My Mother Smiled Down from Heaven Today

About the Book

My Mother Smiled Down from Heaven Today is a wonderful collection of faith inspired poetry written by Terressa Kennedy's mother. Even at a young age Terressa had noticed how talented and strong her mother was. Indeed being a single parent she had to strive hard in order to raise her children. But despite it all she still had great faith and persisted in her love for the written word. Unfortunately, her mother would never see her writings in print. On April 3, 2003, Terressa's mother lost her three year battle to inflammatory breast cancer, but not before passing these treasures on to the one person who cared for her throughout it all, her daughter.

About the Author

My name is Terressa Kennedy and I live in Seabrook, Texas. I grew up in Richmond, Virginia and lived in Virginia most of my life until 2005. I was raised by a single mother who struggled for many years as she tried to put a roof over the heads of her two children. Although we had some difficult times, I never saw my mother give up or lose sight of what was important to her… her faith in God and providing for her children. I realized at an early age while sitting next to my mother in church one day just how talented she was. I would often see her taking notes during the sermons, so I didn’t think anything about it one way or another, but one day I noticed that she didn’t have any scriptures written next to her notes and that all her notes were going down just one side of the paper as opposed to across the page as she usually did them, so I looked to see what she was writing. Later, after the service was over, I asked her what she had been writing and she showed me not only that sheet of paper, but others like it as well. She had been writing poems according to the messages the pastor had been giving in his sermons. She had a whole collection of them that she had done. The one that I saw that I have chosen to use as the book’s title is “My Mother Smiled Down From Heaven Today”, which was written during the Mother’s Day service, and was dedicated to her mother. My mother tried getting her collection published several times during her lifetime, but was unsuccessful at doing so. In 2000, she was diagnosed with Stage 3 Inflammatory Breast Cancer and on April 3, 2003 she passed away. Before going to the hospital the final time before her passing, she had a conversation with me in her bedroom at home. She explained to me about how she appreciated that I had cared for her throughout it all and that she was sorry for anything wrong she had done over the years. She also told me at that time that anything she had, which wasn’t much, was mine to do with as I saw fit, but she especially wanted me to have her writings and her artwork, and that she hoped I would be able to do something with them to make her proud. A short time after her passing, my VA benefits had gone through from where I had enlisted back in 1992, so at that time I was in no hurry to try and publish anything, as it had only been a few months since she had died. Finally, in 2007, I found a publisher online and submitted the poetry to them for consideration. They gladly accepted, however, they did not handle the promotional aspect properly, and it was left up to me to figure it out for myself. Basically, once again, the collection was put on the back burner so to speak until now.