Excerpted from "Angel Visions" by Doreen Virtue, Ph.D., published by Hay House, Inc.

I was very close to my grandmother as I grew up. My mother was a single mom, so there were many times that I actually lived with my grandma while she helped my mom. You could definitely call her a stabilizing factor in my life, and she was always there for me.

When I was 19, I moved back to live with her and my grandfather. One night, when I was 21, I had a horrible dream about a snake in my bed. It was so bad that I woke my grandmother up and made her come sit on my bed while I fell back to sleep. The next morning, I found her dead on the couch while reading a book. The event was extremely traumatic, and I was overwhelmed with grief.

While on my grass-stained knees visiting my grandma's grave site, I looked up to the sky and cursed God. I told Him that I wanted my grandma back. The sky I was looking into was slightly cloudy, and my eyes stung painfully from all of the crying I had done.

At that moment, this thing appeared in front of the clouds. It was like a starburst coming out from the center, yet it was gray, almost the same color as the clouds themselves. The starburst moved fast from inside itself and out again. I was certain that my eyes were playing tricks on me.

Once on my feet, an image appeared out of the starburst, and it stole the breath from my chest. The being had long hair and a distinct heavy robe with a cord around the waist. The hands were stretched on the being's sides with the palms facing upward.

I couldn't see a face, yet these majestic wings opened broadly from behind the back of the image I saw. They pointed straight up toward the heavens, and hands from the image were outstretched to its sides. From lack of breathing, I fell to my knees and whispered, "You are real...you are here."

This being had no face, yet it was the most powerful being I have ever seen. It was standing in the middle of the starburst and made me feel as if it had a lot of influence on my life. The wings were huge and pointed; they appeared solid and strong. The image was dressed in a long gown and had long hair parted in the middle. I was afraid, yet amazed at the same time.

Although the being was hard to discern, I knew it was an angel. The wings and the hands made this fact very obvious to me. Now, I whispered, "You are an angel." As the tears spilled from my eyes, I could hardly believe what I saw. The angel acknowledged my presence and nodded its head toward me.

With miraculous speed, the angel's wings snapped back to its sides. They were fast and strong and made a loud "Whoosh!" as they did this. The noise frightened me, but I didn't move an inch. If this angel had been on the ground, it would have been at least seven feel tall, and the wings would have been even more enormous than that.

The situation was so overwhelmingly intense that I finally had to take my eyes off of the clouds. When I looked back, there was only the starburst shape, but no angel. I tried to look harder, but my eyes were so sore from all of my crying. I looked over at the place where my grandma was buried, and it seemed as if the grass on the plot made a shape. Some grass was darker in some places than others. When I looked really hard, I could see the shape of that angel in the grass.

I dropped the silk rose that I had brought for my grandmother onto the image of the angel, knowing that my grandma was in the mystical place that the angel had come from. Completely stunned by what had happened, I walked back to the car and scrawled a picture of the angel on a piece of paper.

I left the cemetery with a strange feeling of calm and peace that I had not experienced since before Grandma's death. I often doodle pictures of that angel when I am feeling stressed or need comfort, and it always cheers me up.