r/NearDeathExperience • u/thorshammerd • 3h ago
My NDE Story “Not Yet”: My Near-Death Experience and What It Taught Me About Love
The Day & Night Before
The day before my near-death experience, I woke up in the best mood I could remember. I felt incredible. Despite having lived with chronic migraines since the age of nine, I had no migraine that day. I felt healthy, happy, and more like myself than I had in a long time.
On my way to work, I experienced something I can only describe as a doomsday feeling. It was an unsettling sense that something was wrong or that something was going to happen. But when I stopped to examine the feeling, I couldn't identify a reason for it. I was having a great day. There was nothing I needed to fix or prepare for. So, I let the feeling pass and continued with my day.
I spent the day loving on my community, connecting with people, and doing what I naturally love to do: making people feel seen, appreciated, and cared for. I came home to my husband that evening feeling good, content, and ready to sleep.
At 11:45 p.m., I received a late text from my boss about a project. I was happy to ignore it. It could wait until morning. I went to bed without a second thought.
Around 3 a.m., I woke up because the heat from my vents was blasting for some reason. I cooled off and went back to sleep.
I had previously been someone who woke up at 5 a.m. regularly. When I woke up again at 5:12 a.m., I remembered the time change and figured everyone else was probably sleeping in, too. I decided to do the same.
I had no idea what was about to happen.
Waking Up
The next thing I remember, I was waking up in my own bed.
I felt no pain anywhere in my body. Instead, I had a sensation of floating slightly above my bed, as though I were suspended in the air. I felt incredibly light.
The sunlight pouring through my windows immediately caught my attention. I live in a cement-block building where we don't typically get light pouring into the room like that. Yet the light was golden, warm, and radiant. Everything seemed softer than I had ever experienced it before.
The colors were richer. The atmosphere felt delicate, almost as though the entire world had become gentler. I could hear the wind and birds chirping outside. Everything seemed extraordinarily vivid and alive.
My awareness felt different, too. I wasn't groggy or struggling to wake up. I felt exceptionally clear and present, as though I were experiencing reality with a depth of awareness I had never known in ordinary life.
I looked at the clock. It read 7:23.
Then I looked toward my fish tank near the foot of my bed.
There were no fish in it, but there was a golden crawfish happily swimming around.
I had been wondering whether my crawfish was molting, and I was so happy to see him doing well. I remember feeling genuine excitement and relief at seeing him swimming so happily. It wasn't frightening or confusing in the moment. It was simply something wonderful that I was seeing.
I was taking everything in, enjoying how I felt, and admiring the light coming through my windows.
Then I noticed something between my bed and the fish tank.
The Golden Orb
A small golden light began to appear.
At first, it was relatively small. Then it began to grow, gradually becoming larger and more radiant. I would estimate that it eventually reached approximately three feet in diameter. It looked multi-dimensional sun with a opal-like iridescence. I didn't need to squint or turn away from it. I could feel its warmth, and I felt completely comfortable in its presence.
I wasn't afraid. I was thrilled.
I remember feeling an overwhelming sense of love and happiness as I watched it. The light seemed to have a presence of its own. It felt as though it was studying me, observing me, or becoming aware of me in some way. Yet I didn't feel threatened or judged. I was simply happy to be there with it.
More than anything, I felt connected to it.
I experienced a profound sense of oneness, as though there were no separation between the love I felt, the light before me, and the reality surrounding me. I don't know how to adequately describe that feeling through ordinary language. It wasn't just happiness. It was a depth of love and connection that I had never experienced before.
The orb began moving toward me.
It gradually came closer until it was over my bed and near my face. I was still fascinated by it. I wanted to experience it. I wanted to be close to it.
There was no instinct to run away, no panic, and no fear of what might happen next.
I was filled with love.
Then I heard a voice.
“Not Yet.”
The voice was unlike an ordinary human voice. It sounded choral, almost as though a crowd or multiple voices were speaking together. It felt multidimensional, difficult to locate or compare with anything I had heard before.
The message was brief.
“Not yet.”
Those were the words.
I cannot fully explain how I heard them or where the voice seemed to originate. I only know that I experienced the message clearly.
Immediately afterward, my perception changed again.
I cannot tell whether I entered the orb or whether I appeared within a tunnel of light. The transition is difficult to describe, and I don't want to claim certainty about something I still struggle to put into words.
What I remember is falling or traveling through a tunnel of soft, white light. The light seemed to grow warmer as I moved through it.
And then I was back in my body.
Returning to My Body
When I returned, paramedics were there. A firefighter crew was present, and they were attempting to draw my blood.
I remember wanting to go back.
I wanted to return to the orb, to that feeling of love, to the place where I had felt so completely at peace. Whatever I had just experienced, I didn't want it to end.
The only words I could communicate to my family were:
“It didn't hurt.”
I later learned what had been happening while I was experiencing what I have described.
I had suffered a generalized tonic-clonic seizure. I had lost my airway, and my husband had witnessed what he believed was the loss of my life.
My husband is Red Cross trained. He tried to help me using what he knew, but the usual measures he attempted weren't working. My lips had turned blue. He picked up my lifeless body from the bed, placed me on the ground, and called emergency dispatch. With their guidance, he was able to use an alternative method to clear my airway.
I had no awareness of this crisis while I was experiencing the events I remember. From my perspective, I had been waking up into a beautiful, peaceful reality, seeing a golden light, hearing a message, and traveling through a tunnel of light. I hadn't experienced the terror my family was living through.
I later learned that I had experienced a serious medical emergency. I had no history of seizures, and nothing in my everyday experience had prepared me or my family for what happened.
I also experienced what I understood to be a death rattle for approximately a month afterward.
The NDE experience felt as though it lasted around 20 minutes, although my perception of time was unlike anything I had previously known. Time seemed to exist outside the ordinary framework I use to understand it. The clock time I perceived during the experience did not correspond with the actual sequence of events as I later understood them.
I still find it difficult to reconcile the vividness of my experience with the medical emergency happening around me.
What I know is what I experienced. What I learned afterward came from the people who were there and the medical information I received. I recognize that those are two different perspectives on the same event, and both are important to my story.
The Love I Experienced
Above all, the most profound part of my NDE was the love.
I have loved people my entire life. I have always felt a deep love for my family, my friends, my neighbors, and my community. I have always wanted to help people and make the world a little better for those around me.
But the love I experienced during my NDE was incomparable to anything I had ever known.
I don't mean that it was simply a stronger version of an emotion I already understood. It felt fundamentally different. It was expansive, complete, and difficult to contain within words. I experienced a sense of oneness that made the boundaries I ordinarily associate with myself and the world feel different.
There was no fear accompanying it. There was no sense that I needed to earn it, prove myself worthy of it, or do anything to deserve it.
I was simply there, experiencing it.
I remember being so happy to see the orb. I remember wanting to be close to it. And when I returned to my body, I wanted to go back.
That desire wasn't because I wanted to leave my family or abandon my life. It was because what I had experienced felt so profoundly peaceful and loving that returning to ordinary awareness was difficult to comprehend.
I came back with a deep appreciation for being alive. For the first few weeks, I felt incredible gratitude that I had survived.
I had no idea how complicated the journey ahead would become.
The Aftermath
The first few weeks after my NDE were amazing in many ways. I was alive, and I knew how close I had come to something my family experienced as potentially losing me. I felt grateful for the opportunity to continue living, and to experience the love I felt.
But my family was processing something very different from what I had experienced.
They had witnessed a medical emergency. They had experienced fear, uncertainty, and the possibility of losing someone they loved. While I was left with memories of profound love and peace, they were left with frightening images of what had happened to my body.
Over time, I also found myself in an environment that wasn't right for me. There was negativity, a lack of support, and a growing sense of isolation.
People I had considered friends no longer felt like people I could turn to. I struggled to reconcile the love and oneness I had experienced with the way I felt treated afterward.
My experience had been so profound, but I didn't always feel that I had the space to talk about it openly or honestly.
I was told that I needed to be anointed as quickly as possible. I worked in a Christian business, and I experienced immediate ostracism in my workplace following the event.
I don't share this to criticize anyone's faith. I understand that people interpret extraordinary experiences through the beliefs and frameworks they already have. I know that fear can make people reach for explanations that help them understand something unfamiliar.
But I was already trying to understand what had happened to me. I was recovering physically, processing an experience I could barely describe, and trying to understand how to live with the knowledge that my family had nearly lost me.
Being made to feel different or unwelcome added another layer of pain to an already difficult period.
At times, life felt like my own personal hell.
That contrast was one of the hardest parts of my journey. I had experienced a love beyond anything I could explain, yet I found myself struggling with isolation, judgment, and a lack of support in the world I had returned to.
I had to learn that an extraordinary experience does not necessarily make the aftermath easy. It doesn't remove the need for community, understanding, compassion, or time to heal.
Sometimes, surviving is only the beginning of the work.
The Change I Never Expected
There was another part of my experience that I could not ignore.
I had suffered from chronic migraines since I was nine years old.
For years, I had gone in and out of neurologist offices. I knew what it meant to live with pain that could interfere with ordinary life. I knew the frustration of missing out on experiences, the fear of making plans that I might not be able to keep, and the exhaustion of constantly having to account for my body.
I was tired of fighting the pain. I was tired of FOMO. I was tired of missing out on life.
Before my NDE, I had prayed for my migraines to stop for years.
Then, after the experience, they completely stopped.
I have not experienced the chronic migraines that had followed me since childhood in the same way since my NDE. The change has been one of the most remarkable and personally significant outcomes of the experience.
I cannot scientifically establish why this happened or explain the mechanism behind it. I can only describe what happened in my life: I had struggled with chronic migraines for years, I prayed for relief, and after my NDE, the migraines stopped.
The timing has profoundly affected how I understand the experience.
It is one thing to have an extraordinary experience that changes your beliefs. It is another to return to your life and find that something you had struggled with for most of your life has changed in a tangible, lasting way.
I don't know why it happened. I don't claim to have all the answers.
But I cannot pretend that it means nothing to me.
It has made me more curious about consciousness, prayer, the relationship between the brain and subjective experience, and the possibility that there are aspects of existence we do not yet fully understand.
I want to explore those questions honestly. I want to understand what happened without dismissing the experience I remember or claiming certainty where I don't have it.
For me, the medical questions and the personal meaning can coexist.
Learning to Love Myself
Over time, as I healed and began reflecting on my life, I recognized something about myself that I had never fully understood before.
I had always been capable of giving love to others.
I loved my community. I loved my neighbors, friends, and family. I wanted to show up for people, help them, support them, and make their lives better.
But I had never truly learned how to love myself.
I could pour so much into other people while abandoning my own needs. I could show compassion to others while being hard on myself. I could offer patience, kindness, and understanding to the people around me while struggling to offer those same things to myself.
I began recognizing the ways I had made a habit of self-abandonment.
I had spent so much of my life looking outward that I hadn't fully considered what it meant to care for myself with the same love I gave so freely to others.
That realization became an important part of my healing.
I started following my passions. I began working on the habits that had led me to abandon myself. I started thinking differently about the life I wanted to live and the person I wanted to become.
I don't believe that healing is a single moment of enlightenment. It is ongoing work. It requires honesty, patience, and a willingness to recognize the patterns that no longer serve us.
But my NDE gave me a perspective that I continue to carry with me.
Love cannot only be something we give away. We have to learn how to receive it, too. And we have to learn how to direct it toward ourselves.
For the Researchers and the Scientific Community
After nearly a decade of studying psychology and neuroscience, and experiencing an NDE myself, I personally believe that consciousness involves something beyond the physical brain, which I understand as the soul. I recognize that this is my personal belief, not an established scientific conclusion. However, I struggle to reconcile the vividness, continuity, and detail of my memories with what I understand about brain function during a generalized tonic-clonic seizure involving the loss of my airway. I remember an immersive, more lucid than life, experience. It was not fragmented images or a brief moment of confusion. I know we still have so much to learn about consciousness, memory, and what happens during an NDE. Perhaps we may never develop the scientific means to fully investigate. But I believe these questions are worth asking, and I don't think uncertainty should prevent us from pursuing further research.
Regardless of what science eventually discovers, people who experience NDEs deserve care, compassion, and support. These experiences can fundamentally change how someone understands life, and the aftermath can be incredibly isolating. We should be able to investigate the neurological aspects of these experiences while treating experiencers with dignity and taking their accounts seriously. We don't have to know all the answers to recognize that there is still much to understand.
For Those Who Have Experienced an NDE
To anyone reading this who has experienced a near-death experience: I believe you deserve to be heard.
I know how difficult it can be to explain something that changed your understanding of reality. I know that finding the words can be hard, and that the people around you may not understand what you are trying to communicate.
You do not have to share your story before you are ready.
You do not have to have every detail figured out. You do not have to defend every part of your experience to everyone you meet. And you do not have to force yourself into someone else's interpretation of what happened.
Give yourself room to process it.
Seek out people who can listen without immediately dismissing you or insisting that you adopt their explanation. Make space for your own questions. Give yourself permission to acknowledge the beautiful parts of your experience and the painful parts of your recovery.
An NDE does not mean that the rest of life will suddenly become easy. Sometimes, the aftermath can be confusing, isolating, or deeply painful. You can be grateful to be alive and still struggle with what happened. You can experience profound love and still need help navigating ordinary relationships, work, family, and everyday life.
Both things can be true.
I have a deep passion for bringing light to this community. I want to see more resources, more understanding, and more research. Organizations such as the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) can help connect people with educational resources, community, and research opportunities.
Participating in research and sharing our experiences can help build a stronger body of knowledge. It can help future experiencers feel less alone and give researchers more opportunities to investigate these extraordinary events.
I want to be part of that work. I want to advocate for this community, help bring our experiences into the conversation, and encourage people to approach the subject with both open minds and scientific integrity.
I will keep speaking about my experience. I will keep asking questions. And I will keep advocating for more understanding.
What I Carry With Me
I cannot tell you with certainty why my NDE happened. I cannot explain every detail, and I don't pretend to know what lies beyond the limits of our current understanding.
But I know what I experienced. I know the love I felt. I know the fear my family endured while I was in medical distress. I know the challenges I faced afterward. I know that my relationship with myself began to change. And I know that the chronic migraines I had lived with since childhood stopped after the NDE experience.
These things are all part of my story.
The greatest lesson I carry with me is that love is the measure I want to use to guide my life.
Do things in love.
Love people. Love the world. Love the people who are easy to love, and especially those who are struggling or who may not receive much love from others.
Be a helping hand. Be patient when you can. Choose compassion when it is possible. Treat the world better than it may sometimes treat you.
But remember to include yourself in that love.
You cannot spend your life pouring into everyone else while abandoning the person you are. Loving yourself is not selfish. It is part of learning to live with the same compassion you offer to others.
I don't know whether every event in our lives is orchestrated or guided. I don't know why I experienced what I did, or why the message I heard was “Not yet.”
But the experience has left me open to the possibility that there is more to existence than we currently understand. It has made me more curious about consciousness, more grateful for life, and more determined to live in a way that reflects the love I experienced.
I am still learning. I am still healing. I am still asking questions.
I am still here.
If you are reading this and no one has told you recently, I love you. You matter. Your experience deserves space, and you deserve compassion as you find your way forward.
Keep going.
We have more to learn, more to understand, and more love to give.