Dorothea L. Gordon

Growing up in Germany after the War, I was keenly aware of the importance of a good education. Due to my excellent marks in elementary school, I was put on the academic track which would lead to a bachelor equivalent after thirteen years. Among my favourite courses were foreign languages, and I thought it would be fun to teach them – since they were so useful.

As education was free in Germany, I took all my courses there, apart from a year as an exchange student at the University of Colorado. There I refined my English and understanding of American culture. During a month in Mexico to improve my Spanish, I met a young man from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, who was to become my husband.

I decided a master’s degree would help me secure a better teaching position and give me a solid foundation. It opened the doors for me once I moved to Victoria, Canada. The headmaster of the first school I applied at gave me the job saying he knew that German teachers came with excellent training.

During my younger years, handwriting analysis was a common tool in Germany when it came to job applications. A candidate was often asked to submit their CV as a handwritten page. It would then be passed on to a graphologist on staff or an independent one. They would check for integrity, compatibility, intelligence, social traits, aptitudes, and submit a report to the company. That reduced high turnover and assured compatibility.

Later, at university, I met some psychology students who had to take handwriting analysis as part of their personality testing modalities. They asked if they could examine my handwriting and I agreed. Their report was most intriguing and revealed some very surprising secrets – such as strong artistic abilities. My art teacher never had anything good to say about my work and always recommended I focus on my musical skills.

As a future educator I could see how handwriting analysis would help me in my teaching career by allowing me to assess my students’ personalities, abilities and aptitudes at the beginning of the school year and then monitor them afterwards. As the teenagers’ brain processes evolved, changes could be seen in the strokes of the handwriting. I could assess new strengths or weaknesses, fears, coping mechanisms, etc.

After we moved to Canada, I applied to the international Graphoanalysis Society in Chicago and took an eighteen-month correspondence course with them. Feeling proud and daring, I put an ad in the local paper and offered my services. I had no idea it would totally change my outlook on life.

I describe what happened in my first book, a memoir about my spiritual awakening: When Life Has Other Plans…Discover the Hidden Gifts.

After working in personality assessment for a while, I decided to train as a Questioned Documents Examiner. I liked the impersonal aspect of the work, comparing the strokes of two pieces of handwriting and finding significant differences or similarities. The cases involved forgeries, slanderous letters, contested signatures on wills or contracts. My most interesting case was about a bomb threat scrawled on a washroom door.

As an educator I enjoy passing on knowledge and challenging people to broaden their horizon. Few know about the value of handwriting analysis. So it occurred to me to create a character who could use those skills not only professionally but also to make her own major life decisions. I also wanted to address the subject of bisexuality because, again, few people know that 60% of the LGBTQ society are bisexual and have to hide their orientation due to societal prejudice. Needless to say, I am drawing from my professional background and some life experiences, but I have obtained pertinent information from reading and interviewing people on whom I have based my characters. I must confess that the story developed very differently from how I had first envisioned it. The protagonists seemed to take on a life of their own – which quite surprised and delighted me. I found myself having conversations with them and asking what they would like to do next….

A few months before Covid appeared, I had the urge to share my amazing spiritual journey. The story had been bubbling under the surface and wanted to be written. 'When Life Has Other Plans…Discover the Hidden Gifts' only took six months from start to finish because I did not have to invent anything. All the facts and details were already inside me, whereas in fiction they have to be logically created. That process takes a lot longer – if you want to create a high-quality novel.

The pivotal moments are all in my book:

The invitation to participate in the documentary ‘Is there Life Before Life?’ The introduction into the concepts of past lives and reincarnation. Exposure to spiritual healing and its surprising results. A miracle for a patient. Being able to see and communicate with departed spirits.
These experiences allowed me to understand that all my hardships and losses had been necessary for my inner growth and awareness. They put the purpose of my life into perspective.

I took a few years off teaching to promote handwriting analysis and work as a QDE after my children were born. Then I was offered an interesting position as a language teacher at one of Victoria’s prestigious private schools and I slid back into education doing handwriting analysis and QDE work on the side.

I was able to teach to the needs of students who needed a more methodical approach to language learning. I was able to challenge the more gifted ones with advanced tasks. I could also see what kind of fears the teenagers had and how they were trying to cope with them. Sometimes parents asked me what type of career their child would thrive in and I was able to advise them and save them endless frustration. They wanted the child to go to university when training in a trade was more within the child’s abilities and aptitudes.

After forty years in Victoria, I decided to move to a small hamlet by the ocean. This allowed my imagination and writing talents to flourish, simply because there was not the endless distraction of the city. It is quiet here, the sound of the wind in the trees, the sun on the ocean, the cries of the eagles and seagulls, walks in the rainforest, etc., fewer people; all that feeds my senses and awakens a different part of my brain. At first life seemed a bit boring and required a major adjustment, but then my latent creativity came to the surface. Now there are not enough hours in the day to get all the things done that want my attention.

My advice would be to look at the events in their lives which speak to the audience they wish to target. I believe that an author needs to create a rapport with the reader. I am an extremely discerning reader and put aside any book where the author cannot maintain my attention, be it the style or material. Using clear and comprehensible language, I strive to provide quality and keep up a micro tension which pulls the reader in. My books reflect what I would want to read, always hoping that at the end, my readers know more about a subject than before.

I think handwriting analysis will be mostly used more in the questioned documents field since children nowadays are no longer taught cursive writing. That is a shame because it helps to develop the brain and hand–eye coordination.

I am most proud of my deep and cordial relationship with my children who have turned into productive and kind members of society. My biggest learning experience was finding out that I am a spirit having a human experience, that my soul is immortal, that I have lived many times before, that there is an invisible intelligence that I can turn to for guidance. I used to believe that I had to push and struggle all by myself, but as I get older it is very comforting to surrender and watch what unfolds around me in my life. Which does not mean there are no serious challenges, actually there are plenty of them, but now I know they are being taken care of via communication with the invisible world. And for this insight I am deeply grateful.

Yes, I am 33,000 words into my new book ‘Unseen Forces’, a spiritual adventure story. It is the sequel to Daring Decisions, and I go deep into the subject of alternative healing and spirit contact using my own experiences, those I observed in others, and some I have been researching. My intent is to arouse my readers’ curiosity in this fascinating subject. The events in the novel will show what is unfolding in the quantum field about curing illnesses or creating new realities. The protagonists are deeply involved as they observe how their lives are changing in miraculous ways and how they are profoundly affecting their environment in the end.