Chap. 1 — The Morning Everything Changed
I open my eyes—and the terror is already there. It strikes like lightning. No warning. No transition. My entire nervous system explodes awake, screaming. My chest is flooded with a burning I can’t contain, and it shoots down both arms, as if I’m pinned to some invisible cross. I can’t make the burning stop. I can’t name it. I only know: something is very wrong.
There is no racing heart. No pounding pulse. Just fire—inside my body from my chest and outward. My mind tries to catch up, to understand, but it can’t. I sit up in bed, stunned. How can this be?
From that moment on, every hour of every day, day after day, week after week, and month after month—except in the evenings and brief interludes of insight and rest that would arise unexpectedly—this terror lives in me. I try to function. To work. To live. But I can barely eat. What is happening to me?
And no matter what I do, the terror doesn’t stop.
I go to therapy three times a week, hoping someone will find the key. I lie on the massage table, desperate to release what’s trapped. I try acupuncture, letting the needles rest in my burning skin, praying for relief. I listen to spiritual teachers, one after another, trying to stay afloat. I practice A Course in Miracles with devotion. I pray. I plead. I try everything.
And still, the terror stays.
It was this moment—this shock—that would become the beginning of everything. A door opened inside me, not to light at first, but to fire. And through that fire, I began to find my way home.
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I walk through my apartment. I make my cup of coffee and prepare for the day feeling like I’m holding back a firestorm—and if I stop holding, even for a moment, my mind will spin out of control. The terror is everywhere, but I keep moving, as if movement might keep it contained.
When people ask me how I’m doing, I can almost smile. I say, “I’m doing okay,” although I am anything but okay. Then I walk away as quickly as I can. I can’t bear to be seen. I can barely stay with myself.
At the time, I had no idea how long this fire would stay with me—or how far I would go trying to find a way out. I moved through ordinary life while carrying an extraordinary storm inside me. What came next was a journey I could never have imagined.
On one of the mornings, when I couldn’t bear the burning any longer, I cried out for help. And somewhere beyond the terror, I heard a quiet answer: "You're burning off the dross." I didn’t fully understand those words, but they came back to me often—especially in the moments when I wanted to give up, when the pain was so great I wanted to throw myself out the window just to make it stop. But even in my darkest hours, I knew I wouldn’t do it. I couldn’t. My children had already carried enough pain from my unresolved wounds. I would not leave them with this, too.
Those words, "You're burning off the dross," stayed with me and somehow felt like comfort —something true that I could hold onto. They didn’t come from my thoughts. They arrived as a message from beyond my knowing that I trusted. A message that told me I was not alone and there was a reason for what was occurring.
A thin thread pulling me forward, even when I could no longer see the way.
➡️ Chap. 2
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🕊 A Living Memoir
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