How Sudden Death Led Me To My Great Awakening

An Ode to Moab

I’ve known sudden death more intimately than I ever wanted to. But, over time, slowly and consistently, I’ve learned.  I give Moab credit for saving my life. When you sit on the edge of a canyon overlook here, you can see forever – both far and deep.  You can see the inner layers of the earth.  You can see its faults, its timelines, its inner workings. You can see into it - exposed, authentic, unashamed.  And that has helped me so much. 

You might look across the desert and think that it’s barren, but if you look closer, it’s full of life. Tiny plants, tiny crust, tiny water pathways.  Also, heart rocks are everywhere! Moab has helped me to stay away from gross generalizations, to look closer, while simultaneously giving me endless opportunities to zoom out and take in the whole picture by sitting on the edge of an overlook.  It’s all right there to see in plain sight.  That’s quite a thing.

I’ve learned that you never know how someone else’s story might help another human being. And so, like the canyons with all of their many layers, I’m sharing a few layers of my own in case it’s helpful to someone else out there navigating their own conscious awakening. So, I share a piece of my story as a gesture of gratitude - as an offering to the place, the people, and the lessons that have guided me home to myself. 

The Sudden Deaths That Shaped Me

When I was a freshman in high school, one other player and I were hand-picked to move up to the varsity volleyball team as we entered districts and would go on to states. I had an incredibly powerful serve, but when I changed teams, I froze. My back went into pain and paralysis I had never experienced. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even get the ball to the net.   

X-rays, MRIs, CATs cans showed nothing, but eventually a bone scan showed that one of my vertebrae had slipped forward.  So, I wore a brace specifically made for me for nine months with prescribed rest.  It was still there so then I had surgery - a spinal fusion. And then wore the brace another nine months before being cleared to play sports again.  I sat the bench my senior year. That was the sudden death of any athletic dreams I had for college.  My back wasn’t paralyzed anymore, but my emotions were, my psyche was. Not knowing how to process my emotions, I began experimenting with substances in secret.

In 1999, when I was seventeen, my junior prom date and one of my closest guy friends died in a car accident, along with two others. One was left in a vegetative state and passed away shortly after; two others survived. I had been so close to being in that car on that Halloween Eve. I had no idea how to navigate life, loss, and grief of that magnitude. My emotions were out of control and it scared me. I was scared of me.  So I numbed out more - smoking whatever I could sneak and drinking whatever I could find.

In 2004, while I was away on internship after college, at twenty-one, my boyfriend died from a drug overdose. And I just went deeper into numbing, confusion, fear and drugs myself.  I would drink until I was unconscious more often than not. Unconscious was what I wanted to be.  Life was easier when everything was blacked out.

In early 2007, my first love died in his sleep. He and I were each other’s first everything and, though it had been a long time since then, the suddenness of the news opened an old wound.

Later that same year, my dad passed away from a heart attack on the first day of summer.  They tried everything, but he was gone. Another shocking phone call out of nowhere that shook me to my core. This time I decided to do things differently.  Dad used to love when I played piano, so I bought a guitar to keep myself from self-harm and to connect with him. It kinda worked… sort of. At least I was trying to climb that mountain instead of hiding in a ditch at the bottom.

It makes sense then that I was afraid - afraid of death and also afraid of life. I was afraid of feeling. I was afraid of how big I was and how much I would have to feel if I opened the floodgates. I didn’t know. I didn’t know how. I didn’t think it mattered. I didn’t understand.  It was easier to numb out with junk food, pot, pills, booze and cigs. 

When the Student Is Ready, the Teacher Appears

By grace, in 2010, with a pain in my neck and no health insurance, a friend referred me to a naturopathic physician. Something deep in my soul resonated with his way of being.  One day in his office, I realized I needed a teacher.  I looked at him.  “I don’t know how to do life!” I said. “Will you be my teacher?”  Luckily, he let me choose what I would pay him and in exchange, what he wanted most was my commitment to the journey.  He was serious.  I swallowed hard, offered him $20 and showed up every Friday at 4 pm.

We had already been using herbs and homeopathy as my doctor, but with life school, we added in meditation and qigong… and all of my back pain returned, just like when I was moved to the varsity team, when I was being asked to level up. He wasn’t afraid of that.  He calmly expected it. He didn’t rush to do tests or assume something was “wrong.” He knew something was right, and this time, he was going to teach me how to navigate it.

He began to teach me that I had to be with it - to meet it, to mine the diamond out of the black coal of my fearful, numb heart. I was going to have to learn how to feel.

He used phrases like “awakening the soul” and “chi, life force, and spirit.” I didn’t even know the language! His eyes always smiled kindly in a safe, understanding, and encouraging way. He let me ask questions about God and religion. He taught me about Chinese medicine. He let me feel. He recommended books. I took notes. I learned how to cook and eat whole foods. I practiced moving meditation and went to his classes. I was learning, not through force, but through curiosity and commitment.

While under his care, I shifted careers - from working for the government to working as a holistic health practitioner.  Thanks to long-distance learning, I earned numerous certifications, always staying engaged with various schools - devouring whatever I could about health and being human.  This allowed me to dive deep into physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual exploration through intimate work like coaching and bodywork. This was a brilliant move because I was able to learn so much from my clients, which helped me learn more about myself. It was almost spooky how what I was working on in my life was reflected back to me through them. I saw how connected we all are – how similar we are. Different stories, yes, but we all carry similar wounds and fears around love, safety and belonging. Some people still played the victim while others had learned the gifts. And they had found me because they were genuinely doing their best to navigate life - just like me.

Slowly, painfully slowly at times, in ways I was most able to digest and willing to face, I learned, softened, opened my heart little by little, and began to foster and nurture my sensitivity.

The substance use became less the more I added in vital foods, movement, care, and service. More loss came - loss of certain people I hung out with, loss of drama, loss of what I used to think was fun - and in their place, I gained more life force, more zeal for learning, more answers to my questions, more opportunities to feel more aligned, more of the time.

My Great Awakening(s)

One day, a couple of years ago, a friend told me something I’ll never, ever forget. She said that now that she had enough for retirement, her only plan was to prepare for death.

My mouth dropped open.

Prepare for death?!

She was totally healthy and vibrant… and young.  Her words hit me like a lightning bolt and sent a shock through my whole system.  I leaned in and said:

      “So, if you prepare for death, then death can never be sudden or shocking, because you’ve given yourself enough space to prepare for it… and in that space, there’s life.”

Becoming more conscious had been a steady climb for over a decade, but it was this conversation that catalyzed so much for me.  I could prepare for others' death in this way. Very soon after, an article on the Greek philosopher Socrates found me.

It was a story about a drinking glass. He wrote that he knew the glass would eventually break. He understood its destiny was to break one day. But while it was there, he marveled at it - how it held water, how it reflected sunlight in such a way, how it felt in his hand, how it felt when he brought it to his lips.  He marveled at the glass.  He appreciated the glass.

And then one day, he bumped the table, and the glass fell to the floor and shattered. He simply said: Of course.

I read that article and cried my eyes out. The floodgates opened. I knew what I had to do. 

I began to prepare for death by marveling at the glass.  I put this into practice straight away as a mom. Having children amplified my fears, but having children also simultaneously amplified my commitment to get to the heart of them. The more I tried to figure out fear, the more it eluded me. It was only through loving, living in my heart more, marveling and appreciating everyday moments that I began to understand that fear was there for me to learn from.

I would go home and sit with my children as they slept, holding their tiny hands in mine, tears rolling down my cheeks. I went into the fire of my heart and felt.  I went into my emotions. I whispered to myself and to them:

      “You’re going to die. I’m going to die. And we have no idea when that will be.”

And in that truth, I found freedom. Because instead of sitting there frozen in fear, worry, and anxiety, I marveled at them instead. I delighted in how their tiny hands felt in mine. I appreciated them so much for being in my life and for giving me the chance to experience “the glass” in such a way. I hugged them longer, held them closer. I began to allow myself to feel everything - fully and deeply - and to contemplate our mortality every day.  I would look myself in the eyes in the mirror and say out loud that I was going to die, but that I’m not dead yet!  And that gave me space, it gave me life, and it gave me energy. I had to go into it in order to transcend it.

It was just my friends’ time. It was my dad’s time. We all have a time, but we don’t know when. Everything happens exactly as it’s supposed to - because that is what happened... “Of course.”

My love for the glass began to outweigh my fear of it breaking, more and more. It went from an intellectual knowing to a knowing deep in my bones. My capacity grew, and I let the understanding that the glass would break fuel my decisions in the here and now – but not out of panic, rather out of delight, out of “I get to.” The more my heart opened, the more I understood that I didn’t have to know. I began to relax into the knowing that life is for learning, for loving, for allowing room for mystery, not for micromanaging and controlling.

Then, in December 2023, after a year of diving into Dr. Joe Dispenza’s work, I attended one of his retreats by myself. I felt my fear of leaving my kids and husband to go on this personal journey. I went into it and had a conversation with myself that went something like:

      “If one of us dies, it wouldn’t be suddenly - and I’ve done my absolute best at marveling at the glass up until this very moment. And if everything and everyone is okay, imagine how much life this will give me, and therefore, give them.”

And so, I felt the fear, followed my heart, and went to Cancun by myself. Turns out, when you do that, you feel incredibly alive!  This is a lesson that continues to amaze me: how alive you feel when you learn that fear is safe.

Over seven days of lectures and meditation, my body and consciousness underwent a profound transformation. I had a massive kundalini awakening. I didn’t even know what that was. I had to look up my symptoms that evening in my hotel room!  During one meditation I was sweating, shaking, drooling, my brain felt like ice and at times, I thought I was having a heart attack. But I knew enough from Dr. Joe’s books and teachings to know it was my sympathetic nervous system having a response – a big response, a supernatural response. I knew that fear and trauma are trapped in the body, and so into the body I had to go.  I was able to be in it and have the thought “You asked for an experience and this is it.  Don’t be afraid of it, just be with it.”

On the other side of massive amounts of terror and stored trauma being released from my body, I catapulted into heightened states of consciousness - no drugs, no substances, totally sober.  It was my time to wake up - not intellectually, but viscerally, somatically, embodied. My body needed to release all that fear, that terror of loss, and the confusion, anxiety, and despair that came with it. And it did.

Once the terror and grief left my body, each meditation each day thereafter brought beautiful mystical experiences - visions, full-body sensations, so much light, and so many tears - but this time, tears of bliss, of ecstasy, of the most incredible feeling of love I had ever felt.

On the last day’s four-hour meditation, I saw myself holding my infant daughter and son, I saw my mom holding me, my grandma holding my mom, all of my ancestors holding their children. My dad stood there smiling. There was a presence I can only describe as a reverence for life I had never felt before.  Everyone loved each other.  Underneath the personalities, beliefs, religious harm, abuse, addiction, ideas about right and wrong, there was love. That’s all that was there.  Just them holding their children, loving one another.

One by one they and me were all going into this huge void.  The picture of us all morphed into a sort of streak of light as we gracefully, willingly, beautifully went into this black hole.

I knew I hadn’t been breathing for awhile and I was fine with it.  We all went into the hole together and I belonged here! Finally - belonging!  The blackness wasn’t made of nothing - it was made of everything.

I felt the most peaceful, expansive love I had ever known. I didn’t want to return. I thought I was dead. And I thought: If this is what happens when we die, it’s going to be so beautiful.

Then, slowly, the understanding came that I could take as much time as I needed, but I needed to come back to my breath. When I did, I took one giant inhale and came back into my body with the full realization that consciousness can never die.   I had just been swimming in the womb of all wisdom - one with everything, one with God – and suddenly understood what a blink in time this life really is, and how little of it we even know.

Our bodies may expire, but we can never die. We are pure consciousness. There are many dimensions to reality, and this is just one of them here on Earth. It is such a blessing to be able to experience it. And that's what it is - an experience.

Living Life with a Thankful Heart

My journey has led me to understand that Earth School gives us a tough curriculum sometimes, but each and every experience is happening for us - as opportunities to feel, to get clear on what we value most, to reclaim our energy, and to channel it into what truly matters while we’re living this one “wild and precious life.”

We’re here to marvel at the glass. To be thankful, helpful, kind, gentle.  To learn from life itself, to learn from nature. To enjoy the glass, our loved ones, our lives, our beautiful planet, our home. To add beauty, wholesomeness, and goodness into the world with our attention and with our devotion to love. Fear is simply here for us to learn from.  It can even become a friend of ours.

We’re here to feel with all of our hearts. To find others with whom we can be 100% ourselves - to feel worthy of that kind of intimacy, honesty, and loving exchange. And maybe even more so, maybe we’re here to remember to just relax. To relax into the mystery of life. To relax into trusting in life itself, to trust in the events of our lives, to allow our lives to teach us whatever we’re here to learn in a way that helps us remember who we truly are.

I love how Richard Rudd says that we’re here to remember that we’re a piece of God submerged into matter.  I say: somehow, somewhere along the way, we forgot the “piece of God” part.  We’re here to remember this, not with our minds, but with our hearts, to feel it in our bodies and then to demonstrate it through our words and actions. The heart is the door to this remembering.

As I prepare to leave Moab with a cross-country move - a place I’ve called home for twenty years (with a few pilgrimages mixed in) - I carry these lessons, these learnings with me. I’ve graduated this particular course in Earth School and am heading into the unknown somewhere by the sea.  This river is going home to the mother ocean.

With me, I take with me my commitment to remembering that our fear of death dissolves the moment we begin to prepare for it, accept it, embrace it, even celebrate it. I wish it was talked about more, not as something to be afraid of or to avoid at all costs, but simply as another part of this great adventure called Life.

Thank you, Moab - and thank you to all my teachers here who have helped me to mine the gifts of awakening out of the shadows of fear.

Death has been my greatest teacher. From it, I have learned how to live - to marvel at life while we have it, to feel deeply, and to love fully – to allow our love and curiosity for life, our planet, and each other to be greater than our fears.

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading, seeing and knowing some of my layers of being. May you marvel at the glasses in your own life. May you become so loving toward yourself and others that your heart blooms in awakening of what a blessing it is to be here now.

Love,

Sarah