A near-death experience with the Morrigan

Many people’s spiritual stories start with a near-death experience. A taste of the “beyond” that can’t be explained by anything other than the acknowledgment that the spiritual realm is unlike anything we thought it was and is undeniably real. For me, my near-death experience was not the beginning, but rather one of many milestones on my spiritual journey.

Physical health issues have long been something I’ve battled, and though that’s not something I identify with or claim, it is the reality I’ve experienced for the majority of my years on earth this lifetime. In 2018, I was on vacation celebrating the holidays at the end of the year and preparing to take a flight from Chicago to New York City.

I’d long dreamed of NYC at Christmastime and couldn’t wait to see the magic and wonder of the buzzing city, but my health took an unimaginable turn the night before we were supposed to embark on part two of our trip. I kept telling myself and my husband that I was fine—maybe some cold medicine from the drugstore would do the trick. Or maybe a margarita with dinner, cause a little alcohol was sometimes useful in kicking sickness right as it was beginning.

It was when the pain set in, deep-seated in my lower back, that I decided to call my doctor. Maybe I had a rib out of place and could do some yoga or stretching to adjust things. To no avail, I found myself feeling sicker and sicker. I was nauseated, cold, and in severe pain. Maybe a nap would help. In the middle of the night, I was so unbearably cold I decided to stand in the shower to warm myself up.

Hours passed as I stood in the scalding hot waters, unable to alleviate the shivers that shook through my spine. My husband stepped into the shower to tell me that morning had arrived and we were going to miss our flight if I didn’t hurry and get ready—I knew at this moment I couldn’t fake being fine any longer. I couldn’t pretend to feel great and continue on with our vacation. It was time to take an emergency flight home—and against my will, check into a hospital.

Upon arriving back in our home city in Dallas, I still tried to make myself “be okay” but simply couldn’t. That night, I checked into the ER, and everything that followed was a whirlwind. Shuffled from an ER bed to a hospital bed to a CT machine and back to my hospital room it became clear—I was not doing good.

An infectious disease doctor was put on my case, and nurses seemed glum and focused on making me comfortable—and what I wasn’t told throughout this process but was relayed in private to my husband was that I had Sepsis. I had an infectious disease that had spread from my bladder to my uterus to both kidneys, and from there, straight to my bloodstream.

My body was pumped with antibiotics, I discovered I was resistant to Morphine and given Dilaudid (aka medical heroin), my veins rejected the PICC lines multiple nurses tried to place, my body was so swollen I had stretch marks on my sides, and things kept getting worse and worse. I didn’t understand what was happening to me. I wasn’t directly told that I had sepsis or how severe the infection truly was. All I knew was that I wanted to go home more than anything—because I absolutely hated hospitals and feared doctors and needles.

My husband sat on the edge of my bed one morning and took me by the hand to tell me even more bad news. My grandmother had just passed away—and if that wasn’t heartbreaking enough, I wouldn’t even be able to attend her funeral since I was dying myself and not expected to pull through. Family members were torn between leaving town to honor my grandmother’s memory and staying in the area because I was in such bad shape, and my husband assured them that somehow, some way I would have to get better with the words, “She’s going to make it. She has a lot left to accomplish.”

My entire stay in the hospital was riddled with terror. I feared closing my eyes, and I especially was scared to fall asleep or rest. Without a doubt, I knew the moment I did, it was likely I wouldn’t wake back up. I insisted on sitting upright in my hospital bed, which was incredibly painful with the double kidney infection, and begged the nurses for caffeine to help me keep the headaches at bay and my eyes open.

Halfway into my hospital stay, I began paying attention to the various spiritual beings coming and going from my room. Entities I was familiar with seeing since childhood. From gods to ghosts, the invisible realm was rarely hidden from me, but the spiritual activity on this particular floor of the hospital was extreme and horrifying. Technology in my hospital room glitched frequently. My call button didn’t work, my TV flickered off and on with static, and suffering people in surrounding rooms screamed in pain and horror as they themselves were dying.

A new spiritual being showed itself to me, though, and it was the most terrifying spiritual encounter I’d had up until that point. A tall shapeshifting entity made its way toward me, actively changing before my eyes until it was so close to my face, that I pulled back trying to get away from it. Its movement reminded me of a scene in a horror film as an unknown creature would get closer and closer to the main character as the lights flickered on and off making it difficult to track its movements. The most distinct form I remember the being shapeshifting into was a powerful feminine energy with the frightening head of a crow skull that resembled a plague doctor mask from history class.

She was surrounded by other beings that gave a strong death energy and I felt as though they were all somehow connected to my dear grandmother who had just passed on from the material realm to the beyond. This goddess of death with her crow skull head stretched her arms out to me with a large package that looked like both an envelope and a box at the same time. In fear, I continued to pull away from the goddess. What was the package? What would I be accepting? What was the cost? I wasn’t ready to die, I had so much left to do…

As I hesitated to accept the package, I watched as my sleeping husband, who had been in a chair by my side since the moment we checked into the hospital, got up and began carrying his pillow and blanket to a shelf in the hospital room. He woke up confused, indicating he’d been sleepwalking, something that I’d never witnessed him do before. I asked what he was doing and he began describing an entity that came to him handing him an oversized envelope of sorts and that he accepted it on my behalf.

I was shook.

From that moment forward, my hospital stay improved. I got healthier each day, practicing walking around the hospital, trying to keep food down and prove that I was going to survive this, and I was ultimately cleared for discharge a week after having checked in. In those final moments, as my husband was helping me pack up my belongings and prepare to leave, two nurses came into the room exchanging the following conversation.

Nurse 1: This young lady is going home today.

Nurse 2: I have all her paperwork ready to go.

Nurse 1: I was here the night she came in through the ER. None of us on shift that night believed she was going to make it.

Nurse 2: Is that so?

Nurse 1: She was going to die this week. The fact she’s going home today is a miracle.

Everything started to sink in for me at this moment. I hadn’t grasped how close to death I was—even though I knew I couldn’t close my eyes or go to sleep for my entire 6-day stay at the hospital. I didn’t process that I was septic and literally on death’s door—despite having an infectious disease doctor on my case who checked my blood work daily and had stated on multiple occasions that the infectious bacteria count in my blood was astronomically high. I didn’t understand the nurses’ job was to treat me as though I was on hospice—but that’s what the Morphine and Dilaudid were for—to make me comfortable in my “final moments.”

At one point during my hospital stay, people we knew had come to visit and check in on me, and their teenage son had stated that he felt a spirit of death on the whole floor of the hospital—and it wasn’t until I grasped exactly who The Morrigan was that I recognized the true nature of what was happening.

The Celtic Goddess of Death herself, The Morrigan, had paid me a visit, and had handed my husband and me a healing offer that shouldn’t have been “possible,” and yet, here I am today, a sepsis survivor (which claims the life of more than 50% of its victims), and the severity of my case was almost a guaranteed fatality.

The fear I felt accepting The Morrigan’s offer, but my husband knowing spiritually that what she had for me was not only life itself but a redirection toward my true purpose in life—someone who works with death and life energy to heal (something those who know me is connected to my beloved mustard seed), to break ancestral trauma, and so much more.

I owe my life today to The Morrigan, and the Great Goddess, Lady Wisdom herself, who I am eternally devoted to, as she (to me) is the beloved Holy Spirit herself. And I am also forever grateful to my husband for seeing the potential in myself that I was too scared to see with my own eyes due to religious fear and trauma. My deepest and most sincerest gratitude goes to them both.