DEBRA ENGLE
2020 Nautilus Book Award Winner
Author of
Twenty (Kensington Books, 2020)
Be The Light That You Are (Hampton Roads, 2019)
Let Your Spirit Guides Speak (Hampton Roads, 2016)
The Only Little Prayer You Need (Hampton Roads, 2014)
Debra Engle has a gift for inspiring her audience. By marrying spiritual practice with practical application, she helps readers navigate the drama of everyday life and discover a greater sense of who they are.
She is the bestselling author of The Only Little Prayer You Need: The Shortest Route to a Life of Joy, Abundance and Peace of Mind, which features a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. She also authored Let Your Spirit Guides Speak, honored with a Nautilus Silver Award.
Debra’s essays have appeared in international collections, and she has served as a contributing writer and editor for national publications such as Better Homes and Gardens and Country Home. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing from Goucher College in Baltimore and now serves as Director of the Story Summit Writer’s School.
Debra teaches classes in A Course in Miracles and is a highly acclaimed writing mentor. As a lecturer and workshop leader, she speaks to the many ways we can elevate our life experience through storytelling, meditative practices and displays of the most basic human qualities of kindness and respect.
BOOKS BY DEBRA
Twenty (Kensington Books, 2020)
At the age of 55, Meg has been through too many losses. When her 10-year-old daughter Rose was killed in an accident, the strain ended Meg’s marriage to Joe. And now it’s been five years since Meg’s mother passed away after a battle with dementia.
World weary and uncertain about her future, Meg makes a decision that gives her 20 days to find peace with her relationships and herself. When her ex-husband Joe comes back into her life, she questions her choices. Could she find joy again after all?
The book explores many of the themes on the minds of women in midlife: the burden of past hurts and losses, a lack of passion about what lies ahead, spiritual crisis, romantic love in the last half of life, forgiveness, and the healing power of letting go.
PRAISE
“This is one of the most remarkable books I’ve ever read. Calling this beautiful story ‘heartfelt’ and ‘deeply spiritual’ doesn’t begin to do it justice. I cried. I felt happy. I thought about the loss and grief I’ve endured. And I found the inspiration that every grieving person desperately searches for—a reason to go on, knowing there can still be joy.”
—Pamela Wallace, novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Witness
“Debra Landwehr Engle leads us on a beautiful and thoughtful journey, written with such strong and heartfelt faith in the magic and power of never ending love, it will renew your own.”
—Judy Reene Singer, author of In the Shadow of Alabama
“Twenty reminds us to live with our hearts wide open even when they’ve been broken, and how to love even when it hurts. Readers will find hope from this sentimental story about the many ways life can wreck us, and why it’s still a beautiful journey in spite of it all.”
—Julie Cantrell, New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of Perennials
Be The Light That You Are (Hampton Roads, 2019)
Inspired by A Course in Miracles and other spiritual teachings, the book is a guide to improving everyday life. It’s filled with practical examples of what to say and do when life throws you challenges—all based on 10 principles that will keep readers grounded and steady.
The idea for the book came from the authors’ students, who asked questions about how to handle everyday situations that used to make them angry or depressed. How could they bring a new spirit to those experiences? How could they speak from a new “script?”
A follow-up to The Only Little Prayer You Need and Let Your Spirit Guides Speak, this is a go-to guide that readers will refer to over and over again.
Let Your Spirit Guides Speak (Hampton Roads, 2016)
This is a clear and thoughtful introduction to building relationships with your spirit guides. It shows readers how helpful spirit guides and angels can be in everything from the simplest to the most challenging of life decisions and how easy they are to connect with, too.
Our spirit guides help us to:
Fulfill our purpose
Make decisions that will move us forward faster
Stop sabotaging ourselves as well as judging ourselves and everyone else
Remember that we are more than our job or house or relationship
See ourselves as beautiful and everything in life as a gift
Give ourselves and everybody else a break
Keep growing until the day we leave our bodies behind
Go beyond the life we hoped for and onto the life we never even imagined
And they do all of these things when we’re ready and not a nanosecond before. They also often come quietly. As the author states: ”If we expect help from Spirit to arrive with the sound of trumpets and blinding light, we’ll overlook all the nuanced help that’s delivered in small ways every day.”
PRAISE
“If you want to learn ways to connect with your spirit guides, Debra Engle has provided the map to do so. It outlines ways to do so which are accompanied by stories and examples that illustrate these ways. IT is a must have for spiritual seekers!” — Dr. Steven Farmer, international author, Spiritual Psychotherapist and Shamanic Healer
”This book is going to be a valuable tool for people who are serious about their spiritual journey. It's one of those topics that people can't get enough of and I want to thank Debra for taking on a huge topic in such a beautiful way.” — Echo Bodine, author of My Big Book of Healing and Echoes of the Soul
”Debra Landwehr Engle, author, inspirational speaker, teacher, and blogger of faith, takes a leap forward with her newest project Let Your Spirit Guides Speak. In her previous book, The Only Little Prayer You Need, she merely hints at the subject of spirit guides. She has now fully embraced the topic and shares boldly about it. . . . Engle continues to inspire readers, viewers, and live audiences with her gentle nature, considerable kindness, and wisdom, as well as the reassuring passages that we are all being taken care in times of uncertainty. Let Your Spirit Guides Speak will help readers of every level to initiate and cultivate a relationship with their personal spirit guides. Engle’s ministry of using prayer and meditation on a regular basis to request guidance at all times, receive extra support during times of challenge and transition, and to deepen the meaning of our lives and appreciate our connection with Spirit will truly inspire readers.” — Allyson Gracie, Retailing Insight
“In this short and sweet instructional manual, Engle demystifies the idea of a spiritual helper. Exploring the sense of the spirit world that she has felt since a young age, she likens spiritual helpers to ground control operators for aircraft who, although not physically present, are always watching and offering advice. Engle challenges her readers to consider what is possible if they learn to work with their spiritual helpers by seeking creative solutions and new ways of approaching life’s dilemmas. She concentrates mostly on the language of the spirit world, such as urges to take certain actions for no apparent reason, and words, pictures, sounds, colors, and numbers that continue to show up, almost as if instructing one to pay close attention. Some of Engle’s impressions come off as wistful or ungrounded, but her advice to sit still with paper and pen and ask any question that comes to mind, simply recording any and all impressions, is a fine jumping-off point for further daily spiritual reflection.” — Publishers Weekly, September 2016
The Only Little Prayer You Need (Hampton Roads, 2014)
The shortest route to a life of joy, abundance, and peace of mind.
These six words–please heal my fear-based thoughts–change lives. In this brief and inspiring book, based on Engle’s study of A Course in Miracles, she explains how to use the prayer and experience immediate benefits:
being less irritable, more patient
laughing more
feeling like you have more time, more energy
worrying less
making decisions more easily
saying no without guilt
A typical prayer goes something like this: “Please help us find the money to pay our mortgage this month.” Saying the prayer may help you feel like the burden of that month’s mortgage has been lifted, but the part of you that feeds on fear will simply seek out new financial worries to keep you awake at night. Old patterns remain intact.
In contrast, asking, “Please heal my fear-based thoughts about our mortgage” lifts the burden AND relieves the need to re-create that fear and hold onto it. This prayer heals your very desire for burdens, your addiction to fear-based thoughts, freeing you to live without that fear and with greater peace of mind. As a result, your financial situation is also free to improve. That’s what makes it so different.
One Facebook fan told Engle, “The most blessed aspect of this prayer is all the open space it creates for peace–I never knew how many fear-based thoughts were clogging up in me until. . .this prayer.”
PRAISE
“We are made to live lives of tolerance, respect and compassion. This simple yet extraordinary book gives our entire human family a tool to do so, starting today.” —Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu (Cape Town - South Africa)
“Suppose there is a path to a better life that is really the most simple thing, the most direct route to immediate effects? And what if this cost you nothing, took little of your time, and had absolutely no risk of backfiring or hurting anybody else? You are about to find such a gift in this book, and you will soon discover that all of your fears grew out of nothing. In so doing you are also about to embark on a life where forgiveness becomes a tangible practice, and being fixated on fear becomes a thing of the past.” —Dr. Lee Jampolsky, author of Smile for No Good Reason and How to Say Yes When Your Body Says No
“Debra Engle's The Only Little Prayer You Need, took my breath away as I sat reading it. Like Engle, I, too, have been a student of "A Course in Miracles" for thirty years. And also like her, it has taught me all the important spiritual tools I rely on every day. However, her little prayer provides a much-needed shortcut to peace filled living that everyone, course student or not, can use daily. Hourly, even minute by minute. Thank you, Debra. I needed to read your book today. I needed to shift my perception on a current situation and your book and prayer did just that for me. —Karen Casey, Ph.D., author of Each Day a New Beginning
”As stated in the Preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 'Human beings shall enjoy freedom from fear.' Debra Engle, in this precious book, provides the compass to learn how to be and to live together, in order to contribute to the transition from a culture of imposition and violence to a culture of conciliation and peace, from force to words.” —Federico Mayor Zaragoza, Former Director General of UNESCO and President of the Foundation for a Culture of Peace
”A delightful little book on healing our fear-based thoughts through prayer, which is a giving up of oneself in order to be at one with Love.” —Jon Mundy, Ph.D., author of Living A Course in Miracles and Publisher of Miracles Magazine
”Inspired by the psycho-spiritual wisdom of A Course in Miracles, this concise little tome offers peace of mind, laughter, more energy, and freedom from guilt. It's a lot to promise, but Engle delivers the means to the end she commits to in the title. In doing so, she's redefined the word "prayer", removing the overtones of hierarchical religion. Instead she uses the word to express a very simple, six-word request for help. The request is made to our inner selves not to an external overseer. A transcendent force is implied, but without the need to label it. Really, it's neuroscience. Change your thinking, change your life. Engle has packaged it all with compassion, creativity, and a blessing from the Dalai Lama.” —Anna Jedrzieweki, Retailing Insights, October 2014