Chapter 28
by Kathi Robbins
I was raised Catholic but never agreed with everything I was taught in parochial school. I struggled with what my beliefs were for many, many years and eventually gave up and considered myself an atheist. Then I started reading books about psychic mediums and the afterlife and everything I was reading started to make sense to me. It was as if everything I had ever thought or believed was written on the pages I was reading. That is when I found my spirituality. A large part of that was my strong belief in the afterlife and in the people who were able to communicate with souls who had crossed over. Roland is one of them.
I first met Roland a year or so after my father passed away in 2000. I was blessed to have a private reading with him and received many personal messages from my father that I needed to hear. The next time I was able to spend time with Roland was three years later. He hosted a two-day seminar on the weekend after the tragic Station nightclub fire that took so many young lives in West Warwick, Rhode Island, on February 20, 2003. It was an amazing experience that further strengthened my belief in the afterlife and spiritual communications.
I didn’t have the opportunity to see Roland again until October 1, 2017, when I went to his Validating the Afterlife event. It was there that I received two of his amazing Purple Papers. At that time, my life had crashed to the lowest point I had ever been at. I needed Roland and his gift desperately and I came to the event with fear of what would I do if I did not get a message. So much was riding on this day, and although I believe in the afterlife and I fully believe in Roland’s gifts, I was terrified of what was going to come.
In the prior two years before this event, my poodle Izzy—my baby girl—had died in my arms. Three weeks later, my best friend passed away from scleroderma at a young age. Four months later, I sat and held my father-in-law’s hand while he passed away from Alzheimer’s disease at his home on hospice care. A month later my mother was diagnosed with non-small cell lung carcinoma. She was beginning radiation and chemotherapy and was given a prognosis of another year to two years. The treatment was getting more difficult for her to cope with, so I drove down to Florida from Connecticut with my new baby Chloe, a Morkie, who was less than a year old at the time, so that I could help my mom get through her debilitating treatments.
The doctors had told my mom that with treatment, they could “buy” her another year. My mom decided to do it, but warned that if the cancer came back, which was likely, she would not repeat treatment. I told her I didn’t blame her and that would have been my decision as well. My mom was undergoing radiation and chemotherapy simultaneously. She completed her radiation but became very ill from the chemotherapy treatment. I was there to care for her, but after two months, she ended up in the hospital. She passed away unexpectedly a week and a half later.
The whole experience of caring for my mother and being with her when she passed away was very bittersweet. We had not had a very good relationship for many years. When she became ill, I offered to care for her mainly because I had a more flexible schedule than my siblings did. I was on disability, so I could be with her as long as she needed me. But beyond that, I had decided that I needed to go to her because it’s what I needed to do. I did not want to have any regrets when she was gone. It wasn’t that I felt obligated to help her; rather, it was what I needed to do for me. I say that the experience was bittersweet because I wanted to make new memories with my mom to replace some of the negative memories I had. We did just that! Although it was never said, I could tell my mom had regrets for some of the things that happened between us in the past.
We put all that aside and we truly enjoyed each other’s company during the short time we had together, and I was able to see a side of her that she would not show to anyone before.
After getting through the services and cleaning out her house after she passed, Chloe and I headed back to Connecticut. Two weeks after I returned, I had to put another dog, Louie, to sleep. He was going to be sixteen years old and his body was just giving out on him. Shortly after that, my godfather passed away. The amount of loss that I had suffered in two years was just astronomical. For the next eight months, I just existed—barely.
I am on disability for fibromyalgia and major depression. My depression had gotten so bad that I didn’t know what to do to help myself anymore. I finally went to a new doctor and went through a new treatment called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a noninvasive procedure that uses magnetic fields to stimulate nerve cells in the brain to improve symptoms of depression. It was a seven-week treatment, and I wasn’t seeing the positive results as much as I had hoped.
It was around that time that I signed up to go to another one of Roland’s events. I really needed to receive some messages from my mother. I had run out of the money from my inheritance and was very upset with myself because that was supposed to be money to help get me through the rest of my life, but I had to use it for basic living expenses. I received another piece of devastating news and I was at my low point. I bottomed out and I just didn’t know what to do anymore. So I truly felt like my life was riding on any message I could receive from Roland that day. Not too much pressure on him!
For a week before the event, I kept talking to my mom and asking her to please come and give me a message. I just kept apologizing to her for spending the money and begged her to forgive me.
I arrived at the event an hour early and got a front row seat! When Roland came out, he immediately started to give messages to a woman who was sitting next to me. Right after speaking to her, he came to me with a Purple Paper he had written that morning. It said, “Tell my daughter that her life is going to get better. I know the last year has been filled with difficult obstacles. You deserve much more. You deserve happiness. I’m not here to talk about me. I’m here (angels too). We’re here to help you. Look for the dragonfly.”
Roland had drawn a purple dragonfly on the page. I just broke down and sobbed. I was wearing a purple dragonfly necklace because ever since my dad had passed away, he always comes to me in the form of a dragonfly. I actually cried harder when he said that she said she was not there to talk about herself. My mother was a bit of a narcissist and one of our issues was that she would put the spotlight on herself even when I needed it on me, so that part of the message was so important to me.
Roland came and put his hand on my shoulder to comfort me and I could feel my mother’s presence so strongly. He told me that my mom said that it was time for change in my life and that I would feel alive again. She then said, “Don’t let anyone get the best of you anymore. Don’t let anyone get the best of you.” He also told me that my mother was pushing me through these very difficult times so that I could have my own life. She said it’s the first time I will ever have my own life because I have spent my whole life taking care of other people. He stopped for a moment and just stared as if he were listening and then he said, “You are not broken; there is nothing broken in you.” That was something I was continuously asking my mother as I spoke out loud to her. I would always ask her, “What is wrong with me?”
As Roland went on, he picked up his pile of Purple Papers and began reading some. At one point, he just said, “Here is one from Shirley, who was in pain.” I didn’t think it could be possible, but at the break I went up to the desk where his papers were and asked the woman who was sitting there with Roland if she could find the paper about Shirley. She did. I read it and told her I think it was from my dad, Shirley. When my dad was born, Shirley was a boy’s name. It wasn’t until Shirley Temple came along that it became a girl’s name. After I explained this to the woman who was holding the papers, she called Roland over to the table and had me explain to him. Although Roland had initially referred to Shirley as “her” because of the name he heard, he knew it was my dad after we spoke.
This Purple Paper was dated September 8, 2017, and it said, “Shirley started with a little pain in her back (lower). I never did much about it. In late December, my pain was much harder to handle. I did have cancer everywhere. All of the correct/right/perfect decisions were made.” My dad had back pain for almost a year. He finally went to a hospital and was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, cancer of the bone marrow. He lived for four years but couldn’t do a whole lot. After four years, the medication stopped working, and within a month he passed away.
The chances of getting one Purple Paper was certainly not a given, but to get two Purple Papers was really just incredible! It was what I so desperately needed. I had always believed in the afterlife and that our loved ones could communicate with us when they were gone, but my depression had gotten to such an all-time low that I just didn’t know what I believed anymore. I truly felt like there was no life left for me. Although I have had suicidal thoughts for many years, I always believed that if someone commits suicide, they would have to immediately reincarnate and come back and live this life again and I just didn’t want to do that! So I would pray to my dad to just take me, to do something so that I would die and be with him. Now that my mom was with him, I would pray to both of them to take me.
Since that day I found the strength and courage, because of those messages and because of the support of my dearest friends, to make a major life decision that was very difficult to do and came with many repercussions. I was moving to a new place and there were a lot of unknowns and I was terrified—me, who at one time in my life was so independent, was now scared of change. With the incredible losses over the last two years, and having already lost myself, I just didn’t think there was a chance to have any kind of a productive life again. But here I am, on my own and actually believing that I will be able to build my life again. It’s like everything collided all at once to save my soul—Roland, my angels, my mom, my dad, my friends—they all came together at just the right moment, and for that I am blessed and grateful.