We did not have a telephone. My mother later told me she worked frantically to dislodge the aspirin but could not. She was screaming for help while trying everything she could think of. My father was next door at my grandparents' house and heard the commotion. He came running.

My mother told me that by the time he arrived, I had turned blue and gone limp. She believed she had lost me. My father turned me upside down, struck my back repeatedly, and was eventually able to dislodge the aspirin and restore my breathing.

Because I was only two and a half years old, I have no conscious memory of the actual near-death experience itself. What has stayed with me throughout my life are the effects that followed.

As a child, I developed severe separation anxiety. I became preoccupied with the fear that my parents would die or leave me. I also became unable to swallow pills, a difficulty that remains with me today at age fifty-three despite decades of trying to overcome it.

I had what adults called imaginary friends, but I experienced them differently. Their purpose seemed to be protecting me and keeping me safe. Throughout childhood, I also reported seeing and hearing deceased family members, and also other children. I spoke openly about these experiences with my mother which confounded her. Like when my Big Daddy (Great Grandfather) passed away in 1976, my mother was at the hospital with him and he wanted to see me, she said, but she thought it would be too traumatic. When she returned home after his passing, she said that I told her he came to see me.

As I grew older, I began experiencing what I can only describe as spontaneous knowing. During conversations with worried friends or family members, information about outcomes would sometimes arrive suddenly and without effort. It was never something I felt I could control or summon at will. The information simply appeared.

Although I was raised within organized religion and attended church, I always felt that what I knew and experienced was larger than any single religious framework. As an adult, I became involved in Spiritualism while still maintaining some connection to traditional Christianity.

Another recurring experience began in childhood. During sleep I would experience my consciousness leaving my body and traveling independently. These experiences felt completely real to me. They still occur occasionally as an adult, though much less frequently.

The best description I have found for my life is that I have always felt as though I walk with one foot on Earth and one foot somewhere else.

The most difficult aspect of these experiences has not been fear but isolation. Many of the experiences seemed foreign to people around me. I often felt confused and alone because I had no framework for understanding them.

One event stands out above all others. In 2011, my mother was dying. She was unconscious in the next room. On Monday night between approximately 10:00 and 11:00 p.m., I lay down in her bed to sleep. As soon as I did, I heard a clear audible voice say, "Three days."

I immediately sat up and asked my husband if he had heard it. He had not.

The following day, unsettled by the experience, I called a former pastor and told him I was concerned that I might be losing my mind. He reassured me that he knew me well and did not believe that was the case. He said, "The Lord works in mysterious ways," and if I said I heard it, then lean into it. We cannot explain everything. 

Over the next several days, I repeatedly told family members that my mother would die soon and gave the approximate time. At one point, my aunt (dad's sister) was preparing to take a shower, and I urged her not to go because I believed the hour was near. She told me it would be fine, she would be back in no time - but, as I predicted, she missed the transition.

My mother died around 10:00 p.m. on Thursday night, almost exactly three days after I heard the words "three days."

Of all the unusual experiences I have had throughout my life, this remains the most profound and traumatic. While the experience gave me the ability to be with my mom when she passed, so I could hold her during her transition, it was also incredibly lonely and isolating. When I would share her time of death and what I heard, most would just think I was hysterical.

I have also experienced dreams containing specific information that later proved accurate. However, the most consistent phenomenon throughout my life has been the spontaneous arrival of knowledge.

When people ask me what it feels like, I compare it to listening to a radio. Most of the time there is static or ordinary programming, but occasionally, another station breaks through with perfect clarity. The signal is not something I create. It is simply something I receive.

Whether these experiences are connected to the choking incident and near-death experience I had at two and a half years old is something I cannot prove. I only know that I have spent my entire life feeling as though something changed after that event, and I have been trying to understand that change ever since.

I am now approaching my 54th birthday, and I still do not fully understand these experiences. What I know is that they have shaped my life, my spirituality, my relationships, and my understanding of consciousness. I continue to live with questions that began in early childhood and have never entirely left me.