Freedom: In a World Where There is None

By Stella Stickland

Whilst the purpose of this book is to discuss the dangers of the foods on the supermarket shelves, it is also autobiographical. The author has based it upon a period of her own life and the trials and tribulations she encountered. It includes spiritual matters, women’s issues, social problems, politics, self-help, psychology, food intolerances, and family matters.

One day she heard a man’s voice speak to her. She knew instantly it was God’s voice and He proceeded to tell her that she was going to be made into a very strong person where she would be able to travel around freely on her own (she had been slightly agoraphobic for years) to enable her to do the work she had come to do.

Stella has been divorced, remarried, and has had sons and stepsons. She has in the past owned and run a property development company. She is a practising spiritual healer, counsellor, food allergy and intolerance advisor, and life coach.

Because of her having to learn all about food she has since helped a lot of people with all types of illnesses both physical and emotional, by changing their diets, and it brings enormous satisfaction to see how the advice has helped them get their health back and lead full lives again.

The book also discusses freedom and the lack of it in relation to social and political issues.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398477940

Stella Stickland

Stella was born in Worthing in 1946. She married in 1965 and had two sons. The family moved to Sedlescombe in East Sussex in 1975, where she became very interested in self-sufficiency i.e. growing fruit and vegetables, she also had a cow for the meat and sheep for the wool. Also passionate about cookery and crafts especially sewing. Since then she doesn’t eat any red meat. She was divorced in 1981 and had to make an income for herself and her young sons. A chance remark from a friend led her to buy a five-floored Grade 2 listed house to convert into flats which she did and then created a property development company to buy and convert four-, five-, six-floored buildings into flats/apartments. She married again in 1988 and has two stepsons. Mike and she have many grandchildren and a few great grandchildren. Stella became ill in her sixties with colitis, as a result, she has made a study of the effects of food on the body, and the illnesses food can cause, especially from processed food. By being selective with her diet she nursed her body back to health without any drugs. She has given food advice to many people, with some spectacular successes. She is a practising spiritual healer, counsellor, and published author, and for many years she ran a small healing centre in Sussex. For many years she was a member of White Lodge, the Centre of New Directions, a worldwide healing college. Was for a time chair of Rye and District Labour Party. Was a candidate in two elections. From 1988 was a Member of the Federation of Master Builders. 1998 – The Open University: Certificate in Health & Social Care. HSc (Open).

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About the Author

Stella was born in Worthing in 1946. She married in 1965 and had two sons. The family moved to Sedlescombe in East Sussex in 1975, where she became very interested in self-sufficiency i.e. growing fruit and vegetables, she also had a cow for the meat and sheep for the wool. Also passionate about cookery and crafts especially sewing. Since then she doesn’t eat any red meat.

She was divorced in 1981 and had to make an income for herself and her young sons. A chance remark from a friend led her to buy a five-floored Grade 2 listed house to convert into flats which she did and then created a property development company to buy and convert four-, five-, six-floored buildings into flats/apartments. She married again in 1988 and has two stepsons. Mike and she have many grandchildren and a few great grandchildren. Stella became ill in her sixties with colitis, as a result, she has made a study of the effects of food on the body, and the illnesses food can cause, especially from processed food. By being selective with her diet she nursed her body back to health without any drugs. She has given food advice to many people, with some spectacular successes. She is a practising spiritual healer, counsellor, and published author, and for many years she ran a small healing centre in Sussex.

For many years she was a member of White Lodge, the Centre of New Directions, a worldwide healing college.

Was for a time chair of Rye and District Labour Party. Was a candidate in two elections.

From 1988 was a Member of the Federation of Master Builders.

1998 – The Open University: Certificate in Health & Social Care. HSc (Open).

To find more about the author, visit www.stellastickland.co.uk

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my mum, Joan, who was always into alternative medicine years before it became popular, she was a real trail blazer. To my dad, Clarence, who was a builder and was responsible for my love of building sites and builders’ merchants, and later on, all aspects of the building industry, leading me to restore, renovate and convert Victorian buildings into apartments. To my husband, Mike, who has always been so kind so loving and my rock, who taught me how to be an IT literate. To my son, Julian, for being so loyal, so kind, always listening to me and helping me when the chips were down and making me laugh, even if I didn’t understand the jokes! To my son, Jeremy, whose love of the natural world and gardening led him to design and build me a beautiful garden which brought me enormous joy. To our adopted daughter, Rachael, who taught me so much about how kids can become irreparably damaged by not having loving parents. To Nick Sofroniou, my alternative medicine doctor, who helped me when I had colitis by highlighting my allergies and food intolerances. He was also a brilliant spiritual teacher. To our friend Greg, who stayed with us for several years, and provided support to us in many ways. To my friend, Lizzie, whose ear I have bent over hundreds of hours, and to my friend Anne for being a good sounding board over numerous cups of coffee and delicious slices of cake.

Copyright Information ©

Stella Stickland 2023

The right of Stella Stickland to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398477933 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398477940 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Caveat

Dear Reader

It was never my intention to be a writer, so it was somewhat of a surprise to discover that my destiny was to write this book Freedom. I am however a very spiritual person and my reasons for writing this book were because I was able to have numerous conversations with God. I am the messenger. And you know what they say, ‘Don’t shoot the messenger’. I have woven God’s messages about the dangerous food so readily available on supermarket shelves, which is making so many people ill, into a story which contains a lot of political and social comment. I have expressed my views quite strongly in places, which some people might not like, but it is never my intention to offend. Please enjoy reading my book. Eat well and live longer.

My personal walk to freedom in a world that is far from free!

by

Stella Stickland

Freedom

Show me a world where all are free,

Freedom for you and freedom for me.

To walk along side by side,

Somewhere to sleep, somewhere to hide.

The sun shines for you just as for me,

If only everyone could see,

The world I know of love and light.

Let’s keep praying and maybe they might.

Twin Towers

The voice in my head told me to cancel our holiday booked to the United States of America from the 10th to the 25th of September 2001. The voice told me in the spring that something terrible was going to happen on the east coast of America in September that year and that I was not to go there! Thank goodness for the warning; I had no idea of the magnitude of the impending disaster. We were due to be in Washington the day The Pentagon was hit, and New York the day after 9/11. I believe it was God’s voice!

Introduction

Many years ago, before I met my present husband, Mike, my eldest son, Julian, who was sixteen at the time, asked me if I would make an appointment for him to see a hypnotist as he was going through a difficult time and he thought that maybe it would help him. I was not very keen on the idea, but he was adamant it was what he wanted to do, so I set about trying to find one from the local newspaper’s alternative medicine section. Fortunately, I managed to find a hypnotist who lived quite near to us at that time, and I duly made an appointment with him. Whilst Julian was in the consulting room, I sat with his wife in their sitting room with my left hand casually draped over the back of their sofa. We were chatting away one minute, and then the next minute, she suddenly rushed over to me, picked up my hand, and quite hysterically told me that she had never seen a hand like mine ever in her life! I hadn’t realised that she was a palmist clairvoyant, why would I? She kept on repeating Who are you? She made me feel quite nervous. I told her repeatedly who I was, saying my name and that I was a divorced woman with two sons, and then she surprised me by saying, Most people come to this world for a reason, but you have come for a specific purpose; do you know what it is?

I haven’t got a clue! I replied. I’d suffered from a type of agoraphobia during my life, not the type where I couldn’t go out, I loved going out, but I found certain situations very daunting. I didn’t like crowds and if I went to the theatre I had to sit on the end of the row, because if I felt trapped I was likely to have a panic attack. I shunned the limelight and shied away from anything that would put me into that situation, so I couldn’t imagine in those circumstances what God had planned for me! And I must add here that the hypnotist was unable to hypnotise Julian; it works for some, others must work out their problems/tests themselves. It can work for some smokers who wish to give up smoking.

So never having been a person to seek the limelight, you can imagine my surprise when I was instructed many years later in a series of dreams to write my first book entitled Is It an Omen? In one of the dreams, I was shown a picture of me tied up in chains, and I was told that I would not move on with my life until I’d written the book. Well, that seemed a bit cut and dried, so I did as I was told, gave up my little furniture shop, which sold antique and best of modern furniture and bric-a-brac, and I wrote for a full five days a week for about a year. I must add that I had never been near a typewriter, computer, or word processor in my life, so I had to learn all about computers and printers, and I had to learn to type with all that that entailed. Well, that was many years ago now, and with so much more happening to me, including at last, the revealing of my destiny, which has resulted in my writing this book Freedom. My first book Is It an Omen? told the story about my life and all the many difficult tests that I’d had to cope with and how I’d dealt with them. It explained how as a divorced young mum with agoraphobia, I’d started a property development company to support my two young sons. It tells of how I ended up with a portfolio of properties worth a considerable amount of money, and how I would have been worth several million pounds if it hadn’t have been for a set of extraordinary circumstances, including a huge landslide which had been caused by part of a cliff collapsing behind the Marina in St Leonards-On-Sea, East Sussex, not far from where I had just finished converting a six floored Victorian house into six luxury flats/apartments. I’d just put the properties onto the market hoping for quick sales, but all hopes were dashed because the landslide was shown on the television The Six O’clock News! Also, a road widening scheme behind our home to do with the proposed South Coast Motorway which made our family home completely unsalable, followed by the recession in the nineties, and eventually a fire, wiping out one of my furniture shops (and almost lost me my youngest son Jeremy who lived in the flat above, doesn’t bear thinking about!), which all in all lost me everything I’d worked so hard for. But it enabled me to have an insight into many areas of life, and the injustices of life which I’d otherwise never have had the opportunity to learn about. As I said, I knew that what had happened to me were tests to enable me to grow spiritually, and the book explains how I dealt with them all. Is It an Omen? was first published in 2003 and again in 2005. It was at the London Book Fair which was very exciting! It was then distributed in fourteen different countries worldwide. It was still selling until 2017 in paperback and is still available now on Kindle.

Many readers asked me to write another book, but at that time, I didn’t have anything else to say, so it didn’t seem very likely that I would. Years later, when my destiny was eventually revealed to me during an illness I contracted, which was colitis, I knew then that I had to write about the chemicals/additives in our food which is so readily available on our supermarket shelves for everyone to buy, and the adverse effects the chemicals are having on a large percentage of the population not only in this country but around the world, so I set about writing this interesting, albeit very alarming story. Apart from talking about the dangerous chemicals in a lot of our food, and the effects that they are having on our bodies, it also explains how we, the ordinary people of Britain and the rest of the world, have lost a lot of our own personal powers and freedoms. It explains how controlled we are in our everyday lives and how we’ve all but got numbers stamped on us! Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’ is happening! Controlling us through supplying food that make us ill could be the obvious way to gain total control over us whilst reducing the ever-increasing population! By supplying so many foods and drinks which affect our physical and mental well-being, we have little or no control over our health anymore! Food manufacturers seem to be able to put what they like into our food and governments are doing little or nothing to stop them from doing this. They are supposed to state on the labels what is in the food, and it has got a little better but there is still a long way to go. You must ask the question why is that? And the conclusion you would arrive at is very frightening! And at the same time, we are constantly informed that our National Health Service is unable to cope any longer with the sheer numbers of patients needing their help. And that was before the pandemic in 2020. The rise in cancers and diabetes is alarming, and the sheer numbers of obese people is astounding. All this is happening at the same time the government has made savage cuts to every area of social care. The government did promise during the Brexit campaign (remember the red bus) to put an extra £350 million a week into the NHS after we leave the EU Putting more and more money into the NHS will never solve the problem, taking chemically laden foods, meat from animals pumped with chemicals, plus all the sugary drinks, much of the alcohol and all of the cigarettes off the shelves will solve a lot of the problems. What is going on?

‘Freedom’ carries on the theme from my last book, I’m still developing properties but tells the story about how one-day God spoke to me and told me that I was going to be made into a very strong person! He explained that I’d be able to overcome my agoraphobia, and I’d be able to travel around freely on my own to do the work I’d come to do and to promote this book. It tells of how I suddenly became very ill with colitis, and how with the help I had from God and one particular angel I did become the ‘very strong person’ God wanted me to be! If I’d known how I was going to be made into a very strong person I would have started running and never stopped! It explains how because of the colitis and my inability to take prescribed drugs because I’d had pancreatitis earlier in my life, and how I’d eaten myself into this disease I would eat myself out of it! I had to learn everything I could about food, in order to get myself fit and well to become the very strong person God wanted me to be.

Chemically laden food is the cause of a lot of the illnesses in our society today. Much of the food so readily available and on the shelves in our supermarkets is making people ill, and is killing some of them, because of the cocktail of chemicals the food contains. Add to those, the dangerous sprays used by some farmers, the amount of growth hormones and antibiotics given to the farm animals and poultry, plus the chemicals in the food the animals and poultry are eating, all adds up to a lethal cocktail of chemicals. Then if you add to that the excessive alcohol consumption, cigarettes, recreational drugs, and even many prescribed drugs and we have ended up an extremely sick nation. And an obese nation! After many conversations with God, I was told by Him that all food fell into two categories ‘Energy’ or ‘Poison’ and that there was nothing in between. The food that you put into your body would either nourish you thus keeping you healthy, or it would poison you either slowly or quite rapidly, making you very unwell and possibly even killing you! The choice is ours to make. The ready-made food we buy from supermarkets and outlets is not prepared and cooked in kitchens anymore, but rather in factories, akin to laboratories!

I am a practicing spiritual healer and counsellor, and this was written at a time when I ran a small healing centre in the Sussex countryside. Over the years, I have seen many people from all walks of life and with very different problems. My greatest joy is helping people, and when they tell me after the treatment that they are now happy, or feeling well, or are now able to do the things that they had found difficult to do. I am so happy to have been able to help in some small way. I especially like mental health problems, phobias, and people who find life very difficult, because of my own difficulties with my life and my struggle with a type of agoraphobia.

I received the Holy Spirit when I was in my early thirties. I was standing on the top lawn in the back garden of our house in Sedlescombe, East Sussex, next to a Sumac tree, when suddenly this wonderful thing happened to me. It felt as if love was being poured into me from above, it literally just poured into me and it was the most amazing feeling of pure love you could ever feel. I wasn’t aware of the true significance of it at the time. I knew I’d received the Holy Spirit, and I realised that I was very blessed to have received it, but I didn’t realise the true meaning of it (I was a young very active mum with not a lot of time to ponder the meaning of life) and as I’ve already stated, I had no idea of what God had planned for me!

During my life I was to experience many exceedingly difficult and harrowing times, which were tests. Each one was made much more difficult for me because apart from the test which I had to pass. I also had a mild form of agoraphobia. As I’ve explained not the sort of agoraphobia where I couldn’t go out, mine was a dreadful fear of being alone, because when I was alone, I felt so isolated. It was as if I were the only person alive on the planet, and then I would feel panicky and sometimes suffer a panic attack. I liked to know that my neighbours were in, and the telephone was my lifeline for many years. I felt like a person walking uphill in treacle, it wasn’t that I couldn’t do things, in fact I’ve achieved things in my life that most people couldn’t even begin to do, because of a type of bravado that I had which made a nonsense of the fact that I had agoraphobia. In fact, most people I worked with never knew that I had a problem because of my bravado and actress skills! But that doesn’t alter the fact that I found everything much harder than anybody else. I had no idea that I would be told to write about my life years later, and bare my soul to the world, as I’m such a private person. I have been told repeatedly by readers that Is It an Omen? had helped them in one way or another and that is a joy to me. If it had only helped one person, that would have been enough of a reason for me to have written it.

Since writing Is It an Omen? I have been disappointed to see how much worse certain areas of our society have become. Family life is and has been constantly undervalued, the most important structure in our society where as children we learn all our valuable life skills is now not valued in the same way it was by a large proportion of our society, including the government! One example of that is the lack of affordable housing. The selling off of council homes in the eighties, homes that were never replaced, has caused this catastrophic problem with private landlords charging enormous rents in some cases for sub-standard properties that the chancellor then has to pay for or help pay for is crazy! The point I am making is about the lack of security a permanent home has on a family; it creates such stress when many private landlords decide to sell, thus making the family move sometimes several times until a social housing home becomes available. This is harmful to families, especially children it’s harmful to their health. Bring back council houses, social housing call it what you like, with all the rents going into the public purse, do not sell any of them off please. Many people do not earn enough to buy their own home, mostly those who do the essential jobs in this country do not earn enough to buy a home so let’s look after them a bit better! We have become so materialistic to the point where we feel that possessions bring more joy than relationships with people, and that shopping centres bring more spiritual fulfilment than going to Church! Human nature has always been selfish, but never to this level where even the thought of devoting oneself unreservedly to another person and one’s children, seems alien to so many people. This has been proven because of the number of young children and teenagers who are constantly in trouble. Who would have thought we would hear the expression ‘Feral kids’ in Britain, a so-called civilised society! And as I’m writing this we have one hundred and thirty-eight per one hundred thousand people in prison in this country, far higher than countries like France Germany and Spain. Something is very wrong! And mothers walking along with young children whilst on their mobile phones is so common. Whatever can they be talking about that is more important than talking to their children?

I have always been a champion of women’s rights. I got myself into trouble constantly when I was growing up for giving everyone the benefit of my opinion on women’s rights. Certainly when I was growing up in the sixties, women were second class citizens. Married women’s earnings couldn’t be taken into consideration when applying for a mortgage when I first got married, imagine the outcry that would cause today! Husbands had the right to say who lived or died in childbirth if a choice had to be made! Many women of my mother’s generation were permanent stay at home wives and mothers, and some didn’t even bother to vote! Shame on them I used to think, because lives were lost earning women the right to vote! It all made me feel quite uncomfortable as a young woman growing up, because women it seemed to me had opted out of life and given all the control over to men. Now we have the reverse situation where many women simply don’t want to be homemakers, they want to continue working, nothing wrong with that, so we have situations now where in some cases the man is the househusband looking after the children and taking care of the home, usually in those cases his wife/partner earns more than he does and so it makes good sense to do it that way around, whatever works best is OK. And most mothers must work to supplement the family income just to make ends meet! In this very busy world homemaking is quite low on the agenda, many young women are unable to cook even the most basic meals, and many are unable to sew, knit or grow anything in the garden. These are vital life skills that should be taught in schools, because we never know when the lights are going to go out and these valuable old skills will be necessary again. I find many young women quite aggressive, which is probably the result of the pressure on them to work, bring up children, drive, look like a film star and be sexy! Many children go to child minders from a few months old, so mums will not be there when the first tooth comes through, or the first word is spoken. These are important landmarks in a child’s development and Mum will have missed out. Being a wife and a mother does not make you a second-class citizen. Quite the contrary, because the contribution to society of well brought up loved children is worth more than any other job. God created men and women to be equal. We complement each other so beautifully with our different skills and abilities, plus our species cannot survive without each other. I believe the ideal situation for most girls/women is to get a good basic education, learn some skills, or train for a career, work for a few years save some money if possible, then have children and be at home with them for a few years, and then go back to work, leaving children with grandparents or people that are preferably family members or known to the family.

What effect does the change to women’s lives have on the feeding of the nation’s children well it has everything to do with it, because many women don’t feel that they have time or energy to cook proper meals anymore, also as I’ve just stated many are unable to cook at all. If mothers have been out to work all day, it’s understandable that they’re tired and all they want to do is provide a quick meal for their families, so ready prepared meals and takeaways, the sort of foods kids love, but which unfortunately and probably unknown to their parents is laden with harmful chemicals is what is sometimes on offer! Chemicals I believe are the reasons why so many kids are hyperactive and aggressive. I don’t remember ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) years ago on the scale we have it today. When I was a young mum, I did not know anyone who had a child with that condition! Chemicals in the food may well be the reason why we now have so many more cases and may also be the reason why many kids are unable to concentrate at school. I’m not saying that junk food is the only reason for ADHD but I feel it must contribute some way towards it. I know some of the chemicals are capable of affecting the brain through my own experiences, and if I’d had the knowledge years ago that I now have about certain foods, then maybe I wouldn’t have suffered from agoraphobia and panic attacks to the extent that I did, because I later realised that certain foods including lettuce, which obviously isn’t junk food, but which contains a substance called lactucin and is sometimes known as a lettuce opium as it has supposed sedative and painkilling properties was possibly partly responsible along with other chemically laden foods for giving me panic attacks! Perhaps a lot of the food is, therefore, the key to bad behaviour problems in our youngsters in this country who love fast food and junk food. I believe it could also be the reason so many young males are in prison as they are more likely to eat more burgers and junk food than girls who might be watching their weight a bit more.

Structure in society has been broken down. Anarchy rules because structures have all been pulled down! Ideals like marriage have been tossed aside by society generally. The Sunday visit to church has been replaced by a trip to a shopping centre to give that vital lift to the spirit for the next week. Many churches have been sold off and converted into homes. I don’t, on one hand, think that religion should be foisted on young people to quite the extent it was in my day, but on the other hand, it is good to grow up in the knowledge that there is a Supreme being who looks after us, and is always there for us, and they need to know that at the end of the day all of us will have to answer for our lives.

I believe two parents to be the best way to bring up a family. The two people who created you would be the ideal people to bring you up, but I’m realistic, and there are other types of families now who also do splendid jobs of child rearing, and if kids are respected and loved and well cared for that’s all that matters. I was a lone divorced mum bringing up two sons who’ve turned into lovely caring responsible husbands and fathers, but I wouldn’t advocate being a single parent it’s jolly hard work! There are way too many absent fathers now, but we can’t entirely blame them for the situation, although I’d like to. It may well be that because women have so much power now and are, therefore, more independent, a man may feel a bit unnecessary in the family unit. He has to some extent lost his role in this new world. But I still believe in an ideal world that boys need a good male role model, who a son knows will look out for him and protect him in this much more violent world, which is the sole reason why we now have a gang culture, because boys are ganging together for protection. And the Chancellor of the Exchequer should not be the man to support the children of absent fathers or mothers!

You cannot punish children anymore, and don’t they know it? They can do more or less what they like, they’re all aware of their rights, they know that the law cannot really touch them if they are under a certain age. Teachers cannot discipline children either. What hope do many of our young people have of growing up into a decent human being in this uncaring society? Because it is society’s fault, they have permitted the young to go off the rails by not doing anything to put back all the very necessary structures and boundaries that once existed to keep everyone on the straight and narrow. Many men are fringe creatures in this new world. It must be quite difficult for them to lose what was instinctively their role in life which was the hunter/gatherer, bread winner, protector, and head of the family. They must now adapt to this new world where women are very independent.

Some aspects of life today if viewed by previous generations could be thought to be idyllic. Central heating, double glazing, surround sound televisions, cars to get from A to B, public transport, a health service, and foreign holidays. Less than eighty years ago houses were cold and damp, there was no central heating, coal was a luxury for many, who also couldn’t afford electricity, so used candles, went to bed when it was dark and got up when it was light. Lavatories were outside for most people and in some cases shared by many families. The book Angela’s Ashes, although Irish, was a brilliant snapshot of the hardships many endured all over the UK. Many people walked miles to work very early in the morning and then walked back after what was usually arduous work. If they became ill, most could not afford to get a doctor in who needed to be paid upon the visit, consequently many died of illnesses which today are easily treatable. Holidays for the masses were non-existent or at best were a day off a year to go to the seaside. Sounds unreal doesn’t it? Well, it wasn’t that long ago!

What makes life so stressful today when we have everything we need at our fingertips. Everyone has a washing machine, a vacuum cleaner, a fridge freezer, and a microwave etc. Plus power tools which do the jobs quickly and cleanly. Why then don’t we have the backbone of our forebears? Why are so many people addicted to alcohol, cigarettes, and prescription drugs for depression?