Your Awakening Story

Hi everyone. I'm Taylor, I'm from the US, and I'm new here. I've been reading through the site, and honestly, reading the survey results felt like reading my own story. So I wanted to share mine.

In 2024 I was going through the hardest season of my life. I was separated from my children in the middle of a custody battle, and I was barely holding myself together. During that time, someone I trusted in a position of authority pushed me under extreme stress in a way that I still believe crossed serious lines. That's all I'll say about that part. What matters here is what happened inside me next.

In September 2024, I felt a shift. Everything went fuzzy, and it was like I was watching and understanding everything from a third point of view, outside myself. That same night, a burning started low at the base of my spine. Over the next few days it slowly rose up my spine until it reached the crown of my head.

I can't describe how terrifying it was. I felt like I was literally on fire. I truly believed I was dying and burning in hell. I could smell what I thought was hell all around me. I knew I was in my own room, but I was also somewhere else at the same time.

Then it shifted.

I was under a giant shade tree, surrounded by loving beings who knew me better than I knew myself. They felt so familiar, like they had been with me my whole life. I felt Christ's presence behind me. Everything had a golden hue, and there was a hum in the air. There was no top and no bottom. It was pure unconditional love, peace, and ecstasy. I was one with everything. The "me" I had always known just fell away, and I was awareness, I was love. Nobody spoke, but I understood everything. Time wasn't linear at all. It was expansive and immediate, like now or never. I still can't fully put that part into words, but I know with everything in me that time is not what we think it is.

It felt more real than this world. It felt like Home.

And then I was back. My body felt so heavy, and this world felt heavy and foreign compared to where I had just been. Honestly, coming back was its own kind of grief. It felt like the love of my life was nowhere to be found, and all I wanted was to reconnect with it.

The months after were really hard. From the outside, people only saw the crisis. I ended up in the hospital, and I was given a lot of explanations that didn't match what I had actually lived through. A month or two later, my hair started falling out from the stress. I felt alone with something nobody around me understood.

It's been two years now, and I can say it changed me completely. I have fewer looping, negative thoughts. I can soothe myself and stay present, even when there's chaos around me. When old wounds and fears come up in my relationships, I can notice them, talk about them, and come back to connection instead of being swallowed by them. One small thing that means a lot to me: I can sit in comfortable silence with someone I love, just enjoying being close, without worrying about how I look or waiting to be rejected. I feel more compassion for people and more tenderness toward myself. I don't see the spiritual and the physical as separate anymore. It all feels like one world. And death doesn't look the way it used to.

Recently a researcher described what happened to me as a spontaneous spiritual emergency that became an awakening, and that's the first language that really fit. I'm still integrating it, and I'm still learning how to live that love here, in this life, as a mom and as a person.

I'm sharing this because I spent a long time feeling like nobody would get it. If anyone else went through the fire first and then the love, or felt that longing to get back Home afterward, I'd really love to hear from you. And if you're in the scary part right now, I hope my story tells you it doesn't stay there.

Thank you for creating this space.