I am someone who from a young age experienced loss of those I cared for. My father passed of suicide when I was only twelve and my mother cast me out into the world shortly after. My maternal grandmother tried the best she could, along with my maternal grandfather, to look out for me. However they both had health issues and my grandfather also passed during my teens, leaving my grandmother alone. Although she was unable to care for me full-time, she always loved and believed in me more than I did myself.

I struggled with homelessness, addiction, and subjected myself to every self-destructive behavior I could fathom. I didn’t want to live and was too afraid to die by my own hand (my father having passed as he did, death terrified me). I wandered aimlessly, living in other countries, and anywhere I would open a map and point my finger, I would go, meeting many people along the way and tempting death at every turn. I would watch it happen to others around me, but it never seemed to be my turn, to alleviate what I thought was my suffering at the time. I would always remain. 

I was always cast out by everyone in my hometown, by the person who was given the task of raising me, my brother, and every person I tried to fill the void inside with. Pain and shame were normal for me, and I assumed this was just my wretched path to take in life. I realize now that nothing is of chance and that we are entirely part of a much greater design. I became a mother in 2009 and 2012 and was left to raise my children on my own. It then became a priority to work as hard as I could for them, because I wanted them to have better than I did. My thought process was at the time that money and working hard for it was the answer to doing that. I never saw them much because I lived at work. 

Then, I had a series of accidents in the course of one year. The first was on my way to work. As I turned a bend, a deer jumped straight through my driver’s window, impacting my head, neck and spine, resulting in injuries of an incredible nature. I have yet to meet another who has survived impact with this animal at such close range and survived. Statistically, it is a fatality, in most instances.

I had to have lengthy spine surgeries, and recovery was almost unbearable. I was alone with two small kids and experiencing domestic violence during this time in my home. I remember the impact of that animal as if I had drowned and was under water, and I had the most immense ringing in my ears.

I was not taken to the doctor immediately because my mother and my partner at the time somehow appeared at the scene (and to this day, I don’t know how they came upon me). I see now, though, that they intended to hopefully take me home and I would pass during the night. I needed medical attention and they were both abusive towards me, so they left me alone in my bed hoping I would pass. But I also see how I was never alone, even if at that time I didn’t know it. I took myself to the doctor a few days later and the doctor was in gasping awe of the fact of what had happened to me and that I had not had medical attention yet. 

After spine surgery, I tried to return to my job and didn’t even get to the parking lot. While traveling down the highway a hauling truck going in the opposite direction literally had a rear axle fall off the truck, come across the median and into my vehicle. This was approximately three months after the deer through my windshield, which if im honest I was not nearly fully recovered from. I was afraid to lose my job, thinking money was the element of success. I was terrified that if I was without my job, I wouldn’t be able to get my kids into a better living situation. My back was again injured, I began to have nerve pain and weakness in my legs, yet I persisted. More doctors, therapies, medications, etc., a pharmaceutical guinea pig of sorts.

I also began to think deeper at this time that these things seemed a bit beyond belief. I started to think about what life meant to me and what happiness meant to me. I still could not fully get past believing that I needed to keep my job and was aware inside that changes needed to be made, but fear of losing my position overtook me. I knew I had never been afraid as a young person when I was alone out in the world, but I think it scared me because I was alone and now I had kids, other beings who looked to me for support. I grew up in chaos and wanted desperately for peace for them. To me, my job was stability, though now I see there is no stability in chaos, and I was still living in chaos, trying to protect them with anything I could muster.

This is when the last event happened, the one through which I truly saw what I was designed for and what the purpose of being is. How it’s all connected and we are perfect by design, nothing is of chance, but design, and every moment, every interaction is as it should be and leads you to purpose. For me that came in the form of suffering, and was as it was intended to be.

I was traveling home and a car kept tailgating me, then pulled back, then again and eventually passed me. I remember a car coming and the next I remember going off the road, then rolling, over and over. I rolled 300ft, struck a culvert, then rolled another 300ft, eventually landing on my driver’s side in the middle of a field. I remember the windshield in its brokenness tapping my cheek lightly, then the next moment I was above the scene of the accident and could see myself, or my physical body rather, lying in the mangled vehicle. I was aware that I was in another state of consciousness.

I then was greeted by what appeared to be a form of human shape, but it glowed an immense white/golden light that radiated from it. I could see on one side of this being my deceased grandmother and, on the other, my deceased father. They looked as they did in life, as I knew them. And behind the being was a wheel with photographic images that went around on it slowly like an old movie reel, showing different events in my life.

While I focused on what I was seeing, I could hear clearly within my mind, telepathically, this being saying over and over: "Do you see now?"  I kept asking it to help me understand, and see what I must, as well as saying I didn’t want to experience loss of the overwhelming peace and warmth I felt. This was what I had longed to feel all my life: peace. Something that I felt was unattainable to me. As I said, I was born into chaos from a young age and never had a sense of belonging. I was then shown my children and told that there is much work to be done.

I awoke in the hospital, with the doctor again in astonishment, even telling me this time that he was not a religious man, but a man of science, yet could not explain how I survived. I was helicoptered to the hospital, although I only have remembrance of being in another space and time with my creator and seemed instantly transported to the hospital. The lights were bright there as well when I awoke, but not like the light I saw in the other space. The warmth, the golden white light, the sense of weightlessness and freedom my spirit felt, all had escaped my physical body, yet remained in my spirit, and have never left my consciousness, as I can see it all in my mind’s eye as I sit here writing this.

I told the doctor I knew why and how and everything made sense to me. I instantly had a deep understanding of why my life had been as it was. I felt a calling to a purpose, but I still went through many more layers of shedding and becoming who and what I am meant to be.

It was hard to initially share this experience because, at least for me, I knew I had a deep desire to do certain works in life, but I didn’t know how to proceed, and I was still trying to make sense of it all. I worked another three years after this, then into the fourth year, my spinal condition began to worsen. I began to fall and have episodes of my legs giving way under me, along with increased numbness in both, as well as in my arms. I had to go out of work and became permanently disabled. They came to find that I actually had injury to four nerve roots in my spinal cord, which is called posterior cord syndrome. It’s an incomplete spinal cord injury. I had to endure more surgeries. I had an implanted spinal cord stimulator, had weight loss surgery as a result of becoming morbidly obese during all of the countless surgeries prior, originating with the deer incident. I was left anemic from that surgery, I have permanent prostheses on both legs currently in order to ambulate properly, I have had injury to my brain from the deer impact, yet I was also left with a brain that has an enormous quest for knowledge and deeper understanding.

I am in college, taking a bachelor’s degree, in my third year in psychology. I have spoken to kids in local high schools about suicide prevention. My life and experiences have helped others, especially young people. I purchased my grandmother’s plot of land she lived on in my hometown and am using it to create a space to grow fresh food, and I give it to different organizations to feed those who need it. I am building something to be in memory of my grandmother because she was always a giving person although she didn’t have a lot.

I am in several community action groups, as well as sit on the board of directors of the largest non-profit legal aid society in my state. Social justice is part of my purpose, to give a voice to others who may be shunned or feel unseen because of stigmas that exist and the judgments of others. I see now that I was put through all the trials of my life because this was my purpose. I was never accepted and I was judged by appearance and by others all my life. When I wanted death, it was withheld from me because I was made by design to endure all of the adversities stacked against me, so that I would be strong enough to endure the physical pain of my injuries. Because in order to see my purpose I had to endure pain, and what I learned is when I kept hearing "Do you see now?" over and over, the message was that I was created just as imperfectly perfect as I was meant to be in my creator’s eyes. And that by being the light and being the change needed, I am living with purpose. And also ending the darkness that was in my entire family lineage so that my children will not repeat the cycles. As well as giving a voice to so many people who are still suffering as I was by my own torments. What I experienced, to me, was Jesus Christ, and God resides in us all. If we embody being the light and understand that we are much more complex beings than we realize, then one can truly see.

My purpose is to help others see, through me and my story and all of my scars, to show them visibly to choose humility in the face of wrath. I will travel to Washington soon and was given an opportunity to speak with my local congressman about my humanitarian works and also what I am building on my grandmother’s land and the aid it can bring into my community.

So, what I learned from all of it is the thing I feared the most in dying, was the exact thing that was given to me in order to afford me my life as it is today, unexpected, but beautifully designed and formed as it should be in suffering, because one cannot truly appreciate the gift of purpose without first experiencing a certain degree of suffering. I am left with a constant reminder of the physical disability, but this also reminds me of the warmest embrace I have ever felt. I truly do see everything clearly; I was never alone, none of us are.