HALIFAX — Local writer and holistic healer Isabella Rose has a lot on her plate these days, as she works to help people gain connections to the region’s past as well as with healing in the midst of the opioid crisis.
The inspirational book contributor is not only continuing her education in holistic healing, she is also serving as an ambassador for the Plymouth 400 celebration next year.
“They’re such a wonderful organization,” she said of the Plymouth 400 organization. The ambassador program involves a course at Curry College to help visitors gain the best possible experience from the year-long celebration.
She has also become an advocate for overdose awareness since her partner’s death, joining the Moms and Dads of Team Sharing, a support group for parents who have lost children to overdoses, Plymouth County Outreach and East Bridgewater Hope — and she continues writing, with two new books coming out this year that feature her work.
“It’s unfortunate that his relapse cost him his life and his future,” Rose said of her loss. “But I firmly believe there’s a blessing in everything. Sometimes we have to look a little harder for it.”
She had not known her late partner during his addiction to heroin, and did not realize, at the time, how much a part of his recovery she had been before his relapse following a serious car accident.
The MDTS has supported Mass. Attorney General Maura Healy in her case against Perdue Pharma and the Sackler family.
“There is hope,” she said of the work the three groups are doing to combat opioid abuse. “I want to help everybody heal and live life to their fullest potential.”
Rose has since earned a bachelor’s degree in holistic health science and is pursuing a master’s degree in natural medicine with an eye toward pursuing a doctorate in opioid recovery.
She has contributed to another in the “365” book series — similar in format to the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” series — which includes the work of devotional writers. Her latest participation is in “365 Soulful Messages,” as well as with the upcoming “Calling Earth Angels and Healers.”
“Soulful Messages” is the fifth, and final, volume in the best-selling “365” inspirational series. A reader of that series, who had attended one of Rose’s workshops recommended her to “Earth Angels” co-author Geri Magee, Ph.D., who invited her to “write about my journey as an earth angel and healer.”
She said she was aware of her gift as a child, but as she grew older she “started to forget who I was” through life experiences.
“I’m just rediscovering who I am, and I share [in the book] about the car accident and the divine intervention,” she said.
Rose’s car accident in December 2017, which caused a collapsed aorta that was not immediately diagnosed, was one of the transformative events in her life, which have helped her follow her urge to write.
Her partner had saved her life in the crash, Rose said.
“It’s by the grace of God and the bravery of my late significant other, who physically saved me from the car that day, that I’m here,” she said. Two months later, he had died from an unrelated incident and her world “Completely came crashing down around me.”
She wrote about him in one of her essays.
“There is not a day that goes by that I don’t thank him for loving me and loving me enough to want to risk his life to get me out of that vehicle,” she says now. “He’ll always be a part of me and my story.”
Her work has been featured in three devotional books from Goodness Abounds, an independent publishing house based in Oregon publishes collaborative books focused on the soul and life-changing moments. She also writes with the Women Unleashed program online and teaches warrior goddess training workshops geared toward women’s empowerment, although some men attend, and focuses on self-care.
Rose is holding a book signing from noon to 2 p.m., Sunday, Dec. 15 at Storybook Cove’s new location, behind Delaney’s Columbia Car Care Center on Washington Street in Hanover as the Hanover Mall closes it’s current facility. And another with two other “Soulful Moments” contributors at Tatnuck Bookseller in Westborough Dec. 8.
She also will cohost on the Angelic Realms Radio Show [mariagmaas.com/angelicrealmsradio] and the podcast series How to Connect with Angels [theglitchmovie.com/about-our-podcast].