in the angels instead and let them decide what should be done with it and when the time was right to present it. In the next few years numerous coincidences and lucid dreams also occurred, as if to remind me of the reality of angels and their very real presence in my life and in the lives of others. So, eight years later, when out of the blue I was asked to write this collection of angel stories by my editor, it felt not only as if the angels were giving me the green light for the project but as if my whole life had been building to this point.