Trigger warning for near death experience.
I’m six years old, visiting my grandparents in the suburbs of Chicago. One day I make a new friend. This doesn’t happen very often because I’m never there for more than a week at a time and my grandparents live around a bunch of old people. This new friend invites me to a private community pool a couple of blocks away. How exciting! The problem was that you had to be able to swim to be allowed in, and I have never had lessons. I don’t know how to swim. We decide we will lie. “We’re just going to be in the shallow end. What’s the big deal?” we reasoned.
I pack up my swimsuit and towel and head to the pool with my friend. We get in, no problem.
One corner of the pool is a set of wide shallow stairs. Paisley and I wade and splash among the stairs. On the other side of the pool, I see a shiny steel ladder for climbing out of the water. I’ve seen people using these in sports and on TV. I covet that ladder. I want to use it like everyone else gets to. But it’s in the deeper water where I’m not supposed to go. I can’t swim.
After playing for awhile, I decide the concrete steps are for babies. I come up with a plan to get to that ladder. Just hop across! As in, push off the bottom of the pool when my feet touch and voila! Up and onward I’ll go. It worked! I was hopping across the pool! Grit, determination, experimentation paves the way.
About half way across it didn’t work any more.
I couldn’t keep my head above water long enough for a good breath. I couldn’t control the hopping. I start flailing. Water splashes in my mouth as I try to call for help. The lifeguards are teenagers asleep in the sun. I go under. No one notices. I make my way back up for another chance at a breath and a call for help. There was no turning back, no going forward. Lots of splashing, and then right back down under water I go. No response from anyone. Up again, just barely. Another mouth full of water and flail for help. Back down into the water.
Each time it is harder and harder to get to the surface.
Now, slowly sinking, relaxed as debris, I lose track of which way is up. I don’t mind at all.
Fade to black.
Whack!
A sudden flurry of activity. My right arm, raised above my head, smacks into the edge of the pool. The pain wakes me up. My left arm joins the mission and, somehow, I drag my 3,000 pound body above water and hang from the ledge. That silver ladder is a few feet to my left. I can’t breathe. My lungs are full of water. I can see the feet of the sleeping lifeguards right in front of me. Heeeeeeeave! I get one knee onto the deck. Heeeeeave! And then the other knee. I take up “cow” position without knowing it’s a thing. I drop my jaw open like a spout and out pours gallons and gallons and gallons of water. Sputter sputter BREATH! Sputter sputter BREATH!! Lungs are working again. I am still invisible to everyone at that pool.
After a few minutes of breathing and terror, I pull myself up, run into the locker room for my belongings, and run back to my grandparents’ house without a peep.
My body didn’t collapse, but my psyche did. I fell into all consuming guilt, shame and secrets.
My family demanded that troubling events never be spoken of. A long string of devastating events happened in my short life, none of them ever to be cared for. I obliged the status quo and told no one about the pool until I was 36. Instead of being welcomed back home, I told myself what an idiot I am. So the shame grew roots and trunks and leaves and a whole ecosystem in my personality.
Imagine my surprise decades later when I learn that such events are initiations; cracks in the constructs where 3D materialism doesn’t reign supreme. What exactly happened during that fade to black? No one knows. There were no witnesses, not even me. That’s one of the ways magic can become real, spirits can step in and interact, our soul can go on a journey, information can seep in. It isn’t necessarily fun and rainbows. There was obviously some sort of miraculous rescue. Can you prove it was just normal water currents that blew me against the wall or is that a belief you’re choosing? Bodies float, bodies sink. The nervous system and adrenal axis will do ANYTHING to save your life. Perhaps flail your arms while you’re unconscious and losing oxygen? Did I just get lucky? Why? Seriously, why? Or perhaps the Fae or the Water Spirits nudged me to the ledge. Does surviving mean I have a given or expected or desired purpose to my life? Fate, luck, help from beyond. Your belief system is going to influence your interpretation, with no proof at all.
A few years ago I created a sacred ceremony for myself, opening my state of consciousness for the intention of healing and serving. I impulsively decide to take a bath, and in that bath, recreate my drowning to see if I could learn anything about what happened when I was 6. A friend of mine had recently recommended going back into that fade to black, after his own near death experience took him on an epic journey. I wasn’t cavalier about the risk, but trusted myself to not take it too far. I am nothing if not an explorer and experimenter, with unquenchable curiosity. What an opportunity! Note to reader: I do not advocate you trying this yourself.
Down under the water I go. Very, very carefully letting water up into my nose, testing the waters. I look for the boundary of how far I can take up water without it turning into choking. I want to stay with this sensation. It’s intense! After a few tries, I find the sweet spot and get an explosion of colorful electric streams in the brain of my mind’s eye. There is only a thin membrane separating the brain from the nasal cavity. I interpret the experience as the water somehow activating neurons in my brain.
Then the visions come. As so often happens with me, they are scenes from a movie. Sigh. Ok, which one this time? The Long Kiss Goodnight. The scene of the world class assassin rescuing her daughter from the bloodthirsty father trying to kill them both in order to keep Secrets. I recognize myself in that scene. It’s not the first time I’ve been told I’m some sort of double secret assassin who doesn’t know her own identity. And although my ex-husband isn’t a violent criminal, my daughter and I have had overwhelming emotional abuse from him. I was able to escape. I tried to get my daughter out for many years. I’ve longed for the day I can write him a poison pen letter. But assassin? That is a bit much. I also know better than to ignore or discredit the visions. I put this one in the basket of “I need more information before I understand this.”
Then I ask, “How do I know if I am being manipulated into an action or if it’s a genuine service?” The Blue Star appears for me to feel where my heart and soul are aligned with it. I always follow that alignment.
Surviving from nearly drowning like that as a child ~ only to be filled with secret guilt and shame ~ what a tragedy! What an unfortunate pattern to embed into my life! My family had no sense of gratitude in general, so it wasn’t part of my awareness, much less practice. How would I want someone, myself included, to be loved upon surviving? I’m doing that for myself now. Celebrating life! Loving and thanking my body for surviving! Flooding my cells and consciousness with great love and gratitude for being alive, making it through. We’re still here!!! I’m so grateful for the miracles! Lovingly grateful to Life, my Self, Great Spirit, Great Mystery. HOLY OF HOLIES I’M ALIVE!!!