S1 Ep4 - A Medical Error Killed Her… Which Saved Her / Danielle Slupesky

Outwardly, she was the nurse you wanted in the room when everything went wrong. Inwardly, she was barely holding it together.

Danielle was a perfectionist, an ER nurse, and a functioning opiate addict hiding deep emotional pain behind achievement and control. After a devastating medical crisis left her bleeding out in the hospital, she experienced a profound near-death experience that completely transformed her understanding of life, death, love, and consciousness.

In this deeply emotional conversation, Danielle shares her life review, the overwhelming presence of unconditional love, the “light” she encountered, and how her experience eventually led her to become a death doula helping others transition peacefully. 

https://www.deathdouladanielle.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Shh, I mean, I was freezing, I was shaking violently, my whole bed was shaking.

SPEAKER_03 0:10

Right.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

And so I remember being able to look over my left shoulder and see the monitor that had my vital signs on it.

SPEAKER_04 0:16

Right.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

And my blood pressure said 46 over question mark. And my conscious thought as a nurse was, wow, I didn't know I could read that low. That's the last, like, really conscious thought I have.

SPEAKER_03 0:28

Right.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

And then all of a sudden there was this warmth and nurturing. And somewhere in there, as I'm becoming unconscious, I had a thought, which still feels like the wrong word, but thought. Oh yeah, this is dying.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

This is dying. Our world is magnificent. Filled with life in every imaginable form. But what if at the root of all these diverse forms there was one energy, one conscious energy that created everything we know by becoming everything we know, including you. Come with us as we peek behind the curtain of what we call reality and explore the limitless wonders of consciousness. In the realization lab. I'm Jay Sherrick and I'm David Ron. There he is. In the flesh. In the flesh. And we actually have a guest. My wife saw this person who you're about to meet, Danielle. Hello, Danielle. Hello, Danielle. My wife saw you on this thing called the internet with an amazing story, and she was like, Yeah, you have to get it. Oh, is that the origin of this? That's awesome. Yeah. So I hounded you.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

I think hounding might be a little strong of a word. You sent an email, so on that.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

I did send two emails. That's borderline stalking.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

Danielle, you have you have an amazing, you have a lot of amazing stories, frankly. Normally, I don't let David look at the material ahead of time. Yeah, so that he could sort of be a fresh opinion. But he's been kind of down this past week, and he needed and he needed some sort of like spiritual upliftment. So I had him watch your episode. So he actually knows your story in advance. How did you feel about it, Daniel Store?

SPEAKER_01 2:45

I had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it made me feel better. On the other hand, it freaked me out that you could fall out of a cab and hit your knee and that would lead to your death. I knew he was gonna get hung up. I was like, wait, she thought she tripped and fell? And then we're gonna go to a dog.

SPEAKER_03 3:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Yeah, I was like, I don't know if I can watch this.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

Daniel, you're many things. You have uh incredible stories, but the current uh version of you is a death dueler. You're somebody who helps people transition from life to death, I guess, is how you would say this.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

And what's so fascinating about that is David is your worst nightmare. He fears death more than anyone on the planet. A little scared.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

Yeah, yeah, that's fair.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:41

It scares me to go into the unknown. This thing that we don't understand.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

It all scares me in some way or another. Like the there's a version where it's nothing but blackness, and that scares me. There's a version where, oh, my soul is infinite and it never dies, and that scares me.

SPEAKER_02 3:59

It's a complex case every day.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

There's like a window which will make sort of comfortable.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

What would the ideal version look like?

SPEAKER_01 4:08

It wouldn't happen. I don't I don't know. I don't know. I really don't know.

SPEAKER_02 4:13

Your ideal version is never die, and nobody you know ever dies.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Nobody I know dies, and there's no suffering.

SPEAKER_02 4:19

Got it.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

In life.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Ever.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Ever.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

So we don't eat.

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Well, I find eating kind of pleasurable.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

Why we not for the thing being eaten.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Right. Right, right. Right?

SPEAKER_00 4:33

So, like, I think kind of inherently in life, there are things that happen that one could choose to see as suffering, one could choose to suffer from, or we could choose to see them as just parts of the natural rhythm of things and something that we're a part of, and how does that change how we deal with it?

SPEAKER_02 4:56

Well, you're not gonna fix them in one station. I'm just wondering.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Like it's just questions, right? And that's uh that's 90% of what we do is just questions. Just one of the questions.

SPEAKER_02 5:07

Open the mind. Okay, so let's let's get into your story a little bit, uh Danielle. I want to talk a little bit about your upbringing.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

So I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and then moved way out to the Central Valley. I had parents that they've had us young. You know, my mom was 20 when she had me. She had a lot of unprocessed childhood trauma that she hadn't figured out how to deal with. Uh and so some of her coping mechanisms were pretty unhealthy. Such as drinking, um, substance abuse.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

And what was the mood in the house?

SPEAKER_00 5:38

It felt like walking on eggshells because I wasn't sure who I was gonna get, you know, from mom for one day to the next or even one minute to the next. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You know, she'd be fun and happy and and a lot of fun. Um but then, you know, she'd get angry and kind of these moments of rage.

SPEAKER_03 5:56

Right.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

Um, and I think that very quickly I learned that the best way for me to kind of keep safe and do things was to be the perfect kid. Right, get the right grades, keep my room perfect, you know, clean the house. Oh, can I help you with dinner?

SPEAKER_02 6:10

So to keep the bad version of mom at bay, you became perfect Miss Danielle.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Pretty much, yeah. And from a very early age, I I learned that opiates would be a great addition. Oh, yeah. You know, a great help to kind of keep all the emotions at bay in this lovely, fuzzy kind of happy place buffer, you know, between me and everything around me.

SPEAKER_02 6:37

How did you first learn of the the calming qualities of opiates? She lived in the central valley.

unknown 6:44

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 6:45

At school, I mean, was it you know or was it prescription?

SPEAKER_00 6:49

Prescription, yeah. I had actually had my my tonsils out, tonsils and adenoids out at 11, and they gave me a a liquid codeine prescription.

SPEAKER_03 6:57

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 6:58

And I was a really mature kid, you know, I was really on top of things. My mom, she kind of handed me my bottle, like, well, here's your medicine. Follow the directions, there you go. And I really quickly was like, this stuff's awesome. And flew through that bottle, like way quicker than I should have. And I remember going to her and being like, uh, so we need more of this, you know. And then her being like, that's not time for a refill. Like, you're not supposed to be done with that, you know.

SPEAKER_02 7:22

So how did that element play out now as you're moving forward? Did you were you able to manage to continue uh feeding this?

SPEAKER_00 7:29

I was, and it was it's really fascinating to look back on because I had a ton of medical problems as a kid and then as a young person. Right. Still some, but nowhere near compared to any of the things I did before. And so I had seizures as a kid. I had migraines, I had um a congenital bone deformity that caused my lower legs to bow out and required surgery.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

That's tough. It was. And with the operations and all these other challenges, there was some opportunity to get hold of some prescriptions. Is that how you kept everything going?

SPEAKER_00 8:04

There was always some prescription, you know, because there was always something happening. And there was no, especially then, there was zero intention of like I'm gonna be sick to get medicine. Right? My body showed up the way I unconsciously asked it to.

SPEAKER_02 8:31

Yeah, well, that's so interesting because uh subconsciously you're really wanting these prescriptions, and the way to get them that you saw from your tonsilectomy is oh, get sick, go to the doctor, get a prescription.

SPEAKER_00 8:44

Absolutely. That's really and it's also a it's that's a really, really hard thing to to come to for yourself and to admit to yourself, right? Because it's it's taking uh radical responsibility and ownership over the processes happening in your body.

SPEAKER_03 9:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

Some part of this is serving me, and I have to own up to those parts. What are the benefits of holding on to this illness? What are the benefits of holding on to chronic pain? Because they're there.

SPEAKER_02 9:15

So so take us then a little bit through your life. So tell me about what the next big milestone is in your life.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Yeah, so I graduated high school at 17, and immediately after that summer I did an EMT course and then started working out in the field.

SPEAKER_04 9:31

Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

And that entire time still underlying very functional opiate addiction, right? Always knowing that I had something available. If the day was really tough, it was like, oh, I could just pop a narco.

SPEAKER_02 9:44

You're a functioning addict who's working as an EMT doctor.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

Yes. And then I went to Cal State East Bay, and I ended up getting my bachelor's in science of nursing there. And I I was a great nurse. Um, you wanted to be in my room if something bad was happening, and the minute I got off work, like the minute I was in my car, it was like the here's the pill bottle, right? Pop a couple pills on my way home so that they're hitting by the time I get home so I can go to sleep.

SPEAKER_02 10:11

You're like nurse Jackie. Totally. Maisie watched watched that show. She loved it, and she could have just watched you.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

And the thing was, I was really, really good. I was again, I was so perfectionist that I never used on the job. The minute I got off, absolutely, but like at work, no, like that was off limits. And I never, you know, purchased drugs on the street or from somebody else. It was like, this is a prescription. I'm not a junkie.

SPEAKER_02 10:42

Right. You know, so you were you were in denial.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

Totally, totally again. I needed this. This was medication.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

Yeah, yeah. And it came from a doctor.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 10:52

So you've got a complex life going on. What's happening in your personal life at this time?

SPEAKER_00 10:56

In my personal life, I was in a relationship with a gentleman from about 19 to 27, and we'd actually gotten married somewhere around five, the five-year mark. And that relationship was really, really challenging for me. He was another challenge in your life. Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_03 11:16

He was eight years old.

SPEAKER_00 11:19

Very, very controlling. Um, it very quickly morphed into mental and emotional abuse, never anything physical. But things like, you know, I would have to have my outfit approved before I was allowed to leave the house.

SPEAKER_02 11:34

I I have David call me and get his outfit approved before he leaves that I don't want me showing up, you know, unapproved. Do you call that abuse, David?

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Um yeah, I don't know. I might I might I might look back on it at some point.

SPEAKER_02 11:48

That's horrible. Your outfit had to be approved. What uh what other kinds of what what else was going on in that relationship?

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Just really negative comments and hurtful stuff. Lots of hurtful digging things meant to keep me small and controlled. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:04

And it's it's interesting that you were a the type of person that allowed this to happen to you because your sense of self um uh had not been, it sounds, properly uh nurtured as a child.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

Exactly. 100%. So I just found new ways to reenact my family patterns.

unknown 12:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Which I think that's what we do over and over again until we become aware of them.

SPEAKER_02 12:33

Yeah. Um and it sounds like at some point this relationship came to an end.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

The relationship did come to an end. He and I ended up having a miscarriage in October of 2010. And his response to that experience was exactly what kind of finally gave me the guts to be like, I need out of here.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

His response was what do we need to go to the hospital? Wow. Oh, we don't even oh his response was it's no big use to us, that sort of thing. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

That was literally that was the response.

SPEAKER_02 13:06

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Do we need to go to the hospital?

SPEAKER_02 13:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

No, I got it, thank you. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 13:11

And that was the miscarriage.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

That was that was it.

SPEAKER_02 13:15

Yeah, and that that was the wake-up call for you.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Yes. And so I don't want to get crazy out of order here, but years later, I was at a conference um with a woman named Anita Morjani, and she did an exercise where we did a meditation, and you know, we were supposed to be trying to connect with past loved ones.

SPEAKER_02 13:33

Can I just interrupt for people who don't know? Anita Morgiani is the author of a best-selling New York Times book about a near-death experience that she had. It's an incredible book. Um, and so she's giving a conference. This is after you've had your near-death experience. I guess you went to the conference to tear her. Yes. Okay. So you're at this conference with Anita, and and what what happens?

SPEAKER_00 13:55

So, yeah, this was only a few years ago, maybe 2021. And we're supposed to be trying to connect with past loved ones. And so I mentally kind of ran through the list of my loved ones that have died. And as I'm sitting there, she says, you know, ask them to come forward, and my hands are resting in my lap, and all of a sudden it felt like there was the weight of a baby in my arms. And it's I felt almost like the the exact feeling of like a hospital receiving blanket, you know, like that scratchy sort of and washed a million times with the pink blue stripes. And then she gives a prompt to ask them, you know, if they have any messages for you.

SPEAKER_02 14:30

So this is in your mind, you've sort of uh connected psychically, let's say, with this child that miscarried.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Correct.

SPEAKER_02 14:38

And and and Anita says, uh, does this child have any messages for you?

SPEAKER_00 14:44

And so I basically kind of, you know, in my mind's eye looked down in my lap at this, what I knew to be a male baby somehow. It was far too early to have known that in reality, but I just knew that. And it was kind of like, well, what are you doing here? Is how I said it. And the response was, I needed you to know your worth.

SPEAKER_03 15:05

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

And that experience was, like I said, what prompted me to leave that relationship. And so it was this beautiful moment of you know understanding something that again was so painful that had real value and purpose for me that I didn't understand at the time.

SPEAKER_02 15:24

So that's an incredible story. So this child came into your life with the express purpose of creating a miscarriage so that you could get out of that relationship and get on a path to understanding what your value was and and uh who you really are in life.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

That was my understanding.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

Uh that's that's so amazing. And it's you know, at the beginning of this conversation we were talking to David about, you know, David didn't want any suffering in in life. And this is such a uh perfect, powerful example of how something quote unquote bad and and caused anguish and suffering for you particularly was really just this beautiful blessing in your life that moved you out of a a very you know uh dysfunctional situation and uh into a a better direction in life. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

Absolutely. There's purpose and value to all of our experiences. This and that the facts are the facts, right? The things are happening as they are, but the suffering is a choice. It's usually unconscious. We don't know we're choosing it, uh but uh it's a choice.

SPEAKER_02 16:34

And this was a lot of the uh wisdom and and the uh perspective that you gain from your near-death experience.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Yes, definitely.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

So we I want to get towards that. So so you get out of this relationship. Did you end up um you I know you ended up uh meeting someone a little bit nicer, I hope.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Yes, yes. So actually, he and I had been working together for two years in the ER while I was married to my ex. And really good friends became great friends because I was married. I was off limits. You know, and he's a few years younger, and so I mean I was giving him advice on dating and helping him get girls and like you know, we do a lot of great rom-com plot. Very much so.

SPEAKER_02 17:17

Yes. Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

Very Grey's Anatomy, minus the you know, sorry's and the the broom closet.

SPEAKER_02 17:22

And all the uh opioids, probably. Or maybe they've got those on Grey's Anatomy. Yeah, they probably do if you want.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

But so he and I started dating pretty much instantly and got married nine months later.

SPEAKER_02 17:34

Ah wow, sweet.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

And that was 14 and a half years ago, and we're married today in absolute love of my life. Sometimes you gotta get it wrong to get it right.

SPEAKER_02 17:42

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

And did you guys decide to have children or not have children or um that was a decision that was taken away from us with all of my sickness stuff. And he was unaware of my opiate addiction. Like this was very hush-hush and quiet. Like he was completely unaware of what I was doing.

SPEAKER_02 17:59

How was your husband unaware of your addiction? How were you able to hide that?

SPEAKER_00 18:03

Because I was working two jobs, sometimes 60 hours a week and working night shift, and so for me to be passing out on the couch first thing when I came home or being exhausted and nodding off frequently didn't seem that out of ordinary.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

Yeah, you know. I am curious um about um, because you're about to get into the NDE. Did your personality change? Because you come across right now as someone who's very um, you've got a you've got a lightness and an effervescence and an optimism and an abulance that that sort of like jumps out of you. An effervescence, which David wants. I I long for it. I long for effervescence, ebulliance, lightness, all of the things that you seem to possess.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

Yeah, that's very different from how I was. And it's funny because my husband refers to pre-N D E Danielle as Nurse Danielle.

unknown 18:59

Right?

SPEAKER_00 18:59

So we're gonna nurse Jackie. And it only we only even talk about it now if like, like, if I need to be a bitch, then it's like, oh, don't make her bring out Nurse Danielle. Because that was like a completely different human that walked around with this wall up and this shell, and very much this like, stay away, I'll get you before you get me, you know, person.

SPEAKER_04 19:24

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Still very nurturing and caretaking, right, as a nurse, but also just this underlying I just knew that the world was out to get me. I knew that I had no value and worth. I knew that I needed to remain small and yet felt confined by all of that and didn't get it.

SPEAKER_02 19:42

Well, and it's interesting that your husband fell in love with you even though you even though you were a bitch.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

I know, I know. We talk about it all the time.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

Yeah, you fell in love with Nurse Danielle. Yeah, and basically like he cheated on you.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

A little bit. At one point I asked him, I was like, so I'm a little self-conscious. Did you like that? And he was like, I loved that. He's like, but I didn't know that this was an option. Neither did I. I was like, it was a great response.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

That's a perfect response. Yes, it was that's a way better response than do we have to go to the hospital.

SPEAKER_00 20:16

Yes, yes, it's a very different response. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:20

Um, okay, so you've you've been married for how long when when we get to this fateful only a year and a half. Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

And we only dated for nine months prior to that, so it was a a really new relationship.

SPEAKER_02 20:32

Right. And so tell us what happened.

SPEAKER_00 20:34

So I went out with a group of girlfriends and we were drinking far too much. And at some point, I was pretty much blacked out. I don't actively remember the fall, but as I was getting out of the limo, I just my heel caught and I came down on the curb on my knee. And like all good nurses do, and I'm sure I had some pain pills in my purse, popped a couple of those. There was a CVS on the corner, and we popped in there and grabbed an ace wrap, and the ER nurses I was with wrapped it up real tight, and we continued about our night.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

And the next morning I spent the nurse with a I spent the night with a girlfriend of mine, and as I was getting out of bed, and I went to step down the next morning, and like my leg just kind of collapsed. And she was like, Oh yeah, I was wondering how that was gonna be. How are you? you know, and it was like then it all kind of came back to me. Um, and it wasn't until 11 days later that I demanded an MRI because the X-rays were negative that we found out that I had actually fractured my femur. Um Yeah, it didn't require surgery, but required immobilization for eight weeks.

SPEAKER_02 21:36

So you had to miss work for eight weeks and just you were basically uh bed rest.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Yes. Yep. Sitting in a lazy boy with my, you know, leg up on pillows and in an immobilizer and how did you take to that? Um, not well.

SPEAKER_02 21:52

Surprise, surprise.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Yeah. At that point in my life, I was ho completely incapable of Being still.

SPEAKER_02 22:01

I was gonna say all that distraction is very helpful for avoiding all the demons that are sort of lurking in exactly. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

So and now I have this new injury, so I've got more medicine. You know, I've got more more aerobiates on board now.

SPEAKER_03 22:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

And um, so after that eight weeks, I am better enough to go back to work, and I needed to make up some PTO, you know, some time off because I had exhausted all of it. And so I worked a few doubles back to back.

SPEAKER_04 22:32

Right.

SPEAKER_00 22:32

Um and getting off my final double, my leg was really red and really swollen and hurt a lot. And that final day, somewhere around eight or nine in the morning, I was standing in my bathroom and I passed out in our bathroom. Because I didn't know it at the time, but I had a blood clot in that leg that then traveled up into my lungs, and sudden shortless of breath passed out.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Oh wow. This is this is David's favorite part. So look, if that can happen, okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

It can happen.

SPEAKER_01 23:04

So wait, so you had a blood clot because you had pushed too hard?

SPEAKER_00 23:10

No, from basically being immobilized. So the sitting around and not having blood movement and having it, you know, elevated for a continued period of time.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

If we if we stay on David's schedule, we'll talk about the medical stuff forever. So you collapse in your bathroom and you're taken to a hospital?

SPEAKER_00 23:29

Not for a while, because part of you know my addiction was that I had come home and taken a bunch of pills. So I had taken, you know, a pain pill, a sleeping pill, and Benadryl because the pain pill used to make me itchy, right? So now I've got all of these things on board that are said sedations. And the way I passed out, my head and upper body were on the inside of our tub, and like the edge of the tub was sitting kind of across my hips.

SPEAKER_02 23:55

You fell over the tub, the rail of the tub.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

I totally folded over the edge. So my legs were hanging out the outside.

SPEAKER_02 24:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

And so with the combination of blood clot, all of these meds on board, I stayed out for hours in that position.

SPEAKER_02 24:08

Which probably is not a healthy position.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

Not a definitely not a healthy position. And so my husband got off work somewhere around 7:30 p.m. because he worked day shift. We were opposite each other.

SPEAKER_03 24:19

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

And I came to hearing him rinsing his lunch dishes in the sink and pushed myself kind of up out of the bathtub. My legs didn't work at all, couldn't move them. So he sees me laying on the ground, kind of out of it, and freaks out, obviously, picks me up, puts me on our bed, and immediately called 911.

unknown 24:41

Right.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

And so then I was taken to the hospital. But so it was hours in that position.

SPEAKER_02 24:45

So he didn't ask, do we need to go to the hospital?

unknown 24:49

He did not.

SPEAKER_02 24:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

He did not. He was on top of it immediately.

SPEAKER_02 24:53

And so you go to the hospital, what happens?

SPEAKER_00 24:56

They they discover, you know, this large blood clot in my lungs. Um, I was also in kidney failure because the way I was positioned in the bathroom cut blood flow off to my legs.

SPEAKER_03 25:07

Uh huh.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

When muscles don't get blood flow, they die. When that protein is released into the blood, it clogs up the kidneys.

SPEAKER_01 25:14

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

And so it causes kidney failure. Something called rhabdomyolysis.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

One more thing to worry about. There's a new one for you, though.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

I'm creating a hypochondriac at least speech.

SPEAKER_02 25:24

Oh, you're not calling it out. It's been here.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

Okay, I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_02 25:30

All right, so you're in pretty bad shape. After after a lifetime of having medical issues, you would have now gotten to a place where you're you're really in crisis.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

Yes. This is by far the sickest I've ever been. And so I I entered the hospital at 167 pounds. And on day 10, even though I was on continuous dialysis, I still was gaining fluid weight to the point where at day 10 I was 209 pounds.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

And a resident decided she was going to help relieve some of that pressure by doing a procedure incorrectly where she actually accidentally parfrayed my bowels.

SPEAKER_02 26:10

Oh, okay. She was gonna try and relieve some of the fluid buildup, and sounds like she wasn't necessarily the best trained of the people in the hospital.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Yes, wrong procedure, wrong time, done the wrong way.

SPEAKER_02 26:24

Three strikes. And you basically died.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

Correct. Eventually. So then um slowly over the next couple of days, I was leaking stool, weaken poop into my belly and becoming more and more septic.

SPEAKER_03 26:35

Right.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

And I think it was around day two and a half after that procedure that they realized what was happening and they rushed me to the OR.

SPEAKER_03 26:42

Right.

SPEAKER_00 26:43

Um, they did three different surgeries up and down, just trying to clean out all of the dead tissue and keep me alive basically.

SPEAKER_02 26:51

Right. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

And there was a big incision down the middle. And the kind of stitches they used are called retention sutures, which are kind of like wire twisty ties. You know, it's like what you use for open heart surgery.

SPEAKER_03 27:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

And seven days after that big surgery, they had to restart the blood thinning medicine because I still had the blood clot in my lung. So they restarted heprin.

SPEAKER_02 27:15

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 27:15

That caused this entire incision to bleed out.

SPEAKER_02 27:18

Oh god. So what ultimately killed you? Loss of blood?

SPEAKER_00 27:23

Loss of blood. Yes. And so this is part of the challenge of my story is that I had rapid intubations, which means that they give you a bunch of medications to date you really quickly and put in a breathing tube.

SPEAKER_03 27:36

Right.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

And then I also had full resuscitation efforts, and then I also had near resuscitation efforts in a three and a half month hospital stay. And so I don't know for sure during which one of those my NDE happened.

SPEAKER_02 27:50

Okay, so you were just gone, but at some point you died, and this experience happened. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

And so I believe the the bulk of all of the things that I remember happened as this incision was bleeding out.

SPEAKER_03 28:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:06

So it's bleeding, and there are doctors and nurses all around my bed plumping blood products in. And at I was in complete shock. I mean, I was freezing, I was shaking violently, my whole bed was shaking.

SPEAKER_03 28:20

Right.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

And so I remember being able to look over my left shoulder and see the monitor that had my vital signs on it.

SPEAKER_04 28:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

And my blood pressure said 46 over question mark. And my conscious thought as a nurse was, wow, I didn't know I could read that low.

unknown 28:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:34

You know, like commenting on the sensitivity of the machine. And that's the last, like, really conscious thought I have.

SPEAKER_03 28:43

Right.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

And then all of a sudden there was this warmth and nurturing and comforting. Even as I was still present in the room, I was no longer cold. I stopped shaking. Um, and and somewhere in there, as I'm becoming unconscious, I had a thought, which still feels like the wrong word, but thought. Oh yeah, this is dying.

SPEAKER_02 29:08

That simple. This is dying.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

It was a remembrance. It was very much something I had done before. It was not the least of it scary.

SPEAKER_03 29:17

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

I I I I never did the the portion a lot of NDEers do where you see yourself from above, you know, you're separated from your body, but you're still in 3D reality. Right. It's like the second I was out, I was somewhere else. I did not experience anything in 3D reality then.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

But your experience is first this great comfort and warmth and well-being, it sounds like. And then the next thing is, oh, I remember this. This is death. And there's no fear involved. It's like, oh, it's kind of sounded like a relief a little bit. Yes. Yeah. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 29:55

I mean I see even as you say it now, my shoulders drop, and it's this instant, like, yeah, it was complete relief and and it was so normal.

unknown 30:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

Like it felt like, oh yeah, this is going to the grocery store.

SPEAKER_02 30:09

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:11

Yeah. Just another thing that that we do. And and from that point on, everything felt simultaneous. So it has been really challenging for me, even after all of this time, to find ways to put it into language. Yeah. To find language that makes sense.

unknown 30:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:30

Because everything feels like it's all happening in the same present moment. There's no delineation of time, is what you're saying. And so in order to tell a story here in our world, you have to kind of create a linear structure for it. But really, your experience was it's all now.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

Yes, absolutely. And it's so it very much felt I was completely like outside of the constructs of space and time. Yeah. Like we're within them right now and we're kind of stuck in this whatever it is, but it it was outside of that.

SPEAKER_02 31:05

But I invite you to tell the story linearly since we're all here on the planet Earth and we want to know what happened.

SPEAKER_00 31:10

That's the only way I can do it now, right now.

SPEAKER_02 31:12

Okay, good.

SPEAKER_00 31:13

Um and it's just it's one of those things that I feel like I need to say every time because folks want to take the words very literally, you know, and because they get a picture in their mind of what this is and was, and just know that it is so far from what it really was, it's an approximation.

SPEAKER_02 31:31

Your your words can't possibly convey the grandeur and the expanse of this experience. Is that what you're saying?

SPEAKER_00 31:38

That's exactly what I'm saying. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 31:40

Okay, so tell us what happens.

SPEAKER_00 31:42

So at some point, I found myself below the light. Now, prior to this experience, when somebody would kind of describe, you know, seeing the light, I always pictured like a tunnel, like a with a flashlight or a train headlight at the end with this darkness. And it was not like that at all. It was very much like when you're a little kid and you're swimming and you maybe dive down and sit on the bottom of the pool, you know, or you're down deep under the water and you look up and you know where the sun is, but it's like diffuse and sparkling around the edges. And it was very much that, and it was above me, but when I say me, I was not Danielle. Yeah, I was what I refer to in my mind as me, and I'm currently playing the role of Danielle, right? But I didn't have a body, I don't know what I was or what I looked like, um, but I could see spherically, like complete global vision, up, down, sides, everywhere. And I, like I said, didn't have arms or legs or or any way to push or propel myself upwards.

SPEAKER_04 32:54

Right.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

And so I knew that this light was everything. It was where I had come from, where I was supposed to go back to, it was home, it was mother, father, sister, brother, like it was everything. It was my entire being knew that I was of this light. I belonged in this light, and I somehow needed to get back in it. And because I couldn't push or propel, I had no way of getting there. And I had a sense of desperation in that moment. Because again, I just knew I needed to get there.

SPEAKER_04 33:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:34

And it because it was above me, and I think because it it had these remembrances, you know, of kind of being underwater, it felt like drowning to me. Not because it was painful, right? Not because I couldn't breathe, not because, but just because I was desperate to get out of like helpless and stuck on. And that I needed that light just as much as I need to breathe oxygen now.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

Yeah. And was it panicky? Like, like, like you're drowning and you're at you're you're panicking.

SPEAKER_00 34:03

So not panicky, but desperate. Just like just you know, how do I gotta get there.

SPEAKER_01 34:09

Gotta get there, gotta get there.

SPEAKER_02 34:10

Which is kind of surprising because you know, you think of people go into these experiences and you think it's all so peaceful, but here you are actually experiencing a a sense of anxiety on some level.

SPEAKER_00 34:22

Mm-hmm. Yeah. It was it was like I knew I had to do this thing and didn't understand how, didn't know what I was supposed to do to get there, like you know, so that level of desperation.

SPEAKER_02 34:34

But it but's interesting is you have this built-in absolute longing to move in that direction.

SPEAKER_00 34:42

Absolutely. The words we use are unconditional love, but it is so far beyond that. Um I mean, even the term unconditional is a condition. You know, like we we don't have a way of expressing this, and I now see that that energy, that love, that source as kind of it's not only like whatever is creating all of this, but it's also the glue that holds all of it together somehow. It doesn't make a lot of sense in my intellectual mind, but I know it to be all it is.

SPEAKER_02 35:19

So even while we were just talking about there being a sense of um desperateness, I think was the word you used, but the whole thing is still wrapped and infused in this experience of unconditional love that you can't even put into words.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

Yes, and that's why it's so hard because I've never felt that feeling here on the planet. I don't have a word for it.

SPEAKER_03 35:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:39

Um, like if every human on the planet could wrap you in their love in one moment, it wouldn't come close to what it was.

SPEAKER_02 35:49

That's a that's a powerful statement.

SPEAKER_00 35:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:51

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

And so at some other point or at the same time, I found myself in what felt like a it felt mechanical. It was large enough to be like a huge room. Um, but it was not constructed like any room I've ever been in before. It was circular, and it was arranged like an old Kodak slide carousel or like a a revolving door.

SPEAKER_02 36:25

So it's got a lot of you're in the center, and there's all these sort of partitions that are surrounding you. Is that that's what you're saying? And now this is an experience because there's no time, it's sort of happening all at the same time, but this is sort of a separate experience from that light being above you. Okay, this is like so you're in this giant Kodak carousel slide projector. What what what's happening?

SPEAKER_00 36:50

Again, I can see spherically that these I call them cells in my mind. Cell makes sense. Um they were arranged all around me, 360, and each one of these individual slides or cells was somehow simultaneously a photograph that I could look at, like third person, like a video or 3D rendering of an experience that I could look at, like a like a hologram or something. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 37:22

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 37:22

But I was somehow also in the scene as myself, so experiencing it first person.

SPEAKER_02 37:30

These are experiences, scenes from your life. Correct. The life as Danielle that you had lived up to this point. So there's a lot of pill taking going on and it was everything.

SPEAKER_00 37:42

I mean, it was everything from I mean, I was 30 when this happened, so it was everything. I mean, there were moments of infanthood and toddlerhood and things. Everything everything.

SPEAKER_04 37:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:54

But so I could experience it as myself, but it wasn't just from my own perspective, but also from the perspective of everyone else, also in that memory or scene.

SPEAKER_02 38:05

Right. So this this is what's so amazing about your experience. Because we we we hear this, like when you die, you kind of go and you review your life and you look back and oh, I I'm glad I did that. Oh, I think I could do better with that, or whatever it is. But in this review, which is what this carousel is, right? And it's all these experiences of your life, you're seeing all the moments of your life, but you're seeing them from the perspective of not only re-experiencing it as you in that moment, but everyone else who was party to that moment. You're getting their experience as well.

SPEAKER_00 38:42

Yes. And so, and because I was able to do both somehow, right? My my perspective split in like four ways somehow simultaneously, that I could experience, re-experience what Danielle had in that moment while also feeling in very real time the effect of my words and my actions, but also my thoughts and my energy, right? The unseen things that were going on in the background for Danielle, what was I really thinking and feeling as I was saying and doing this, and how did that affect this other person as well?

SPEAKER_02 39:19

So when you looked at one of these scenes, and Danielle in that scene had a thought which maybe was kind of kept secret because you know, because you're acting uh in one way, trying to make an impression one way, but deep down you're feeling another way. That sort of hidden motive, that hidden agenda is still affecting the people in the scene.

SPEAKER_00 39:41

Yes, definitely.

unknown 39:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 39:43

I wouldn't even call it a motive or an agenda. It's just a hit it's just a it's just a private thought. Private thought. David is correcting us here. It's a private thought that we all have in every situation that we come into contact with other human beings, and and you're saying that that thought had an effect on that other person just by thinking it.

SPEAKER_00 40:03

Yes, so it's thoughts are things.

SPEAKER_01 40:06

I'm so screwed.

SPEAKER_00 40:09

Right? But thoughts can either heal or they can harm, right? And your energy can heal or it can harm. You either send people in a more positive, a more negative, or a neutral position, right? Just a matter of physics than when we first encountered them.

SPEAKER_02 40:25

Yeah, and not only other people, but yourself too. I mean, you're basically you're you're having that effect on yourself as well. So why do you think you're having this moment, this this incredible perspective?

SPEAKER_00 40:40

Because I was dying. Like there was no again, there was zero question about this process or of exactly what was happening here. It was like I, the the timeless self-me, the the grander me, was reviewing all of Danielle's experiences and not judging them in a oh, that was good, that was bad, you know, you're going to the good or the bad place.

SPEAKER_04 41:04

Right.

SPEAKER_00 41:04

But from a place of a mother teaching their kid how to do something, you know, for the first time.

SPEAKER_02 41:11

Very lovingly.

SPEAKER_00 41:12

Very lovingly. And like, oh yeah, that one didn't feel good, huh? Yeah, see, when you when you did this, but you felt that, see how that felt. That's inauthentic. See how that didn't feel good in your body? See how that feels out of alignment? Yeah, see, we don't want to do it like that. Okay, see how that felt better, you know, and so it was very much that feeling that I was reviewing all of Danielle's experiences with. And and the benefit, I believe, too, of seeing and feeling it simultaneously with internally and what the other person was, is I could compare and contrast, right? What being authentic felt like for other people, how other people receive authenticity and true kindness and empathy and good intention versus how they receive good actions without good intention. It's very different.

SPEAKER_02 42:04

Were there instances where you had done the good action, but you're you're kind of resenting the experience a little bit, but you're doing a good and what happened in those situations?

SPEAKER_00 42:14

Honestly, I think that was most of my situations prior to my NDP. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:18

Yeah. I was very much acting from um the way you should be, the what you thought was the right thing to do, and yet there's all this inner turmoil, and there's maybe a sense of resentment or a sense of like conflict at least about doing all this.

SPEAKER_00 42:33

And I was also so sensitive and empathic that I didn't know honestly where I stopped and someone else started as far as their needs in mind.

SPEAKER_04 42:44

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:45

And so I needed other people to be okay in order for me to be okay.

SPEAKER_03 42:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:51

So most of my giving and caretaking was essentially selfish.

SPEAKER_02 42:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:55

I wasn't doing it to make them okay, I was doing it to make me okay.

SPEAKER_02 42:58

Which really very much explains the abusive relationship you're in, because here you are trying to make this person okay because that's how you thought you could make yourself feel okay.

unknown 43:08

Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:09

And it was an impossible task.

SPEAKER_00 43:10

So I think that's why I needed to experience it that way in order to understand, right? Because if somebody had explained that to me intellectually, I mean, conceptually, I think I kind of get it, but like I needed to feel it.

SPEAKER_02 43:24

In this moment, is there a sense of my mind is being blown, or is this all seems so very natural to you?

SPEAKER_00 43:30

At the time it felt very natural.

SPEAKER_02 43:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:32

It's so hard to describe, other than I know I've done it before.

unknown 43:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:36

And maybe I've done it lots and lots of times.

SPEAKER_02 43:39

But it's so interesting that we that it's very normal for when we leave this plane of existence that, oh yeah, now I get to understand how my actions and then we come back, and that normality, that piece of information, is sort of erased from our memory banks to so we can I I don't know exactly why, but so we can, you know, learn to do it without the uh the carousel.

SPEAKER_00 44:06

Well, yeah, and that I think that if we really knew, if we really remembered, we wouldn't do it.

unknown 44:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:15

Like why play the game? The game is only fun when the illusion is in place.

SPEAKER_02 44:19

Exactly. There'd be no drama at all. We'd all be, you know, saying positive things and being really nice to everyone and and taking care of ourselves and loving ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 44:28

It'd be like watching a play and the curtains are up in the backstage the entire time.

SPEAKER_02 44:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:33

You know, and you're just like, well, this isn't fun anymore. I can see everything they're doing, you know?

SPEAKER_02 44:38

Because you were having so much fun before you die.

SPEAKER_00 44:41

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 44:42

That's one of your big questions, right, David? It's like David always says this, is like, well, if God is all powerful or divine or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 44:50

And I'm supposed to come here to learn and fucking show me and teach me. And I'm like, you know, don't put me through all this.

SPEAKER_00 44:59

Yeah. I get it. And I hate to use this comparison because I don't see God as some patriarchal parent in that way.

SPEAKER_02 45:10

But male. He is male, right?

SPEAKER_00 45:14

Yeah, sure. Like so far beyond gender. Like it's so funny. Um, that it's very similar to with kids, right? If you told them everything, it wouldn't they wouldn't learn it. A number one, they wouldn't listen to you. Two, that's not how they grow. That's not how they become their own person. That's not how they expand, right? Is if we feed them everything for their entire lives. Like at some point, you gotta go, figure it out.

SPEAKER_02 45:44

I think it's so interesting. This is the second time you've uh made a reference where you're talking from the point of view of a mother, and you're so clearly a brilliant mother, and yet in this lifetime there were other other uh tasks to attend to. But you you're so naturally this mother. You've probably done it before.

SPEAKER_00 46:07

Uh one of my first clients as a death jeweler, I only met her one day before we were actually at active dying time vigil. And her sister and her best friend were sitting kind of at the sides of her bed, kind of up at the head of the bed, and I was sitting at the foot of the bed. And we're talking and sharing memories, and I'm keeping an eye on her breathing, and I recognize she's getting to take her last breath. And I tell these women, hey, we might want to pay attention. These are the last few breaths she's taking now. And they both turned and like quickly looked at me, and visibly with my eyes open, I saw little girl faces. And it was just this moment of like, oh, this is my mothering. They don't have to be children, and they didn't have to come out of my body. But these are grown adults who no one has walked through this process before. No one has normalized this for them, no one's taught them how to do this, and I get to be that kind of nurturer and mother. And so it was this beautiful moment of like, this is why I don't have biological children. I couldn't be here in the middle of the night if I had little kids at home.

SPEAKER_02 47:13

Oh, yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_00 47:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:15

Okay. So you're you're experiencing all these moments from your life. You're having this much broader perspective of it because it's not just what you're able to see within yourself, which is so clear, but now you're seeing what all these other people, how it ripples out into the world in terms of the influence you're having in all these other people's lives.

SPEAKER_00 47:41

Yes, very much so. It can feel like a huge responsibility to be aware that your thoughts have so much of an effect.

SPEAKER_04 47:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:48

And so I caution people to not get so wrapped up in the possibly negative side of that or the bad side of that, and just to recognize that you have a beautiful opportunity. You know, and so when you do have a negative or judgmental thought, when you catch it to just be like, oh, there's my humanness. Okay, I love you. Sorry about that. Next, like, and just move on. Like it's an opportunity to do and be better, not to get wrapped up in judgment and shame spirals, because that's just as detrimental as the the first negative thought you had to begin with.

SPEAKER_02 48:22

I think that's such an important point, and I I want to reiterate it by saying that, you know, I think you know from my story that for many, many years I spoke with this energy which was called guidance through this woman, Kathy, she media and divorce, and I would get all my spiritual many of my spiritual understandings via them. And they would say, very similar to that, they would say it's not the negative thought, that's just being human. It's your judgment of the negative thought which actually has a creative power to it. So, you know, if we have negative thoughts, uh that's just what we're supposed to have, positive and negative, that's the duality of the world. But the thing that we really have the opportunity to shift is our self-judgment and putting ourselves down and getting all wrapped up in that because that just perpetuates it and adds energy to it, and then it becomes a creative process.

SPEAKER_00 49:17

Thank you. That was beautiful. Thank you, guidance.

SPEAKER_02 49:20

Yes, thank you, guidance. David has to endure all this like calmness and goodwill. It's awful for him.

SPEAKER_00 49:30

Dripping all over you.

SPEAKER_02 49:31

He's like melting like a witch in the Wizard of Oz. You just gotta fan it. It's okay, David. I'm okay. Okay, okay. So you're in this carousel, you're at all everything's happening simultaneously. What happens from there?

SPEAKER_00 49:46

So at first I had time to kind of really sit with and be in each one of these scenes and memories. Again, it felt very mechanical, and then it would like click over to the next scene, and all of a sudden I was in the next one. And then it would like click into the next one. And eventually that clicking started happening faster and faster. And as it did so, it's spinning, and it seemed as if it was creating some sort of like suction force, or like this vortex that started to form as it was spinning.

SPEAKER_04 50:21

Right.

SPEAKER_00 50:21

Um, almost like a reverse whirlpool that started to pull me upwards. And again, there was no ceiling above me, right? But as I'm being pulled upwards, it I knew that if I crossed this invisible threshold, there was no coming back. And so as I'm getting pulled up, it was the first time I thought about 3D reality. Like I thought about Danielle and Danielle's life and my husband Luke.

SPEAKER_04 50:49

Right.

SPEAKER_00 50:50

And the second I thought about him, I knew I had to go back to say goodbye.

SPEAKER_04 50:55

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 50:56

I had the intention to continue on. Every part of me knew that I was gonna keep doing this.

SPEAKER_02 51:01

But I have to at least go say goodbye to Luke.

SPEAKER_00 51:04

Yes. So for a little bit more of the backstory, I was about, I don't know, a month to six weeks into my hospital admission at this point.

SPEAKER_03 51:13

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 51:14

He hadn't really ever left the hospital. You know, he was not eating, he wasn't showering, he stunk, like he'd lost a ton of weight. And so his brother convinced him to go home that night, and the two of them had shared a bottle of jack, and they were passed out. And my one of my girlfriends, who is another ER nurse, was in the hospital with me when all of this bleeding episode was happening. And so she's calling and texting him, you need to get back to the hospital, you need to get back to the hospital, and he's missing all of that.

SPEAKER_02 51:40

Oh my god. Okay, so in real time, what's happening is you're dying. And he's not there, he's been there the whole time. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. He he's having a little break because it's been really tough for a long time. Oh, and do you think on some level you in this other arena, this other sphere, is knowing that he's in trouble?

SPEAKER_00 52:04

Yes. 100%. I knew that if I left this way, he was not going to be okay.

SPEAKER_02 52:13

You just had this knowingness about that.

SPEAKER_00 52:15

Absolutely. And if he had been at the hospital, if he had been there when I passed out, if I had had the opportunity to say goodbye, I would not be here. I 100% feel like I have Jack Daniels to thank for my life because I would not be here.

SPEAKER_01 52:35

Spoken like a true Southern rocker.

SPEAKER_02 52:38

If you had said goodbye, you think Luke could have had the closure he needed to have pulled it through and moved on had you passed.

SPEAKER_00 52:47

He most definitely would have struggled, but he wouldn't hold the guilt of going home and not being there and getting drunk.

SPEAKER_02 52:56

Oh. Because he had been so dedicated, he was there all the time, and this is the moment when he was off duty. He took a little break, and if you had died then, it would have it would have crushed him. He would have felt responsible in a way for your death. Yeah, because the message would have been the second I left her side, she died, and and saw, yeah, and he would have to be. And do you think it was designed that way for some reason?

SPEAKER_00 53:18

100%. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 53:20

I love how certain you are.

SPEAKER_00 53:23

Zero question. Yeah, because again, it's too many coincidences, right? So much of this is set up in order for everything to have happened the way it did.

SPEAKER_02 53:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:32

Um, that yeah, I 100% believe that was part of the plan.

SPEAKER_02 53:36

That's pretty cool. That's amazing. I mean, the the intricacy and the levels and the the strands are getting interwoven. Okay, so you're getting sucked up into good stuff. Stuff that you you're trying to like. But on some level, there's this knowing this, I've got to get back to Luke or he's not gonna make it. And so what happens?

SPEAKER_00 53:58

So I knew I had to go say goodbye, and I would be right back. I it really felt like I I kind of put my finger up at God, if you will, and was just like, give me a second, I gotta do a thing, I'll be right back. Which is insane, but it's also so me. Um, I knew that that meant I had to get back in my body.

SPEAKER_02 54:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:18

And it was really, really painful and broken at that point.

SPEAKER_02 54:21

That's a pretty uh messed up body to get back in.

SPEAKER_00 54:23

Oh, yeah. It I really didn't want to get back in my body. And and at the same time, then the way I I realized I could get out of this thing was almost like my idea was like, I'm just gonna break it.

SPEAKER_02 54:37

This thing being the carousel that you're kind of spinning, and it's going faster and faster and faster. Can I ask you real quick about the faster and faster? When it's going faster and faster, is all that information, are you absorbing all that information?

SPEAKER_00 54:49

So as I'm being pulled up, the further and further up I got, and it became really, really clear that the whole point was compassion and connection.

SPEAKER_02 54:57

Your whole lifetime had been about compassion and connection.

SPEAKER_00 55:02

That every every instance of finding it, fostering it, cultivating it, showing it, felt amazing.

SPEAKER_04 55:11

Right.

SPEAKER_00 55:12

Anywhere where I had blocked it or pushed it away or chosen something else, chosen fear, chosen judgment instead, felt horrible.

SPEAKER_02 55:22

Now, was compassion and connection the purpose, the meaning of your life, Danielle's life, this one time, or do you think that's universal? That's for everyone.

SPEAKER_00 55:34

I think it's one of the things that's kind of uh one of the universal themes, but I don't think that that's always kind of the main point personally.

SPEAKER_02 55:42

Person.

SPEAKER_00 55:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:44

All right. Yeah. So now we gotta get back to Luke. So you're getting sucked up. You're getting all this information about compassion and connection. It's all blurring into one big thematic hole that you're now seeing. And you're like, okay, hold on, uh, source.

SPEAKER_00 55:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:59

I'll be right back. And then how do you get to Luke?

SPEAKER_00 56:02

So again, and this one makes no sense to me.

SPEAKER_01 56:05

Yeah, you broke God's machine.

SPEAKER_00 56:07

I wanted to. That was the plan. Yeah. Because I didn't have a body, but my thought was like, I'm gonna like shove my arm, which I didn't have at the time, but I punched through this spinning thing. Like I was gonna literally just like jam the gear.

SPEAKER_02 56:22

Or putting like a stick in the in the bike tie in the spokes of the bike tire. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:26

And I made this motion, and in 3D reality, I had been re-intubated. So I was back on a ventilator.

SPEAKER_02 56:36

Right.

SPEAKER_00 56:36

And I hadn't been responding to doctors or nurses.

SPEAKER_02 56:39

So you're slipping.

SPEAKER_00 56:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 56:41

You're in a coma and you're and you're on your way out.

SPEAKER_00 56:44

Correct. And it was somewhere around like 10, 11 in the morning. He wakes up, gets all of these calls and messages, flies to the hospital. And I think that when I shoved my arm through this thing, that's when he gets to my bedside and is holding my hand and yelling in my ear, squeeze my hand, squeeze my hand. I found his hand on the other side. Like we did this like sliding, cliffhangery almost by fingernails moment, and it felt like he pulled me through, and I was like back into my body.

SPEAKER_02 57:18

That's incredible. I mean, that's amazing. So you're in this other realm, you put your hand through, and he's in the real world holding your hand, and he it feels to you like he pulls you back into your body.

SPEAKER_00 57:30

Yes. It felt like, again, if you picture like a I don't know, like a gear or a cog or like a old water wheel, it felt extremely cartoonish.

unknown 57:40

Right.

SPEAKER_00 57:40

And like I had to completely flatten out in order to go through this spinning thing, and it was pulled to my right. I keep doing it.

SPEAKER_03 57:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:49

Um, and like it was, and I hear the noise even. It sounds like sounds so bad. But you know the noise when you the jellied cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving and drop it out of the can.

SPEAKER_02 58:04

Yeah, that is the scene.

SPEAKER_00 58:06

It was similar to that sound, this sort of sort of, but I was like sucked back into my body.

SPEAKER_04 58:13

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 58:15

Yeah. And then all of a sudden, I mean, and it I felt so small and so confined, and it hurt like hell. Um it was that was when things got confusing. Because prior to that, like that all made sense wherever else I was.

SPEAKER_02 58:34

And then all of a sudden it was like now you're struggling for your life again, and you're in a body that's broken, and yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:41

Yes. And so, and I don't know exactly how much physical time passed thereafter before I actually became conscious again.

SPEAKER_02 58:48

Right.

SPEAKER_00 58:48

But the hospitalization continued for another six weeks or so after that.

SPEAKER_02 58:53

And from the moment when you became conscious again in this life, uh, you still had the memory of what had happened?

SPEAKER_00 59:02

I was still so confused because I was also, there were moments of actual hallucination, actual ICU delirium.

SPEAKER_04 59:11

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 59:11

You know, and so like that whole time period is super fuzzy and really weird.

SPEAKER_02 59:16

So you just you just really piqued David's interest. I'm not even I didn't even look at him, but but I just felt it like, oh, here's a way that I can explain this away. Yeah, I can I can make all of this fit, I can go back into my little body.

SPEAKER_01 59:33

I mean, like the reason I mean like as you're describing some some of this, I remember a time in my life where I lost consciousness for probably 20 seconds, maybe, maybe even less. And in that time, I had this crazy dream. And it was it felt like it was like an all-nighter, you know, like an all-night dream with all of these details, and then I opened my eyes thinking I was still in this dream that I was having. And then slowly I was like, oh no, oh, I understand what just happened, you know. And but like that's what happens to me when I when I pass out. But like in that 20 seconds, I had this like crazy elaborate like experience.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:23

So what what in your mind, Danielle, that experience, which I actually 100% know that, um, do you consider that uh just chemicals in his brain, or did he does he like leave his body, or what you have no idea.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:38

Yeah, you're the expert, Daniel. Is that right? No. Like who knows? And I I don't know the answer. And I I just got an email from a woman this morning that came right out and it was like, well, how do you know that this wasn't just DMT in your brain? Like, how do you know that? And I don't know for sure, of course. What I do know is that since my NDE, I've experimented and worked with a fair amount of plant medicines and a fair amount of psychedelics, and I've had some incredibly profound experiences with that. Those experiences fade. The memory of those experiences fades similarly to a dream. This not only has not faded, it almost in some ways has become more intense.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:17

Okay, but have you had any, like, are there any experiences in life that have allowed you to at least move closer to confirming yes, this was a true actual experience, like this was me living in the afterlife for a period of time?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:31

There there is that so my experience was uh all in 2013, and then fast forward to 2018, I had a small cleaning business and I was cleaning for a gentleman um who was for all intents and purposes a hoarder. And his wife had actually kind of snuck me in to do some cleaning while he was off at a medical appointment.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:52

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:52

And I was cleaning his office, and there were just stacks and stacks of papers, you know, three, four feet high on every surface. And maybe three-quarters of the way down on this three-foot stack of paper, I was dusting around everything, and out of nowhere, I kind of set my stuff down and reached in and grabbed a report folder out of this huge stack of paper.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:14

Wait, why did you grab that particular report?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:17

That's a great question. Oh I still have zero idea. In fact, as I was doing it, I was actively scolding myself, knowing that it was totally inappropriate. I'd never read anybody's stuff or gone through people's things while I'm cleaning. Like, like, what are you doing as I'm doing it? And so I sit down and start reading, and it was like a report written in the early mid-80s, you know, done on a typewriter, yellowed all around the edges, probably been in that stack for years. And I came to realize that it was a thesis paper that a college student had written on near-death experiences. And the man that I was cleaning for had had an NDE in the like I think it was 1978, it was early 70s, when we weren't resuscitating a ton of people. We weren't bringing a lot of people back at that point.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:05

Wait, so this is the man you're you're cleaning his apartment. He's got stacks and stacks of stuff, and this is a paper he wrote when he was this is a paper a college student wrote about him.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:15

Yeah, he was a test.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:16

He was one of three people interviewed who had an NDE. Oh.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:20

Yes. I see.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:21

And he'd been in a diving accident. He was a scuba diver where a tank had blown up on the dock next to him and it actually blew apart his torso. And he was resuscitated. And the way he described the light was exactly the way I do. About being underwater and having being sparkly and diffuse around the edges. And he described being in this circular room where he was reviewing his memories. And I just, as I'm reading, like I was shaking and I lit up with goosebumps everywhere, and I I started crying. Cause it was the first time that it was like, well, wait a minute. If someone else has also experienced the same thing under similar conditions, right? That's two sets of data points now. This can't be something I just made up. This can't be just a figment of my own imagination or the mess firings of my own anatomical brain, unless we both happen to have the exact same misfirings. Misfirings.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:20

Which David is mulling over right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:24

Did he mention God's machine?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:27

He didn't describe it that way. He didn't say machine, he said room. Um, but again, even then, like that's why I say in the very beginning, it's so hard to put into words because it wasn't a slide projector, it wasn't a revolving door, it wasn't a machine, it wasn't a room, it was something I've never seen or experienced that I don't have a way of describing to everyone else. Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:48

And what do you what do you make of that? I mean, the similarity of those two experiences, but obviously when other people have near-death experiences, they have all kinds of experiences. Um, what do you make of the fact that you and he had such similar ones? Or how do you put this together in your mind?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:08

Okay, this is a really big question. I have a sense a sense that we see what we need to see based on where we are and what we need to do when we come back. Right? What information do we need? And what in what way can that information be presented that it will make the most sense to us, that it won't be scary, that we'll be able to absorb the information and assimilate it, integrate it, and do something with it. And so I don't know why he and I specifically were so similar, other than to me, it very much feels like I needed that for my own validation.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:47

Um synchronicities where if there was a higher intelligence plotting all of this out, it would be the perfect thing for you in order to A shift your experience then seeing this paper?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:04

Definitely. Absolutely. And so I I couldn't clean anymore. I completely stopped. I took this report and I went and I sat went downstairs and sat on their couch and waited for them to return. Yeah. And they walked in and he sees, you know, I've had a tear-streaked face, but eyes are all swollen. I'm sitting here like my entire paradigm of the world has completely just been shattered.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:27

And he walks in and he looks at me and sees what I'm holding. And he in first words out of his mouth, you've seen.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:37

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:38

Like that's some movie crap. Like, what was I supposed to do with that?

SPEAKER_03 1:06:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:42

And he starts crying, I start crying, and he kind of looks at his wife, and she didn't know the entire story either. And so, because this he'd been ridiculed, you know, he'd been told, okay, you're off your rocker, okay. That's that's what the brain does. You made it up. And especially as a man, like you just shut it down.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:57

Like, he buried it in a stack of paper, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:00

Yep, forget about it. Pretend like it never happened.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:02

Um so he walks in, he sees you crying, and he just knows instantly that you guys have this connection. Were you holding the paper in your hand? It was, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:13

Yeah, yeah. And so we just sat there and talked for hours, lots of tears, lots of people. Did you compare notes? Tons, yeah, absolutely. Tons. He was just as emotional sitting across from me in 2018, right, as as I was, you know, and this was five years ago for me and almost 30, 40 years for him.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:36

And that sense of welcoming and home was the biggest takeaway that he had as well of just this that longing, right? That homesickness feeling.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:50

Like that is that is my ultimate home, and I'm going back there someday.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:55

Yeah. But we're here to visit, we're here to play a game, you know, we're here to play these little roles and put on these little meat suits and get all serious about it.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:03

You know what I think is so funny? When you said to the divine or source or whatever, you said, uh, I'll I'll be just a second and hold on just a second. From the perspective of the second, you know, but for us, it's gonna feel like 30 or 40 years or yes, let's say 60 years for you. I don't know. So what happened with Luke in terms of this progression for you? Like, did when you came back from your experience, your near-death experience, did he did you tell him right away what had happened? No.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:37

No, no, I actually told a couple of friends really briefly, not even the entire thing. Yeah. Um, both a doctor and a nurse, and immediately got shut down.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:48

Right? Immediately told it was hallucinations and this is what a dying brain does, and yada yada. So I stopped talking about it.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:53

Uh and you didn't even tell Luke?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:55

No. I we didn't talk about it until 20, I think, 18. Yeah, when I came home from that that night was the first time we really dove into it.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:04

Oh wow. So that paper, that paper not only confirmed it for you, but it opened it up with regard to Luke.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:12

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:13

And does he think you died and came back? He does.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:16

He he sees in real time and witnesses kind of my after effects, which is also a very common thing that happens to people that have NDEs. Um, that I have moments of precognition. I have moments of spontaneous mediumship, I have moments of clear cognizance where I just know things that I didn't have access to.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:38

Can you give us an example of how like now you're open to information that you weren't before?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:44

Yeah. So I was driving around to Albuquerque, and we have a pretty big houseless population, just like all big cities do. And there was a couple on the side of the road, and they had a whole setup, right? Their lawn chairs, the umbrella, the dog sitting there. It looks like a whole living room's kind of setup. And I pull up to a stoplight and I glanced over and made the briefest of eye contact with the man. And when I did, I heard audibly in the car, they need salads. Not food, not water, right? Very specific. And it was like it was a male voice and it was yelling basically. And it was so intense that I had both hands on the steering wheel and I pulled them off. I was like, okay, like, why are you yelling at me?

unknown 1:10:29

You know?

SPEAKER_00 1:10:31

And it was again, it was odd, but it didn't freak me out. It was just like, okay, I'll get the salads. And so I went around the corner and there's a Carl's Jr. I got two chicken salads and two bottles of water. And the way our freeway frontage road system is, it's kind of a mess. And so I had to make this big loop to get back. Drop off the salads and water. They say thank you. I have to make the loop again to get back to where I'm supposed to be. So now I'm at this light for the third time.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:57

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:58

And I look over and he's standing behind her, rubbing her back, and she is just sobbing, like ugly cry, bawling, holding a salad. And I can't help myself. I pull over again, walk over, and I'm like, hey, is everything okay? You know? And he looks at me literally like I have three heads and says, Her father just died. He always had a vegetable garden. And we were talking about how long it's been since she had fresh vegetables. And then you walked up and handed us salads. And I welled up and I looked at her and I was like, Your dad's okay. Enjoy your salad. And I got back in my car and I pulled over and I cried for five minutes. And I don't know, I don't understand what's actually happening there, right? Like, is there a ghost, a spirit standing on the core screaming, naming salads? And it I just happen to be the one porous enough to pick it up. I don't know. I don't know the answers, but I know that I was open enough to deliver a very important message to her.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:03

You know, and so thank you. And like that's how I come away from those situations. And so there's been handfuls of these random events like that that that lead me to believe this was more than a dream. Because I didn't do those things before. That did not happen before.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:21

You're handing out salads to the I wasn't handing out random salads. Um let's check in with David for a second. So where are you now, David? With uh Well, she's so lovable about crazy.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:34

He's gonna, even if he didn't believe he needs to be nice and saying, it's it it's a very compelling, incredibly compelling, and I want so badly, like to believe it. Um I have this this loop, you know, this playback in my in my mind that goes, that can't be that can't be that it's too good to be true. We created it because we needed it to uh an answer to a question that none of us have, and and all of that.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:01

But I'm can I share something with you? Because you brought we were talking about guidance before, but one of this might be helpful for people. One of the things that guidance did tell me was one of the biggest hurdles to spiritual expansion, to getting closer and closer to the truth of who we are. One of the biggest hurdles is the sense it's too good to be true. And y your experience uh certainly speaks to that, absolutely. I mean, you're feeling this love, you're having all this wisdom, and you know, there was clearly so much better for it.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:39

I mean that is as obvious as can be. So uh it's it it is a powerful argument.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:46

Danielle, thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your story. It's just full of just so much information. You've even made a dent on David. So uh that's a great accomplishment. And I think your story will make a dent on a lot of people who watch this episode. So thank you so much for for being here. This was great. I loved this.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:10

Thank you. I had a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:16

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