At the age of six, Heather Woods was uprooted from her family home and spent the next 12 years in a succession of institutions, enduring sexual abuse, physical violence and mental cruelty. She ran away over 30 times, only to be caught and punished, and eventually at the age of 18 was given her first real home. She claims to have started receiving messages from the spirit world in 1989, and in 1992 to have experienced the stigmata (the bleeding wounds of Christ) on her hands, feet and side, and the mark of the cross on her forehead. She took up spiritual healing, and subsequently became riddled with cancer. This biography is a story of triumph over a lifetime of physical and mental hardship, and of the paranormal, and religious vision.