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  The first time I died I was 15 years old. I flew up a cliff on a motorbike wearing a full face helmet and a bikini. They never found the bikini top.

I’d been sunbathing in my front yard when my friend Nate pulled up on his brand new Kawasaki 175, and invited me to go for a ride.

My family was going to an event later that day, but there was hours to go before then. I figured I could go for a ride and be back before anyone noticed I was gone.

“Can I ride?” I asked him, he eyed me in my bikini and his teenage hormones said YES! 

He handed me the helmet, got on the back, and off we went down Gympie Road. 

It was an old highway, narrow, windy, in disrepair.

The road canted to the right where you could see patches of color that were paddocks far below the unguarded cliff edge.

To the left the cliff rose more gently and woodcutters had cut trees down into sharp pointed stumps.

As I turned a corner, the front wheel hit a pothole and I was launched into the air.

I should have flown straight off the cliff, but my Angels had other ideas, and against The Law of Gravity I was thrown up to the left.

I landed next to a pointed stump, my left femur spectacularly broken.

Nate was unharmed, he raced, to the bike, tenderly wheeled it to the side of the road, checked it over, then came to see how I was doing. 

He took one look at me and fainted clean away, leaving me alone on the hillside on a rarely used road.

I don’t know how long it was before a car came by. This was long before cell phones were invented.

A mother and her daughter found us. The daughter drove into town to get an ambulance. 

I remember the rattling of the gurney as I was wheeled into the operating theater, tightly holding the nurse’s hand, begging her not to tell my sister.

I somehow thought that I could still get home before anyone noticed I had sneaked out.

I remember the anesthesiologist putting the mask over my face and counting me down.

Next thing I was high above the table looking down from the corner of the room. I heard the anesthesiologist say “We’ve lost her” and there was a flurry of activity on the operating table.

With shock I suddenly realized ‘OMG that’s ME down there!’ immediately followed by ‘OMG that’s NOT me, it’s just my body!’ A feeling of wild freedom and exaltation.

It’s true what they say about the Tunnel of Light. 

I can tell you what that Light is, it’s Pure Unadulterated LOVE, and I wanted with every fiber of my being to go into that Light.

But I was stopped, and I was sent back, and I was furious about that.

I awoke in ICU to be told that I would never walk again. The doctor wanted to amputate my leg.

He said I was lucky to be alive. I’d been declared dead on the operating table for two and a half minutes. 

I told him "I’ll not only walk, I’ll dance on your grave! 

Within seven years, I was a silver medal-winning ballroom dancer.

 It was a long road back, and along the way I did to myself what I wouldn’t let the doctor do. 

I metaphorically amputated my own leg. 

I didn’t know how to cope with the pain, so I labeled my leg ‘bad’, ignored the pain, and Soldiered on.

Then I wondered why I wasn’t healing.

I had yet to understand that We Can’t Heal What We Don’t Own.

I discovered that pain was not my enemy, but my body’s way of alerting me that there was something I needed to address. 

Our bodies don’t yell at us for no reason, suppressing pain instead of listening to it is like putting masking tape on the oil warning light in the car because we don’t like the message it’s sending.

Never a long term helpful thing to do.

Instead of locking it away and making it wrong, I learned to treat my pain like a crying child. 

I held my precious leg and sincerely apologized to it
“I’m so sorry that I made you wrong and bad, you are NOT a bad leg, you are wonderful, you reach all the way to the ground and do your best despite all the terrible things I’ve done to you. You don’t have to yell at me any more. I’m listening now.”

And that’s when I began to truly heal.

I had 5 more NDEs in the years to follow. Each time I was returned with different skills and abilities to help people.

Death has taught me many things; like the difference between urgent and important, and the awareness of how truly precious life is.

I am living proof that you only get to die when it’s your time.