Cate Cavanagh and Her Godmother

Today's guest blogger is author Cate Cavanagh. Cate will be talking about the magic of hope found in her new book, Her Godmother.



Her Godmother and the Magic of Hope

by Cate Cavanagh

In Her Godmother Allie's mother and father break up because of her father's alcoholism. While her mother plans for relocation to rural upstate New York, Allie goes to stay with her colorful godmother, Brigid. Allie begins her journey to healing a sad and guilt ridden young girl but she begins to evolve into being a child again with the spiritual wisdom to understand and know what is not within her power but more importantly, what is. When a parent is an alcoholic a child experiences grief over the loss of normalcy in his or her life. Experiences like this steal hope. They steal the spirit and suddenly you are experiencing adult issues with the coping skills of a child. Such is where Allie is when we first meet her.

Everyone reaches crossroads. Allie's crossroad is the disease her father suffers from and the belief that it is somehow her fault that he cannot stop drinking. This belief is common to children of alcoholics as I personally know since my own dad was an alcoholic. This crossroad brings Allie to a a very sad place in her young life. To feel hope again, Allie needs to begin to heal.

Hope is not holding the Divine or yourself to a time frame and Allie's journey toward hope is a series of enchantments during a summer stay with her godmother who sees the magic of hope and belief everyday in everyday things. Through her godmother, Allie learns that faith is a very important component to recovering from being "lost".

What we often lose along our journey into adulthood is the feeling that anything is possible. Allie is losing this youth-entitled feeling before her time and with her godmother's help she begins to feel like a child again entrenched in the wonder of the spiritual healing of the magic in all things around her like a rainbow, a squirrel that taps on the window for peanuts and the mystery of a very fat, big black cat named Sally.

Like so many children, Allie is growing up too quickly as she faces adult problems within her family that affect her deeply. Sometimes adults underestimate the impact adult and family problems have on the children in the family and how they begin to steal the magic of believing. The magic of believing is essential to living life with hope. Without it life becomes a connecting-the-dots string of events that conceal what can be beautiful from us. Children deserve to not experience this. Childhood is supposed to be filled with dreams, fun, hope and believing! When children are able to hold onto these magical feelings, they are actually creating a strong spiritual foundation for a better adulthood. As for the rest of us it would have been so much easier for us if we had not lost that magic along the road from childhood to adulthood to begin with, if we had had a godmother like Allie's. My book, Her Godmother, although about a child and a story written to help children begin to heal from the trauma of an addiction in the family, is also a book adults will enjoy as well for it is a venue of healing for adults whose parents were alcoholics too.

Simply put- do you remember when you were a child eager to wake up the next day to see what the tooth fairy left you? Remember what it felt like wishing on a star? Remember how it felt to believe anything was possible? The way we used to feel is a spiritual way of being for within this feeling is hope is the base of all spirituality. This is a precious gift that Allie is losing. So many of us lose this along the way and as we do we experience doubt, a challenge to hoping and the loss of the belief that life can hold blessings, miracles and magic. I have written numerous articles that help adults recapture hope and belief through loss and grief and truly difficult times but this book is an entertaining way for children to receive the same message and for adults to remember what hope feels like. Her Godmother is a simple handbook to healing and seeing what there is to celebrate about life everyday.

In Her Godmother, Allie learns to connect with the magic all around her and within herself and in discovering this, she begins to heal; she begins to release the problems that are not hers and learns what it is to experience magic all around and the hope it brings with it. She begins to believe again.

To see the book trailer, produced by VALKYRIE PUBLISHING, you can visit my blog, somethingmagicalinourmists.blogspot.com
Please visit my websites quantumspirituality.tripod.com and catecavanagh.tripod.com


The HER GODMOTHER VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR '08 will officially begin on October 1 and ends on October 30. You can visit Cate's tour stops at www.virtualbooktours.wordpress.com in October to find out more about her latest book!

As a special promotion, Pump Up Your Book Promotion is giving away a FREE virtual book tour to a published author with a recent release or a $50 Amazon gift certificate to those not published who comments on our authors' blog stops. More prizes will be announced as they become available. The winner will be announced on our main blog at www.pumpupyourbookpromotion.wordpress.com on October 30!