Angela Legh Interview Published on: 09, Mar 2026

Those shadows were quiet, constant, and deeply shaped my life. My father’s alcoholism created a home where anger moved freely but safety did not. His feelings of inadequacy were often projected onto my mother, my siblings, and me, and we became verbal targets in ways that happened entirely behind closed doors. From the outside, our family looked fine. Inside, we learned to read moods, brace ourselves, and hide in the smallest spaces in order to survive.

That experience shaped me in two lasting ways. First, it gave me an intimate understanding of unseen pain. I learned over time that some of the deepest wounds are the ones no one even notices. Second, I realized I could see the threads of emotional pain that run quietly beneath people’s words and behaviors. Even when everything looked fine on the surface, I could sense what was unresolved, unspoken, or misunderstood.

For a long time, I did not recognize this as a gift. It was simply how I moved through the world. With time and healing, I came to understand that this sensitivity allows me to write toward truth with compassion. It guides the way I shape characters, conflicts, and moments of quiet transformation, always with the intention of helping readers feel seen rather than exposed.

I did not realize at first that writing would become part of my healing. I did not set out to write in order to mend pain, largely because I had not yet recognized how much of it lived quietly inside me. In 2017, I lost everything in a California wildfire. While the loss was profound, it also loosened something that had been held tight for a very long time.

I began writing not as an act of recovery, but as an act of creation. It was a way to give form to imagination at a moment when so much of my outer world had disappeared. Around that same time, I left an emotionally abusive marriage and stepped into a season devoted to my own healing. It was during this period that the fantasy worlds began to take shape, and the Bella Santini stories were born.

Only later did I understand that creativity had been quietly healing me. Writing did not arrive as a cure. It arrived as a companion. It gave me a language for transformation before I knew I needed one, and in doing so, it helped me find my way back to myself.

At the time, I did not realize that my stories were becoming a pathway for emotional healing. That understanding came much later. When I began writing the Bella Santini books, I was not setting out to teach lessons or guide healing. I was following something quieter and more intuitive.

I did not plan story arcs or map emotional themes. Scenes would arrive in dreams or moments of stillness, and I would simply write them down. It felt less like inventing a story and more like receiving one. Looking back, I believe my higher self was bringing the story through me, offering images, challenges, and moments of courage before I consciously understood why they mattered.

Over time, I began to see that these imagined worlds were holding emotional truths. The magic, the trials, the friendships, and the fear were mirrors for real inner experiences. Storytelling became a gentle way to explore feelings without naming them directly, especially for children. It allowed healing to happen sideways, through imagination, safety, and choice. Only in hindsight did I recognize that the stories were not just creative expressions. They were invitations to feel, to grow, and to trust what lives within.

I balance it by trusting children. I am a child at heart myself, and one of my gifts is the ability to translate deep truths into language that feels accessible rather than heavy. I have always been drawn to making the complex simple, by shaping it in a way that can be felt and understood.

I work from the belief that children are far more capable than we often give them credit for. They live with big emotions every day, and they recognize complexity long before they can articulate it. I do not pander to them or speak over their heads in a way that feels hollow. I give them something meaningful to engage with, something they can sink their teeth into.

Fantasy creates a safe container for this work. Through story, children can explore fear, courage, loss, and choice without being overwhelmed. They are invited into emotional depth at their own pace. My role is simply to open the door and trust them to walk through it in the way that feels right for them.

There was a quiet but decisive moment. As I was preparing the first book to go to the publisher, I had a conversation with a close friend that shifted something in me. I realized that if I had read these stories when I was ten years old, I would have had a foundation I did not yet possess.

I would have understood that feelings carry information, that fear does not mean weakness, and that choice exists even in difficult moments. I might have made decisions rooted in inner strength rather than the smaller, more protective choices I made simply to survive.

That realization reframed the books for me. They were no longer just stories I loved. They were something I could offer forward. Not as answers, but as groundwork. A way to help a child feel resourced earlier than I did, and to know that their inner world matters.

Feeling bravely means allowing emotions to move through you instead of pushing them away. When I was growing up, feelings were rarely acknowledged. I was four years old when we lost our home in the first fire of my life. There was no trauma counseling, no language for what we were experiencing, and no guidance for how to process fear or loss. The unspoken message was to get over it and move on.

At the same time, no one named my father’s behavior or explained that it was not our fault. Silence became the way our family coped, and emotional suppression was treated as strength. Many families still live this way, not out of neglect, but because they do not know another path.

What I have come to understand is that emotions themselves are brief. A feeling lasts about ninety seconds unless the mind keeps circling the story around it. Real bravery is not avoiding emotions or muscling through them. It is the willingness to feel, to allow the sensation to rise, crest, and pass without judgment.

With young readers, I model this through story rather than instruction. Characters pause, notice what they are feeling, and learn that emotions are not dangerous. They are signals. By seeing feelings met with curiosity instead of fear, children learn that bravery does not mean being unafraid. It means staying present long enough to let the feeling do its work and then choosing what comes next.

I hope children recognize themselves in the characters. Bella, in particular, is the child who does not quite fit in, who feels ordinary or overlooked, and who wonders if something essential is missing. She is not the loudest or the most obviously gifted. Yet within her lives an untapped magic that only begins to emerge when she stops trying to be someone else and starts honoring who she truly is.

So many children receive subtle messages to edit themselves. Do not be so sensitive. Do not be so different. Do not take up so much space. Over time, they learn to hide parts of themselves in order to belong. Bella’s journey gently challenges that idea. Her strength comes not from changing who she is, but from reclaiming what was always there.

Through Bella’s story, I want children to feel seen without being singled out. To sense that their quiet traits, their questions, their sensitivity, and even their uncertainty have value. That who they are is not a mistake, and that the very parts they have been asked to set aside may hold the key to their own unique magic.

Facing my own shadows has given me a deep respect for the invisible forces that shape behavior. Through my own healing, I came to understand the threads of generational trauma and how pain is often passed down not through intention, but through coping. In earlier generations, emotions were rarely named or supported. Alcohol, silence, and suppression became the tools people used to survive.

That understanding informs the way I create characters and conflicts. I am less interested in villains and more interested in backstories. Many of my characters carry emotional wounds that influence how they respond to fear, power, love, or belonging. Their choices are shaped by what they learned to do when feelings felt unsafe, even when those choices create conflict.

This lens allows me to write with compassion rather than judgment. Characters are not simply good or bad. They respond to what they know, until something invites them to choose differently. In that way, conflict becomes an opportunity for awareness and growth, both within the story and for the reader who recognizes a familiar pattern unfolding on the page.

I would say yes. There is a way out of the pain. And it begins with understanding that pain is not who you are, it is something you are experiencing.

On my own healing journey, I learned about the victim triangle, the shifting roles of victim, persecutor, and rescuer. What I came to understand is that no matter which role you step into, you are still feeding the same cycle. The way out is not by changing the circumstances, but by recognizing that you always have choice in how you respond to them.

That realization is deeply freeing. When you take responsibility for your reactions rather than blaming yourself for what happened, something opens. You begin to move from being trapped by pain to being in relationship with it. From there, real choice becomes possible.

I would also say this gently. The path out of pain does require courage. It asks you to feel what you have been avoiding, not all at once, but in small, safe moments. My books offer children a way to practice this through story. They get to watch characters feel, pause, and choose differently. And in doing so, they learn that they can do the same.

I reflect that truth by letting healing unfold in layers rather than straight lines. In my stories, growth does not happen once and then stay fixed. Characters circle back to familiar fears, old habits, and tender places, but each time with a little more awareness than before.

I allow my characters to stumble after moments of strength and to forget lessons they once touched. That is not failure in the world of my stories. It is part of being human. Healing moves in spirals. We revisit the same emotional terrain until we are ready to meet it differently.

Transformation in the Bella Santini books often happens quietly. There is no single moment where everything is resolved. Instead, there are small pauses, subtle choices, and gentle shifts in perception. Over time, those moments accumulate and something changes.

By reflecting healing this way, I want readers to understand that there is nothing wrong with them if they are still struggling. Growth does not require perfection. It asks only for presence, honesty, and the willingness to begin again.

Imagination is one of our most powerful tools for processing trauma and difficult emotions. Through imagination, we are no longer confined to what happened. We can fly away, face a demon and win, or place ourselves in environments that feel safe, spacious, and calm. Imagination gives the nervous system a different experience, and that matters more than most people realize.

It also creates a safe channel for emotional expression. Writing, in particular, allows emotions to move without causing harm. You can dash off an angry letter, pour everything onto the page, and then tear it up. The energy of the emotion is released through expression, not acted out on yourself or someone else. The feeling moves, and no one gets hurt.

That is very different from many of the coping strategies we were taught, which often involved suppression, distraction, or turning emotions inward. Imagination invites movement instead of shutdown. It allows feelings to be felt, shaped, and transformed. In that sense, creativity is not an escape from reality. It is a bridge that helps us return to ourselves with greater clarity and compassion.

Living in Taos has profoundly shaped my creativity because it keeps me in relationship with the natural world. Nature is deeply healing for me. When I hike, I am not just moving through a landscape. I am sensing the energies of the land, the quiet wisdom of trees, and the steady flow of water. Being in that environment brings me into a state of inner calm that gently transforms whatever I am feeling.

When I feel low or overwhelmed, which happens often for me as a highly sensitive and empathic person, the forest becomes a balm. Stepping outside shifts my inner state without requiring effort or explanation. The land holds a steadiness that my nervous system recognizes and responds to.

My inner wilderness mirrors this outer one. It is a place of depth, movement, and discovery rather than something to be tamed. Exploring my inner landscape has taught me to trust what is wild and intuitive within me. That trust shows up in my writing as spaciousness, imagination, and an openness to what wants to emerge. Taos does not just inspire my stories. It reminds me how to listen, both to the world around me and to the one within.

The reactions that touch me most are the ones that reveal how quietly these stories travel into people’s lives. An aunt once shared that my books helped her two nieces through the loss of their father to cancer. Knowing the stories offered comfort during such a tender time was deeply moving.

Another moment surprised me in a different way. A friend told me her son put down his electronics and asked her to read the book to him. That simple choice spoke volumes. It told me the story had created a bridge, not just to imagination, but to connection.

I have also been profoundly touched by adults who have found support in the emotional tools woven into the stories. One man shared that the emotional freedom process I teach, the Feel and Free method, helped him navigate the grief following the suicide of his best friend. That moment stayed with me.

My books are written for children, but emotions do not belong to one age group. When a story helps a child feel safer in their feelings and also gives an adult language for their own inner world, I know the work is doing what it was meant to do.

When a reader closes a Bella Santini book, I hope one understanding quietly remains. Feelings are energy. They are not good or bad. Some feel light and pleasant, others feel heavy and uncomfortable, but all of them are part of being human.

The moment we stop labeling emotions as something to avoid or fix; they lose their power to control us. Real freedom comes from being willing to face even the most difficult feeling, because once you are no longer running from it, it no longer runs your life.

If readers carry anything forward, I hope it is the knowing that they can feel deeply without being broken by what they feel. Emotions move, courage grows through presence, and on the other side of allowing is a quiet, steady kind of freedom.

Yes, I am an enthusiastic supporter of the AllAuthor platform. I have received a tremendous amount of value from it over time. From the free weekly mockup book cover images to the ability to upload and promote my books easily, the tools are both practical and generous.

The weekly social media features, including the scheduled tweets, have been especially helpful. They create consistent visibility without adding pressure or complexity, which matters when you are balancing creativity with business growth.

What truly stands out to me is that no other book platform I have used offers this level of support in one place. AllAuthor feels built with authors in mind, not just in theory, but in how it actually serves the day to day realities of writing, publishing, and sharing your work with the world.