Charlene Costanzo

Charlene Gorda Costanzo is an award-winning author, workshop facilitator, wife, mother of two adult daughters, and grandmother of twins. She holds a B.A. in Philosophy from St. Bonaventure University and an M.A. in Spiritual Psychology from the University of Santa Monica.

The Twelve Gifts series of fables began in 1987 when Charlene wrote The Twelve Gifts of Birth as a life message for her own, then-teenage, daughters. Twelve years later she published the book and discussed its message in schools, shelters, prisons, churches and hospitals throughout the United States.

The Twelve Gifts for Healing was written while Charlene was in treatment for advanced non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2001. "Cancer led me to examine my convictions and look at these life gifts more deeply. Truly, they helped me heal," she says.

The Twelve Gifts in Marriage comes from the ups and downs, ebbs and flows, and hurts and healings that are a part of every long-term marriage.

After she wrote The Twelve Gifts of Birth, Charlene mused about a scene in its opening. What might have happened when, "The wise women came to understand that the twelve royal gifts of birth belong to every child... yearned to proclaim the gifts to all children...but the customs of the land did not allow that."? What happened was The Thirteenth Gift. This fourth work in The Twelve Gifts series also explains why so many people world-wide are fascinated with stones.