Coming Around Full Circle When I wrote my first book, Full Circle: The Near-Death Experience and Beyond (Pocket, Simon and Schuster, 1990) all I did was tell my truth. I wrote about how the synchronicities (or meaningful coincidences) became a web that wove my path in the direction I chose to take.
Bear with me while I sort through some back up material. The first section of Full Circle is called "The End." It is my life until my divorce, when I was 41. I had my near death experience (NDE) when I was 32. It was then that I made profound changes in my life. I went to school and became a respiratory therapist.
My new career included being published in magazines and journals about the emotional needs of critical care patients. I became confident, and my self-esteem became healthy. My husband of 23 years was upset and unsupportive, which led to the eventual demise of our marriage. I met Kenneth Ring, a University of Connecticut professor, and became a subject in his groundbreaking book on the NDE, titled Heading Toward Omega: In Search of the Meaning of the Near-Death Experience.
My husband and I separated. My ex-husband, our mutual, friends and even my relatives told me I was crazy. They said I needed to settle down and go back to being the way I was before. In the first half of Full Circle, all of this is described.
I was alone one Sunday morning, and I wrote this poem:
The Beginning
I sit patiently, now
In my solitude.
Awaiting the dawn
Of my release
Knowing a death has
Occurred
Two cautious still
To announce my rebirth.
But starting to sense my need
For lessons in crawling, then walking
So I may eventually Skip
And Dance
And Live
To my Heart's Own Content
After I finished the poem, a couple of friends invited me to lunch. They knew I was having a hard time.
This is when my life got stranger. As described in Full Circle:
"In my car, I was waiting at a stop sign about to make a left turn when I saw a small car stop at the intersection across the street. There was a small box sitting on the top of the car. I honked my horn, trying to get the driver's attention. She ignored me, so I pulled out into the intersection, stopped, and got out. I could see the car was filled in the back with gift boxes. As I walked toward the car, the driver pulled off, turning sharply, leaving me standing alone in the middle of the street. The box on the roof was airborne, and as the car speeded past, the box hit me in the chest and then fell to the pavement.
I picked it up with the contents spilling out and waved to the car, but the driver was long gone. |  |
The box was in one hand and in the other I was holding a frilly white garment. It was trimmed in beautiful eyelet lace and satin ribbon. It was a baby's christening gown and bonnet. I chuckled and wondered if it was really intended for me. I knew I was dying; maybe the Universe was also telling me to stop being fearful; after death, you're born again! I got back in my car."
Later on this August day, I called Leslee, a friend from Connecticut who is from the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS.)
I told her about the christening gown, and she told me she had just gotten off the phone with her sister who was crying. They wanted to christen their baby and didn't have the money. I mailed the gown and bonnet the next day to her and her baby.
In October, I drove 1700 miles to Connecticut for an IANDS Board meeting. During lunch, only a mile or two away from a church, was the christening for the baby I mailed the christening gown to. The parents lived over an hour away, but this church agreed to christen the baby for little money. Their decision for the time and place of the christening had in no way been influenced on me being at a board meeting there in Connecticut. Leslee and I attended the christening. This meaningful coincidence, after the other meaningful coincidences, had moved into a realm that I had to acknowledge as a miracle.
A few years later, the above poem and the series of coincidences became the pivotal turning point of my first book. The second half of the book which, like the poem, I called, 'The Beginning' became a stream of synchronicities that I draw on constantly for my writing.
If we have the eyes, or the heart, to see, our lives can become the greatest story of all. | |