A year and a half ago, I decided to die.

I made the conscious and aware decision to let go of my physical consciousness and awareness and return to the greater consciousness and awareness from which I came. I was finally too sick and too homesick to bear it, care for it, a moment longer.

I arrived at this ultimate exit point after a quarter century of stubborn suffering. Victimhood I identified with from my entrance into this human form. Psychological abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, self-abuse, abuse, abuse… Pain was what I knew. When it wasn’t being served to me, I served it to myself, and kept it right there, to myself. Through this disservice, I became suffering, strife, sickness, and only attracted more into my ether.

Every moment that I chose to suffer, from crippling chronic stress and anxiety, PTSD, chronic fatigue, eating disorders, fibromyalgia and Lupus, was another moment of wilfully surrendered strength. Loyal first and foremost to self-loathing, I relentlessly ruminated on my depths of my despair day in and day out to realise deeper and deeper desperation. A seasoned sufferer, if you will, committed to cultivating relationships that could only ever offer tumult and torment, a penchant for purging every calorie I consumed, a hallowed hatred for my body and the shame it housed, the energies of trauma embedded in my tissue and bones, an absolute aversion to love in all its forms, a daring denial determined to drive my demise. A most divine demise…

…

I was 25 years old. It was an uncharacteristically balmy Autumn night. I was in the heat of my worst Lupus flare to date. I had just learned in the days preceding that I’d never again be able to trust the partner I considered to potentially be the partner. Inflamed and inflammatory, my head pounding and ablaze from the heat and pressure of a hellish fever, my brain misfiring frenetic pulses of pain to each of my convulsing limbs, my paining palms profusely sweating, my loveless heart hysterically palpitating, my lungs aching with every prickling expansion of breath, resisting nausea so intense it could have only been my soul desperately trying to escape its expired container… I stared up through the skylight at the stars and gazed into the vast freedom I craved. Freedom from the confines of the prison I created. Never could there be a more stunning exit sign than the cosmos from which I came. This was finally it. My freedom. It was decided. I was decided. Through an expansive exhalation, I took my exit.

…

An unknown period of time passed between my decision to die and my return to physical realm. Between the push of my pain and pull of my purpose. A pull punctuated by the faint calling of my name by my partner’s voice. My name that carried the dual potency of pain and passion for life itself. I would now meet true Grace. I felt surges of pleasure emotions I had numbed myself from experiencing for so long rush through my field; the joy of creating and exploring my gifts, the unrelenting love of family, pure wonderment for nature’s rhythms. The fundamental experiences of humanity that I was not, in actual truth, prepared to forfeit. Not yet. Give me Grace.

In this space of suspension, my soul sourced the strength my physical body needed to seize in order survive the stroke I had experienced. Blurred vision, high pitched ringing in my ears, paralysis, neuropathic pain, convulsions, extreme temperature variances and brutal shock welcomed me back into my body. Beyond survival, this would be my revival.

 

 

It wasn’t the real me that gave up, that decided to die. It was the source of my pain, my fear, my suffering – my ego. And of course, it was exhausted. It had been running the show as full cast and crew far beyond curtain call. Selfishly consumed by suffering.

The low-lived version of me that allowed my fear-driven ego to define my life experience most certainly, absolutely, spectacularly died that night.

The high-lived version of me that today channels utmost love and light through the expression of my authentic truth in this perfectly unfolding life was most certainly, absolutely, spectacularly born that night.

 

The most divinely directed demise I never could have imagined has led me to now live fearlessly by the warmth of a soul ablaze with passion and purpose and a committed conviction for all pursuits of healing and nurture in Mind, Body, and Spirit.

With every decision to unapologetically honour my Self, I have aligned with my truth, bolstered my health free of all medication after being told indefinite chemotherapy was my only option, and grown further and more genuinely into happiness. It’s what I’m so impassioned to now teach my clients and community because it’s what I’ve learned. It’s what I will continue to learn, because it’s what I will continue to teach: the release of anything and everything that no longer serves the soul, and by extension, the world.

I’m stirred by the knowing that we each have the right and responsibility to serve the collective of which we are all part by first and foremost serving ourselves. Before we can end our suffering, we must first choose our healing. It starts with Self.

 

The thought that I almost denied my soul this full lifetime of growth and healing takes my breath away while also breathing greater life into the daily embodiment of my mission. A calling of consciousness informed by the difference between hellfire and soul fire, the duality of dark and light, the necessity of falling in rising. These lived understandings have illuminated my immense power, our immense power, of choice. The choice to HEAL instead of suffer. To commit to Self, above all. To do the inner work.

Again and again, in every moment of every day, I choose to survive, revive and thrive through holistic healing – through targeted mindset training, therapeutic nutrition, movement and rest, and a dedicated spiritual practice. A transformative and liberating rather than restrictive and confining passage through life. An impending book I title Healing Happens.

It’s time for the healer within each of us to claim our limitless power to create health and happiness, in Mind, Body and Spirit – at once an intimately individual and ultimately universal experience. Much like the night I lost and gained it all…

I am so gratefully empowered to now know that even when the sun goes down and I recall the night I chose to die… I will decide for my healing.

I will choose, in any darkness, to radiantly LIVE.

 

With all the light in my heart,