During this time, in the early stages of my awakening, I started to look back and connect some of the dots on how the previous two years had brought me to the place of surrender. I had a series of life-changing events that created an urgency in me. 

The common denominator was staring death in the face. 

During this time between March 2020 – Feb 2022, the pandemic had upended our lives in so many ways. 

I can’t remember when it started exactly, but as the pandemic wore on, people began losing, then leaving, their jobs in droves, and then someone coined the term “The Great Resignation.” 

It bothered me the first time I heard the term, and this was before I started this journey. 

I think it was because I could sense that it wasn’t telling the REAL story. It tells the story of the result, the external picture, instead of the root cause. 

Here’s a journal entry from Feb. 2022, as I began to unpack the pandemic, "The Great Resignation," and my thoughts about death. 

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For a while now, I have been bothered by the phrase “The Great Resignation.” And I finally think I know why.  When I listen a little deeper, I become aware that the term just doesn’t ring true. When I listen to God, and I connect with my wholeness, I sense something different about what is happening in our collective consciousness. I think what is really happening is the beginning of spiritual evolution for many people. 

There is something deeper going on here, as more and more of us begin to become very unhappy with the hell on earth we have made. Deeper questions are coming to the surface. Why are we living this way? What really matters in life? Who made these stupid rules about working 9-5 anyway? 

The pandemic that we are collectively experiencing can become a catalyst for awakening, as any form of suffering can. We’ve been stripped of so many of the things that we have become attached to and make up our ego identity. Stripped of spending time with loved ones, traveling, going out to dinner, or even seeing each other’s faces as we move through a grocery store. 

Any time we experience acute suffering, we desperately want a way out. And if we are open, in that search, we can surrender and find a glimpse of inner peace. 

As a result of the collective and personal loss we’ve experience during this pandemic, many of us have experienced a gentle or forceful nudge reminding us that whatever THIS is, this life we have created, is NOT IT. 

In my case, the nudge came first after being with my Grandfather for the week he was dying and being with him when he took his last breath and left his body. I remember feeling very present that week, nothing else mattered other than taking care of Grandpa. I was acutely aware of what was happening, moment to moment, almost a heightening of my senses. I was also very in tune with the toll it was taking on my grandmother. 

I’ve never written about this, and only shared this experience with a handful of close friends and family members, but that week changed me. It was the first time I’d seen someone die. 

My Grandfather was such a presence in my life. He grew up on a farm and left school after the 8th grade to work on the farm full-time. Without an education, there weren’t too many job opportunities available to him, and he became a truck driver at 19 and retired as a truck driver in his sixties. He was loving, funny, stubborn and a real character, everyone loved him. He was incredibly resilient, having had two heart attacks, open heart surgery, diabetes, and finally Lymphoma, he had a strong will to live. The Lymphoma went into remission twice and he had several great years in between bouts, but the third bout came back right around the time of my Grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary. He’d started sweating again at night, and that was his body’s sign that the cancer was back. That was in January 2020. The doctors felt as though another round of chemo would be very tough on my 86 year-old Grandpa, so he opted out. By July he was in bad shape, and I got the call from my aunt that he didn’t have much longer, maybe a week. I was stunned and in shock, as you are never prepared for these moments. 

Immediately, my husband Anthony declared that we were packing up the car and driving to Wisconsin (we couldn’t fly due to the pandemic). I got the call on a Thursday, and Saturday morning we were on the road to Wisconsin. We arrived at my Grandparent’s house on Sunday afternoon. My Grandfather was in his hospice bed in the living room, and he was alert although a bit tired. I sat next to him and we held hands and shared some of our favorite memories. 

He talked about how he didn’t get out to mow the lawn this week, and hearing that, Anthony sprang into action to mow the lawn. Grandpa sat and looked out the window watching him mow, smiling, and just watching, almost in awe. It was as if he was living through Anthony at that moment. It was the last time he was going to see a lawn being mowed. He kept saying,” I’ll betcha it will take him about an hour to get it done.” 

My Grandmother was putting on a brave face, but inside I knew she was terrified of losing her husband of 50 years. As much as she was trying to hold it together on the outside, she just couldn’t. Each day, more and more of him faded away, and the family was taking shifts to be by his side 24 hours a day as his care required. The medicine schedule and keeping everyone on task and informed became my charge, as well as taking care of my grandmother. By the following Saturday, he was no longer conscious, and overnight into Sunday, the death rattle started. 

We had the day shift every day that week, and so when we arrived around 9 am on Sunday, we were startled to hear the noise coming from the living room. I had never heard of the phrase the death rattle and certainly never heard what it sounded like, and I will tell you it was jarring. Then I knew it would not be long until he’d be gone. As Anthony, Grandma, and I surrounded him in the living room that afternoon, the spaces in between his breath became longer and longer, until finally…the breath just stopped. I looked at my grandma, and Anthony, wondering if they had noticed and were thinking the same thing. Was he gone? There was a moment we sat paralyzed, where we just did not know - was another breath coming, or was he gone? Tick, tick, tick, still nothing. My Grandmother got up and took his arm, as though she were trying to shake him awake, saying “Vern, Vern.” I put my arm around her to calm her down and put my ear to his bare chest. There was no heartbeat. He was gone.  

As painful as the moment was in a way that I cannot explain fully, it was also beautiful and sacred. I realized that bearing witness to the end of someone’s life is a great honor. During that week, I got to hold his hand, sing to him, and give him medicine. Even cleaning his soiled diaper felt like a sacred act. And I was there when he slipped away from his body. Although I didn’t consider myself religious, my belief in God rushed back to my mind, and in the moments after his transition, I felt a deep knowing of, and oneness with, God. 

The whole week had been an incredible gift and it was the beginning of listening to my call to heal and awaken. The feeling of God was so comforting, despite all of the pain we were all experiencing - it was incredible. I had a sense that this was the feeling I had been missing all along. The truth is, it was never really gone, it was always there, I had just forgotten to access it. That feeling I felt is the feeling of inner peace. I had a moment of direct knowing that although my Grandfather may no longer be in the physical world, his spirit, the consciousness in him, will never die. 

For weeks afterward, I wanted to stay connected to that feeling of peace I had found, and I tried to remember that feeling and get back there, and yet, slowly as I moved back into my life, I lost touch with it. But the seed had been planted. That was July 2020. 

And then, the following April came a personal bout with COVID in which I brushed up against my mortality. Again, this brought me back to that place of knowing what really mattered, and I got back in touch with that feeling of inner peace. This time, I really woke up to the fact that the life I had worked so hard to build; the job, the house, and all the external trappings were ultimately meaningless. 

During this same time, my ego was using my job to create enormous suffering for me, which of course was not real. But I was not yet on a path of healing and I was deeply unconscious of the suffering my ego was creating. After having COVID and wondering if I might be one of the young healthy ones that would not live, something changed in me. I knew I needed to change my life, but I didn’t know how or what real change looked like, but I sensed it had something to do with that feeling I had. 

My ego was clear that it was the job that was creating all my suffering and that once the job was gone, everything would be just fine. But of course, that was not the case, and somewhere deep inside I knew that. Wherever you go, you are. I’ve done enough personal development work to get very clear on that. 

I don’t think I am different from anyone else that has lived through the last two years. The Source, God, the Universe, Consciousness, whatever you call it, is always speaking to us, calling us home, whether we are listening or not. Oftentimes our ego is speaking so loudly and constantly that we don’t hear the call, but it is always there. We have simply forgotten who we really are. And like any time filled with great loss, there can be an opening, a window, however small, for us to remember. We don’t even have to know what we are remembering necessarily, but just the smallest invitation, the notion that THIS isn’t it, can invite spirit in to begin to remind us of who we really are. If we keep listening and learning, we can find inner peace. We just have to remember to remember. 

I think this time can be a “Great Awakening” for humanity, the beginning of remembering for so many of us. I know it has been the catalyst for me to finally connect to who I really am, to make my healing and the recognition of my wholeness a priority. 

To remember that I am not powerful because of anything I have achieved, but because of who I am. 

A child of God.