THE BEGINNING OF
MY JOURNEY

Seventeen years ago, I had just become a mother, and I was walking with my son in the stroller when a car came at us, traveling at high speed. The driver lost control of the vehicle and drove up on the sidewalk, where it hit me and my baby, and then the driver just turned the car and drove off. 

My son was only three weeks old at the time, and this was my first time taking a walk with him alone. When the car hit us, he flew out of the stroller, which was destroyed, and landed on the ground a few meters away. Since I was also struck by the car, I was lying on the ground for a few seconds before I got up and ran to the stroller, only to realize that my son wasn’t there. 

I looked to the side and saw him lying on the ground, and I didn’t know if he was alive. He didn’t cry or make any noise, and he was lying on the side, facing away from me.

There were other people who came running there to help us, and one of them helped pick him up since I was so afraid that he might be injured and that it might get worse if I moved him. The woman who picked him up said he was breathing and that he seemed okay, and then we called an ambulance. 

When the ambulance arrived, it seemed to take a very long time until they drove off to the hospital, and the wait was hard. But they put the sirens on once they did and drove very fast. They checked on my son and said that he got the oxygen he was supposed to and told me that I could hold his hand if I wanted to, and I did. They also prepared me for arriving at the hospital since a whole team of doctors would be meeting us there. They said things might go fast, depending on what injuries it might be. 

When we got to the hospital, the team of doctors was waiting, and they cut my son’s clothes open so they could examine him. The whole team stood around him, and I was just standing there in shock. 

After a while, my son’s father and a few of our family members arrived at the hospital, and I also had to go to the emergency room to have my injuries examined. The hospital staff more or less had to make me go there because I didn’t want to leave my son. And while I was there, I still didn’t know if he would be okay.

But after hours of being examined, we got the news that we were both okay. My son had a minor injury, but the doctors said that it would go back to normal again by itself. That was such a relief. I had inner bruises in my stomach, but I also made it without any more significant or lasting injuries, and after a night at the hospital, we could go home again.

But a few weeks later, the shock of the event started to catch up with me. I started having panic attacks and was terrified of losing my son. I was also scared of walking anywhere near a car, and I had a really hard time with the fact that the driver just drove off. I also felt strong fear coming over me without any reason for the fear at the moment, and with the fear and anxiety came thoughts about different catastrophes that might happen to us, and the thoughts just kept coming.

There was so much fear, and I could not explain nor ignore it. There was no way for me to get back to” normal.” It was as if the ground was pulled from beneath my feet.

After a few months, I started Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and that became my first opening into something new. It was the first time I got to separate myself from my thoughts, the first time I realized that thoughts are just thoughts, no matter how scary they might be. But with the intense fear from the trauma still active in my body, which is how I see it now, that realization wasn’t enough. I also had to face my thoughts and fears a lot. And after some months, the fear was not as intense anymore, and things were, we could say, relatively normal again after a lot of work.

I also had some good moments during that difficult time, and I spent most of the time with my son, but those were also really hard months. I had people around me, but I also felt like no one really understood, and some even said that I should just go on and be happy that nothing happened. So much of my time was also spent trying to convince people that I was fine or to cover up how I really felt so that they wouldn’t feel so much discomfort around me. That made the whole process even harder. 

But the event and the inner work that followed changed me. I no longer felt like the same person I was before the accident. A new dimension of depth had opened up in me, and I was searching for something more meaningful that resonated with my new way of looking at life. I knew there must be more to life than I had experienced. 

After a while, I found Eckhart Tolle’s book A New Earth, and that book changed my life. While reading the book, I got another opening, a spiritual awakening, which became the beginning of my spiritual journey.