Trigger warning: This is a newsletter about my Near-Death Experience in 2015, after I tried to end my own life. It discusses domestic violence, child abuse and suicide. It’s also funny and ultimately healing and inspirational. I just want to make sure you feel safe here and can choose to look away if these themes might trigger your own trauma and pain. Much love, A.
Read earlier chapters by clicking on them here:
Prologue & Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapters 4 & 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
In the strange days that followed my return from death, I soon perceived that I had not come back as I was before. I had crossed a threshold, though into what precise realm, I could scarcely have said. The world had altered. Its veil had thinned. And through that fragile membrane, curious gifts began to press themselves upon me—some gentle, some wild, all of them unforeseen.
These new faculties, these visitations of the extraordinary, did not arrive all at once, but unfolded gradually, as if the Universe, conscious of my fragile state, sought to temper its revelations. The first of these was a singular awakening of musical sense.
All my life, though I had loved music dearly and pursued it with ardor, there had remained one door closed to me: the act of singing. My voice, thin and wavering, seemed always to betray me. During my youth, I had studied the saxophone, and with that instrument I had found a voice of sorts—one shaped by breath and brass—but when I attempted to sing, I felt as one cast before a locked chamber, the key forever beyond my reach.
But following my strange sojourn beyond life, I awoke to find that the door had vanished entirely. Without bidding, melodies began to rise within me, not as the occasional fancy of a distracted mind, but as torrents—urgent, insistent, whole. Songs came to me in their entirety: lyrics, harmonies, refrains, modulations of mood and rhythm, all as if some unseen hand had inscribed them upon the air. They clamored to be sung, to be written, to be brought forth into the world.
And I, once voiceless in this regard, found that I could not resist them. I sang. I composed. It was no longer an effort of will, but an act of necessity. It seemed that some hidden valve within my soul had been opened, and from it poured the language of song, unceasing and inexhaustible. Here’s one of the songs that appeared to me fully formed.
No sooner had I accustomed myself to this marvel than another came.
I began to perceive, with growing certainty, that there now existed about each living thing an aura of colour and shape—an effulgence visible not to my ordinary sight, but to some subtler faculty newly awakened within me. At first, I questioned the veracity of these visions. Surely they were but figments of an overtaxed imagination, the residue of my ordeal. But they persisted.
I soon discerned that these emanations conveyed meaning. The hues that surrounded a person bespoke their temperament, their honesty or deceit, their health of body and spirit. There were colours bright and true, others clouded or corrupted. And most curious of all—when a person lied, the light about them faltered, as if truth itself refused to illuminate falsehood. I began to know, with a solidity I cannot describe, the essence of a person’s soul, through senses I’d not had before.
In time, I came to trust these perceptions, though I spoke of them but little, lest I be thought mad. I learned that what I perceived were called "auras," though no prior learning of mine had prepared me for so vivid an experience.
Yet even this was but a prelude to a greater and stranger revelation: for soon, it was not the living alone who sought my notice.
One winter, some six months after my return from the border of life and death, I was persuaded by a companion—a gentleman of artistic temperament, by name Taylor—to accompany him upon an excursion to the mountains of New Mexico, there to photograph the stars on the longest night of the year.
We camped in solitude amidst the pines of the Capitan range, beneath skies of rare and unsullied darkness. Throughout the night, Taylor roused me at intervals to assist with his equipment. I obeyed, though weariness weighed upon me.
It was in the final hours before dawn, when the moon cast a pale and spectral light across the clearing, that I ventured out alone. The air was sharp with cold. And there, at the edge of the wood, I saw something that would forever alter my understanding of the world.
A boy stood before me. He was clad in garments of an earlier time—short trousers, a kerchief about his neck. He gazed at me solemnly, and though his lips did not move, his words entered my mind with perfect clarity.
"Are you a mommy?"
"Yes," I answered softly, though my heart had quickened.
"Good," came the reply. "My mommy told me I could only talk to other mommies if I got lost."
He extended a small hand toward mine, and instinctively, I knelt to take it. His skin could not touch mine, but I sensed it was cold, as if touched by the chill of long-forgotten years.
"Can you take me home?" he asked.
"Where is your home, my dear?" I inquired gently.
He pointed into the southern distance. When I asked of his parents, a shadow crossed his face, and at once a series of visions flooded my mind—terrible and vivid beyond all expectation.
I saw through his eyes: a man beside him on a wooden bench, unwrapping a humble lunch. The sudden appearance of dark figures from the forest, faces daubed with black paint, knives drawn. A brutal hand seizing the boy, a blade flashing across his throat—then darkness.
When the visions subsided, the boy fixed me once more with his spectral gaze.
"Billy and Dylan did it," he whispered.
Strange images followed: the word Morris upon a sign, an old-fashioned tram, the numbers 1-9-8-6 gleaming in the air.
And then—he was gone.
I stood alone beneath the indifferent stars, trembling.
When at last the morning came, and Taylor asked why I seemed so pale and withdrawn, I recounted the encounter in cautious terms. He smiled indulgently, attributing it to the vagaries of dream, of fatigue, of the suggestible mind. But I knew with unwavering certainty that no such explanation would suffice.
Upon our return home, I was possessed by an urgent need to uncover the truth of what I had seen. The boy’s name had not been spoken, yet something within me whispered it might yet be found. I began to search. Day after day, I pored over records, articles, histories of the region. For a time, no account matched the vision. The year—1986—seemed barren of such tragedy involving what I thought must have been a boy scout. And then, as if guided by unseen hands, I thought to reverse the numbers.
1896.
It was then that I discovered the fate of Albert Fountain, a local prosecutor, and his young son, Henry, who had vanished that year after prosecuting a cattle-rustling case in Lincoln, New Mexico. Their wagon was later discovered near White Sands, stained with blood. Among those suspected of the crime were two men: William and Gilliland—names that echoed too closely the whispered “Billy and Dylan” to be dismissed.
With a heart both awed and sorrowful, I realized that the boy I had met in the mountains must have been Henry Fountain, lingering in that lonely place for more than a century, awaiting a mother who could see him.
I returned, alone, to the spot where I’d found him. Terrified, I waited until the depths of night. Then, I reached out once more to his spirit, seeking to bring him some measure of peace. He appeared, much as before. I asked if he could see a light.
“Yes,” he answered, his voice soft within my mind.
“And your father?” I asked gently.
“Daddy went to the light.”
“Why did you not follow him?”
“I wanted my mommy.”
I tried to reason with him, to get him to follow the light. But he was unable to do so. Unwilling. A stranded spirit. Wanting his mommy.
It was a reply so simple, so piercing in its innocence, that I could scarcely speak. Even now, I pray that some kind soul, more versed than I in such matters, might guide young Henry at last into the light where, surely, his mother now waits to welcome him.
Yet Henry’s appearance proved but the first of many such visitations. The door, once opened, would not easily be shut again.
Some months later, I found myself at a Planet Fitness gym in Albuquerque one afternoon. The room was nearly empty; I had chosen a machine in the back row, away from the handful of people in the free-weight area, and for a time, all was ordinary. But then I saw a man in my peripheral vision, stepping onto the elliptical directly beside mine, on my left, though the remainder of the gym stood vacant. I saw his black shorts, his red t-shirt, his gold chains, his black sneakers.
I felt at once an unease, as if some invisible weight pressed against me. I did not think this was a spirit. I thought this was a real man, doing what creepy men do in public. Harassing women. Standing too close. Staring too hard. The sensation of being watched, of being intruded upon, grew so strong that I turned sharply to confront the stranger—only to find no one there. The machine stood empty.
And yet the presence remained. In that instant, a flood of impressions overtook me—not images this time, but knowledge, certain and complete. The man’s name was Puchi. He was Cuban, joyous by nature, a lover of life and music. I saw him in my mind’s eye—broad-smiling, clad in a red shirt and gold chain. I knew that he had left behind a wife in Cuba, and a girlfriend in Albuquerque. I knew, too, with grim certainty, that he had been murdered not far from this very gym—stabbed or shot in a sudden act of violence. I felt the pierce run through my flesh as I experienced his final moments.
There was a message. I heard it as clearly as if spoken aloud:
“I’m waiting for the baby. It will be all right. The baby won’t be alone.”
The strangest thing about Puchi was how happy he was. He wasn’t angry or bitter about having been murdered. He was… generous? Kindhearted. Not concerned about his killer. He wasn’t lingering like Henry had, because he was lost and alone and afraid. Puchi was lingering to send a message to loved ones.
So vivid was the encounter that I could not rest until I had sought confirmation. I searched through local news reports, obituaries, social media—until at last I found him, in an obscure newsletter produced by unhoused people in Albuquerque, to raise money. His true name was Giovanni, known affectionately as Puchi. He had indeed been a Cuban immigrant, and he’d also indeed been killed in precisely the manner I had seen, and the red shirt in which he was last photographed matched my vision exactly.
Through cautious inquiry, I discovered the identity of his girlfriend. In a gesture both tentative and heartfelt, I reached out to her through Facebook and conveyed the message I had received. It took her a while to respond. I was terrified she’d think I had insider knowledge because I was somehow involved in his killing. But that’s not what happened. She called me. She wept. She told me she had recently lost a grandchild to sudden infant death, and that my words had brought her comfort beyond measure.
“You’ve brought me peace,” she said. “I know it was real.”
And so it continued.
When my friend Alicia’s husband passed, she asked if I might reach him. I made the attempt, though even now I hesitate to describe the strangeness of what followed. His spirit came to me, but not as one weighed with sorrow or regret. Rather, he seemed exhilarated, delighting in the freedom of his new existence, soaring through the universe like a hummingbird fashioned from light—and deeply annoyed, aggressively so, that Alicia was trying to ruin his awesome afterlife with her heavy sorrow.
“Tell her to stop bothering me,” he said, though his tone was one of affectionate teasing. “I’m fuckin’ fine. Tell her to go dancing. Tell her to get on with her life.”
When I relayed this to Alicia, she laughed through her tears. “That is exactly what he would say.”
As I began to share these experiences with friends and family, they began to ask me to help contact others beyond the veil for them. I honestly felt like a fraud. How many times in my life had I eye-rolled at the mere thought of a “psychic medium”? It was absurd. And yet, whenever I let myself give it a go, it… worked.
When my mother lost a dear friend, she asked if I could find her. In response, an image came unbidden to my mind: the iconic cover of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, with her friend’s face smiling among the crowd.
“Tell your mother she was right,” came the message.
When I shared this, my mother wept. That had been their favorite album in youth, and they had once argued over whether life after death existed. Now she knew.
And then—there was my beloved dog, Topaz.
When her body failed and the time came to ease her passing, I held her in my arms as she slipped away, singing softly to her. I felt her spirit rise—at first bewildered, then pained, then lingering at the ceiling near me in loyalty and love.
“You may stay if you wish,” I whispered to her spirit. “But you might be happier if you go.”
For nearly a year, I felt her presence near, just above me, following me, confused that I had let her go. And then, one day, she forgave me. And she departed.
The voices of the living and the dead were not the only new companions of my altered life. Even the trees began to speak.
Once, driving through the charred remains of the Coconino Forest in Arizona on my way from New Mexico to Los Angeles, I stopped and offered a whispered apology to the blackened trunks. I expected only silence. Instead, a voice answered, resonant and ancient. Telepathically, as always, and in an instant download of information.
“Thank you. But do not worry for us. Worry for yourselves.”
In an instant, I saw a vision—a vast network of roots and branches, an organic web encircling the earth. And then came the words:
“The Creator has learned that ambulatory life was a mistake. When the moving creatures are gone, those who remain rooted will inherit the earth. We are waiting. That age will be called the Ascendancy of the Trees. We will survive. Your kind will not.”
Another time, hiking in the canyons near Malibu, I sought a particular tree I had long loved, only to find its charred remains. Overcome with grief, I knelt and wept.
But then a voice, gentle and knowing, whispered:
“I am not gone. I live in my acorns, far underground. We trees live on a much longer time frame than your kind, and we are far more patient than humans.”
In the face of such revelations, the trivial pursuits of the modern world soon lost their power over me. The endless chase for status, for wealth, for fleeting pleasures seemed at once childish and grotesque.
I found myself unable to endure toxic workplaces, manipulative people, systems rooted in fear and domination. I suddenly had zero interest in romantic relationships, and low tolerance for all but a handful of friendships. I became more aligned with plants and animals, and spent much of my time in the wilderness, where I felt part of a greater community of life and spirit.
Soon, I returned to writing—but with a new voice, and a new purpose.
I began a series about an eco-warrior game warden—a story born of truth, of reverence for the living world, of love for its mysteries.
The world responded. The books are now in production as a television series, with 20th Century Studios and the luminous Gina Torres set to star.
Yet all of that pales beside a deeper knowing: that at last, I am doing what I came here to do.
I am creating in service of love.
I am telling stories that honor the web of life, the wisdom of trees, the loyalty of dogs, the grief of mothers, and the strange and sacred laughter that lies beneath all things.
And now, I’m writing this newsletter and NDE memoir. I am speaking my truth, at last.
More coming soon!
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Thank you again. I hope this story continues for a long time!
I am pretty sure that trees are what triggered my awakening. You are very fortunate to have had all those gifts opened up. My gift was an insatiable desire for more information which is a dubious gift….But long story short, the aura is a meissner field generated by every cell in our body. As humans on Earth we are connected to source via the micro tubules in our cells. Our ka body never dies. And a small advice for those interested. Only go to the light if you want to do the forget and reincarnation thing. Thank you for sharing your story.