Heather's 20 NDEs in 3 Weeks

0:00 From the time that they pronounced me deaf was a good 45 minutes. They cut my clothes and then they paddled my heart, my heart had stopped. And I could see people screaming and crying, but I didn't realize that was actually my physical body because I was somewhere else. The only thing that I could feel, if you could imagine, absolute love and peace, there wasn't anything else to be felt. I was greeted by people I'd known in the past. I'm back home again. Incredibly safe and felt at home. Welcome, welcome to RoundTripDeath everybody and to our very specialist guest today, Heather Vander Maiden.

0:45 How are you Heather? Good, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Well, I appreciate you being on here and I know you have not talked about your NDE much. This is your first podcast and so thank you for trusting us and I appreciate you being here today. And as always, before we jump into the NDE, let's take just one minute and get to know who Heather is. Tell us a little bit about you. Okay, well, I had my NDE when I was 20, so it's been quite a few years. I have two kids now and I work in a legal field and pretty calm life, but it's definitely changed my view on death.

1:27 I'm not scared anymore and I'm very grateful for experience. Well we'll get into all those details, but your mom and just a regular wonderful person and okay, well let's jump into it. Let's go back to when you were 20. Oh man, you had a not a fun health issue going on. I know other people that have had this too and it is not fun. Tell us what was going on. So when I was 19, I had been healthy up until that point and I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis and generally you can keep it in remission and I wasn't able to. So for about the next year or so, we tried every medication possible.

2:10 I saw multiple specialists and it was not able to go into remission. So I was getting sicker and sicker. I weighed about 94 pounds at this point, couldn't eat anything but vegetable broth and baby food. And one day I was sitting at my parents kitchen table and I heard this voice say, you're going to die soon. There was no one else in the room but me. I looked around and I thought, okay, that was very clear what was said. I was in complete denial of how sick I really was and so I just assumed there was going to be a car accident and I was going to die that way. So I started kind of preparing for if I wasn't here and then as the months grew on, I got sicker and sicker.

2:54 I ended up in the hospital for collapsed lungs. I kept passing out and falling down the stairs and broke my telephone. That was in October. By December of 1999, I was really, really sick and was admitted to the hospital for what would be three months. So I didn't realize that ulcerative colitis affected other things like lungs and falling down stairs and stuff like that. I was really dehydrated and malnourished from not being able to keep any fluids in. So I think that was a lot of why I was passing out so much. That does make more sense. But I also waited a week to go to the doctor or the hospital for my lungs collapsing because I thought it was back pain.

3:37 Except that you couldn't breathe. And just to give people a heads up of what's to come, you had multiple near death experiences during this three month hospitalization time. We're going to kind of pick them apart and take them one by one even though there's a bunch of overlap. But okay, so you're in the hospital. Things are going downhill. Give us a little more idea of the medical side, what happened. Okay, so I was admitted on December 20th and they did some abdominal ultrasounds, CAT scams, X-rays and said, we need to remove your large intestine. It's basically falling apart. You have about 24 hours before you'll die from complications. Again, I was in severe denial and I said, well, I don't think I'm as sick as you think I am.

4:22 And I have a family Christmas party. So why don't I just go to that and then I'll come back in a couple of days and we can talk surgery. They laughed and kept me and did surgery on the 23rd. Effectively, they removed my large intestine completely. It's called, it's a three part surgery that they give you an ostomy, which is a colostomy bag, where your body heals and then when your insides are healed, they go and take your small intestine and form a loop at the end. It's called a J-Pouch and then hook your body part together. That's how you use the bathroom now instead of a colostomy bag. So that was the plan was to just do the three part surgery and I went critical before they were able to finish that surgery.

5:07 The first surgery I should say is when you went critical and... And I had about 13 surgeries. So... Wow. Yeah. So the first surgery went pretty well, I think. It was done on December 23rd and then New Year's Eve of 1999, which was Y2K. I was recovering still in the hospital. It was a pretty major surgery. I had an eight inch incision on my stomach. But as the nurses were checking on me, my body started lifting off the bed and I was about shoulder height with the nurses. Okay. Hang on. My body was lifting off the bed. My soul, yeah. Okay. Your spirit was lifting out of your body and coming up. Yeah.

5:47 I never had that experience. So I felt like my entire body was lifting up and had no idea what was happening. It was kind of scary. Yeah. The nurses didn't seem to notice. They just kept checking my vitals and then they left the room and I floated back down. So that was the first time I left my body. Okay. What prompted the second time? Second time on January 3rd, my small intestine came out of my stomach. And so they rushed me back into surgery to replace that. And then it happened again on the 11th. Same thing. It's called a small bowel evisceration. The second time on the 11th, that's when I went critical. I developed what's called ARDS, acute respiratory distress syndrome, where basically your lungs fill with fluid and you drown.

6:34 My heart rate was 190 beats per minute and my body started crashing. So they had a critical care team of eight nurses that were trying to stabilize me and asked my family to leave the room. And the next thing I knew, I was in a hospital bed being pushed down the hallway, screaming everyone move, get out of the way. And that's when I left my body the second time. Was it very similar? Did you just kind of float up or was it different? This was totally different. I remember being with the nurses in the room and everyone was working fast. And then I don't remember flying down the hall. My family told me about that.

7:14 The next thing I remember is sitting off to a side, it almost looked like stadium seats. You'd see if you go to like a rodeo or something. And to the right was a nurses desk. And the nurses were, you know, they had their clipboards around certain phones. And then to my left, I could see a hospital bed with nurses all around it. And they were working at a fast pace. And I could see a girl that was having severe problems breathing. Her chest was moving up and down really heavily and she was hysterical. And so I watched for a few minutes and thought, poor girl, she looks terrible. She looks near death. And then I noticed that I could feel the nurses stops and they were terrified.

7:56 And as I watched a few minutes longer, I realized that that body was me. And I had no feeling for her whatsoever. It didn't feel like my body. I didn't have an emotional connection. It was like watching a show on TV and not really caring what happens, but you're kind of interested. And so I watched them intubate me and get me stable. And then the next thing I remember is waking up in a hospital room with my arms tied to the bed, then later in my mouth and a nurse screaming at me to help still not touch. I kept trying to pull the ventilator out. Yeah, so they'd strap you down.

8:36 Well, trauma. Yeah. OK, what happened next? That nurse actually was quite abusive throughout my hospital stay. I was in the shock trauma unit of the hospital and I would go from room to room. So for the next three weeks is when I would pop in and out of my body. And quite often I think I've counted about 20 different experiences between the shock trauma unit and the respiratory care unit for the heart and lung ICU. And so the first time after that I was laying in bed and all of a sudden I felt myself moving up in the air at a very, very fast speed. It was completely dark around me. And there was a man next to me. He was really close about right here, probably.

9:18 And he was dressed in a black tux type suit. He looked like he was from 1800s. He had a black top hat on. He actually reminded me of Abe Lincoln and his facial features. It wasn't him, but that's what it reminded me of. And he stayed with me. And he never said anything, but everything around us was dark except for him. He emanated this light around him and he wasn't scary, but everything else was scary because we were moving so fast. And so when I would start to panic, I'd pop back into my body and then a few minutes later it would happen again. And it happened multiple times over a three day period, so I quit sleeping. I couldn't tell anyone because I was intubated and I was really, really critical at this point.

10:04 My fevers were like 107.5 degrees. And I developed some pretty severe complications from all the surgeries. I had a bunch of blood transfusions. My liver was shutting down. It was pretty bad. So for about three days, that would happen and I quit sleeping. I was terrified. And so the nurses eventually sedated me and I was able to sleep and then I didn't go back into there. And now looking back, I know it was a tunnel. And I'm sure there was light at the end. I just never got there because I would panic. That's interesting. Tell me how you felt like you were moving fast. What was it that made it feel like that?

10:45 It was interesting because my hair wasn't moving in the wind or anything, but it's like, it almost felt like you're being shot through a rocket. Or when you stick your head out a window of a car when you're driving really fast, like you just know there's this extreme speed. But you were also kind of lifeless in a way that there was completely still. There was no noise. It was quiet. But I could just tell that I was moving so fast. And it was terrifying to me because I was still confused about what was happening. Any idea where you were going? Probably towards the light, I think. I mean, I was really, really critical at this point. Okay. All right, well, keep going because I know there's more even than that.

11:27 At this point, I was in shock trauma, which is the very critical care unit of the hospital. I was across the nurses station. I had family that was with me a lot of the time. And they would remark later we talked about it and they said that suddenly my face would get blank and there was no movement. They could tell I wasn't there. One of the experiences I had, I left my body and I found myself in a room that was very tall. There was no ceiling. And it was different colors of light, almost iridescent. And there was a door to the right. It was wood, but the top part was like I had a window to it. You could see it was just this way you could see through the window. And there was a tall, almost like a shelf or a ledge about 10 feet up.

12:10 And there was an older couple. It was a man and a woman and they were sitting there. And so I felt myself floating up towards them, which seemed completely normal and sat with them. And they told me that they worked in the critical care units of the hospital and they would help the patients. If they were going to pass away, then they would see God in the window of a door and know that they were supposed to help that patient to pass on to get them to the other side. And if they weren't, they would help in their recovery here. If the patient passed and they would comfort the family as well. And so I was able to go with them to a couple of different rooms.

12:50 One was a young man that probably late teens or early twenties would have been in a car accident. He had a lot of the same life support of what I did. He had his parents and a sibling that were in the room with him. And they knew that he was not going to make it. And so they sat and put their hands on the shoulders of the family members and gave them love to send all of their love to the family to comfort them. And he did pass away at that point. And so there was a couple of different experiences like that. And I was able to see God in the door and he was beautiful. He had these piercing blue eyes and like this just white, silvery hair that was just different colors of light that we don't have here.

13:34 You know, it was very clean cut beard. Just he emanated love like I've never seen here. He knew every one of us and I could tell that he cared so deeply for everyone that was there. So at one point I asked the nurses, I don't know, not the nurses, but angels. I said, I don't know why I'm here still. I'm obviously dying. I am extremely, extremely ill. I had been packed in ice in my hospital room because I was so feverish and I couldn't get the fevers down. And these two beings told me that before I came to this earth, I had agreed to take on some of my younger brother's trials and that that's why my suffering was more so than it would have been otherwise.

14:22 But that I was helping him with some obstacles that he would have in his life to take away that pain from him basically. And he was a teenager at the time and didn't have any trials. But he did have a child later on that has some critical health issues. And so I don't know if that's what it was, but I would do it again in the second for my nephew. Yeah. I have a whole bunch of questions, but I'm fascinated by this. So I would say just keep going. We'll come back to all the questions. Okay. And so the next one I can think of, there was two children that came to the end of my bed, a little boy that had blonde crew hair and he's alive and a little girl that was a little bit younger.

15:10 She had blonde straight hair and he's alive. And then sometimes an older man would come with them that was in a gray suit. And I didn't know who they were. And so I tell my mom, there the kids are again. And she'd say, who are they? And I said, I don't know who they are. She said, is the man your grandfather that's passed? And I said, I don't know. I don't know what he looks like. And so they came quite a few times and eventually they didn't come again. I didn't know who they were. I was married at the time, but I didn't have any children. Okay. I want to make sure I get this. So these, you're awake now when these children come to your room. You're not out of your body. You're in your body. I am in my body.

15:50 You're not intubated anymore. So you can talk. Yeah. And I'm probably balancing from place to place, but at this point, I was intubated for about two weeks. This was when I was not intubated. And these two children in spirit form show up in your room. You're the only one that can see them. Yeah. I'm telling my mom, there they are. And she's like, where? I don't see any kids. And she's freaking out because I'd been telling her, I was with grandma and my grandma's passed away. I'd tell them all these experiences and I'd write them down on paper when I was intubated. So they knew stuff was happening, but they were pretty scared. And sometimes a little boy had come by himself.

16:30 I just didn't know they were. And so we joke about it because my husband was Portuguese. He was dark. He had dark eyes, dark hair, darker skin. And so I'm kind of dark hair too. And these kids were blonde. So I did find out later who they were. Okay. Let's keep everybody in suspense on that one. Let's come back to who the children are. Sorry, listeners. I know you want to know right now, but I want to kind of go chronologically here as to what all was going on. So did your mom think that you're crazy or that they're giving you drugs that are making you hallucinate? Or does she really believe you because this is so real to you?

17:14 So I had a morphine pump that I could use whenever I wanted and I chose not to. I hated how it made me feel. I purposely would ask for no drugs. The only time that we would use the pump is when I'd have to get up and walk because when they'd gone in for the fourth surgery, which was I had leaders of abscesses, they had positioned me wrong and I had to learn to walk again. It caused foot drop. They left my stomach open because it was shredding and I couldn't shut it. So I just kind of packed it. So when I'd walk, they would use the morphine pump, the nurse would. It was pretty painful, but other than that, I was pretty lucid. I'm a pretty honest person.

17:54 I don't come up with weird stuff like this. Sure, but people do hallucinate if they're on a lot of morphine or something, but you weren't. No, the only time I had a lot of narcotics in my system was when I'd gone for surgeries. I would be obviously under. But for the most part, I tried to not have any pain medication. And I would just hold really still. I had so many machines attached to me. It was hard to move anyways, but I was pretty lucid. What else happened? And so when I was at my worst, you know, when I was 105 degree fevering, I left my body and I went to this building and it was really tall. The doors were just probably 10 feet or more high and it had pillars on the front of it.

18:39 It kind of reminded me of like an ancient Greece building or one of the Middle East and I found myself outside. There was no one out there. I did have a guide that would come with me tall. He was always there when these experiences were happening and he was always behind my right shoulder and would just kind of be there with me and sometimes he would talk with me. But he was there at that point and I thought, this is a really cool building. And the next thing I knew I found myself inside of the building just popped into it. I didn't go through a door. I was just there. And then we, when we got to the entrance, he took me to a room that was full of books and I love Turried.

19:21 There was just thousands of books and they were, they filled the ceiling, you know, from the ceiling to the floor and it was a round room with this gorgeous wood exterior everywhere and there were scrolls. And so he would open the scrolls and show me, let me stay there as long as I wanted to. And I feel like this room was, to me, the room of knowledge. There was so much knowledge in there. But I was told that I'd forget some of my experiences once I returned to my body and I don't know what was in those books. But after we left that room, we went to the entrance again of this building and off to the right there was a desk but just past that was a podium. But if you're giving a speaking, speaking to people and the podium had a small desk attached to it.

20:07 And as we walked towards it, the podium started to move to the left and there were stairs. And I just went downstairs. I just felt like I needed to be down there. And when I got to the entrance to the downstairs, this building was downstone. It was very ancient. And when I got down there, there was pools of water and waterfalls. There was no plumbing like we'd have now or electricity. But there was windows that went from the entire ceiling down a couple feet the entire way. So it was very lit with light. But I was told that the water was healing water and that it would help my soul to heal.

20:48 And there was a pool that I went and sat in. And I could feel the water. I could hear it lapping against the sides. I can still hear the sound it made to this day. It was very calming. And I just would sit in the water. I would go multiple times. I was at my most sickest and then the most pain. I would find myself in this area again. There was a waterfall there that was about five feet tall that at one point there was a mother with her two children or a boy and a girl. And they were just splashing in the water and having a good time. And it was just such a beautiful scene to watch because there was so much love in this room. I could tell how much she left her children.

21:29 And my guide stayed with me whenever I was there. And he told me that not everyone could be in that room. That it was only for people that were pure that needed to heal and that the water would heal them. And if someone accidentally got in there, it wasn't supposed to. The water would turn to mud. And at one point it did turn to mud and flowed into a cave area behind where I was. But the water was very, very, I guess, healing again. For me, it was probably one of my favorite experiences because I felt so much love there. There was so much loving energy in the water itself. So this place of the healing waters, since you've healed and come back, have you found any place that looked like that or pictures of any place in the world that looked like it?

22:16 If so, tell us so we can maybe go look it up and have an idea. Yeah. Actually, when I got out of the hospital, I went to the library because it was still, you know, the internet wasn't huge back then. I got every book on near-death experiences reading about anything that had anything to do with water. And I didn't find anything, but I would constantly search and a couple of years after I did find, I would put everything into Google. I could think of trying to find it. What I can see that's the most similar is it's in Jerusalem, it's the poles at St. Anzabethezda. That's what it reminds me of. It was just a very, very ancient-looking place.

22:58 Everything was made of, like, sandstone. It wasn't, you know, an elegant place with marble, but it was just so beautiful to me. And then a couple of years ago, probably about two years ago, I saw Solomon's Temple, a picture of what they think that looked like. And that's what the outside of the building looked like. Very similar to that. Really interesting. Okay. Is there more? There is more. Keep going. So I, my grandmother had passed away, and I had a great-grandfather and an aunt that had also passed away previous to my hospitalization. And one point I found my A-self in my grandmother's backyard. My grandfather was still alive. And there was orbs in the back of the yard.

23:39 It was late at night. You can see stars in the sky. It was pretty quiet. And these orbs were kind of almost going like this, just bouncing across the back of the yard from the right to the left. And then three of the orbs were my grandparents. They were separate orbs. My grandmother, my grandfather, and my aunt. And the other orbs had, kind of reminds me of a lava lamp, as high as Blaineham. Greens and blues and silvers that were just, just kind of moving around inside of them. They were really pretty. But my family members were in there, and I think it was more of a comfort to me to know that I wasn't alone. And I did spend more time with these family members in different times.

24:20 At one point, my aunt took me to her house. And she actually lived across the street from my grandmother and showed me her husband, who was still alive. And showed me him falling in the hallway and passing from his fall. And so I was frantically trying to tell my family, you need to go check on him. And it took a couple of days to communicate with them to go check. And when they did, he was fine. He actually did pass away in that exact same spot, exactly how I saw it 15 years later, which is very validating to me because I've been telling them he's going to, he's going to die. But it was exactly as I had seen it, but 15 years later. So there's, there's a difference in time on the other side and there is here because I don't have time.

25:03 Wow. I was sad to be passed, but I was like, look, I finally, you know. I knew this was going to happen. At one point I, I saw my grandmother and she said, you're going to be fine. You just need to eat more. And there was more to it than that. So I said to my family, when they were telling me you need to live or transplant, I said, oh no, I'm fine. I just need to eat. That's what grandma said. Yeah. Grandma said, I just need to eat more. And it ended up being that when I got out of the hospital, I weighed 79 pounds. And I, I was constantly eating off our food, trying to get some weight on me. At that point they're like, well, maybe just a little bit. And your grandparents had passed away prior to that, right?

25:44 And his grandmother had, yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Her husband was still alive and he would come to the hospital and I would tell him about her and he would say, tell her I love her and I miss her. So my family was pretty open to it because I don't make up stories enough. They knew if I was telling them stuff that it was accurate. Yeah. But I'd also be able to tell them stuff that I'd seen happen when I was out of my body that they could, you know, they could verify. At one point, my nurse had shot me up in bed and had his hands on my shoulders to get me ready to stand up to walk. I had to walk every day. And I left my body and was in a hallway behind him. And I could see him shaking.

26:25 He had one hand on my shoulder and another one snapping in front like the same. Wake up, wake up. Come back, come back. And my mom was next to him and she was freaking out. And I could see a 360 degree view. I could see everything that was happening as I was behind him. And so for quite a few minutes, I sat and watched this hallway that I was in had these oval or doors that were like, kind of like this or windows, I guess. And they went, they stretched forever. And at the end it was kind of lit up, but I didn't want to go back into my body. And so I just sat and watched him for a few minutes. And then I heard this voice, which I think was my guide that said, you need to go back. And so I thought, okay, well, I'll leave my body again when he's gone.

27:06 And so I popped back into my body. And then he, you could see the look on his face that it turned from terror to relief. And he said, we lost you there for a minute. And I thought, yeah, I know. I didn't want to come back. So then, you know, I said, you know where you are, what year is it? Who's the president? And I was able to answer the questions, but it was really hard to get back in my body. You pop back in and it would kind of shock you. Like he slammed back in type thing. Let's talk about that for a minute. Because a lot of people have explained to me what it's like leaving body. It's kind of soft, lifting sort of process.

27:47 And often coming back into their body is described as being slammed back in. And you're saying it was, for you, it was kind of a shock. Sometimes when I would come back in, I would, it was the jolt to me. And it would take me a few minutes to realize I was back in my body. My husband said at one point, he saw my whole body at lurch. And before that, I'd been completely unmoving my face is blank. And then all of a sudden I lurched in like this and looked around the room confused where I was. And then did these experiences just gradually go away or was there one time where you were told specifically you have to go back and then that was the last time?

28:31 That did happen. Yeah, there was multiple experiences. I was able to go to my house and check on my husband and he was in bed. I've been worried, you know, he's, I've been gone for a while. It's two months. And at this point, I'm going to make sure he's okay. And he was. And then I heard a voice say he'd come back. The nurses are coming in. But the time I was told that it wasn't my time, I found myself at what I call the entrance to heaven on both sides of this area. There were thousands and thousands of beings that were lit. Basically, they were just pure light. They had on these light type roads. And they were all different heights, but they were so vibrantly lit that I couldn't distinguish facial features from any of them.

29:15 And they were on both sides of the entrance. And I was with my guide. And I knew very distinctly that if I got past the entrance to here, I could stay and I would not have to come back to my body. And that's what I wanted. I did not want to be alive. I was in profound pain and I was just done. I felt such love on the other side that can't be experienced here that it was my goal to stay there and not come back. And I knew that my family would be sad, but it, to me, it was just, I couldn't. I couldn't handle the pain and I wanted to be there. So as we stood at the entrance, my guide was with me and we telepathically communicated.

29:58 So he could understand and hear my thoughts. But I thought to myself, I just need to get past there and I'm home free and I won't have to return. And I'll just tell him I'm going to go see my grandma for a little bit, just hang out in the garden. And then once I'm there, I won't come back. He could hear everything and understand. But I was so desperate because I thought this is my chance. And as soon as I thought those thoughts, I heard him say, it's not your time yet. You have to go back. And I immediately popped back in my body and it was devastating. And that was the last time? There was a couple of other times, but that was probably the last time. Yeah. A couple of other experiences.

30:38 Did you ever have a life review? I didn't. Yeah. I'm, that I remember. So it's always interesting to me when someone has a life review because I don't remember one. Well, that's okay. Everybody's experience is different. Yeah. I don't know if it's because I was never going to stay there and it was just to reprieve from the pain or, I don't know, but yeah, I never had one. Well when you and I talked previously and correct me if I'm wrong, I believe you told me that sometimes you could almost control this when you were in the hospital. If you were in a lot of pain, you could leave. Tell me about that. Yeah, so my dad actually took FMLA. He worked for the government and they were called to the hospital so often, my family, because I would just go critical quite often.

31:22 And so they ended up just, my family decided to have someone there at all times to keep an eye on me. And so he would sit and read this book next to the bed and I would watch him. And if he wasn't paying attention to me, I would pop out of my body. It almost became like a game. Like see if I can get away with it without them noticing I'm gone. And he never noticed I was gone because I wouldn't be gone for very long. But a lot of the times I would go to the healing waters or I would just be out. The minute I left my body, I felt healthy and whole and young and there was no worries. Like on earth, you know, you worry about bills or everything, you know, there's always a worry for people.

32:03 And once you leave your body, it's just absolute love and nothing worries you. There's no pain. And so I would pop out quite often when he was there. For you, did you feel like those healing waters were healing your spirit or you physically also? I feel like I was being healed physically. I was told that I had a 4% chance of survival. And when the doctor, my main doctor would go in for surgery and say, I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'll figure it out when I get in there. And at one point I found myself in a field. I was above the field. It was a grassy area of trees and there was, there were two white tents. And as I kind of floated down towards the tents, I had my guide with me and there was doctors in there and white lab coats.

32:50 And they had Petri dishes and microscopes and huge, huge medical books and they were all working together and they were working at a pretty rapid pace. And my guide told me that the only reason I would survive is through faith alone and prayers. And so I knew that these, that the doctors didn't know what they were doing, but they were being almost fed the information of how to save me from the other side. And so I felt comfort in that, that they weren't alone as they were working to, to save me. All right, we're going to get you back another time because I have a feeling there's a whole bunch more to talk about, but we don't want to be hours and hours today. So if you don't mind, I'm going to jump into some question and answer, but be free to fill in whatever you want to.

33:36 If there's something you want to say, I don't, I don't want to be cutting that off or cutting it short or anything. Okay. I want to go back to some of the sort of chronologically here. Okay. Before you were even in the hospital, you heard that voice telling you that you were going to die soon. Do you have any idea who that was? Yeah. It was my guide. And I felt him multiple times. He's, he's always around. I can tell him all these. Still to this day. Yeah. Oh yeah. Do you have any idea if this guide has any relation to you? Friends, family? Um, I, I think he was kind of, he's been there since my birth, but he's not related, um, ancestrally.

34:18 It's almost like we made a pact before it came here that he would help me through this life as high as I feel. Maybe you'll have your chance to help him sometime. Maybe so. Okay. When you found yourself moving really fast and there was a man in a black tux, any idea who that was? I think he was a, a very far removed grandfather. Um, I've looked through family pictures and I think that he was probably one of my great, great, great type grandfathers. Now I promised our listeners we would come back to this. Let's talk about the two children and the man in the gray suit. Okay. So when I was released from the hospital, it took about two years to recover and learn to walk again.

35:02 I had to learn to walk and talk and my hair had fallen out. It was quite ghastly. So it took about two years to recover. And by that point, I was pretty healthy for the most part. I'd gained back the weight and I had the reversal surgeries and was doing quite well. And then I had one more surgery, which where I did a tummy tuck, um, to remove the scar and fix it kind of. And I went pretty critical with that and left my body for the last time I floated above it when I was being given a bussing before I went in for another surgery. And I was told that would be the last time that would leave my body than it was the last time. It was almost just such a profound gift to, um, experience that love on the other side one more time.

35:43 Um, but shortly after that, I did heal significantly after that and did knee surgery. And I was sitting down on the couch one day watching TV and I heard my guide tell me your body will not support a pregnancy. I thought, well, that's obvious. And I was told if I wanted to become a mother that we would need to adopt and that that's how I would find my children. And so at that point, um, I was 23 and you had to be 25 to adopt from Guatemala. That was the country that we had chosen to adopt from. I'm way too many years to wait for that. And during that time, they actually closed the adoptions down and I decided that we would do foster care.

36:26 And just in the meantime, I didn't know you could really adopt through foster care, but I, I just wanted to be a mom. I was healthy and I, you know, just wanted to enjoy my life with kids. And so we did do foster care and foster 25 kids and the third child I had, I got a phone call for, it was on Halloween. They said we have a 20, 20 month old boy and a little six week old girl. And I heard that guy say it's the boy. And I said, well, put us in committee for both. Cause it's an adoption committee where they choose, you know, different families. And about a week later, I got a call that we had been chosen for this little boy. And when I went to pick him up, it was in the middle of winter and he had this little blue and white plaid hat on like a fleece hat that covered all of his hair and a blue puffer coat on.

37:19 And I got him home and took off his hat and he had curly blonde hair and he's a Lise. And that was for the little boy. So what's his name? His name is Isaac. So we fostered him for about a year and a half, not knowing if it would go to adoption or not. And I was able to develop a really good relationship with his birth mom. And I felt that was important that I wanted an open adoption so she knew that he was loved and that she could see that he was safe and she didn't have to worry. And so we ultimately did end up adopting him a year and a half later. He's 24 now. He's definitely that little boy. The hair, it was him.

37:59 It was very, very like, it was like being shocked in the gut when I saw him. I just knew it was him. So we fostered many, many children after him. One stayed for almost two years and then went back to his parents. And so a couple of years later, I was thinking, well, you know, I think that this little girl is supposed to be coming, but I don't see her. And so when I was driving, I said to my guide, is she coming? Do I see things that aren't going to happen? And I heard his voice say, it's not time yet. So I thought, okay, at least there's an answer there. And in June of 2005, I woke up one morning and I just, I knew she was coming.

38:40 I just knew it. And I got a call a couple of hours later from the adoption committee that we've been chosen for an 11-week-old baby girl. All I knew about her was her name. And that's it. And so when I picked her up from the foster home, she had orange peach fuzz hair and these gray dark eyes and that was babies, not very healthy looking, but as she got healthier with us, her eyes, when she was about five months, a little turned to that hazel color and her hair turned blonde as it grew in. And she's definitely that, that baby that I saw is a top. She was probably about six months old. That's the girl.

39:22 What's her name? Her name is Sienna. It's awesome. And the man in the gray suit? I don't know. Don't know. Okay. I don't know if he was kind of like a guide that brought them to watch over them. I don't know who he is. You also mentioned just very briefly, you were with grandma. What was going on there? I was really close to my grandparents growing up. They lived a couple of blocks away from me and so I spent a lot of time with them. And so it makes complete sense to me that she was there with me to protect me and come for me and just be with me when I was leaving my body. I felt her multiple times before and after this experience. And so I know that she's around me, but I think she was sent especially because it would take away the worry of not knowing what was going on.

40:08 And when I would leave my body, I didn't, I felt more at home there than I did here. There's just this profound sense of going home whenever I'd leave. And so having her there was definitely comforting. Tell me a little bit more about the tall building. What was the whole thing, a library or just that one room? Just that room and what I could tell. What do you think the rest of the building was used for? The area in the very beginning when you walked in, it was, there was a shelf on the wall that people could read. There was chairs and people were reading a lot of them. So I think it was a, I call it the building of knowledge and healing. And I think that everyone kind of has their own experience with that if they go to those buildings.

40:52 But for me, it definitely to me helped all the knowledge. And I've heard, you know, Akashic records maybe, but it was, if you needed knowledge, that's where you went. And so the people that were there in the main entrance, they were just reading books and gaining knowledge and getting their questions answered. I thought it was kind of funny that you described the door, but then said, she didn't used it. You just sort of appeared inside. Like, what's the door for? Yeah, I don't know. But I did think it was really cool that I could just pop through and be inside. I mean, we don't get that experience here. Yeah. Okay. Now there is something that I, I admit, I really don't understand. I have a long ways to go on this one particular topic I'm going to ask you about.

41:36 And that is orbs. And some people see them, some people don't. When they see them like you did, there's usually like they see somebody in it. I don't get why people are in orbs. Enlighten me. Tell me more about the orbs or what you know. Yeah. That's probably what I know the least about. I know that people lately have been saying they're seeing orbs in different parts of the United States. I don't know a lot about them. I, for me, it was just very comforting to see them in a place that held a lot of good memories to me. When I think back about it, I don't know why they were in orbs. Cause you could just see their face. You couldn't see their body.

42:17 And at a time I thought, well, it's a little bit odd, but it was kind of a cool experience because I felt like time was suspended. Like it didn't exist in that moment. And there was a different feeling of energy there than there generally was in my experiences. It was like you're in delt in a loving hug. Tell me more about that. How do you feel that when you're looking at an orb? Well those are especially because those were people that had a profound amount of time in my childhood and I'd missed all three of these family members quite a bit. So seeing them there and knowing that they're not here on this earth, but they're still there and there's, I will see them again and that they're safe was something I needed for me.

43:01 I struggled a lot. In fact, when I first got sick, the doctors had said, you're just depressed because your grandma just died. And I was like, no, that's not it. I mean, pretty upset about that, but these symptoms are kind of scary. So having them there again was such a gift to me. And it was just something that was so important for me to feel safe. Next, tell me a little bit more about the angels that you saw at the entrance to heaven. I was told that they were family members, ancestors, and there was thousands of them. I could tell that they were there almost to greet me and that they all had a sense of knowing me from before and that they all loved me, that it was their goal to make sure that I was loved very much and that I knew that they watched over me.

43:52 And so they all have a different job in order to help us on earth, but they all seem to know who I was. And there's just thousands of them. I thought, well, you know, I have a big family and so it makes sense, but I could tell there's multi, multi generations of ancestors there. Okay, lastly, I want to get back to the door that had the window. If I hope I got that right, that you saw God through. Tell me more about that. It's funny because it was just a normal door. Almost like if you go to high school and they have the doors at the windows. So you can look into the classroom and kind of reminded me of that. So it wasn't this like spectacularly golden door or anything. It was just a wooden door.

44:34 You could see the light through it because God was just light. Like his energy was just pure love and light. And so everything around there was lit up. The room was just so bright and it's, there was more love in that room with him than I've ever experienced anywhere in and he knew me and I knew him. And I'm not a particularly religious person. I was raised in a very strict religious household, but I've been more spiritual my entire life. But seeing him there, I just, I could feel his love and I knew that he knew me as a person and that he had always known me and that my healing was something that he was profoundly involved in. But the amount of love was just incredible.

45:16 Explain the love. You could take your best day on earth, like the birth of your child or your best vacation and multiply it a million times. And it would not even come close to the amount of love that you feel on the other side. Nothing compares to it here. And it, it makes it hard to be on this earth sometimes because life is hard, you know, we have our struggles, everyone does. And I think back to when I was out on my body and didn't have the struggles. And so sometimes it's definitely hard to be here and go through the trials that we have here. But I think this is a classroom for us and we're here to learn. And in the grounds scheme of things, we're not here for a long time, but it feels like we are when we're in the thick of it. But once we leave here, we do return to that home, which is our home.

46:00 This is just a stop on the way there. Okay, Heather, I really appreciate you spending all this time with me today. And I can tell there's a whole lot more. Like I said a few minutes ago, we're going to have to circle back in a while and have sort of a part two. But there is one person listening today and you know who you are that is struggling with, I don't know about death. I don't know about an afterlife. I don't know about God. I don't know, you know, just struggling. Please say something to that one person. I've found since this experience that when people are sick and getting ready to pass away that I want to be with them to tell them how much love there is waiting for them.

46:47 Each person on this earth is profoundly known and loved. And sometimes we feel alone, but we are definitely known on the other side. We're seeing a one of us. We are so loved. And sometimes things get overwhelmingly hard here and we want to just check out. But we're here for a reason, even if we don't know what it is. And there's nothing to be afraid of when we leave this earth. It's like stepping from one room into another and being greeted by every person that loves you and like you're at your own party. And so if I can say anything to anyone, I don't want people to be scared of death. It's not a scary thing.

47:28 It's just there's so much love involved in it. Once we get to their side, we'll be able to see that, but we are very loved. That is a beautiful message of hope. Thanks again, Heather. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Thanks again for listening and sharing this podcast. Don't forget to hit the follow or subscribe button and sign up for our newsletter at roundtriptest.com. If you want to share your near-death experience or if you have questions or comments about the show, send an email to ericatroundtriptest.com. Until then, I wish you everything good that you're looking for in this life and the next.