By the time I was in my late thirties, I had walked through or around a significant number of life experiences. I was fortunate that as a child I had all my great-grandparents, all my grandparents, and even great-aunts and great-uncles. So by the time I reached twenty years old, I had already said good-bye to so many people who had died. Although I was blessed to have known and loved so many folks, I had dealt with major grief time and again when I was still too young to face so many tragic changes.

I was used to grieving, and I was used to loss. This doesn’t even include all the animals that I lost along the way. Some were lost through age, and some through tragic accidents; however, the loss was the loss itself, not the way in which it happened.
I started noticing in my late thirties that the pep in my step was becoming faded. Up until that point, regardless of the situation, circumstances, challenges, or anything else, I had always been the type to get up, get going, get moving, and move on. Whether I had gotten drunk as a teenager and run my car into a tree or into a transfer truck going sixty-five miles an hour on the highway, I had always gotten back up. I drank so much in my teens and early twenties and had so many car accidents that many of my guardian angels sought new assignments. I really think I am the one who gave the auto industry the idea of off-road, all-terrain vehicles, for driving a car while under the influence and keeping it between the lines was not practical to me.

Thank God within me for a sober spirit! I was having way too many near-life experiences. I was showing up, yet spiritually I wasn’t growing up. We must move from our knowing to our growing to our showing, and I wasn’t doing that. I would simply dust off my feet and my heart, get back on my horse, and continue on the trail.

What I did not realize is that some of my past had never been felt, experienced, and transformed. You might say I glossed over a number of events or drank on top of them. I responded to too many events with a cliché, a bumper sticker answer, or a good quote by Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, or Marianne Williamson—always someone other than myself—to sugarcoat the reality of pain.
There was something about me that was changing, and the best way I can describe it is to say that I had a soul ache. My get-up-and-go just got up and went. I was determined not to share the pain with my dearest friends, for sharing it would make it real, so I kept it to myself.

I was having a series of near-life experiences and was often numb from the outside in. My life turned around 180 degrees when I did a soul retrieval and received a lot of energy back into my body that I had lost. I became more grounded, like a tree with roots that would sustain me through all situations. I became more authentic and more alive. My life turned around when I stopped being whatever someone else wanted me to be and started practicing being me. Yes, I mean practice. After a lifetime of being a chameleon and being everything to everyone, I had to practice a lot to unravel the layers and find my originality again. I was no longer dead on the inside while attempting to be awake and alive on the outside.

Excerpt : When Did You Die?