Heidi Newfield Recalls Ethereal Visit From Her Late Mom
Whether or not you believe in the supernatural, Heidi Newfield's own ghost story is sure to touch your heart.
The singer's beloved mother passed away in 2004 after suffering from multiple sclerosis for several years. Heidi, who was devastated to lose her mom at such a young age, began her difficult grieving process, feeling such a profound loss that she wasn't sure how she could cope with this tremendous hole in her life.
About a month after her mom passed away, Heidi was sleeping in her house in West Nashville when she was suddenly awakened. "I felt this presence in the room," she tells The Boot, "and I opened up my eyes and shifted my head to make sure I was truly awake. There was sort of this white [aberration] ... you couldn't make out a face. It was sort of like this cloud. I kept blinking my eyes to make sure they weren't playing tricks on me as they'll often do in the night. It was like this presence came around the side of my bed.
"At the time, I worked shows through the entire time after my mom had passed," Heidi continues. "I went to her funeral, of course, but I really worked a lot through all of that. So I sort of held my grief in. I was really mourning her. I held a lot of my pain from her death in, and I wasn't OK with it.
"She came to visit me this one night. This presence came around the side of my bed, and I didn't have any fear. I was not scared, and I remember it was like she was almost lying down next to me. I could almost feel her hand on my arm. In my mind, I was completely overwhelmed with this sense of [her telling me]: 'I'm absolutely fine. I'm OK, Heidi. It's OK to let me go. I'm always here with you.' I just got this overwhelming sense of peace and that everything was OK. From that night forward, I've slept really peacefully ... and you know how back in the day, a mom will lay next to their child and just calm them? It was like she was doing that. She was telling me that she had gone on, it was OK, and I could let her go."
Heidi says she feels like her mother's spirit is with her, especially when she's on stage. "She really nurtured my career and was very supportive of my singing, so sometimes I can look into the lights, and there's this little magical moment when I'm singing a certain song and the band is really clicking, and there's that really great chemistry on stage ... and I'll look out into the lights and it's like my mom is looking at me."
Heidi says specific things trigger wonderful memories of her mom. "I'll hear a certain tone in someone's laughter because my mom had this wonderful, big laugh. I could find her anywhere by her laugh, and sometimes I'll hear this laugh, and I'll turn my head and go, 'Oh my gosh, that sounded just like my mom.'
"I still carry her purse. We made her this leather hand-tooled purse with a big bit -- because we raced horses for a living -- so inside her purse, it still smells like Juicy Fruit gum. She carried everything we could possibly need in her purse!"
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