Resumes and curriculum vitae never tell of who we really are. They do not include our real-life stories, experiences, growth, and insights.
Here are some of the missing details in mine.
Before the crash
If you’ve come here from the About page, this is the longer version.
When my daughters turned me into a mother, initially with my firstborn, then when my twins were born, motherhood, in all of its facets, became a significant line in my heart’s CV.
The car crash tilted everything. For a long time, I was not my daughters’ mother. Formally, yes, I was. In my intention, yes, I was. In our daily life, I was not.
But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me start where it started.
Sunday, January 2, 2011: I hosted a small gathering of mothers in our little house. It was a celebration of the twins’ first birthday. And for me, for surviving a challenging year. I had no idea what was waiting for me, just around the corner.
Thursday, January 6, 2011: I brought my toddler to her daycare. I was on my way to teach the one class I was teaching at the time.
The car crash
The car crash. An “accident” (are there accidents?), a dance of cars, and a meeting of related souls who had never met each other here on earth before.
In precise timing, one car came downhill, on a lightly wet road, and for some reason, slipped to the right. The woman in it, the other woman in this story, as she called herself at our first unexpected meeting, did what I would have also done: tried to correct to the left, and found herself driving directly into my lane. Into me. We crashed.
No. I did not see her coming. Yes. It could have easily been the other way around.
The road was slightly wet. Tiny raindrops were pounding on the car windows. The sun, coming in and out from behind the clouds. Everything was clean. Shining. The air carried the fresh smell of earth dancing with the drops.
A few moments earlier, I had brought my toddler to her daycare. We sang rain songs. My twins were at home with my mom. My husband thought he would work from home that day.
I felt a sense of a “boom” coming. A boom that awakened all of my senses. The next thing I remember was light.
My near-death experience
Immediately after the crash, having no conscious awareness of what had happened, I felt myself expanding and hovering in white, shimmering, soft surroundings. The stillness was magnificent. Tranquil, perfect, and enveloping as only true silence can be. I felt peace as I had never felt before. Intact, complete, and whole. All the noise disappeared. Beautiful waves of soft white light were moving delicately around. Soft love was covering me, sliding by my luminous skin, bubbling into my being, reminding me what we are all made of.
So much beauty. So many alternatives and choices. So much love.
It was barely a few minutes in earthly time until I crashed back into my body. It felt like days. I viewed many dimensions of our world, earthly and others. Some heartwarming, some full of joy, and some sad. So much beauty. So many alternatives and choices. All the while, I was floating in the acceptance of being perfect just as I am. I gradually recognized, within my being, within my skin, that the light bubbling into me was bringing love. Was love. Until I remembered that I was love, myself.
Then, it was my time to return. It did not feel as if the option of staying in this serene, beautiful place, meaning not coming back to my body, my family, earth, was even an alternative. I was not asked or given a choice; I was to return immediately, and in the next second, I was floating backward, feeling as though I was weightily pulled down, and I crashed back into my own physical body.
Coming back
I was in the hospital for about two months, first in the ICU. I experienced multiple injuries.
In those two months in the hospital and then in the many months recovering at home, I learned it is OK to get help from others, to be dependent. To let others love my family and me, and help us. We were enveloped by our families, friends, and the amazing community we live in. We learned we are loved, and physically experienced love’s great force.
I was unable to do any of the caretaking I had done before. I felt I had been fired from the one role in my life that still had meaning. Luckily, after some time, and considerations, and tests, and although I came back completely different, they accepted me back at the job. I kind of adopted my own daughters, the ones I gave birth to, with a new sense of love.
What opened
Since then, it has been over fifteen years.
Throughout this journey, I peeled off and shed almost all the self-definitions I had carried before. Slowly, I got rid of the smell of the peeling, rotting onion and began to see the new onion sprouting from its roots. I started on a motion towards who I am in my essence.
The trail is continuously taking me to more and more new adventures, places, and self-discoveries. Sometimes fun, sometimes challenging me to the level of my cells.
I found I must write, even if my grammar is not perfect. And more so, in English, which is not my first language. I write for myself. I now write to share. I write as a way of breathing.
On this path, I embraced the gift of the open gates left after the near-death experience and accepted, not easily, my ability to move between worlds. Between our seen physical reality, and that of the unseen. It brought me to study shamanic energy medicine, and I became a shamanic energy healing practitioner.
The most profound gift of the near-death experience is the memory of who we are. A knowing, not a belief, that we are more than our physical being. And when we realize we are more than the physical and that we are on a journey, then this same understanding becomes true for our children. Parenting takes on a whole different outlook when we accept that they are on a journey. Their journey. This understanding affects our roles as parents. It clarifies what is important and what may be less crucial. It becomes the compass for our choices.
Today
I am a certified Shamanic Energy Healing Practitioner, continuously learning and owning my healing crafts. I work primarily with children, teens, and families worldwide. I guide parents of intuitive, highly sensitive, and spiritually aware children, helping them understand their children, connect with their spiritual selves, and say YES to the many invitations their children offer.
I am also a wife and a homeschooling mother to my three spiritually aware, intuitive teens, who constantly invite me to grow, and to our four four-legged teachers, who know more about love than we humans can ever understand.
Everything I write and offer comes from this path. From the crash, the light, the returning, and the fifteen years of walking toward who I am.
Read more
The near-death experience, the three soul promises it revealed, and what it taught me about the parent-child journey are told in full in my first book.
If you’d like to hear me speak about the experience directly, there are interviews and conversations on my Media page and on YouTube.
