An Angel on My Shoulder - Theresa Cheung

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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.

      A Loving Presence

      I’ve got a bit ahead of myself, so let’s go back to the first year of my daughter’s life. In the months after my vivid angel dream there were, of course, times when I felt overwhelmed. What new mother doesn’t? But whenever I felt unable to cope or out of my depth all I had to do was remember the feeling of warmth and comfort my guardian angel gave to me that night when I was at such a low ebb. Simply remembering that it was OK to make mistakes and that an angel was walking by my side guiding me through the good times and the bad times was usually enough to give me strength. It wasn’t until my daughter’s first birthday, however, that the black and heavy fog of depression cleared away completely.

      I remember waking up that morning with a violent headache. I’m prone to migraines when I get stressed and that day there was so much to do. Although we had only invited a few friends round and were determined to keep things low key, I still felt apprehensive. This was the first time I had invited a gathering of people to our house since our daughter had been born. A part of me wondered if I was really up to it.

      Perhaps I wasn’t. For no reason at all, buying the food and drink, wrapping the presents and tidying the house became insurmountable obstacles in my mind. I stood in the shop agonizing over which birthday cake to buy and when I ran out of wrapping paper I cried as if it were a national disaster. On top of all that, the vacuum cleaner wasn’t working, so the carpet looked dirty, and the central heating had packed up, so the house felt cold and unwelcoming. But if I’m honest with myself, none of these irritations was the real cause of my distress. The greatest pain for me was that my mother wouldn’t be there to celebrate with us. She had always longed for grandchildren but had died before I had got married and had them. She had also died alone.

      Regrets

      Back in my early twenties I was trying to make my way in the world. I had just landed my first proper job as an editorial assistant for a publisher in London and even though it was a fantastic job, my starting pay was terrible. But as I’d grown up in a low-income household, I was used to making a little go a long way. I rented a tiny box room in an overpriced rundown Hackney bedsit right by a station (so it rattled every few minutes) and made the best of it.

      I knew my mum had been ill and constantly fatigued in the last few years, but when she eventually told me she had been diagnosed with bowel cancer, I went into shock and denial. I couldn’t cope with it at all. At first I was angry. I thought about it all from my own point of view. Life was hard enough for me starting out on my own in London and I needed my mum’s support. I wasn’t ready to step into the role of full-time carer yet. I needed the chance to establish my career. And this all felt too grown-up for me.

      I went to my doctor for advice. He put me in touch with a hospice. The hospice staff recognized that in a few months my mum would need care 24/7, so offered her a place. This seemed like the best solution, but my mum was having none of it. She point blank refused to leave her home. She wanted to die on her own terms. I understood and respected her wishes, but it left me in a terrible dilemma. I could ask for leave at work, but with doctors estimating that my mum had anywhere between one to five years to live there was no guarantee that my job would be open when I returned. I also wondered what several years caring full time for my mother at home in a tiny Sussex village would do for my employment prospects in the future. There weren’t any local jobs in publishing; the place I needed to be was London. This sounds incredibly selfish, but I was young, money was tight and survival mode was kicking in.

      I now know that millions of people face the dilemma I faced when loved ones get sick or need round-the-clock care, but back then I felt as if I was the only one. My mum and dad had separated years before and my brother had a new life abroad.

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