The Universal Mother of Integrity

This following is a slight edit of a post made on May 11th of 2021:

This morning, my feelings of gratitude started mingling with new insights into integrity and familial legacies.  I will explain what I mean in a minute, but I feel a little context is in order.

I was in the process of completing a wave of thank you messages, to the folks who have donated to my son Liam's fundraiser. He had created it on my behalf.  My thoughts about needing that level of help arrived with an unexpected pot luck of emotions today.  Metaphorical casseroles of embarrassment, shame, fear, and frustrations were followed by the more simple fare of sadness and grief.  It took awhile to locate compassion.  But when I did, I sprinkled some on everything that was on my plate, so to speak.  And that is when I found I could let myself rest within the process.  Again. Prayerfully.  I followed this with a gentle meditation to reconnect to the present.  Perhaps my dessert for the day was the action of getting back to gratitude.  I wanted to express it sincerely --- to those who have responded to my son's eyewitness account of the more recent medical trajectory. 

Isn't it interesting how asking for help can feel so damning?  I mean this in relation to cultural expectations of getting back in the proverbial saddle --- as if nothing had happened.  Or being in a hurry to be totally self-sufficient and dependent on no one.  Where does this come from?  And what does it mean, honestly?  This unrealistic pressure to speed up healing so that everything looks, at least outwardly, like others expect it to?  And, if it never gets to normal, which is likely in my case, then what?  The more integration I gain from the crash and ICU events of 2019, the stronger I feel about my current progress in body, mind, and spirit. 

There have been days in which I felt rather dragged along.  A strong woman with one foot caught in the stirrup of a beloved horse that took off before I was fully seated.  With my body upside down, almost tragically unable to gain my handhold on the saddle horn and haul myself back up --- with an all encompassing umph! of effort. Before the crash, my thoughts were sometimes riddled with if only --- when reminders of my perceived personal failures caught me in a moment of doubt.  These tended to queue-up before becoming compressed into a kind of wall of undifferentiated forgetting.  My examples would be thus: forgetting that I have been a home owner and run my own businesses; or, that I am the first female on my mother's side to have earned a degree of any kind, let alone being within a year of achieving my doctorate!  Even "forgetting" that the pain I have in my body every day was actually caused by someone else's driving negligence (a person I have never met, by the way), and not by any self-sabotage.  Mostly, I have a forgetful recycle over the fact that I am still recovering from a near-fatal crash, which could have left my now twenty-something kids without their mother --- either by death or paralysis.  And, not to be missed, leaving me without the earthly prospect of loving any future grandchildren. 

Differing levels of vulnerability and understanding continue to emerge.  I'm a complete failure at pretending to be invulnerable.  But what does this have to do with integrity?  Well, it doesn't feel like being invulnerable is very useful or honest.  Especially in a society that is still dealing with pandemic related issues.  I'm human --- not superwoman, dammit!  

The gradual slide toward becoming the archetypal crone (wise woman I hope!) has speeded up.  A lifelong impulse to seek out a new teacher or teaching, might now be a diversion, or maybe just another arrow into my heart.  Nonetheless, I seem to be drawing meaningful parallels with earlier healing journeys.  Instead of looking for something entirely new, I'm panning for gold within my journals and personal library. There, my lessons of self-accountability and full-on integrity seeking are embedded in these life-long progress notes. 

Let me anchor my post with a quote from the late John O'Donohue, known by those who loved him as a "priest, poet, prophet, philosopher, mystic and...peasant of this valley" (1). O'Donohue identified most with the idea of being a peasant, despite his massive education and life of service. Without using the word integrity, here is his profound recognition of it: 

“Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing that will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment. The eternal makes you urgent. You are loath to let compromise or the threat of danger hold you back from striving toward the summit of fulfillment.”(2)

I've been at that point of no going back that O'Donohue speaks of. Not once.  Not twice.  At least half-a-dozen times in my sixty-plus years. At this moment, I still catch my breath on the phrase "the eternal makes you urgent."  This is exactly the present-life-tense I came back with, from my near death experience (NDE): that the eternal is HOME. A state of being we all long for, even as if in a half-forgotten dream or distant divine memory, rather than a literal place.  How does one begin to describe the expansiveness and cohesive complexity of space, possibly akin to parallel dimensions of experience? 

Although my particular life situations were all different in their external manifestations, each of the dark-night-of-the-soul events I encountered possessed the same intensive, internal element: a decision that would cost me either my personal integrity or adherence to a set of cultural expectations and the people associated with them.  Not to belabor the intensive part, but those dark-night-of-the-soul experiences can last longer than one night --- they last until the essential, pivotal decision is made, in fact.  Then, and only then, do we glimpse how the universe tilts in our direction.  And yes, the fear of what you do want to be true can be as powerful as the fear of what you don't want becoming your destiny.  Your reference point and metaphors will likely be different than mine, but I hope you will claim them when they come to teach you.  I believe such personal metaphors and dark-nights-of-the-soul are direct influences from our divine soul essence. There is probably a more beautiful way of articulating this, but I'm standing in the puddle all the same.

Cultural expectations are not necessarily bad.  They can be the source of obstacles or the loss of support, which proves very challenging to dismantle.  Only you can know which aspects of culture provide the nemesis that prompts you to doubt yourself, just as only I know the ones that have nailed me.  Each of the pivotal moments of decision-making that I have faced brought me to a belief that the impulse to live must be grounded in a sense of personal purpose --- and that living toward that purpose is the individual's process of attunement with their own integrity and God's will.  Yes. I did just say attunement. Alignment works, too.  Like resonating as our own tuning fork with what is our higher-level knowing.  When the frequencies match, the better seasoned we become for attending to life's adventures and misadventures. I'm depending on the fact that, the more authentically we respond to the co-creative aspects of the path we find ourselves on, we become happier and more whole.  

If you are experiencing a pivotal choice point in your life, take heart: you are in good company. O'Donohue "risked everything to walk a different path and live passionately the integrity of his own truth" (1). He certainly wasn't the only one who has written about it.  In fact, the quest for the holy grail of Arthurian legends, and Dante's Divine Comedy are excellent examples of the metaphorical hero's journey: to the "summit of fulfillment" which is our "own truth"--- rather than a literal object from antiquity. 

I personally think it's the quest for the soul-directed path of integrity. Something that is designed by the soul to be lived by the personality and character of the individual, when embodied.  In different words, "the journey is the destination" (attributed to a photojournalist named Dan Eldon, who died quite young). From within such a perspective, every moment in time matters, not just the end result.  After all, everyone knows they will someday cease to breathe life into their earthly body. Even very young children understand this (see the work of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, if you feel skeptical).  Is the death moment the goal of everyone's life?  If that were seen as true, we would have a lot more education around it!  Or, is one's truth contained in the consciousness with which we have lived and lost, learned and loved? The former seems to instill fear while the latter embraces the diversity of time and the influences of our lived life. 

As I write this, I feel like one of those Russian nesting dolls, called Matryoshka (meaning: little matron or mother).  You might know what that is.  For those who are unfamiliar, it describes a set of culturally significant wooden dolls handcrafted in incremental sizes, so that they fit perfectly --- one inside the other. Each doll can be removed, like a shell casing, to reveal a smaller doll inside. Until you get to the smallest doll. At the deepest core, this is the only doll that is intact or whole. It doesn't split open.  It isn't hollow, like all the others. According to the  oldest Germanic traditions I could find, the smallest doll represents the youngest female within a matrilineal line.  She carries the legacy of all her genetic mothers before her. The chain of fertility of a specific motherhood, and inherited traits of spirituality and courage,  extend far beyond the physical conception and birth aspects. At least it does in my perspective.

FYI: I especially like the symbols represented on the separate dolls of the Matryoska set above. Online, it can be obtained for about $60.00. Vintage sets can be as high as $5000 on the open market. The true vintage sets may bear a place name or a kind of serial number. If you're really lucky, the names of the family line it traces may be located. But I rather doubt those would survive anywhere outside of a museum or a treasured family chest --- forgotten in a barn or attic adjacent to the largest wilderness area of the world (78% of global wilderness is held by Russia). In the Matryoska set above, five generations are represented. Most nesting doll collections range from 3 to 7 individual dolls. Although, I have seen a few commercial collections that contain up to 40. 

I share a love of history with an aunt, several siblings, and some friends. Little did I know how important genealogical research would become in my life as it is now. In early October of 2019, while still wearing the cervical collar brace (from the crash injuries), I turned my doctoral level research skills into a search and rescue effort --- for a legacy of familial meaning to pass on to my kids. What began as a lightweight hobby at 30 minutes every other day, has evolved into a full day at least once, if not twice, a month.  

Because of that research commitment, I've since discovered chasms of misinformation, misunderstandings, and unclaimed historical influences predating and including our British colonial roots.  Surprisingly, those discoveries have provided as much insight into the present as they do about the past.  And not just regarding my direct lineage, either, but collaterally, as waves of cultural paradigms and transitions.  Even more surprising to me, is that the subject of my dissertation research can be seen to have its roots in what I needed to learn to become a reasonably whole person. Intact.  Integrated.  Connected. A daughter of integrity looking for the universal mother of integrity!

When I faced death and chose to live, not by scrambling after the hope of not dying but reaching, rather, for something intrinsic to my soul --- that's when the game really changed for me.  My NDE in 2019 did not land me in an unrealized fantasy of butterflies, rainbows, and unicorns. Imagine the backlash of trying to get that kind of experience into print and still living outside of the confines of a psychiatric facility!  No.  The journey can be infused with a sacred mysticism and still be deeply grounded in evidence. Bear with me here. This post is not as random as it might seem in this moment.

What kind of evidence would indicate the strength of someone's NDE or other life transforming event? How important is it to be believed if the story that needs to be told is a mixed bag of graces and griefs? In this paragraph, the griefs I refer to are the losses we experience when we make a choice. We either pretend to go along with our cultural environment or we trust our innate integrity. Whichever decision we make we will grieve something. There's the loss of what we thought was right and true or the loss of ourselves --- what we know to be true. More subtle perhaps but just as real is the loss of that which is not to be chosen or experienced (3). A setting aside of certain potentials, so that the one we did choose has our full attention.

After getting this far in my writing session, I needed a stretching break. Made some tea. Cut up some watermelon. Let the dogs I'm pet-sitting have a romp out-of-doors. But my thoughts were still in the flow of this meandering about integrity and where it's leading me. So, when I settled back into the chair, put my laptop back on my lap, I reached for my cup of tea.  I couldn't help but notice the quote on the Yogi tea bag: "Live by your inner knowledge and strength." How's that for synchronicity?

Here's the working title of my dissertation: Resiliency in Survivors of Human Trafficking and Forced Marriage; A Qualitative Study. My intention is to gain, from survivors themselves, insights into supporting resiliency from such horrific traumas --- and provide some protocols that people who work with survivors and their families can use.  You may have the impression that I'm accustomed to rather intensive topics. This is not new.  I've been working toward this particular focus since I entered my first session of therapy (at 30 years of age), added in vocational rehabilitation (at 32), and continue to invest in my educational journey.  Before I get much further on this particular trajectory of my life's work, I want to make two things clear: I believe am alive by God's grace and, I feel called to present a coherent, well thought out and legitimate reality check on the phenomenon of human trafficking and child marriage.  Because I'm a survivor.  Because I wanted to know things and have access to education, when that was denied me by my family and the religious culture I was reared in.

There will be details that leak into future posts. I want to be sensitive to how my heart needs to tell my story and to how my readership may receive it. I also have siblings who were not raised with me who have become cherished.  And the siblings I was raised with are still in a certain amount of resistance to going as deep as I have to heal. My version of the truth doesn't necessarily align with the secrets they still feel a need to keep.  My near-fatal car crash and NDE event forced me to reexamine the entire process of healing.  From what I went through in my 30's, in the realm of revelation and recovery and normalizing my life, to the more recent reflective inquiry. 

In the midst of it all, I am continuing on task with a purposeful life.  Including the scope of my  research project is about much more than a research topic.

In the dissertation process, which I will no doubt refer to from time to time, I will not be permitted to tell my own story directly.  But it enables me to attend to certain issues and address specific inquiries that other researchers, without a similar history, commonly avoid. One of the benefits of my research focus, however, is that, after earning my doctorate, it will enable me to thoughtfully share parts of my story through other venues. And this goes full circle with my earlier intention: to anchor my true story in its own legitimacy, with an intention of wellness for others.  It's another kind of legacy I'd like to leave behind when I die. 

In 2015, I went public about the fact that I had survived being trafficked and being in an arranged child marriage. A publication with a capsule of my story can be located from the list below (4). If you've read my other posts then you have seen my photo.  I am a white woman of European descent, which includes Germanic English, Albanian, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, French, East Indian, Chinese, Ashkenazi Jew, and a host of other DNA markers that make me a Heinz 57 varieties sort of human mutt. I was born in Iowa but raised in association with several cult-oriented communities within the U.S.  I am no longer a stranger to confronting this difficult terrain of both psychological and spiritual transformation. In simpler terms, this means taking the hard pain of unmitigated trauma and helping it become the softer pain of recovery and restoration.

Through my online travels into archival documents and narratives, I have learned that over the last 21 generations, just tracing my mother's lineage, there have been more child marriages that there were marriages starting with an adult female. Four generations of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), with plural marriages, precedes my maternal grandfather's birth.  It is unclear if my mother ever knew of this history directly but one influence can be seen in the fact that she became a child bride at 16, followed by her younger sister, Pauline. 

I was not raised as a Mormon but as a Jehovah's Witness (JW).  I walked away from that gradually in my late twenties, but made the total break when I started college, at the age of 33.  One effect of discovering the significant and mundane histories of my ancestors is that I no longer blame my mother entirely for her lack of affection or protection of my siblings and I. She couldn't have intervened because she had no education or therapeutic alliances, nor even a personal, spiritual imperative to question what she believed she knew.  Once she began self-medicating with alcohol and pharmaceuticals, at only 23 years of age (I was 4 years old by then), there was little consciousness in her to reach for anything else. 

If I say my mother was out of integrity I would have to say what that meant to her.  I never knew her true feelings and thoughts.  She was a beautiful but lost, insecure, unhealed and suffering person.  My mother had been too enculturated to silence and avoidance by the time I was ready to ask the essential questions of my youth.  She was already imprisoned in her suffering, unable to transform anything except through her death in 2013.  Perhaps one of her greatest gifts to me was that she lived the painful folly of never risking anything or everything, in order to preserve some integrity for herself and her children. Where would she have learned this if she never confided in anyone or had the wherewithal to educate herself out of the family patterns?

I am no longer the inner core doll of the Matryoska that represents my maternal heritage. That is for my two daughters to hold sacred and work with in their own way. In order to conceive and give birth, a woman has to surrender physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Because I had my children later in life, and I had been a recipient of some amazingly powerful and productive therapy, I was able to interrupt the multi-generational abuse patterns, including the misogynistic tendencies that can be traced back at lease the 21 generations I have researched thus far. When I became a mother, I chose to love and parent differently. Motherhood is full of contradictions and cannot be perfectly implemented.  However, I must acknowledge that I did so much better than what had been passed down to me. I look at the strength of voice my daughters have, compared to where I was at their current ages, and I feel a powerful grace that I was a part of their process of staying solid in their self-identity and physical integrity.

I rarely feel angst at my mother for her failures.  I have been freed up by the evidence that what I went through was the end of a very long-standing multigenerational pattern. It seems more in alignment with my integrity to keep changing the pattern I inherited.  Rather than bellyache about how hard it was or how invisible I felt, I believe I have been granted 30+ years of breakthrough awareness: to rebuild my own core.  And my four children, 26, 24, 24, and 21 at this writing, have blessed me with their trust, curiosity, and love, which helps me to keep progressing. Their presence in my life has taught me what childhood and young adulthood can be, in the midst of  mutual challenges.  They might not fully comprehend what I worked through to become a conscious and present mother.   Nor appreciate the integrity of learning to do it things much differently than how I had experienced them. While i once had no choice and no voice, they are keenly aware that they do.  I wasn't abandoned to the choiceness/voiceless state by God and destiny. I was brought out from it because I asked the Creator of all life to lift me up.  And then I respected the knowledge that emerged, even when it contradicted everything I had been led to believe about life, the universe, and me.

I'm sensing today that integrity is a movable spiritual feast we carry with us into whatever we do and wherever it takes us.  It isn't a doctrinal creed but a soul connection.  And who doesn't need that kind of connection in this earthly school of time, talent, trauma and treasure.

Reference Footnotes

1. Poet and author John O'Donohue laid to rest. (2008) Huff Post

2. Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom. (1996). John O'Donohue. 

3. The Way of Integrity. (2021). Martha Beck.

4. Child Marriage in the U.S., Survivor Story Compilation. (2020). Tahirih Justice Center

A Kind of Integration

On Wednesday, I saw three Eagles. According to World Birds the metaphysical meaning of spotting eagles (especially three in the same tree!) symbolizes, "new beginnings, resilience, and stamina for those who have been experiencing difficult passages in life" (Jan. 11, 2021). Amen to that!

My favorite part of bicycling into Friday Harbor these days is the opportunity to hear, and see, the diverse bird populations that grace us in the islands. Wednesday's weather featured a mostly cloudy sky, which provided some moderate protection from overexposure to the sun for us fairer-complexioned folks. My veggie and fruit stash was getting low and it was time to replenish my provisions! I left the cottage where I'm staying, near Roche Harbor, a little before 4pm and arrived back at just past 7:30 pm. It requires about an hour of pedaling each way. My bike paniers are still in my off island storage unit, so here is what my load looked like:

It isn't easy to see from the photo above, but another canvas bag filled with groceries hung on the far side of my bike rack, too. I wore a back pack as well, in which I had tucked the more lighter weight or fragile groceries. 

Thursday morning's juice preparation was Zen-beautiful and delicious! Aside from the colorful array you see below, my staple of carrots and celery were hanging out in the kitchen sink. But who needs a photo of that? I usual go through 3 pounds of carrots, a full bunch or two of celery, and half a head of cabbage each day. Everything else is run though to individualize different juice combinations, keeping the minerals abundant and the taste buds happy.

For these ongoing, memoir-type writings, my plan is to focus my entries on what I have been learning about healing as it applies to my particular recovery. This is going to include the spiritual connections that are unfolding, as well as the physical and emotional bits. Perhaps I may find myself touching into a kind of mystical mastery? 

I hesitate to write much more on the actual crash event. Speaking or writing about it, outside of a therapeutic setting, feels somewhat threatening to my current homeostasis. Because there is an active civil suit, it seems prudent to let direct crash details and issues remain the purview of my attorneys, my medical team, and my ongoing PTSD therapeutic process. That being said, I want to touch on my near-death experiences (NDE) with this post. The NDE aspect of the crash event is something I find myself integrating on a daily basis, at least as much --- if not more than (some days) the physical changes that the more serious injuries have caused.

When my Honda hit the rear wheels of the dump truck, the sound I recall most vividly is that of rubber grinding on metal. Lasting several seconds, it was quite distinctive before an overwhelming roar of sounds filled the interior of my car. My transition from within the rolling car was overwhelmingly auditory, compounded with the sensations of spinning out of control. As if I was traveling faster than the speed of light along a corkscrew path --- that unforgettable trajectory may be the only likeness to the experience of being in a tunnel, which many other NDErs often talk about. 

I need to acknowledge that time, as I had known it, became quite distorted as I moved into a different dimension. It seemed, in fact, nonexistent. I've read through other people's experiences looking for some commonalities and have discovered that the awareness of timelessness, like gravity, depends on the dimensional plane one is in. That fits.

Simultaneous to having the air knocked from my lungs, I had a sensation of the car lifting. Or was it just of my spirit? Right now, I have no image or memory of what that looked like. Except for one instant of getting a glimpse of the crash from on high, and hearing a voice from quite near me, which said (in my head), “You don’t need to look at that,” which was all it took for me to refocus my attention on my mystical suspension.

I was standing, uninjured, as a light-body. My consciousness was so high above the crash site that no sounds of the rescue vehicles, or the people involved, ever reached me. A feeling-sound of whooshing lingers even now --- I can’t say if that was only sound, or only feeling. They are bonded as if dependent upon each other. I was completely knocked out of my body. And I knew it from being outside of it.

Even now, words and thoughts are failing to extract the sounds I experienced as separate from the sensations I can still feel in memory. Maybe it’s a Koan riddle, like the tree falling in the forest: If there is no one to hear it fall does it make a sound? If I had not survived the crash, there would no one to relate the sequence of events to because they were only important in the moment and how I experienced it. 

If my life on earth had ended because of the crash, my friends and family would have been left to imagine their own worst versions of disturbing possibilities. I have my own real life example of this in relation to my father's passing. 

On Friday, May 13th, of 2016, I was sitting on the lawn of the Orcas Island Public Library. While my head was bent over some research I was synthesizing for my university coursework, Budd (as my father was called by anyone on the planet who knew him), had fallen out of the seat of his antique tractor, while pulling the plow disc implement across the grassy pasture of his rural Iowa farm. 

Budd was mowing near the edge of the ditch between his pasture and the gravel road, when the softer ground caused the tractor to dip unexpectedly. My father, in his barrel-chested 6' 4" frame, toppled out of the seat onto his back, no doubt becoming winded and dazed because he was 78 years of age. The well-maintained but old-time tractor meant there was no safety feature to cut off the engine automatically if the seat lost its occupant, so the tractor kept moving forward. Without him in the saddle. 

When the disc-blades were pulled across my father's body, he had been unable to scramble out of the way. Budd lived another 45 minutes or so, due in part to the fact that his head and upper body were angled into the ditch, below the area where his body had been severed. On the plane of synchronicity (as Carl Jung would probably define it), Bud's wife, Sandy, who was in the farmhouse unaware of anything amiss, received a phone call from her mechanic at about the time the fall had occurred. The mechanic told her that if she hurried, she could come and pick up her car right away. Feeling a sense of urgency, Sandy left her cozy kitchen to locate Budd on the northern stretch of their 20 acres.

Sandy, a 4' 11" former truck driver from Portland, OR, and the mother of my three youngest siblings, immediately noticed that the tractor had no driver and was slowly progressing on its own, just shy of the ditch boundary. Somewhat bewildered and rather close to 70 years of age herself, Sandy half jogged toward the tractor. When she was able to get close enough, she navigated a quick hand-hold and climbed on. Sandy turned off the engine.

When all was quiet she then gathered the fortitude to look behind the bloodied disc implement and follow the trail it had left --- to where her husband, my father, had tumbled. Budd was on his back, making no sounds and not moving. Scrambling off the equipment, Sandy made it to Budd's side, calling my brother Ty on her cell --- and Ty then calling the paramedics. Less than 30 minutes passed before Ty and the emergency personnel arrived. 

Amazingly, Budd was still alive but barely so. He could not talk but he had looked Sandy in the eyes and squeezed her hand at least once. However long it took to load my father and his limbs safely in the emergency vehicle, I know he was softly reminded of how he much was loved. Budd was declared dead en route to the hospital in Clarinda, where, 56 and-a-half years before, I had been born. My sister, Marcie, born 2 and -a-half years after me,  just happened to be coming out of the hospital emergency room when the ambulance, carrying our father's body, was pulling in. An hour or so before this, Marcie had taken a nasty fall at her workplace. Her evaluation was over but an unexpected grief would meet her on the way out. 

I was notified within the hour of Budd's passing, by our brother Stacy, who lives in Texas. When Stacy phoned I knew something was up because I had suddenly been feeling nauseas and unable to concentrate. I had actually been laying on my back in the grass, with my research papers fluttering in the breeze under the weight of my backpack. My eyes were closed and I was focusing on my breath. That is what I was doing when Stacy's call came though.

When I had been sitting up earlier, engrossed in reading, I began to feel as though the earth was spinning a little too fast. My memories of my mother's passing, also at a distance, were less than 3 years old, so I thought about her briefly and even said a prayer to understand what was coming up mentally or emotionally. I had encountered the same loss of equilibrium around the time of my mother's transition, and I soon discovered  the connection to my father's passing. What had lasted about 2 hours or so with my mother's passing would be of a similar intensity and time lapse as my father's, too. 

The only reason I believe I could make these connections is because I have kept journals consistently since I was twenty-nine years old. Otherwise, I feel that the physical and emotional evidences would have been long lost if I had not recorded them when they occurred. In addition, trauma itself has a way of making its own kind of memory. The bottom line then, for me, is that my capacity for awareness was enhanced by my spiritual receptivity, which had been adding up since just before the passing of my beloved great grandmother, whom I was closer to than my own mother --- but she had prepared me for her passing as well as gifting me with other spiritual insights.

Edna Olive Watts Caylor (1891 - 1965), known affectionately as our "Gomo," passed on the 75th anniversary of her own mother's death. I was less than a month shy of my 6th birthday. But my father had adored her after he had met and married my mother. Gomo came to teach me in dreams all throughout my life and as recently as July of 2020. I will share more about this relationship in a future post.

Part of my recovery energy has been spent learning the foundations of how to perform genealogical research. When I took up the task of creating a family tree as a legacy for my kids, I discovered that my beloved Gomo, had actually lost her own mother, Olive E. Mallow, just a month after she was born. Edna (Gomo) was then raised by her maternal grandparents. 

When my brother Stacy broached the graphic details of our father's tractor incident, I became very restless and ungrounded. this lasted for several days. I prayed repeatedly to let go of my inner turmoil and made preparations to travel to Iowa, for Budd's celebration of life. My nightmares were rather unrelenting, though. I knew I would be seeing siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles soon, so I managed to talk our oldest sibling into making the trip from California. He had not yet met all of our relatives from our paternal side of the family. We met up at the Kansas City airport and shared a rental car from there to Clarinda, Iowa.

One of Budd's deepest longings had been to see all eight of his children in the same room at the same time. His celebration of life, with all the prefuneral gatherings and the impromptu pot lucks over several days time would be that dream fulfilled, I hope. For me, getting to see Sandy and Ty, to hear them speak of Budd's last moments, helped me put to rest the horror show my empathic imagination had been giving me for days. Human nature being what it is, I am deeply grateful that my children were spared something similar in regards to me. 

My kids and my perceptions of eternity are not yet written in the same script, if you catch my drift. If I had passed from the earth because of the crash, I would have tried to reach out to them across the ethers into their dreamscapes, as my great grandmother had done with me. I would have wanted to confirm that I was free and unencumbered by what had happened. For their sakes, it didn't seem the right time to leave them behind. But something more is held in this story, as well. 

I am aware of an inevitable choice-point in the NDE. A letting go opportunity of everything that was already lived. Simultaneously to this was the grace or invitation to be present to the as yet unlived opportunities of the future. This is where, in my NDE, I most definitely experienced the permeability and malleability of time, dimension, and circumstance. 

Please be patient as I attempt to clarify things --- if that is even possible? From what I've read of other NDE accounts, this is unanimously agreed to be an impossible experience to describe. My first heavenly impression was of being surrounded by a low tone or harmonic vibration.  So vivid and real was the whole episode that it supersedes what I would normally call human "reality" in realness. Like a dream that seems more alive than the moment of waking. To merge back into the mundane routine of how we normally perceive life is an encounter with a dumbed down but organic algorithm. 

My essence or true self, which had a shape of its own, was enclosed in a protective field that held me in an active stillness. I moved instantly into a clear cocoon that was shaped like a Torus donut. When I looked this up later, I learned that the Torus shape is considered to be a highly-charged revolving geometric shape in science and a phenomenally potent one in metaphysics. This feels accurate to my impression of being within it. Perhaps a comparison to being in the eye of a hurricane might help with understanding the electrical charge and sounds I encountered.  I knew a whole lot of motion was going on around me but I was floating within an inner calm, sustained by the way a Torus moves through space. Contrary to what might be imagined, although I had no ground beneath my feet, I felt securely held in place by no obvious means of support. There was no gravitational orientation.

Perceiving myself within an infinite consciousness, I felt warm and unharmed. Absolutely no sensation of pain was evident! But I knew my body was still in the car and was in harm’s way. I had no anxiety about it though. I was not only surrounded by an overarching love, I was somehow intrinsic to it. As a divine aspect of consciousness, I felt linked to God in a way that seemed familiar and solid, even though I was a temporarily inert presence. My mind was responding to a fast-forward like activity, as if a high-speed download was taking place of mostly future events. At least, that is how I remember participating in it. Again, the visual elements were minimal because the inner auditory was activated the most.

As the above elements were unfolding, I heard two phrases clearly: it is accomplished, and, it is complete. The images that filled my mind were of past experiences disintegrating. Abusive memories were flung away even as certain lessons were retained. Confusions were dismantled because there was no confusion! Hatreds held within humanity were being recalibrated towards remorse --- and I could see this energetically. And then they were recalibrated again, towards forgiveness. 

Through these mystical encounters, I witnessed the collective distress being transformed. One very clear message was that a global event was going to force people to confront their fears --- but I didn't understand what the event was specifically. It just appeared total and complete, like a sphere that holds all reflections and motivations within it. It was of a universal nature rather than of a personal ego or individual identity. Yet both were true and present simultaneously.

If I could describe the audio-visual and cellular knowing of the situations I observed, you might also comprehend, as I did, that all will be well. The details do matter to our individual natures, but our collective connections operate quite holistically. 

 A thought that came repeatedly to me was: I am held in love. It was the thread of a mantra that burbled like the heartbeat of a fetus in the womb of its mother. There was no tunnel of light or other figures that I recall seeing specifically, like relatives that had passed over. And yet, I instinctually knew that they were present and aware and helping me energetically. I became acutely open to life itself, as an abundant, creative energy, filling the spacious expanse beyond my capacity to see specific liminal shapes. I was therefore dutifully filled with an awe that has not diminished now that I am back in time.

I became aware of breathing through an outer membrane, if you will --- or being breathed through --- rather than possessing actual lungs. I was momentarily an expression of light and color rather than of flesh.  I saw my children’s faces in sequential snapshots, as if to emotionally punctuate my willingness to return to the earth plane. Within the vibrational space I occupied, something greater than myself was there. There was a glimmer of a voice, more as a series of thought transfers. No sense of gender was even relevant.

 After a period of sensing the soundless yet harmonic vibration and the fast-forwarded download, I was back in my compressed, awkwardly positioned body with a slam-dunk effect. Or better yet, it was as if I had been underwater for an extended time and was suddenly surfacing for air. That's the effect on my lungs. I felt a kind of buoyancy to my spirit, however, as though it would simply not all fit back into the body. 

What had felt to be several intensive seconds in duration, had, in fact, been well over an hour in linear earth time. Weird but rather beautiful how time can be compressed or expanded or disappear altogether!  Despite the limited focus of my awareness, eons of existence, past and future, had been revealed to me. This is the part that is essentially inexpressible. I am sorry to disappoint but I, myself, am not disappointed. Each person probably has some form of memory about the pre-birth planning and post-death transition. Such experiences convince me of the necessity to hold them sacred and avoid projecting them as revelations that would necessarily apply to others in the same way. 

A second NDE occurred after I arrived at the hospital. I recall being wheeled from the emergency room toward the surgical suite, where they were going to obtain MRI and CAT scans. As I was moved very quickly in the gurney down hallways toward surgery, the ceiling lights passed rapidly overhead, making me feel dizzy. I closed my eyes and in that instant, I was out-of-body again. Just like that!

As I write this, I remember how glad I felt to be out-of-body. That second time I was more like an eight-year-old girl, out for a secret flight. I was aware that I was still a 59-year-old woman trying to reorient to life on earth, in a surgical room, but my spirit was much more playful and childlike. 

My flight plan kept me close to the buildings and city blocks surrounding the hospital in downtown Green Bay, Wisconsin. A different sort of Being, familiar to me (but not a relative) hovered near by. It was wearing a hooded garment, similar to the cloaking shroud demonstrated in the Harry Potter films. I was gliding very quickly in the immediate atmosphere. I peeked in store windows and saw through rooftops with ease. Again, time was nonexistent. No pain or urgency was felt.

Momentarily free and lighthearted, I was eventually escorted back to my body. I reentered the hospital through a closed window and saw a woman hovering over my scalp with a magnifying apparatus between her face and my head. I recall thinking I could zip around the room but I was suddenly back in my body, coming out of the anesthesia in the ICU. The doctors were laughing at something I said but I cannot recall what that was. I felt like I had been laughing, too.  

One physician took the lead in listing off all my injuries. Aaarrgh! I was way more interested in the encounter I just had traveling out of body. I was aware of the medical concerns over all the broken bits of my body, but not worried about any of it. The next 48 hours are a light sketch of blurry, undifferentiated pain and a few lucid moments. People were coming and going but I didn't make much effort to open my eyes. Being measured for a rigid brace, stands out as a strange, morphine enhanced affair. 

A repeating whirlwind of hallucinations, in which I relived the spinning vortex of being catapulted, through the rollovers, to the alternative heaven-scape reality was rather unpleasant and uncontrollable at first. I assume that the morphine in my IV was part of the reason this was happening.

As a writer by nature, I wish I had been able to write or audibly record my first days of post-crash impressions. Most of my time was spent straddling the two worlds: out-of-body and in-body. I didn’t have hunger or bodily needs that I could even take care of. That was all being done intravenously or otherwise. Through each day of my hospitalization and beyond, an otherworldly sense of vibrational energy remained in my auric field.  I never read or watched a film or listed to any music during my hospitalization (I almost wrote, my incarceration!)

One of my friends, upon hearing of these experiences a year after the crash, mentioned I had been given an angelic triage, in her opinion. I cannot deny that I sensed a lot was being done outside of normal human awareness. Through the early phases of urgent healing, my physicians and nurses were amazed at my progress.  They, as well as friends and family, were wondering how I had even survived such a horrendously dangerous event.  

I didn't wonder about how or why I had survived. I knew it was a choice to come back. I’ll write about this part of my encounter another time. Even though I have very little conscious memory of the sequence of body blows and impacts within my car as it rolled over, I cannot see crash scenes in films without falling apart. This is especially weird because it always catches me by surprise and seems illogical. Whatever protective measures were enlisted by my divine consciousness, my body is still letting me know it isn't over yet.

Many synchronistic events took place, ranging from the housing that friends provided to the minute confirmations that my life mattered more than I had realized before. How I perceive mortality and time has shifted dramatically. I wasn’t able to write about my NDEs until 7 months had passed. It took that long before I could focus my eyes properly to look at paper and pen or be able endure a computer screen for any length of time.

 After one of my weekly therapy visits in Sturgeon Bay, WI, I walked to a favorite family-owned café, Kick Coffee, before connecting with the rideshare back to where I was staying. An older couple were sitting next to my table, and, noticing the body braces I was wearing, they asked me what had happened.  I provided a 2-minute capsule of the crash. They asked me if I had an NDE, which kind of shocked me. When I confessed that I had, indeed, experienced a significant NDE they made a recommendation of a book: Changed in a Flash: One Woman’s Near-Death Experience and Why a Scholar thinks It Empowers Us All. Written by Elizabeth G. Krohn (the experiencer) and the scholar, Jeffery J. Kripal (2018).

I obtained the book shortly thereafter, and I couldn’t put it down once I started reading it. Another important NDE resource I now have is: Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (2011), by Pim van Lommel, M.D. 

As a cardiologist, van Lommel performed a systematic study of NDEs because the most common reports of experiencers are cardio patients, followed by children. I read parts of each book concurrently and became convinced of the value of my experiences. However, while I will never forget my encounters I found them hard to describe. Until I had a friend ask me to simply write out, to her, what I experienced, factually. Telling a friend whom I trusted, who was sincerely interested, helped me access some elements of that phenomenon.

After my first summary draft went out via email, and while I was nearing the conclusion of van Lommel’s book, I noted a reference to the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, a 17^th century scientist turned mystic, who himself had elicited conscious experiences of what some call the afterlife. I really don't like the terms other side or afterlife because my encounter was inclusive of all life, with past, present, and future all pervasive, simultaneous, and holistic.

I obtained a couple of volumes of Swedenborg's writings. By that time, it was February, 11, 2020. While sitting in a little cafe I was doing bookkeeping for in Algoma, Wisconsin, taking my lunch period to read and journal a little, I opened up my new copy of Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell. Something in Swedenborg's mystical writings sparked me, though I was barely passed the introduction of that particular book.  The impulse to capture my  NDE experience, in a form of synthesis, took over. 

I grabbed my pen, opened my journal, and pushed my lunch out of the way ---  five minutes later, the capsule-synthesis of my NDE experience became a poem, which matched the resonance that I felt inwardly. What it may mean to others is for them to decide, but what it means for me is the closest I can come to reliving the essence of it. Perhaps the poem is a hologram, where the whole is made up of the parts that all mirror each other?

I have provided the synthesis below. 

 

 The Far Side is Nearer than We Know

 

Beloved,

A moment in Your Presence,

a vibrant love, an unveiled life

now gather in my essence.

Suddenly, I knew myself

as You knew me – eternally,

past, future, and present. In all

matters, We All Matter.

 

No intruder I, but welcomed

there, held in the air

as space within space. So safe!

No guilt, remorse, nor anxiety;

pain-free, yet free to return

by the Will of my Soul’s heart.

Which I found loves what is good,

and a fresh start, for its own sake.

I can be no fake.

 

Opalescent colors blew right though me

as light. Intelligence breathed me in, too.

I was tangible energy, reflecting

back to You, then to me, then to Whomever

You may be. There was no time for doubt!

Even Wisdom revealed Herself

as sound; as numbers; as subtle vibrations

felt more than heard. Oh yes,

my essential atoms danced

a choreography called redemption,

where all forgiveness prevails.

Freely, I was set to sail. Again.

 

Conceived in Divine Intuition, I am

as familiar as faith, empathy, generosity,

simplicity: a single drop in Your Ocean

of humanity --- a tiny beloved

to Your Infinite Being. This gift

humbled me in a particular memory:

of wholeness; with only four tasks ahead ---

Re-member who and what I am.

Be willing to Be: if only for the good

and the grace of it. Adore life

in all its forms. And laugh,

at myself. Often.

© February 11, 2020 Morgan L. Meadows, M. Ed. 

Integrating the OBE / NDE of June 3, 2019