On November 16, my brother’s birthday, in 1975, I swallowed every medication in the medicine cabinet after my bedtime bath. I said goodnight to everyone and went to my bed. I lay there thinking I would just go to sleep and not wake up. I didn’t want to leave, but I knew I had to. I was scared but relieved it would all end soon and, my mind foggy, I finally fell asleep.

I don’t know how long I was asleep, but I woke from a crushing pain in my chest and was unable to breathe normally. I managed somehow to reach my mother’s bed. Trying to get her to blow air into my mouth. She shoved me away screaming at me, “What is wrong with you?!?”

I couldn’t talk. I ran to the bathroom and shoved empty prescription bottles at her. My breathing was getting harder. She sat me in a chair and yelled for help. I sat there looking at the floor and I couldn’t take any more short breaths. I just fell forward hitting the floor. I remember fighting so hard just to get in one breath and nothing came.

I finally noticed I felt a sensation of drifting away. At that moment I made the decision to let go.

In what seemed like a single moment I opened my eyes and I was standing upright in the dark. I wondered whether there was no light or I was blind. I lifted my right hand up to see if I could see it. There it was, but it had no flesh. I could see it there shimmering. I scanned my whole body and realized I was all there, just without flesh or bone. I began to look beyond myself. I realized there was no floor beneath me, nor walls around me. Just endless space.

I saw a white light, like a star far away, and before I could finish the thought of wanting to go to it, I was moving towards it, flying faster and faster. I literally thought that, at the speed I was moving, and the brightness of the white light engulfing the darkness, it would have a painful impact on my body. But when I reached it, I floated gently into it.

Before I could open my eyes, the love and serenity engulfed all of me. It was beyond human description! Without a single flaw. It was completely and endlessly pure! I had never known such feelings. I opened my eyes. The light was a radiant white that penetrated through me, all-encompassing. There existed no fear or human pain. Insecurity was wiped away. A peace that exists nowhere in this life, only in this place. Before I could think of any question, I knew the answer. Like I had always known but somehow forgotten. I began to look around to try to figure out: what is this place? Where am I? I never want to leave!

Then I heard him. Not with ears or spoken words, but joined together as one. “You can’t stay; you have to go back.” I tried desperately to find the figure that was speaking to me and couldn’t. I said repeatedly, “I don’t want to go back!” He explained it was not my time to come. So, I stomped my foot and demanded to stay… and he chuckled at me. Like a parent with a precocious child. In that instant I knew he knew me, that I came from him! He knew my life and no matter what had happened or would, he would always love me unconditionally! I belonged to him and that would never change! The joy and security I found in that moment has never left me. It was inscribed into my soul and mind. I was not unlovable or dirty. Instead, I was loved unconditionally and promised that when it was time I would return!

I was turned, and as I was moving forward, I was shown things. The first, holes in the ground, and I knew what they were, where we bury people. As we hovered over them, I saw that they were all empty and immediately I knew no one dies! It brought me such a peace that my family, those I loved, would go where I was. The last memory I saw was everything burning. Flames everywhere, engulfing everything, and I knew we created this, not him! I felt immense sadness and fear. It hurt to see what we would do to ourselves and to each other. It hurt him! I know he showed me other things. I feel them, but I can’t remember them. It’s like a veil placed in front of me, separating me from the vision of it.

Then he stopped and I continued forward.

As I returned, I began to go faster. Beneath me, dashed lines like those marking a road began to smear into one as I traveled. Suddenly I was back in my body. It felt so weighted, like I was engulfed in a heavy wet blanket. All the sadness and pain I felt through my life was all there waiting for me. It was miserable. I felt so separated from him, that place, from knowing what I now knew, and it brought feelings of immense loss and turmoil.  

After waking several days later, I wanted to tell everyone and tried, but no one wanted to hear of it! It was a dream, they would say, a nice one but just a dream. My life went back to normal, as we know normal. With one new rule, we were never to speak of it again.

For many years after, I tried to go back, through countless suicide attempts. Not once did I ever reach my heaven again. I was locked up in mental health facilities to be kept safe from myself. Released to Christian Children’s homes, because I was too much for my family to handle.

I became angry. Why would I be sent back here to this hell I desperately wanted to leave? Every day felt like rejection! Another day to try again. I could not understand why I had to be here. Why know what I know and not be able to go back?

I learned to play whatever role I needed to play to appease whoever controlled me. In moments of freedom, I drank and did as many drugs as possible to dull the memories. Which only intensified the loss I felt. So many times, I’d run into the dark night, and I’d scream up at the sky, “WHY?!?”

I couldn’t let anyone love me; I wasn’t good enough. I was messed up and would only run away if they got too close. Oh, I hoped someone could love me with all my scars, my mind twisted with pain. But I never believed I would be. I became my worst fear!

Years later, at 26, I found out I was pregnant. After my first son’s birth, I had my second son twelve months later. How could I be blessed with having the opportunity to love the way I knew real love felt like? I could finally love someone the way love is supposed to be.

But the abuse I had endured as a child was ripping me away from my own children. I was terrified I could not possibly give them what they deserved as a mother. But I knew I had to find a way. I needed help to learn, or I would destroy their lives as completely as mine.

I went to therapy, to doctors, read books, and took classes. But I never spoke of why I was there. I could not speak of the past without my throat tightening or the fear of it killing me. But one day it happened, a scream of a thousand screams came out of me! My composure gone in an instant. There was no stopping it.

Into the third year of therapy, I was exhausted. I felt like the torment of my life was too much for me to bear any longer. I remember one day sitting there across from my therapist thinking, “I can’t do it any more. I’m never going to be well enough, no matter how much I love my sons. They deserve better than me.”

Suddenly my head began to swim and I felt myself falling. I opened my eyes and I was standing in that same black space. But it was different: I was not alone; there were countless more! They were moving around in this space in enormous pain beyond description. I was separated from them but felt them. It was terrifying. I couldn’t understand why all this torment. What is this place?

Suddenly, I knew he was there and I knew I was being given a choice! If I really wanted to die I could! But this place would be where I would finally learn my truth! The truth of all things and the pain we create by our choices. Our greatness and what we did with it and the impact of that on all that existed. Knowing we could not come back to change any of it, nor go into the light as I did as a child. My suffering was incomparable, because in this place you suffer the retched pain you inflicted on others as well. Those you didn’t even know in your life here.

As I began to understand that this is our hell, I felt myself becoming a part of it. I begged him to let me leave. I didn’t want this! Finally, I realized it was not him I needed to convince; I had to convince myself! So I shouted, “I will never do this to myself again!” I know my worth now and what it means to be and give. I know that what we say and do ripples out across the universe to touch all corners of it. That’s how powerful we each are. All we are meant to be is within us from the beginning. If we destroy that, we destroy others and our purpose.

We are meant to love, to raise up all those we touch in this life. That’s it! No more, no less is required of us. We live to experience and learn our greatness and to give it to each other! We will falter and fall, and we will rise and shine our brightness. This life is a gift to find ourselves.

I don’t know what happens to those in what I call the knowing place. I do know that it’s hell! I asked, “Do they stay here forever in this state?” I was not given an answer, but an impression: No! I understood for the first time in my life what I was, what I had within me to survive. That I was a blessed being, never alone, never too damaged to be loved! It was my choice.

I was released and woke up lying on the floor of the therapist’s office. Changed! Relieved!

I finished my therapy a couple of years later. I live in the present now. I know my worth and my gifts. My mind is free to explore and grow in the present and my soul is my peace! Right and wrong. Love and hate. Good and bad. We will all experience these throughout our lives here. Our beauty is what we decide to do with it.  

I don’t find him in a church or any religion. I find him within me; my soul is my connection to truth, to him. He exists all around us as well. We have only to really look to see him in the beauty of all things. We can speak to him; he hears us and responds. All we need to do is quiet our mind and listen to our soul for his answer. Knowing it’s always the right truth, whether we like it or not. His spirit lives in all things. We only have to look within and listen.

I know nothing else in this life to be truer. And I know without doubt I will someday return to him as he promised me.