Pink Hair is a Life Lesson

A few weeks ago, my 11-year-old daughter begged me for an unconventional haircut.  Shaved on both sides and the back, with a half- angled bob cascading down one side of her cute face...she had been asking me for this haircut for a year, and I kept putting it off, it made me anxious, reminding her that when she cut her hair short the last time, it bothered her that people thought she was a boy.  (she was 9.) Well, already at 11, there is no question that she is a girl.  And she was adamant.  "I don't care what anyone thinks, I LOVE this hairstyle and I really want it!"  Ok. 
I will step out of my own judgmental thought process here, my surprising conventional approach on this, and "let" her cut her hair any way she wants.  Who am I to tell this beautiful girl she can't have her hair short?  How does this affect me?  Me, who laughs when I go to the grocery store, sans makeup and bra, ponytail held back by a bandana, and realizing after a glimpse of my reflection in the grocery freezer door that I fit a few unflattering stereotypes myself.  Judge away, world, I think to myself.  I have kids to cook for.  I get my milk and go home.  I don't care what others think of me; but I am so protective over my kids, I want so much to protect them from the harsh judgments of others, their peers especially.  Kids can be so cruel.  But I want my kids to be better than that, to withhold their own judgment of others, to be kinder and stronger than what has become the new cool:  Bullying those who are "different."  I know, bullying has been around as long as civilization and probably before, but technology has brought it to a new high...but that's a whole different post. 

The look on her face as she examined her new haircut in the mirror erased any doubts I had about it.  She was GLOWING.  She was ecstatic.  She looks beautiful.  All of her friends love it.  One boy at school called her Miley Cyrus.  She responded, "I wear a lot more clothes than that chick, but thanks for the recognition."  A week after we cut her hair, she told me she wanted to dye it pink for the month of October, for breast cancer awareness.  So we did. 

I am thankful for this spirited daughter.  I am so grateful for the lessons she and her 4 siblings teach me, all the time.  I love how she steps out of her comfort zone, unknowingly setting the example for her mother that it's ok for me to step out of my comfort zone, too.  Her little sister loves the chance to do anything unconventional, so this was a no-brainer for her.  I love the silly faces in this picture, with one eating sushi and the other making what we call the Brizzo Face. 
(P.S. I love my pink hair.)

Cold Weather Aches

I've been doing so good!  But. Today it was 39 degrees out.  I put on my snuggliest Pink sweats, my slipper boots with da fur, and I even broke out the zebra electric blanket.  *sigh* I don't know why I'm in Wisconsin.  As soon as it dips below 55, I'm in sweats and boots.  The Aches have set in.  I am determined to make sure they don't stay all winter; however, today, they have caught me off-guard. Well-played, Aches, well-played...

I am going to have to stock up on arnica salve, cinnamon and honey, turmeric, echinacea tea, ginseng tea, and lots of chai (oh snap! I just remembered I bought a fresh bag of loose chai tea the other day! yesss.)

Here is where I think we should live. Santa Cruz, CA

I did not take this picture, I found it here:  http://www.city-data.com/picfilesc/picc12658.php



And here is what I think we should do for the Aches.  I am not affiliated with these websites, I just know this kind of thing works for me and is helping me cope with chronic pain.  :)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0S9kiADZHz0
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_HQLsfZh5js&list=UUSGAd7US0VwzJ4xIucuFJLA

And Today: A Clue to What I've been UP to!!!

I have been trying to come with a way to explain what I'm trying to achieve here.  How I have tried to figure out what it means to have survived because of modern medicine, and yet to have been failed by modern medicine so completely in my healing process.  How there have been too many procedures, needles, stark white operating room lights and cold tile floors, and not enough eye contact, kind words, and TIME.  Not enough time spent putting the pieces of my being, back together.  See, what most people don't know is that a traumatic experience, whether it be a car wreck, loss of a loved one, war experiences, a lost love, abuse, on and on and on...what most people don't know is that those instances may only take a second, or an hour or a day...but they can take a lifetime to heal if the pieces aren't gathered, and if the gatherer doesn't have the right tools.

I felt as though there was a great explosion that day.  The day of my accident, the day my brother died, and a few other days...  Like a silent scream that never ended, like watching a bullet shatter a glass bottle in slow motion; you can see every shard, every tiny crystalline bit as it explodes outward in every direction in an instant, and all you can do is watch in awe.  This is how it feels.  Like every piece of myself, my heart, my family, my work, my schooling, my soul, my body, my IDENTITY...I watched them all splinter and fall in slow motion, as I scrambled in real-time to scoop them back up and put them all back together again as fast as I could, as they cut my hands and made me bleed all over again, but I never stopped trying.  And they just didn't ever fit the same, and they cut me from the inside, trying to fit and form to the way I am in this life now, and they don't, not always.  I still feel like I'm bleeding, as I go about my days and smile and do my work, my play, my chores, my loves...I am bleeding, but not bled out.  I am crying, but silently, and not every day.  But here I am.  And I will go on.  And when a person is able to identify that, to face it in all of its raw pain and heartbreak, healing can begin.  It can be years.  When we can let the pieces fall, and we can look at them with love, with patience for our pain, and compassion for a fragile, beautiful LIFE, and we can gently, painstakingly and lovingly pick up each piece of that life and let them come together again as they will...healing does begin.  Some people do this instantaneously; others, it takes longer.  It's not a contest.  There is no right or wrong, as long as there is healing.

It's hard to be patient with yourself when you've seen suffering much worse than your own, and you see people who just smile, day in and day out, acting as if things are fine, you think, "what do I have to complain about?  Have you seen how bad _______'s got it??"  ...but I know now, even those who appear so strong, so stoic and brave, even they cry into their pillows at night.  Even those who would never dream of shedding a tear by daylight, I know the turmoil within you, and I send you love.  This insidious sadness, the pain that eats away at your inner peace like a starving dog...all we have to do is throw that dog a fucking bone.  Throw it a fucking bone.  It's starving.  We're ALL starving, for Love.  The thing is, we keep looking to others to love us, to make it right, to smooth the rough edges and keep our "happiness bubble" intact.  But it's never enough, we are still starving, because we are the only ones who can give that dog a bone.
That "bone" is many things.  Forgiveness, kindness, compassion, grace, humor...we are forever fighting to pull ourselves out of the pit of despair, climbing desperately for the ledge and falling again.  What if all we really need to do is FILL that pit?  What if all we need is to look inward with love, instead of the constant vigil of outward bravery and strength?  Why must we always convince ourselves and others that we have it all together, each hair and nail and brow perfectly made-up, tackling life in designer jeans and Ugg boots with our picture perfect family in frames all around?  Anyone outside looking in could see how "together" we have it.  Look INSIDE.  Look at that void.  Fill in that void with love, with kind self-talk.  Not ego, not vanity, with self-LOVE.  You know, the conversations we have in our heads, the words that we tell ourselves are true...make them kind.  It sounds so simple and stupid...but what you are thinking really can be powerful enough to kill you.  Be Love.  It sounds so simple...and if you let it be just that, just Love, well, it truly is.  And then we are able to be so much more loving and compassionate to those around us.

So, off of the soap box for a minute...I am writing this because I feel so strongly that I did not receive the care I so desperately needed, the kind of care that is left by the wayside in our modern world.  We look at illness and injury and how can we fix it?  What pill or treatment will work?  Write a prescription and move onto the next puzzle.  But that's the problem.  The Western world has lost interest in the entire puzzle, and is focusing on just one piece; sickness.  If we can make the symptoms disappear, we have success.  Untruth.  A human being is a million more things than mere illness.  I remember going to physical therapy for months after my car accident, and I had massage therapy.  I would lay on the table and tears would just stream down my face within seconds of the practitioner's touch.  I'd apologize over and over again, while she'd tell me, "It's perfectly normal to have an emotional release during massage therapy, it's your muscles releasing memory of the trauma.  It's ok.  You're always ok."  And I WAS always ok when I was there.  I was in a safe place.  I could cry, I could hurt, I could be weak, and I knew I was held up by strong and capable hands.  I didn't feel that way anywhere else at that time, not at home, not at work, I was the caretaker in both of those places in a time when I so desperately needed care myself, and didn't realize it.  My heart was utterly broken.  During this time, I was trying to get back to full-time work, I was a full-time nursing student, mother of 5 plus 2 stepsons, and managing 3 different therapy modalities:  occupational therapy, PTSD therapy, and physical therapy.  I know you'll be shocked to learn that I would progress, then plateau.  Progress, then re-injure myself.  And, this was my pattern for 6 years. The doctors kept urging me to apply for social security, disability.  Urging me to find a different line of work, because nursing would not be kind to my system after the injuries I had sustained.  My heart was broken.  Each time I would re-injure my unstable spine, a felt like a piece of me would die.  Depression would creep in, deeper all the time.  I felt I was a failure.  I knew nothing else but nursing, it was all I'd ever done for work, what else could I do?  I kept trying.  My doctors and therapists kept after me and cared the best that they could within their scope of practice, but the truth was, I felt so beyond broken.  I quit going to my doctors.  I quit seeing a therapist about PTSD.  I stayed home.  I got up every morning, got my kids ready for school, hugged them up as they caught the bus...and I went back to bed and slept until noon.  It didn't take too long to realize that this was not a healthy way to live, that I deserved better, and that I was not going to improve my health by ignoring it.  I began reading about Paleolithic eating, tailoring meals to fit our bodies' needs, about nutrition and herbs and the biology behind our bodies and how we can heal by nourishing them properly, that our bodies are not meant to be sick, but that if we tune in to how they change and how we need to eat at each stage, age, and injury or illness, we can restore our bodies to health. 
I began this new leg of my journey in January of this year, after nearly 2 years of research and trial and error and tears and failure and pain.  And I'm glad to report, I am on my way to wellness, for the first time in nearly 8 years.  And I'm going to tell you all about it!!!!!!!

We Create Our Heaven

Many times throughout my life, I have had "out-of-body experiences."  I didn't know that's what they were when I had them; not the first few times, anyway.  We didn't talk about such things at church.  I was raised in a devout Catholic home.  We ate fish each Friday, we observed all of the traditional Catholic holidays and sacraments.  We said grace before meals, we prayed before bedtime.  I went to catechism from the time I was six, church every Sunday.  I've heard others describe their out-of-body experiences as being very much in alignment with their religious beliefs.  But each experience I've had with the Afterlife has been very different, and I feel that they directly correlate with the state of mind and/or belief system I subscribed to at the time.

The first out-of-body experience that I can remember was when I was 8 years old.  My mother was curling my hair before we went to church, and I was standing in front of her, watching her through the bathroom mirror.  Suddenly I got the most horrible, sick pain in my chest and stomach.  I groaned, clutched my stomach and crumpled to the floor.  My mother crouched over me, "Lisa!  Lisa!  Are you alright??  Dave, she's not breathing!"  My dad came, and stood watching me from the bathroom doorway.  It probably only lasted about 30 seconds.  During that time, I watched my parents, I observed my body lying flat on the bathroom floor.  I was on the ceiling of the room, looking down on my body, my mother kneeling next to me, and my dad standing in the doorway looking down at me.  I don't really remember waking up, except that I was so disoriented and confused, and why the heck was I floating on the ceiling?!?  I think it scared the shit out of my mother when I told her that.  We went to church anyway, and it was boring, as usual.  ;)

The second out-of-body experience I had was when I was about 11.  A friend and I were playing in the hallway of her apartment building.  We were playing "the choking game."  Those of you who don't know what it is, GOOD.  Don't find out.  It's dangerous, it's stupid, people have died playing this game.  Those of you who DO know what it is, BAD.  Don't play it ever again.  It's dangerous, it's stupid, people have died playing this game.  Got it?  Ok.  On with the story.  When my friend pushed on my chest and I passed out, instead of just sinking to the floor and lying unconscious for a few seconds, this time was different. I apparently stood up, ran down the entire hallway, and threw myself backwards against her neighbor's apartment door.  I woke up when my head hit the door, holy SHIT did that hurt.  She was so freaked out.  "Lisa!  What the heck are you doing??  Get back here!"  I clutched my head, got up, and ran into her apartment before the neighbor could come running out and see us.
   I remember sitting in the uppermost corner of the ceiling, looking down on my body, watching my own back as I ran down the hall.  Suddenly I got scared, and I "jumped" back into my body, the force of which threw me into the door.  I had the same sick stomachache when I woke up that I had the first time this happened.  My heart was pounding, I felt so awful, I called my mother and went home early.  I told my mom what had happened, but not about the dumb game.  She looked worried and called the doctor again in the morning.  Here we go again, more pills and doctors.  I already felt like they didn't listen.  Mom was just doing what she felt to be right, and that was to have an expert diagnose her daughter and move forward from there.  We didn't "know better" yet. 

The third out-of-body experience I had was when I was 21.  I was a divorced mother of 2, I had left the Catholic church I'd grown up in.   My priest told me I could not receive communion or have my children baptized in the Catholic Church until I paid a tidy sum of $300 to the local Diocese so that my marriage, which was legally over, would no longer be recognized by the Catholic Church.  My priest, the man who had earned my respect when he was so kind to my family after my cousin took his life.  The man who had baptized me, my brother and sister, had married my parents in his church, and had been a spiritual leader of my family since before I was born.  The man who said to me when I shamed my family by becoming pregnant at 16 years old, "This baby is not the sin, this baby is a life given by God, because of your sin.  And your sin will be forgiven." I needed to hear that just then.  I needed to lean on my church as I became a young mother and felt I had to have forgiveness for shaming my family and for being a sinner.  I thought I found it then.  I did not find it when, four years later, after months of counseling with my priest, I decided to divorce an unhealthy man.   I told my priest, "I don't believe God needs $300 from a mother of 2 who works 60+ hours each week so we can eat.  I don't believe God would take from my children so he can shut his eyes to a marriage.  And I don't believe that MY God would want me to stay with a man who was not good to me and my family.  MY God doesn't need my money.  He knows that I do."  I walked out, and never went back.  The Catholic guilt walked out with  me, though, and has taken more than 15 years since then to wash off, and maybe it never will completely.  I believe it's because of this guilt that my next out-of-body experience was like this: 
I woke up with my heart racing, positive that I had overslept and was late for work.  I jumped out of bed, ran downstairs, and by the time I hit the bottom stair I thought, "ugh I got up too fast, damn low blood pressure!"  I barely made it to the bathroom with my vision going black.  As I'm about to pass out, I think, "Good thing I made it to the bathroom, I'll sit down and..."  Next thing I knew, my bathroom was no longer my bathroom, but a dark cavern that I saw across a deep, bottomless abyss.  From where I stood, I could see on the far side of the abyss was a demon-like creature, a snarling, terrifying, horrible-looking thing, and it wanted to get me.  It was trying to get me to cross the abyss, to grab me and tear me apart, I thought to myself.  I heard a deep roaring sound filling my ears, like a train going by, and I covered my ears, screamed NO! and threw my arm out to scare off the beast.  I "came to" standing in my bathroom, swinging my right arm out into thin air and covering my ear with my left hand.  The bathtub had reappeared where I knew it always was.  I stared hard at myself in the mirror, "am I really awake??"  My pupils had completely swallowed up my irises into blackness.  I stared into my own eyes as they shrunk back to their normal size, my heart pounding so hard in my chest I thought it would jump out.  As I caught my breath, I realized I had blood all over my face, down my neck and all over my bathroom sink and floor.  My nose was bleeding profusely, and it looked broken.  I think I must have hit my nose on the sink as I passed out and fell, but how the hell did I wake up standing and swinging my arm in the air?  I don't know.  And I wasn't even late for work, it was my day off. (fuck.)

In between here, I need to mention a dream that I had before my next OBE.  When I was in high school, I was part of the Marching Band, a Color Guard and Winter Guard performer.  Our band director was an angel walking on earth.  He inspired all of us.  He was passionate about teaching, about music, about finding what you love in life and pursuing it.  He was a role model to me, and taught me to work hard for what I wanted, to believe in myself when no one else seemed to.  One morning, October 16th I believe, 2005, I woke up from a dream about him.  In the dream, I was standing next to a highway, and everything around me was shades of gray.  Faces of high school-age kids and a few adults swam in and out of focus in front of me, talking so fast and so urgently I had a hard time figuring out what they were saying.  I was suddenly on a bus, next to my band director, who was working quickly to help people around him while talking to me earnestly about something very important.  "What's wrong with me?  I wondered.  Why can't I understand him??  He's speaking English for chrissake.  But I just couldn't understand.  He finally just looked at me and sighed.  He said, "You just need to know that it's not too late for you.  Not like it is for us."  And he pointed to an empty bus seat at the front of the bus, and somehow I knew his wife was there, although I couldn't see her.  I woke up from this dream, puzzled as to why I would dream about my band director, when I hadn't seen him or talked to him in at least 5 years?  I got up, got coffee and started making the kids breakfast.  I was half-listening to the news when I heard them announce a bus crash.  My beloved band director and his band had crashed into a jackknifed semi on the highway.  The phone is ringing.  It's my mother.  "Did you hear about the bus crash?" she said.  "Mom, I know.  I dreamt about the crash this morning."  I told my mother about the dream, and was still so puzzled as to what he meant when he said "it's not too late for you..."

The next out-of-body experience I had was also in a bathroom (ok, good question for the Powers That Be, why the heck are most of my OBE's in the damn can?  Awkward.  This time, I was about 28 years old.  This was about 2 1/2 weeks after the dream I described above.
Background before this next OBE:  I had been married to my second husband for about 5 years, and we had 3 children together, my two boys from previous, and his two boys from previous, so seven beautiful kids altogether.  I was working full-time, I was a full-time nursing student, I was nursing a baby, and doing my best to bring up a houseful of amazing kids.  I thought I was doing everything right.  We went to a non-denominational church on Sundays (well...the kids and I did.) and we were pursuing "The Dream."  Big family, good jobs, I was finally pursuing my dream of becoming a nurse.  I was a God-fearing, good-hearted Christian woman.  We were renting my grandparents' house from Gramma, who had moved to Arkansas after Grampa passed.  The house felt full of sadness and negative energy to me, but I never spoke of it.  It's just the brick, it doesn't let the air circulate.  It's the tall trees surrounding us that make it seem gloomy in here.  I told myself all kinds of things to pass off the vibes I got from that house, but I had sensed them since I was a little girl.  I prayed throughout the house, many many times, asking the Divine Spirit of Christ to clear this house of its sadness, to surround it with Divine Protection and the Holy Spirit.  One time after the kids had told me for the umpteenth time how afraid they were here, or they'd seen something frightening, I had had enough.  I prayed fervently through the house, angry, demanding that any negative presence or energy there leave immediately, and I flung open the front door.  A freezing cold wind blew past me down the stairs and out the door.  I shivered.  My 4-year-old daughter said, "oooh, Mommy, your eyes glowed red just now."  I slammed the door shut and never spoke of that again.

I had this sense of doom hanging over me, it got stronger and stronger as the months went on, and by October I felt it was suffocating.  One night in late October, I got up to use the bathroom...again,  my low blood pressure caused me to feel like I was going to pass out.  Just make it to the bathroom, you'll be fine, I impatiently told myself, and that's the last thing I remember saying with my eyes open.  Suddenly a horrible, singsong, whining voice was telling me things, terrible things, and I did not want to believe them.  No.  I shook my head hard.  NO.  NO!!!  I woke myself up with my shouting, standing with fists clenched and wild eyes staring into my reflection in the full length mirror.  I didn't remember the horrible things the voice had told me, just that they were awful, but I did remember saying "it's not true, it's NOT true!"  and the singsong voice saying, "It is.  It iii-iiiiissss."  and it made me so angry I shouted NO as loud as I could.  I was so shook up from this one, I sobbed for a few hours.  I couldn't sleep.  I just had the most horrible, gut-wrenching feeling, something terrible was going to happen.  Three days later, I had a car accident on my way to work.  (remember my dream from earlier?)  I died and came back.  I was in a coma for 5 days, in the hospital for a month.  My family struggled to stay above water.  I had to put off school and work for 4 months.  I was in a wheelchair.  Everything I had worked for, suffered for,  for so long, was now crumbling all around me.  Why??  I was doing everything right, wasn't I?

When I was in the car crash, I lost some of my memory because of a head injury.  I don't remember supper the night before, or going to bed that night.  I don't remember getting up for work that morning, or driving.  I have a flash of my van spinning, slow motion, into the side of a big silver pickup after he clipped the front end of my van.  I see his wide blue eyes staring, horrified, into my own eyes.  I hear the crashing of metal and glass, but I have no picture of it.
Before I came to, I have some sort of odd memory of me walking into work, but everything was gray and I heard a strange hissing noise, like being underwater when a motorboat goes by a mile away.  I couldn't get the light switches to turn on, or the water system to turn on (I worked in dialysis and we used a reverse-osmotic water system for the patients' dialysis treatments, it was my job to start the water system each morning)  I realized that I was not inside my body.  That I was not at work at all.  That my body was still in the crumpled up van, next to the highway, right where I had left it.  My next memory is of sometime in the next 10 minutes after the crash, I'm not sure how fast people came to help but I remember coming to, alone, with the cold November wind blowing through the broken windows of my van.  I was in and out of consciousness.  Apparently I talked to a woman who held my hand until the paramedics came.  She is an angel and somehow, someday, I will repay her.  I told the paramedics exactly what was wrong with me and what had happened.  I remember screaming when they used the Jaws of Life to pry open the van and the window glass shattered all around me.  I passed out with pain as they carefully lowered me onto the stretcher, as they hit a tiny bump and I felt my life drain away.  And then I left my body, I rose above the cold highway, and I flew over the tops of pine trees so fast, they all became a green blur.  Suddenly, I was in a "place" that didn't really feel like a place...it wasn't a room with walls and windows, it wasn't outside, it wasn't sky and clouds and harps...it just...was.  It was peaceful and pure, warm and loving, and I was greeted by three beautiful, familiar women, all around 20-30 years old.  Two of them wore green gowns, with darker green sashes tied around their waists.  Their gowns were the palest shade of green,  with iridescent colors I had never seen, glinting in the fabric as it moved.  One of these women had black hair, and one had reddish-brown.  I knew the black-haired woman was my paternal grandmother, and I didn't recognize the other woman right away.  The third woman was wearing a pale pink gown with a pink sash, and her gown glistened like the others.  She had red hair, and she was my maternal great grandmother.  They were all so happy to see me,I had the strangest feeling I was coming home.  For some reason, only my paternal grandmother spoke.  She told me how very happy she was to see me,  and she wished that I could stay, but I needed to go with them and make a choice.  The other two women just beamed from ear to ear and hugged me.  I trusted them completely, I just 'knew' that I could.
They took me to my body at the hospital, where I was being prepped for emergency surgery.  My spleen was ruptured and I had nearly bled out.  Most of the bones in the left side of my body were broken, and some on the right side, too.  Internal bleeding.  Traumatic brain injury.  Punctured and collapsed lung.  I was on a ventilator.  OH MY GOD this is the most horrific pain I've ever experienced in my life, let me come back with you!  I begged the beautiful women, and they did, on and off, for the next few days.  They were with me when I was IN my body too, though, I knew they were there.  During the time I was not within my body, I was held by what I can only describe as God.  I did not see a face, I did not sense male or female, but ALL things. Not man, woman, animal, plant, but every thought, every emotion, every conscious thread was holding me in a cradle where I knew nothing but peace and love.  I saw the brown sleeve of a monk's robe and then a tree so huge, I couldn't see the top of it from where I sat at the base.  I did not sit on the ground; a vast, huge being held me like I was no bigger than a newborn baby.  Waves of peaceful, loving and joyful thoughts washed over me like gentle ocean waves.  I felt so safe,  so loved, so connected, so free of all pain and suffering, and I knew everything was ok.  I had this 'knowing,' this understanding of all things having their place, even the painful things.  They all serve a greater purpose.  I didn't think of my broken body and the pain it was enduring; I was at perfect, blissful peace.  And then the love of my children would flood my mind.  I would not leave them.  God told me, without words, but told me nonetheless, I had to make a choice.  I could stay here, free of pain, or I could go back to my body, heal, live my life, raise my children.  I knew how very hard that would be, that the pain I would endure and the injuries to my body would be unbearable.  But I would not leave my babies.  Not for more than a split-second did I consider staying.  I came back from unconditional love, so I could teach my children unconditional love, so they could learn it and know it here, before they pass, and hopefully live a more fulfilled and truthful life than those who do not experience such love until they die.  It all. Starts. With us.  :)

So when I woke up from my coma, I turned my head and whispered to my mother, who had not left my side, "remember my dream about G?  This is what he meant.  It's not too late for me."   I believe he was trying to warn me, to encourage me, to let me know it was going to be ok and don't give up.  I think the reason I couldn't understand him is because he was trying to tell me information that I was not meant to know, because it hadn't happened yet.  It was part of a bigger picture and it could not be altered.  But it all made sense when I came to in that hospital bed.  Thank you, G.  :)

When these OBE's were happening, they were spaced so far apart, I never really thought anything about them.  I never put them together on a timeline until now.   I don't know why, but I feel that they are all very important.  I'm not sure what caused them, I'm not sure if I'll have another one in my lifetime.  But I find it quite interesting that my experiences, the things that I saw during each OBE, they were very different from one another.  And each one of them reflected scenes, people or objects that were associated with my religious beliefs at that time.  This, to me, says that our thoughts are POWERFUL.  We can change our Heaven.  The beliefs that we hold and the things we associate with Heaven, WE cause them to appear as part of our afterlife experience.  There is not one static set of rules to follow in order to get to Heaven, there isn't a specific religion we have to be or we don't get a free pass, the bottom  line is US.  WE create it.  We decide with the good deeds and misdeeds we do here and the beliefs we attach to those deeds.  WE harbor the belief.  That belief is so strong, it carries beyond our physical consciousness to our higher consciousness, for a little while.  In my experience, I realized within a matter of seconds (which is relative, because time does not pass in the afterlife like it does here) that I was no longer in my body and could not interact with the physical world the way that I could before I had passed.  I quickly shed my belief that I was still continuing to work, that nothing had gone wrong that November morning.  A few attempts to switch on the lights and the water system, and I realized I was not in a physical body to do physical work for me. Yet I was still thinking, emotions and awareness still intact, and I had experiences that were like nothing I'd ever seen with my physical eyes.  The longer I was in this non-physical state, the more I became free of the boundaries and ties and belief systems we set in place here physically.  The more I was able to connect fully and freely to the constant stream of pure bliss and love, the more I realized that this is everyone's Heaven, something I believe every single being on Earth (and beyond) is capable of.