Speaker 1: Tell me what you loft was like before you died. Well,
Speaker 1: I'd sort of come to a standstill in my life.
Speaker 1: I was divorced, I had a six year old daughter.
Speaker 1: I had been a model for seventeen years, and I'd
Speaker 1: kind of come to the end of that. I didn't
Speaker 1: know what the next step was, and that was concerning.
Speaker 1: So I was kind of hitting the wall emotionally. You know,
Speaker 1: you get to certain stages in your life where there
Speaker 1: are markers for you, where you think you know you
Speaker 1: need to be in certain places. And I wasn't there,
Speaker 1: and feeling badly that I'd not had a successful marriage
Speaker 1: and whatnot. And like the good Catholic girl that I was,
Speaker 1: I went to church and prayed that, you know, help,
Speaker 1: I need some guidance. What am I doing? Where am
Speaker 1: I going. I knew there were all kinds of feelings
Speaker 1: inside of me, but I had no idea what I
Speaker 1: was supposed to do with those. So I just needed guidance. Now,
Speaker 1: both of my parents were dead at that point. I
Speaker 1: was in my early thirties, and I just didn't have
Speaker 1: anybody to go to to say, hey, this is maybe
Speaker 1: the next logical step. So here I am praying, like crazy.
Speaker 1: And three days later I'd had an accident in Mexico
Speaker 1: with my ex husband and just located my knee, did
Speaker 1: all kinds of damage, but could not have the big
Speaker 1: patilla surgery because I was a working model. Having that
Speaker 1: big scar was not okay. So I waited and it
Speaker 1: was finally time to have that, and that morning, I'm
Speaker 1: sitting on the gurney in the hallway waiting to go
Speaker 1: into the surgical suite and I'm just freezing. I'm racking
Speaker 1: with cold, and part of it, I'm sure was nerves
Speaker 1: and whatnot. And this lovely nurse came by me and said,
Speaker 1: you know, would you like a heated blanket? And I said, sure,
Speaker 1: I would love that, that would be great. And she
Speaker 1: gave me a heated blanket and that seemed to calm
Speaker 1: things down. And I'm still a little, you know, unsettled
Speaker 1: and whatnot. The next thing I know, I'm in the
Speaker 1: surgical suite and they put another blanket on me and
Speaker 1: I'm out. I haven't even had the anesthesia yet, and
Speaker 1: I'm out, which was kind of a pre cursor in
Speaker 1: a way of what was coming. At that time. As
Speaker 1: a working model, I was really thin and they had
Speaker 1: so much more damage to do to repair than they
Speaker 1: knew because they didn't have MRIs and all that stuff
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty one. You know, we didn't even well.
Speaker 1: Arthur'scopic surgery was fairly new at that point, but it
Speaker 1: was still you know, they knew what they were doing.
Speaker 1: So I'm on the table like almost two hours longer
Speaker 1: than I'm supposed to be, and that meant that much
Speaker 1: longer under anesthesia, and I guess because of my weight
Speaker 1: distribution and all of that. With the anesthesia, it was
Speaker 1: too much for my system. So I'm a sensitive I
Speaker 1: always have been. So the next thing I know, I'm
Speaker 1: waking up in recovery and I'm hearing all this commotion
Speaker 1: and I don't want to pay attention to it because
Speaker 1: I'm in my own experience right here. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to groggy and disoriented and whatnot. But I hear
Speaker 1: all this commotion and I'm hearing them say Diane, wake up, Diane,
Speaker 1: wake up, And I'm thinking to myself, how weird is
Speaker 1: that that we had the same first name, And a
Speaker 1: few minutes later, I'm hearing them say, Diane Sherman, wake up,
Speaker 1: Diane Sherman, wake up, at which point I'm thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: my god, did they get the wrong patient, did they
Speaker 1: do the wrong surgery? What is happening? And I'm waving
Speaker 1: to them, trying to get their attention, but not being intrusive,
Speaker 1: because clearly whatever they're doing is serious and they're not
Speaker 1: paying any attention to me. Alex. I'm thinking to myself,
Speaker 1: maybe they can't hear me, and maybe they're just so
Speaker 1: focused on saving this person's life that you know it's okay.
Speaker 1: The next thing I know, I'm standing at the bottom
Speaker 1: of her bed looking up at her while they're working
Speaker 1: on her, and I'm looking down at myself. I see me,
Speaker 1: I'm looking down at me, and I'm looking up at her,
Speaker 1: and I realize it's me and I have no connection
Speaker 1: to the knee in the bed that they're working on.
Speaker 1: It was as if somebody had said, passed the soul,
Speaker 1: you know, it was just neutral. There was nothing. And
Speaker 1: the weird thing was it wasn't scary or off putting
Speaker 1: or it was just I was notating what was happening,
Speaker 1: you know, I was in that frame of reference where
Speaker 1: you're just the observer. I was the observer. I don't
Speaker 1: know that I'd ever been the observer that way in
Speaker 1: my whole life, so it was next thing I know,
Speaker 1: I am floating up. I'm in the corner of the
Speaker 1: surgical room or the post off, and I'm now looking
Speaker 1: over everything that's going on, and in watching it, there's
Speaker 1: no real fascination except that something's happening, and I'm not
Speaker 1: even questioning it, and I'm very analytical. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to fear, I'm not going to anything. I'm just watching it.
Speaker 1: And from there, I'm feeling extricated out of the corner
Speaker 1: of the ceiling of that room. And now I'm being
Speaker 1: pushed and every time I say that I can build
Speaker 1: my body push against it, I'm being pushed into this
Speaker 1: abject blackness. And as a kid, I was terrified at
Speaker 1: the dark, and so being in that absolute blackness where
Speaker 1: I couldn't see, could I had no reference to anything,
Speaker 1: it was terrifying. And I'm being pushed forward more and
Speaker 1: more into it, and I'm thinking to myself, Okay, if
Speaker 1: I can just find one little glimmer of light, one
Speaker 1: little tiny glimmer of light that I can hold onto,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be okay. And so I'm just like
Speaker 1: staring and stretching myself to find something, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, as far out as my vision could go,
Speaker 1: I'm seeing one little, tiny glimmer and I'm just like
Speaker 1: glommed onto that to hold on to it for dear life.
Speaker 1: And it starts getting bigger and closer, and I'm like
Speaker 1: fascinated by this, And as it's getting closer, the fear,
Speaker 1: of course, is starting to abate. And I'm just watching
Speaker 1: this and just hopeful, and you know, all the feelings
Speaker 1: of relief. You know, there's something happening where I feel
Speaker 1: a little sense of control or a little sense and
Speaker 1: there's something more than this blackness. And now it's surrounding me.
Speaker 1: It's everywhere around me, and I'm fascinated by it because
Speaker 1: it's nothing I've ever seen before. It's a color of
Speaker 1: white I've never seen, and a substance. It's like being
Speaker 1: in clouds, but not exactly that, the white as all
Speaker 1: the colors of the rainbow in it. You know, it's iridescent,
Speaker 1: and it's loving, and it's protective and it's supportive, and
Speaker 1: it's here for me. We'll be right back after a
Speaker 1: word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
Speaker 1: And that's the first time I've said that, I just
Speaker 1: got that it's here for me. That was such a
Speaker 1: divine sense for me, because I think where I had
Speaker 1: been before this experience was in a place where I
Speaker 1: didn't feel people were there for me. So to have
Speaker 1: this be here for me was wow. Coming home, really
Speaker 1: coming home to that sense of belonging, that sense of
Speaker 1: alrightness within yourself, That that sense of everything you've ever
Speaker 1: hoped for in your life, whether it was the work
Speaker 1: of the family or the marriage, or that this or
Speaker 1: that this was the ultimate goal, was that sense of
Speaker 1: coming home to self. And I've felt that in this moment.
Speaker 1: And as this white is totally surrounding me, I'm now
Speaker 1: floating in it. I have an odd sense of humor.
Speaker 1: But at the moment I got the fact that I
Speaker 1: was floating, I had the awareness that I was thinking,
Speaker 1: I'm floating, and it was like it didn't feel unnormal.
Speaker 1: That's what was so interesting. It felt so right and
Speaker 1: normal to be floating. So as I'm coming through this white,
Speaker 1: diaphanous cloudlike area, there are two rows of monks in
Speaker 1: front of me, dressed in the brown monk's robes with
Speaker 1: the hoods up, and I know, having listened to so
Speaker 1: many near death experiences, I realized that people have experiences
Speaker 1: that are analogous to them in some way. And the
Speaker 1: monks were kind of like the safest part of my religion,
Speaker 1: you know. Being in Catholic school for twelve years, I
Speaker 1: went through lots of missions and whatnot, yes, and the
Speaker 1: monks were always sweet to me, which the priests were
Speaker 1: kind of scary. So these months felt okay for me.
Speaker 1: You know, there was nothing scary going on in this
Speaker 1: whole experience except being in the dark, and that was
Speaker 1: my own childhood fear. It really, in retrospect, was a
Speaker 1: very gentle experience. So now I'm coming to the end
Speaker 1: of these two rows of monks, and the one on
Speaker 1: the end steps forward and he speaks to me, and
Speaker 1: I say, he because he had all those wonderful male qualities,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of that masculine being in charge and
Speaker 1: knowing what to do and caretaking and observing, and you know,
Speaker 1: just he had the energy, had the powerful energy. And
Speaker 1: he looked at me and I say, look, the hood
Speaker 1: was up, but there was no face. It was a blackness,
Speaker 1: and it was almost like little sparks of colored things
Speaker 1: dancing in this hood, and it almost looked like a
Speaker 1: picture of some kind of sci fi film where you
Speaker 1: see things moving and when, but it seemed again normal, natural,
Speaker 1: not scary. And he spoke to me, and when I
Speaker 1: say spoke, he spoke inside of me. He didn't verbally
Speaker 1: say anything out loud. And he spoke to me and
Speaker 1: he said it's not your time. He must go back.
Speaker 1: And I said, you can't send me back. I've just
Speaker 1: found home, I've just found feeling cherished. You can't send
Speaker 1: me back. And he said it's not your time. You
Speaker 1: must go back. And I said, you can't bring me
Speaker 1: this far and send me back. You can't. And he
Speaker 1: said you have a child, and I said, yes, I do.
Speaker 1: He said, well, you must go back. It's not your time.
Speaker 1: You have a child. And I started thinking about my daughter,
Speaker 1: my six year old daughter, who I loved and adored,
Speaker 1: and I thought, I want to stay. I love my daughter,
Speaker 1: but I want to stay. And so he kept repeating,
Speaker 1: and I started thinking about who would take care of
Speaker 1: her if I stayed. My parents were both gone, my
Speaker 1: sister was not emotionally healthy enough to raise my daughter.
Speaker 1: My ex husband was my ex husband for a reason,
Speaker 1: I didn't have anybody that I couldn't trust her to
Speaker 1: to be love, been cared for and watched over and
Speaker 1: supported the way I wanted her to be, and in
Speaker 1: that thought form back in my body. So to this day,
Speaker 1: I don't know if they sent me or I sent
Speaker 1: me back, and I won't know until I'm on the
Speaker 1: other side. When you cross over, there's that kind of
Speaker 1: help to bring you back to you know your essence,
Speaker 1: who you are as a soul, and to remember the
Speaker 1: brilliance of you. And so I tell them there's nothing
Speaker 1: to be afraid of. There's absolutely nothing going to go
Speaker 1: on that's scary, that's demeaning, that's hurtful, that there's nothing
Speaker 1: but love and joy on the other side. And I
Speaker 1: don't want people to be fearful of something that's so beautiful.
Speaker 1: I think we should be celebrating death just like we
Speaker 1: celebrate birth. It's the same, it's on the same part.
Speaker 1: It's going to the next level of your being. How
Speaker 1: can that be detrimental in any way? How can that
Speaker 1: be scary? It's not. It's an adventure, the most divine
Speaker 1: feeling you could ever imagine. It's connecttion, it's satisfaction, it's comfort,
Speaker 1: it's preciousness to love and be loved. Yah h m
Speaker 1: hm