Mindful Monday: When a Car Crashes into Your House, Things Change

Dear friends,

I know many of you have heard the news by now and I wanted to provide an update. For those who haven’t, on Sunday October 27th at 3:30am a drunk driver crashed into the front of my home and drove into my living room, just a few feet from where I was sleeping.

My whole life has been turned upside down.

Right now, I’m staying with my sister and brother-in-law, and my health and well-being are my priority. I am not working right now, while everything gets sorted and I have a chance to heal on a psychological level.

As you can imagine, it was a huge shock, but I am taking care of myself and receiving love, support, and wonderful treatments from friends and colleagues. I feel so loved by all my family, friends and community.

Thank you for your kind messages, prayers and support. I want you to know it means the world to me and provides me with so much strength as I continue to work through this.

This experience is not without challenges, but I am grateful for the tools I have; to be present, find acceptance, feel what I’m feeling. I am not focused on the future. It is one day at a time.

In those moments when I feel scared, vulnerable and unsure of everything, I am allowing myself to feel what I’m feeling. I am loving myself more and am open to receiving love. And the love I feel from others is what is helping me to heal. It truly is.

When I share that we can’t control what happens in our outer world, this experience is a perfect example. The only thing I can control is how I respond.

What I can say with certainty is, my mindfulness practice and dedication to personal growth have provided me with a level of resilience that was not always there. In times like this it is invaluable. It’s a life saver.

I am now tapping into a strength within me that goes deep. Deeper than ever before. It is who I am, and you are going to see a lot more of this.

There’s one more thing I’d like to share with you now…

When my sister and friend were going through my bedroom to collect some of my belongings, they saw a book beside my bed, The End of Your World by Adya Shanti. They couldn’t believe it. How bizarre. Adya was not writing about the end of our world literally, but the end of living life through the illusion of the ego,

From Adya Shanti... “Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing through the facade of pretence. It's the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.”

My life did not end. It was literally only a few feet away from ending. Clearly, I am meant to be here. It does however feel like the end of one world, in both a spiritual and physical sense, and the beginning of something new. And this new is yet to reveal itself.

Things have changed. Things that mattered before do not matter at all. Experiencing hard things can offer us so much perspective.

I want you to know how grateful I am to share this journey with you. Deeply grateful.

And I know that we are going to be sharing so much more in the future.

Much love,

Diane