Do you know your life's purpose?

I think I finally do

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last months analyzing my life.

Why am I here?

What is my mission?

What can I do to give back?

It seems I have more time to devote to my writing now, but is that really “giving back” to the world? Or is it just a silly pastime that gives me pleasure?

I enjoy writing so much I sometimes wonder if it’s simply a selfish endeavor.

I do volunteer at the Nature Coast Gardens a few days a week. A guest wandering through one day thanked me for “keeping the gardens so beautiful for us.” That’s giving back, right?

One of the other volunteers there asked me about my books, and I explained that the majority of them are romances with ghost stories intertwined.

“Why ghosts?” she asked.

Hmm. Interesting question. Why did I decide, a decade or so ago, to write love stories set in haunted places?

My reply came quickly, almost without thought. “Because I believe in the spirit world. And I also believe that love transcends the grave.”

After writing and publishing five novels in my Haunted Romance series, I’m just now articulating the theme? I guess I probably knew it in my heart, all along. But now, as a newly-minted widow, I’m getting a chance to see if I truly believe what I write about.

Does love live beyond physical death?

Yes, it does. My love for my late husband didn’t simply evaporate when he left me behind. It is still strong and true, and I firmly believe we will be together again, someday.

I also believe love connects us through multiple lives. I always believed I had known and loved my husband before this life. It was probably in the middle ages, which might explain my fascination with this time in history. Guess that also explains why I sat down and wrote a three-book series of medieval romances.

Right after my husband passed last July, I vowed I could never again write a romance story. It would be too horribly painful, I believed. Grief can be crippling. I saw it stated somewhere that “grief is love with nowhere to go.” That feels true.

But now I know better. And I’m seeing that my silly little hobby of writing love stories intertwined with ghost tales may have a bigger purpose after all. My belief in love as the strongest element of life needs to be shared.

Why? To give comfort to those who remain here in the physical world when someone they love has moved on to the next realm. My beliefs give me hope that I will be with my soulmate again, in another realm or a future life.

I was wrong when I said I could never write a romance again because it would be too painful. I’m writing again, and it gives me hope. I am more than halfway through my next book in the series. This time my heroine has a psychic power called psychometry. It is the ability to see into the minds of people who are no longer living in our world by touching something they touched.

Why not? There’s so much we don’t understand. And I think everyone could benefit from a little dose of magic, don’t you?

Book Six will be out this spring. The working title is “Pigments.” A sneak peek (maybe even a cover reveal) will be coming soon.

Tell me… does anyone else out there believe love transcends death? Does that notion give you hope? I would love to know.