Wow!!  What an absolute honour to have Hannah on Heaven's Angels.  I first 'met' Hannah when I opened the pages of a book called 'Hannah's Gift'.  The book was written by her Mommy ~ Maria Housden ~ telling the story of brave little Hannah and her battle against cancer.  Hannah's Gift is more than just the story of her life and death ~ it is a lesson taught by Hannah.

I read the whole book the day I bought it.  I had to.  I simply couldn't put it down.  There were moments where I smiled as I imagined Hannah ~ twirling in her red shoes and there were many moments where I cried.

If you have not yet had the privilege of reading Hannah's Gift then PLEASE get your copy by clicking HERE.

Maria says: When my daughter Hannah was diagnosed with cancer, one month before her third birthday, everything I had believed about myself and my life was called into question. For years I had been measuring my worth by being involved, important, and indispensable to the people in my life and in my community, saying "yes" to things not only because I wanted to be helpful, but because I wanted to be looked up to, admired, and loved. I had poured myself into maintaining an illusion of perfection in every aspect of my life and had lost track of what really mattered to me. Hannah's diagnosis catapulted me into a new way of being; in the face of the fiercest, most unrelenting truth, I began to look for new answers.

Since Hannah's death, a stillness that she opened in me has become the foundation for a new life; a life that I sense had been living in me all along. Although a part of me will always be afraid of getting hurt, making mistakes, or not being loved, I no longer let my fears hold me back. I now know that there is a death more painful than the one that took Hannah's body from this world; a soul suffocated by fear leaves too many joys unlived

 Hannah is with me, like breath. She inhabits several places in my heart. In one, she is still three years old, skipping along beside me in her red shoes. In another, I celebrate the fact that she's almost twelve years old. Mostly though, Hannah has become a part of who I am, an inescapable integrity that is ever-present in my life.

I light candles to remember her. I talk to her in the car, and smile when memories of her slip through my mind. Our family celebrates her birthday each year with a cake, ice cream and candles. Margaret and Madelaine, her younger sisters, include Hannah in pictures they draw of our family. Will speaks to her before he goes to sleep, and Claude has raised money for children's cancer research in Hannah's name.

There is a magnolia tree that was planted in front of our church a year after Hannah's death in memory of Hannah. Even today, people stop by to leave small tokens of remembrance: a bead necklace, colorful pinwheel, tiny angel ornaments.

It is deeply comforting to me that Hannah is still a presence in so many people's lives.

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