I

had a dream about my mother after she passed away. In this dream, I was transported back to the kitchen in which I grew up. It looked like the same kitchen I was in at 10 years old, but I was my age now—38. The kitchen was vibrant and alive. I could see the blueness of the walls; I remember touching the countertops.

I thought, “Oh, my God. I am here. I am in this kitchen. I can’t believe it!”
It was so solid and so real—more real to me than this reality right now. It was as though someone or something had put me in this kitchen to see what my life was like in a very real way, at that point in time.

I looked towards the stove and my mother was standing there, smiling at me. I walked over and looked at her in disbelief because I knew it was her.
I took her hand, kissed it and said, “I love you so much.” Gratitude and love were pouring out of me.
Her smile was filled with love. “Tell them what I told you,” she said.
“What? What do you mean ‘tell them what I told you’?” I said. “Tell them what I told you when you were growing up.”

When I woke up from the dream, I wrote it down in my journal
and then thought about something that happened between me and my mom when I was boy.

I was about 10 years old and my mother and I were sitting at the kitchen table painting trees. About halfway through, as I looked at our trees, I compared my tree to hers. I felt like my tree looked like a lollipop and her tree looked like a real tree. I got upset and started to leave the table.
“I’m done. I quit!” I said.
“Oh, no, Michael, your tree is beautiful!”
This made me angrier. “No, it’s not! You’re just saying that. You
always say that.”
“Let me show you something, Michael.” She took a little bit of
yellow and put some on my tree. “Do you see that? Do you see that?” “No.”
Then she added a little orange. “Do you see that?”
I started seeing something. “Maybe I do.”
“You go and get some color.”
I got some color and added it to my tree. Then we were both putting
color—orange, yellow, blue, all kinds of colors—in this tree.
When we were done with this tree, as a 10-year-old boy, I thought this was the greatest tree in the world. I still remember the feeling in my heart and the image of this tree with all of its different colors. We put this tree up on the bulletin board and looked at it every day. We talked
about the story of this tree for the rest of my life.
I felt a little clearer when, in my dream, she said, “Tell them what
I told you when you were growing up,” but there was still something missing.
What was it?

Then I remembered a statement my mother said and wrote to me hundreds, maybe thousands, of times throughout my life: You are a gift to the world.
I have never had a person believe in me as much as my mother did. For most of my life, I did not believe it when she said these words to me. I would shrug my shoulders and think, “You’re my mother, and you think that way because you are my mother, but I do not believe it is really true.” I would get angry with her and respond, “What? What are you talking about? Stop saying that, Mom.” Although she said these words to me, I still grew up not believing in myself. I flunked eighth grade and doubted myself and my own ability.
Even after all that self-doubt, my mother would still say that she believed in me and told me that I could do anything I wanted to do. I do not remember any negative words from her to me. I felt a high level of acceptance. No matter what I did or did not do, she would still fully love and accept me. I eventually learned to fully love and accept myself through the way she loved me.
I started thinking, “Maybe, just maybe, I really am a gift to the world!” As I began to accept this statement as true, I had real experiences that supported that belief. Living my life and giving away the unique expression of this gift is like her intention being fulfilled.

Khalil Gibran said, “The song that lies silent in the heart of a mother sings upon the lips of her child.” This book and its messages are about me singing this song. Once I started believing my mother’s words, it has been my mission to share her messages and pass them on to you and to the rest of the world.
We create the experience of our reality through our thoughts, feelings and actions. We may think it’s about attracting things outside of ourselves, but it’s about the story we are telling ourselves about ourselves and about what is actually happening outside of us. These stories—and the words we are saying to ourselves in between our ears—create the way we experience reality.
I am using myself as an example in that journey—from not believing in myself and not believing who I am to the place of knowing that I am a gift to the world. I invite you to join me in this journey and open yourself to experiencing yourself as the gift I know you already are.