Thank You For Considering To Share My Story!

I wasn’t born a bright child. I didn’t start speaking until after the age of four and struggled to understand even the simplest things. In my first year of school, I failed completely. A child psychiatrist told my mother there wasn’t much hope for me – that I’d never be able to learn and should be sent to a special school for slow-developing children, where they medicate them to help them ‘cope.’ Thankfully, my mother refused.

The psychiatrist’s diagnosis felt like a black mark on my forehead – a label that made teachers turn away and quieted my soul into silence. No school or teacher wanted to take me. My mother grew desperate, worried no one would accept me, and it only made her life more difficult. I began to believe there was something deeply wrong with me.

After much pleading, my mother finally found one teacher who was willing to take me.

School was always stressful for me, and throughout my childhood, I struggled to fit into the world’s system. I watched other students learn with such ease and wondered what that must feel like – to understand, to remember, to feel capable. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t.

The only skill I truly had was in athletics. I was born naturally strong, with remarkable strength and endurance. Because of that, I spent much of my time doing all kinds of athletic disciplines – cross-country skiing, gymnastics, dancing – and eventually competing in some of them. I brought home numerous first-place wins. Yet despite my exceptional abilities and coaches chasing after me for my natural talent, I took it all lightly – it was never my dream. My soul was crying to become a medical doctor – a dream that seemed far beyond my reach.

I remember my mother telling her friend about a medical doctor who was exceptionally gifted. She could look at a patient and simply know what was wrong – and she always found a way to help. Because of her extraordinary ability, there was always a long line of people waiting for her care. Even then, I somehow knew this was something you couldn’t learn in school – you had to be that. And I thought to myself,

“She must be so gifted and intelligent. If I could do only one thing in my life, it would be to see the unseen – the true cause of illness – and to have a knowledge of health unlike anyone else. I wished I could be just like that doctor, so exceptionally good. I wished I could take people’s suffering away.”

I longed for it so deeply it felt as though my heart ached for it. I couldn’t imagine being anything else in that moment. Yet I knew it was a dream far beyond my reach, because I couldn’t learn anything.

I couldn’t grasp complex subjects like math or physics – I could barely follow simple directions. Most of the time, I just watched others and pretended to understand, though I had no idea where they were going or what they were doing. Throughout my school years, I was barely keeping my head above water.

Still, the desire to help people, to ease their suffering and take away their pain, burned inside me like an unending fire. Even when I realized that becoming a doctor was a dead end, that desire never stopped burning within me.

I was a very quiet child – barely noticed, easily forgotten. I was afraid to speak, terrified that any word might make me look even more foolish than I already felt. Most of the time, I didn’t understand what was being said or what was happening around me. I avoided conversations like the plague, dreading every question that might come my way. I just wanted to disappear. I didn’t want anyone to notice me or ask anything I couldn’t answer. I didn’t ask questions either, knowing the answers would slip through me like water. So I retreated into my own inner world, where the silence was safe and the fewer words spoken, the safer it felt.

Being in groups was even worse. It was too loud, even when only one person spoke. Everyone had their own thoughts about what was being said, and I could feel them all. It felt like millions of thoughts were swirling in the air at once, and I got completely lost among them. There was no point trying to sort it all out – who said what, or why. I simply couldn’t absorb the flood of thoughts, let alone follow the conversation. I didn’t know it then, but I was taking on all their energies. It overwhelmed me, and I blamed myself, thinking it was just another failure to understand. It was like standing in a dark room, unable to see or understand where anyone was; only chaos in my mind – not knowing what was said, where they were going, or why. It was all too much, leaving me completely lost and overwhelmed.

No one in my family or among my relatives had struggled the way I did. Almost everyone was highly educated or excelled easily in school. I felt misplaced – like I didn’t belong to them, or even to this world. Why was I here? Why was I even born? I wanted to go back… but where? I just wanted to escape – my body, my life – to disappear, or to have never existed at all.

At around the age of eight I wished for the first time that I had never been born. I felt like all I brought to people’s lives was pain and trouble. I couldn’t understand the world, and the world couldn’t understand me. I wanted to disappear so others could have a better life without the burden of a girl who couldn’t grasp anything.

But the reality was that I was here, and I had to make it work. Around the same age while walking with my mom through the park and taking in my surroundings, I noticed how everything felt gray and lifeless. Even though I had never seen any other city or place, I somehow knew there had to be somewhere better – somewhere with more life and vibrancy. But where? I didn’t know then, but I did know one thing with absolute certainty: this was not my place; I did not belong here. So I looked at my mom and said, “I’m not going to stay and live in this place.”

My father, an alcoholic, would call me useless and stupid. My older brother never wanted me around or anywhere near his room, while all I wanted was to play and talk with him. He’d echo the same words – useless, stupid, and tell me I couldn’t do or learn anything.

I didn’t like being at home – it was endless chaos. Six of us lived in a small three bedroom apartment: my mother, my alcoholic father, my older brother, my alcoholic uncle, my grandmother who also drank, and me. My other grandmother would visit only to drink as well. There were always arguments. The air was cold, thick with cigarette smoke. My mother and brother were the only sober ones, but my brother had hated me since the moment I was born. My mother was all I had – the only close person in my life.

Because of my mother’s fragile health, weakened by her heart and nervous system from my father’s years of drinking and abuse, I grew up in constant fight or flight. I remember waking in the middle of the night, rushing from my bed into the hallway, finding my mother collapsed on the floor, unconscious. In those moments, the world seemed to disappear beneath my feet, and I was certain that if she died, I would die with her. Each day carried the same shadow – the fear that she could be gone in an instant, that I might never see her again. Though I had never been to war, it felt like walking through a minefield, every step uncertain, every heartbeat bracing for death to strike and take her from me.

Death became my deep fear, because it could take away the only person who loved me – and whom I loved deeply. I wanted to protect my mother from my father, convinced that all her health problems and suffering were caused by him.

One night, when things at home spiraled out of control, I found my mother trying to end her life. I was too young to understand what was happening – only that something inside me broke. From that night on, I carried a deep hatred toward my father that would stay with me for decades.

I could feel the weight of her suffering, which I could neither lift nor escape. I came to believe her suffering was the price of her blind love for my father, and so love itself became my enemy and another deep fear – something to run from and avoid at all costs, because all it brought was pain.

My mother taught me, “Make sure you get a good education and a prestigious career with a high income, so you can be fully independent.” The message was clear: I should be able to walk away from any relationship I didn’t want to be in, and still stand on my own. I used to tell her, “I don’t want to love anyone. All love brings is pain and suffering. Look at your life – why would I do the same to myself?”

From an early age, I associated love with pain. My heart closed itself off, impervious to anyone or anything. I had witnessed more cheating, fights, and arguments than true love or joy. To me, love was fake – a performance, a commercial illusion. No one could truly love anyone; all that beauty people displayed was only for show.

Watching my mother suffer tore my soul apart. I didn’t want her to be sick, and from my child’s point of view, I came to believe that her life would’ve been better without me. She wouldn’t have to worry about feeding me or finding money, and she could’ve left my drunk father without another child to raise. Because she had to care for me – this strange, difficult child – she couldn’t have a better life. I felt like a burden to everyone. With all the chaos around me, I longed to leave, believing that if I disappeared, my mother might at least have a chance at a better life.

I came to believe the world would be a better place without me – that my family would be happier, freer. I felt like an excess, a mistake, a problem that didn’t belong here. I wanted to dissolve into the air, or better yet, never have been born at all. Then, I thought, everyone’s life would be easier.

All these childhood experiences planted a deep belief in me – that love didn’t exist, or at least it was something to be avoided to protect myself from pain.

Death and Love became my two greatest fears – forces I felt I had to resist, fight against, and never let near my heart.

Alongside my poor performance at school and the constant fear that my mother might die, I was also running every day from a terrifying world no one knew about – the world of the dead.

My family was never religious or spiritual. We never spoke about the dead, the Bible, or anything beyond the physical world – I knew nothing of such things. Yet, at night, I often sensed the presence of the deceased. Sometimes I’d find myself on ‘the other side’ with them, not knowing where I was or what was happening. It terrified me. I didn’t know how to stop it or what to make of it. It felt like a curse I couldn’t escape.

I never spoke to anyone about my experiences. I already felt strange enough – there was no need to add to people’s confusion about me. I kept all my weirdness to myself, wishing it would just vanish so I could finally fit in and be normal like everyone else. I wanted to know what it felt like to be normal – to learn easily, to belong, to be part of the world around me.

As I grew older, my experiences with the dead became more intense. What began as simply seeing spirits turned into witnessing people during their transition – the moment between life and the afterlife. I found myself present on ‘the other side’, watching their crossing unfold as if I, too, were part of it.

It began after my aunt Olga was instantly killed in a horrific car accident, leaving behind her husband, Valera, and their thirteen-year-old son. Nine months after her death, I found myself on ‘the other side’ – in the transitional space.

I stood in a vast expanse before a spiral staircase that looked as if it were made of dense mist – not fog, but something that only resembled it. There was no ground, no walls, only an atmosphere that felt like walking through a cloud, yet everything remained clearly visible. I began walking up the stairs, each step weightless and soundless.

At the top was a room made of the same mist-like substance, without ceiling or floor, only a sense of endless openness. In the center stood my aunt, radiant and alive, smiling at me. Strangely, I wasn’t afraid. I moved closer, completely calm.

She began telling me about events from my future, all of which would later come true. My mind was clear, my thoughts sharp. I felt fully awake, my awareness as present and vivid as in ordinary life.

I had many questions about my future, but I asked only two. She answered both, and both proved true years later. Then she interrupted me and said it was time for me to leave. Yet somehow, I knew she had to leave as well.

Driven by curiosity, I ignored her instruction to return to my body and followed her instead. She entered another room – one without a floor or ceiling, made of the same cloud-like substance. As I stood there, observing and sensing the space, I realized there was no such thing as distance, space, or time. Everything simply was.

I stood in the doorway, more outside the room than inside. I sensed I wasn’t supposed to be there, yet out of deep curiosity, I refused to leave. Inside, all of our deceased relatives were gathered around a large table. It felt as if they were about to celebrate. I could feel their excitement and joy, and the anticipation of welcoming someone they deeply loved – someone who was one of their own. I instantly knew they were waiting for their beloved relative to come home, to join them in the life beyond. The room’s atmosphere was filled with their unspoken happiness, excitement, and warmth.

I noticed a spirit emerging from the light and entering the room to join them. Somehow, I knew that someone on Earth had just died, and I was watching his soul arrive. As the soul began to enter, everyone lifted their glasses of wine in joyful celebration. It was a homecoming – a reunion on ‘the other side’, where one life had just ended, and had returned home.

When I leaned closer to see who the soul was, a sudden, powerful force tore me away – ripped me out of that realm. I was slammed back into my physical body with such intensity that my heart felt like it had gone silent – then started again, flooding me with terror. The clock on the wall in front of my bed read 3:00 a.m. I could still sense everything from that realm. Fear rushed through me, and though I tried to contain it, I couldn’t. Terrified, I ran into my mother’s room and crawled into her bed, trembling in the dark once again.

When morning came, my mother and I went to the market. As we walked between the stalls, I told her about being on ‘the other side’ – how I saw our deceased relatives, and a soul crossing over, and that it happened exactly at 3:00 a.m.

Later, when we got home, my dad was sitting in the kitchen, the phone still in his hand, his face pale.

“The hospital just called,” he said quietly. “Valera died last night at 3:00 a.m. – heart attack.”

The world went still. My mother turned to me slowly, her eyes wide, as if she were seeing a ghost standing right in front of her.

Valera was my late aunt Olga’s husband – the very soul I had watched cross over only hours before.

After that night, I witnessed many more souls crossing from their earthly life into the afterlife. Some were startled to see me on ‘the other side’ – confused by my presence, while others were even frightened, realizing that I wasn’t one of them. Some didn’t know what to do and asked for help; others begged for help because they didn’t want to die.

I also saw souls preparing to come to earth – beings about to be born into life. Among them were even animals, including pets I would later meet here in the physical world.

I spent most of my life running from the dead. I didn’t know how to handle it all, or why it had to be me. Why couldn’t I just be like everyone else, normal? I grew up believing I wasn’t. So I kept running from myself, trying to shut down every strange ability I had – every trace of what made me different.

While people were busy talking, I would drift into my own world, quietly observing the subtle colours that surrounded them. I watched the way those hues and shapes moved, trying to understand what they revealed about each person as I listened to their voice. I didn’t know then that what I was seeing was called an aura – I only sensed that it was their truth behind the curtains.

It felt like looking at the cover of a book and somehow being able to read its chapters without ever opening it. While others formed opinions based on appearances or words, I was drawn to what lived behind them – to what could never lie or pretend.

And when the colours weren’t visible, I would reach out with my awareness instead, feeling their energy field as if touching it from within. I didn’t understand what I was doing back then. It was the only way I could comprehend people – their hearts, their emotional state, their inner vitality.

Somehow, I knew these colours and energies revealed the essence of a person – their character, their emotions, their health, the very state of their being. They showed who someone truly was, beyond words or appearances.

I still remember being around nine years old when a very tall man walked into a store. His aura was enormous, radiant, and pulsing with colour, as if he were glowing from within. He seemed alive in a way that lifted the space around him. Every other aura in the room paled in comparison.

Most people, by contrast, carried muted, greyish auras – dim, heavy, lacking light. Their faces mirrored this inner dullness: burdened with worry, weighed down by life, with almost no trace of joy. I could feel their struggles, their sickness, their tiredness. And in that moment, I understood something invisible to most: the colours of a soul spoke louder than anything words could say.

I preferred observing people’s energies when they stood with their backs to me – that way, they wouldn’t wonder why I was staring. I didn’t see auras all the time, but often enough that they became part of my world – a silent language I instinctively understood. Whenever one appeared, I tuned in completely, becoming utterly mesmerized by it all.

It was easier when a person spoke. Their voice carried its own vibration that I could match with their colours, revealing nuances that words alone could never express. I could sense what they truly meant beneath what they said – the emotions they hid, the truths they didn’t voice.

It felt like holding a box of crayons and painting the unseen portrait of a person’s inner life – their emotions, health, character, and energy. By the time someone turned and met my eyes, I already knew the picture. I had seen and felt their soul, their intentions, the quiet essence that lived behind the body and voice.

When I couldn’t grasp the meaning of someone’s words or the chaos around me, I would retreat inward, into my heart, and listen. When their actions or speech baffled me, I would sink deeper, tuning into the subtle currents of their environment. In that stillness, I could peer directly into their soul – a space that could never lie, only reveal itself in full truth.

Over the years, as I quietly practiced this unintentional art of observation, I discovered I could sense who a person was before they even spoke a word – perceiving their essence behind every gesture, every glance, every breath. I often wondered, “How is it that people cannot see others as they truly are — their pain, their struggles?”

I often felt misplaced, as if I’d been born in the wrong place, the wrong country, and even into the wrong family. Nothing ever felt like home. There was a constant pull inside me, a quiet longing to go somewhere else… though I never knew where that was.

I loved sitting alone on the balcony late at night, speaking into the vastness of the universe – to the unseen beings I felt nearby. Their presence was immense and powerful, surrounding me with calm and safety. I could feel them listening, protecting, and caring for me. It was as if their only purpose was to hear me – to quietly answer every whisper and request that left my heart.

I would ask these beings to help me find my home – or at least to give my life meaning, a reason to exist. In those moments, I could feel their immense compassion and love for me, as if I were the most important soul in the universe. Somehow, I trusted them completely. Their guardianship felt almost tangible, like a protective shield around me, carrying the quiet certainty that the life I was searching for still lay ahead.

I never spoke to anyone about them. I was already seen as a strange child – who would I tell about things like this, and who would believe me? In my family, the rule was simple: get real, get an education, get a prestigious job. Anything beyond that was dismissed, even ridiculed.

My earlier psychiatrist’s evaluation planted the seed within me that I was not normal. “Maybe I shouldn’t be seeing colors around people,” I told myself. “Maybe it isn’t normal. No one else sees them.” I doubted everything – myself, my perceptions, and every part of me that didn’t seem to belong in this world.

As I grew older, I tried to push it all away, to ignore the colors, just to pretend I was like everyone else. I wanted to be ordinary, to blend in, to erase every part of me that felt different.

By the time I was fourteen, I realized my life wasn’t going to get any better. My father wouldn’t stop drinking, my mother’s suffering would continue because of it, and I would never meet the expectations of school. Out of desperation, I began to retreat into my own private world, living in my imagination whenever I could. Day and night, I immersed myself in it, convincing myself, as much as possible, that it was real.

It wasn’t always easy to hold my focus – the world around me constantly intruded, pulling me back into its noise. But when you’re desperate, nothing else matters. You do whatever it takes to grasp the feeling your heart is craving. So I pretended, again and again, until my imagined world began to bleed into reality, until it felt as real as the air I breathed.

I lived almost entirely in my imagination – convincing myself that my imagined world was real, and that my real life was only a bad dream. Back then, I knew nothing about the power of imagination; I had never even heard of such a thing. I didn’t create those worlds with hope or expectation. I felt far too unlucky for that. I imagined simply to escape – to rest somewhere where my pain couldn’t reach me.

Interestingly, deep within me, I felt that a better version of my life actually existed, and I was pretending to live it – I just didn’t know where, when, or how. That knowing rested somewhere deep inside me, and I was like a well-trained police dog, subconsciously sniffing out my better life – following the call of my heart rather than the demands of others. After all, I could hardly ever meet anyone’s expectations, so I might as well follow my own.

Only four years later, at eighteen, the life I had long imagined began to unfold before my eyes. An opportunity had finally arrived. Ahead lay the future I had dreamed of for so long – once a distant dream, now within my reach. This was the moment that could change not only my life, but my mother’s as well – a true fork in the road, where everything could shift in the blink of an eye. 

The one thing I had always possessed and never lost was complete freedom of my heart – I did whatever I wanted on a whim. I liked exploring new opportunities to see where they might take me. So, at the age of eighteen, I was introduced to the director of a modeling agency and was offered work there.

It was a beautiful summer day when I went to the modeling agency to pick up a thick stack of my professionally done photos. The director and I had a relaxed, easy conversation until he started talking about one of his models who had moved to the United States.

The moment I heard him say that, everything stopped. My attention locked on that single idea. I didn’t want to hear anything else – only how that young Russian woman had managed to get there. My brain lit up like a switchboard; I was ready to ‘pull all of his teeth out’ to make him tell me all about it. He didn’t stand the slightest chance of leaving or even changing the subject until he’d ‘spilled all the beans’ for me. Anything that he knew about it, no matter how insignificant, I absolutely had to know.

It wasn’t about the United States, it was about how she’d managed to leave this country, and at such a young age. No one I knew had ever done that, or even knew how. For most Russians, leaving to live in another country was simply impossible.

I asked him with intense curiosity, “How was she able to go there?” He replied very calmly, “She met a man from USA who invited her as his bride to marry her.”

Sadness washed over me. I couldn’t even imagine where I could meet a man from another country, let alone one who would like me. Who could possibly want me? It must have been her luck, I thought quickly.

But my curiosity didn’t leave me, so I asked anyway, “How did she meet him?” He said, She went to a bridal agency that helps single women meet men from around the world.”

In an instant, my hopelessness turned into the greatest possibility of my life. I absolutely had to know the name of that agency and where it was. And to my luck on that day, he gave me both.

Our conversation ended soon after; I had to get to that agency immediately. There wasn’t even time to breathe. I was like an eagle diving for its prey, there was no escape, no hesitation. I couldn’t let this opportunity slip through my fingers; it was the only way out of where I was.

When this opportunity knocked, one that could completely change my life and take me far away from this place, I had to answer. Even if it meant to change everything, including myself.

Luckily, I was ready for it that very day. I had just picked up hundreds of beautiful, professionally taken photos from the director, and I was an eighteen-year-old single young woman.

I felt like a wild child let loose in a toy store – I had to have it, and I had to do it.

There was no time to breathe, let alone think. In a big hurry, I rushed through the streets, as if my life depended on it, heading straight for the bridal agency. The moment I stepped inside, I fired off a hundred questions at once. They looked at me as if I were a child and said, “We only accept women seeking a serious relationship with the intent to marry.”

The words made me pause for a split second because I wasn’t looking for anything serious, and I’d never even been in one before. But once the train starts moving, you either jump on or get left behind. So I jumped – I was now a serious young woman looking for a man from another country to marry me.

However, I wasn’t looking for love because I didn’t believe in it. I was simply looking for a good man, someone who could be a good husband. I saw it as a way to escape the chaos of my family, to give my mother the chance to leave my father, and to finally find the true home I had longed for.

Marrying a man from a foreign country seemed like the only way out of my situation. I was all in.

I filled out an application, and the ladies at the agency told me, “It will take a couple of weeks before you start receiving emails from men.” Curious, I asked, “Roughly how many should I expect?” They replied, “Two or three a day is what our women usually get.”

I didn’t want to just sit and wait, so I decided to visit my cousin in another city. Back then, I didn’t have a cell phone, computer, email, or internet – there was no way anyone could reach me if I wasn’t home. This agency was my first real exposure to the digital era.

I left the city without telling anyone about my new plan, not even my parents, because I had low expectations. Who could possibly want me? These men were probably educated and smart, looking for equally intelligent women – not like me, a girl scratching at the walls of school like a prisoner, desperate just to get out.

Upon my return a week later, I decided to call the bridal agency to see if there was any news or if they had tried to contact me. They were frantic, speaking a mile a minute. Within the first two days of my ad going live, I had received over three hundred emails from men around the world, and they just kept coming. By day three, they had closed my ad because they couldn’t reach me and the volume had become unmanageable. That turned out to be a stroke of luck, since the agency was charging me for every email I received, whether I replied or not.

Now what was I supposed to do with over three hundred emails, all in foreign languages I had never studied? English had been one of my school subjects, but I could barely manage my own Russian language and literature classes, let alone English. And yet, here I was, sitting with a thick pile of printed letters, most in English, with no idea what any of them said.

I knew it would take me a very long time to sort through them all. I decided not to even look at the letters that contained only a few words. I focused on those where the men had taken the time to write a proper letter, though not a poem. For me, the qualities of the man mattered far more than the country he came from.

I never reopened my ad; it seemed more than I could handle. However, much to everyone’s surprise – mine and the women who worked at the agency – two months later I received a new email from a Canadian man named Joe. His letter immediately stood out to me. We became good friends very quickly. When Joe and I decided to meet for the first time in Moscow, we made no promises to each other. But the moment we met, I instantly saw that he was a true gentleman – a good man who deeply respected me as a woman. I liked that, and in a short time I decided he was the kind of man I wanted to marry. Love wasn’t essential for me, nor expected. I simply wanted a man who would respect his woman, and Joe was perfect.

In less than a year from the time he sent me his first email, he became my husband. One year later, I received my Permanent Residency and moved to Canada. My whole family was in disbelief: I was single at 18, married to a man from Canada at 19, and living in Canada by 20. As soon as I was old enough to do things legally, opportunities started knocking on the door, though I believe I had been trying to open it long before I even found it. My imagined stories were finally unfolding into real life.

I remember back when I was still living in Russia – no computer, no internet access, and with barely any education – I didn’t even know where I was moving. A lady warned me, her voice full of concern, “You know, it’s very cold in Canada! Lots and lots of snow.” My eyes went wide, and I asked in fear, “How cold?” After doing some research, I realized the weather wasn’t much different from where I was living. It just happened that he was from Calgary, Canada. I only started learning about the country I was going to live in after I got married. Looking back, it’s absolutely insane! Going to Canada felt like throwing a dart at a world map and hoping for the best.

I flew to Canada in November. I still remember the shock as the airplane began its descent. I expected to see the Rocky Mountains, or at least a city skyline, but the only things I saw below me were empty, flat, yellow fields, dusted with only a thin layer of snow. Stunned, I whispered to myself, “Where have I come? There’s nothing but flat land. What am I going to do here? This can’t be real! There’s no way back – my ticket is one-way, and I’m married to this man.” I had no clear idea where I was headed. Yet deep inside, I felt something undeniable: I was moving closer to something far greater, something better, and I knew – somehow – it was the right choice.

Looking back, and remembering how young and naïve I was, I realize just how lucky I was to have met such an amazing man. He gave me his love, a beautiful home, and our son. Together, we built a happy family.

I was so immersed in my new life, with my newborn son in my arms, that I quickly stopped communicating with my otherworldly beings, completely forgetting all my unusual encounters. Adulthood pulled me into the outer world, and I became increasingly detached from my inner world.

Everything seemed perfect, yet a hollow emptiness lingered inside me. I remember holding my newborn son in my arms, feeling the weight of his tiny body against me, the softness of his skin, the gentle rise and fall of his chest – and yet, I felt nothing. No surge of love, no bond that everyone said would come naturally. I searched for it desperately, hoping, waiting, but inside there was only a quiet, echoing void. I couldn’t summon the deep, true love everyone talked about. “Why can’t I feel love? He is my son. I must feel it. But where is it?” In that moment, I confirmed to myself that the big powerful love that everyone talks about does not exist, or at least I was not capable of loving anyone.

Then my doctor’s words hit me like a brick: SIDS – babies sometimes die suddenly, without warning. I should be prepared if it happened. Instantly, a wave of fear crashed over me – fear of death, and fear of love. The thought of losing someone I could love so deeply was unbearable. Out of that fear, I kept a part of my heart closed. I loved him cautiously, always thinking, “What if…” because I knew the pain of losing him would be unimaginable.

My husband, our son, and I were a happy family. Not for a single moment did I ever think I had made a mistake or regret marrying Joe, moving to Canada, and having our son. It was one of the greatest decisions of my life. My life in Canada was very different – I always felt accepted and welcomed, no matter where I went or who I met, despite my very limited English at the time.

It felt like my life had just begun. I had to start from the very beginning, like a baby. I had to learn to speak English. I went to school, studied Accounting, and even earned a scholarship for high grades – one I initially threw in the garbage because I thought “Who is really going to give me that kind of money for free?” Until Joe came home and saw the check in the trash. His eyes went wide, “Are you crazy? This is a real check with real money?” I threw it out because just a week before that check arrived, Joe had told me there were a lot of scams in Canada – “There’s no such thing as free money.” he said. And since I had never even heard of scholarships or the idea that you could receive money that way, I assumed it was some kind of scam.

I was simply learning and living an entirely new life in Canada. My lives in Russia and my life in Canada were incomparable. In Russia, I had been a ‘lost child’, unable to meet anyone’s expectations – always feeling like a failure. In Canada, I exceeded at everything I touched; every single dream and goal I pursued was achieved. My life felt peaceful. I enjoyed my quiet days with just my husband and my son.

My beautiful life came to a halt in the summer of 2006 when I found myself on my deathbed for the first time – severely ill, yet no doctor of any specialty could help or diagnose me. It was my first wake-up call. But I was living in such a deep sleep that I couldn’t even begin to imagine the true cause of my sudden illness.

My son was just over a year old at the time, and he was the only reason I was fighting for my life. The thought of dying – of leaving him behind and knowing he would grow up without his mother – was a pain beyond anything I could ever describe. My little boy was the one anchoring me here. The pain of not being able to raise him, of not being fully present with him because of my mysterious illness, was eating me alive. I missed out on so many happy memories that a mother should have with her baby boy because all I knew were emergency rooms and my sickness, where no one knew what to do with me, and I had nowhere else to turn.

Since doctors couldn’t find anything medically wrong with me, I was offered anti-anxiety drugs on several occasions. They somehow thought that anti-anxiety drugs would help. Offering a medication without even knowing the problem – an approach that was, to say the least, both strange and baffling.

I refused anti-anxiety medications until I’d exhausted every corner of medicine. After several months, desperate and out of options, I finally took the anti-anxiety drug – even though I knew I didn’t have anxiety or depression. I had a devastating reaction, with dangerous cardiac symptoms. I woke up in the middle of the night as the room began violently spinning. I collapsed onto the floor, and my entire body felt as if it were being doused in acid from the inside out – like my blood and skin were sizzling. My heart tightened like a fist, then released only slightly, staying tight as it raced. I was breathing faster than a dog after an intense run on a hot summer day. My breaths were extremely shallow, rapid gasps – I could barely pull in any air. I literally couldn’t speak.

When my heart finally slowed, I felt like I was being electrocuted – my muscles tightening throughout my entire body, especially my abdomen, pulsing in waves as my whole body trembled. Throughout the entire time during this illness (in 2006), not once was I suicidal or depressed. In fact, it was the opposite – I was fighting for my life because I still had my little son to raise. But after taking just one small dose of an anti-anxiety drug that I believed I didn’t even need and took only out of desperation, I was suddenly hit with an abnormal, foreign urge to kill myself. It felt as if there were two minds inside me: one pushing me toward suicide with a force that was hard to stop or control, and the other – the real me – watching in complete clarity, horrified by how insane and unnatural these thoughts were.

Once I pulled myself together, I took a taxi to the emergency room. There, they told me they’d never seen anything like it, and once again, they had no idea what to do. They gave me some IV medication, told me to never take anti-anxiety drugs again (as if I ever would after what happened), and sent me home.

On the second day after my emergency room visit, I gave up. I was ready to die if it was meant to be – there was nothing left of me; I was less than 100 lbs, I had no mental or physical strengths remaining, and no one to turn to for help. My parents were in Russia, Joe’s parents had passed away, and I had no one close to me except Joe. And even then, it was just me quite often, because he was frequently out of town for work. I went to bed thinking, “I’m ok if I never wake up. I’m ok to die. Dylan [my son] will be taken care of. I trust that everything will be ok.” Just the thought of my son growing up without me – while he was still so small – was tearing my soul apart, but I had to find peace within and accept the worst living nightmare.

I went to bed and fell asleep almost immediately. I woke up eighteen hours later from an uninterrupted, deep sleep. I got out of bed and knew instantly that my health was completely restored, not a single trace of my illness remained. Everything was back to normal. Overnight, all of my symptoms had vanished – as if I had never been ill at all.

I still remember clearly standing beside my bed, tuning into my body, trying to feel and find even a trace of what had been there before – but every symptom was completely gone. My body felt normal and healthy again. The healing was so sudden and mysterious that it felt as if I had just simply awakened from a nightmare. When I was ill, I couldn’t even hold my son; the weakness had spread through my entire body, especially my legs. And now, after just one night, all my strength had returned.

Even though this first mysterious illness only lasted a few months, it left me deeply traumatised. And because I was healed so mysteriously too, without having any answers to what happened, in the back of my mind lived a fear that it could come back at any time.

I searched everything and everywhere, trying to understand what had happened to my body, but there was nothing to find. I tried to make sense of it, but I couldn’t come up with anything.

Somehow, deep within me, I knew this ‘healing’ was temporary – just a pause to restore my strength – because my mysterious illness would return later. How could I have been healed so spontaneously? Maybe I hadn’t been eating well, which caused my illness, but then how could I have recovered so suddenly without changing my diet? Nothing made sense. This experience changed my life. I began studying health, eating a squeaky-clean diet, and living a very healthy lifestyle.

My husband and I always got along, despite being quite different in almost every way. But my severe illness shook my inner world; it truly woke me up, and the drastic changes within forged a greater distance between us. I knew I had to move forward with my life. After seven years of marriage, we separated. Even today, we maintain a good relationship, and I’m truly grateful to him for all he did for me.

I had married young, before I ever had a chance to taste freedom in my adult life. Now my soul wanted to run wild, to feel alive, and I was determined to let it. Except… life had other plans – it was time to draw me into alignment with my true purpose.

On the first night of my freedom, I decided to do something I had never done before. At 9:30 pm I stepped out of the house with the word freedom echoing in my mind, hailed a taxi, and asked the driver to take me to a bar and restaurant in downtown Calgary. The streets were nearly empty, and in less than ten minutes, I stepped out and walked inside, where a host led me to a table by the window.

Only a few minutes later, a man named Bill approached, saying his friend Mark knew everything about the menu, then promptly disappeared. Mark came over, explained his friend’s odd behavior as an excuse to leave, and invited me to join him for a drink at his table.

The next thing we knew, the lights flicked on, and the waitress announced they were closing. We looked around, stunned. “What happened?” we asked. She said it was 2 a.m. – closing time. The bar was empty; we were the only ones left. Had we really been talking that whole time?

It felt as if I had just reunited with someone I had known across lifetimes, catching up on everything we’d missed. There was a strange, undeniable familiarity – a deep sense that I had always known him, even if I couldn’t remember how.

From that moment on, every time I looked at him, I felt a deep knowing, as if I had met him somewhere before. But where? Why couldn’t I remember? Being held in his arms was like coming home – an embrace so warm and safe, it was like sinking into the softest, most welcoming bed, where every worry simply melted away. That profound comfort, and the quiet certainty that our souls had danced together long before, defies any words I could find.

I began to feel love for him, yet I fought against it with all my might. His love only made it harder to resist. For the first time in my life, I felt powerless – unable to stop the love growing between us. I accepted his love and finally admitted to myself that I was truly in love, but I still couldn’t fully open my heart. I loved him with fear and caution, always thinking, “What if? What if he left me? What if he cheated?” I knew I loved him, yet I kept one foot outside, ready to run, bracing for the inevitable pain, never letting myself fully rest in his arms. I longed to surrender, but my heart stayed clenched, frozen by the memory of love turned to suffering.

Despite finding the love of my life and having my son – both true gifts – and following society’s path by fulfilling my parents’ dream of a prestigious job as a financial analyst at a large corporation, something was still missing. I couldn’t find my place in this world. Working sixteen hours a day, rarely seeing daylight, I often thought, “This can’t be it. There has to be something greater – something more meaningful than this small, ordinary life.” Deep down, I knew my life was meant for more than spreadsheets, deadlines, dirty laundry, and rushed dinners – all while on the phone with my son’s teacher because he had thrown a chair at her. Something extraordinary was waiting beyond the walls of my office and the weekends that vanished in the blink of an eye.

I was very successful in what I did and was offered remarkable opportunities, yet many people insisted I was in the wrong field of work. Wherever I went, people would tell me I was born to help others – that I needed to become a doctor. I would always think, “I’ve spent years building my career. I’m not going back to school.”

But my childhood dream of helping those who suffered – of taking their pain away – never let me go. At first, I entertained the idea of leaving my field as a joke. But the more I thought about it, the more real it became. Soon, it stopped feeling like a joke at all, and I found myself unable to shake it.

In search of fulfillment, I decided to leave behind everything I had built and returned to university to study health and also in hopes to find the answer to what happened to me in 2006 – what made me so sick, and what had caused my spontaneous healing. Despite my ongoing search and conversations with many doctors, no one could explain my sudden and mysterious illness. Over time, I convinced myself it must’ve been my diet and some of the choices I had made. But deep in my heart, I felt something was still missing. It was like a sharp needle lodged in my chest, always there, always making me uneasy.

In September 2016, I earned my Master’s and PhD in Holistic Sports Nutrition, with superior distinction. Holding my certificates in my hands, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Now what?”

This is where my story began – on a bench crying to the universe, asking it to help me so I could help others. Only two months later, in January of 2017, while visiting my parents in Russia, my mysterious illness retuned. It was a single ‘wake-up call’ that left me with no escape, no turning back – but to walk the path: stand face-to-face with Death in hell until I could awaken Love in heaven, and enter the prison of the health system that would test every part of me until I could find and remember the truth. I knew I couldn’t run from it. I knew what I was up against. There wasn’t going to be another spontaneous healing and there was no pause to press this time. Deep within me, I knew it was time for me to begin my work, yet I had no idea what that work was. When my illness returned, it came back without mercy – as if something was telling me loudly and firmly,

“WALK IT!”

I was so deeply traumatized – knowing very well what I am up against – the unknown, deeply mysterious, and unimaginable illnesses. ‘God knows’ I didn’t want to walk it.

After being a prisoner of the system for over three years, there was only one exit – the only door – and I finally chose to open it and walk through. It was the very door I had avoided my entire life, afraid of being mocked, dismissed, ridiculed, or labeled crazy. I didn’t want to touch it. I didn’t want to open it.

But my collapsing body pressed me forward. And the moment I stepped through, I crossed into a reality far greater than anything I could have expected – or even begun to imagine.

This is my revised story of childhood, a perfect example of a blessing in disguise.

Being born in Russia, and into that specific family, was neither an accident nor a mistake – it was a well-orchestrated path I wholeheartedly agreed to walk. Every moment was perfectly played out, and I am eternally grateful for it all – even the darkest days. I hold deep love for everything my parents gave me and for every experience I lived through while growing up in Russia. I was never cursed; I was only blessed.

If not for my father, I would never have had the experiences I required. He gave me everything I needed to become who I am today. I am deeply grateful for all that he gave – and for all that he did not. Through the pain he brought, I was forged; the fear of Love he planted became my compass, guiding me back to my essence and teaching me how to transform my own hell into a true heaven. By facing the twin shadows of Death and Love, I have grown stronger, greater, more whole. The gift he has been to me surpasses any words in this world – I love everything he is, and my heart is full with his love.

He gave me the life I have today – a life lived in inner peace, love, joy, and a deep understanding of why I’m here on Earth. Yes, he made mistakes, but who am I to judge? I’ve made plenty of my own mistakes, any of which could boil me forever if I let them. He is still a beautiful soul who cared for me when I was a little girl, and now, decades later, he still lights up with happiness when we speak on video calls. With my awakened eyes all I see is his love and care for me and for everyone else in our family. If he had given me everything in a perfectly gentle way, I would never have discovered, learned, or experienced the true powerful force of unconditional Love in the way I did, and I absolutely love the way I discovered it. My father gave me exactly what I needed to experience what I came here for. He is the catalyst who propelled me to find deep peace within myself and to remember true unconditional love.

My older brother’s rejection of me began with his separation from our mother soon after his birth. As a newborn, he didn’t receive the care and love he desperately needed, and this early wound planted a deep belief within him that our mother did not love him as much as she loved me. When I was born, I wasn’t hospitalized like he had been, so I received all the attention and nurturing he had missed. Seeing our mother give me the care he longed for created feelings of jealousy, pain, and rejection toward me.

His trauma took root at birth – far beyond his awareness or memory. How could I judge or withhold love from someone who couldn’t possibly understand what happened to him when he was so small? Long before he was born, he knew of this challenge and accepted it, and that became another hidden blessing for me – he gave me the pain I needed to grow.

Trauma can begin as early as the womb or in the first moments after birth. Who can remember or make sense of anything at that stage? Only a few people recall their time in the womb or their earliest days of life. Today, I understand this fully, and my compassion for him runs deep. He carried pain so that I could evolve. I love him endlessly.

After I recognized this truth and felt pure love for him in my heart, he contacted me the very next day to say, "Happy Birthday” – something he had never done before. We hadn’t spoken in years. Coincidence? Absolutely not. We are deeply connected to everything through our heart; we’ve simply forgotten. And in that forgetting, so many of us live in unconscious chaos that leads to suffering that feels like living hell.

However, our suffering is never misfortune or wasted time; when we shine our light upon it, we see only growth and the unfolding of greatness. My mother endured immense pain, yet I have no doubt that her struggles served her in their own way – and witnessing her suffering shaped me in exactly the way I needed. Her suffering planted the seed of my fear of death – one of the greatest fears of humanity. But facing Death reminded me of who I truly am – the power that I am, which can never be touched or destroyed. Life has no errors, only hidden blessings waiting in plain sight – the fire that molds and transforms us. It’s our perception that shapes our history and not the events themselves.

I am deeply grateful to her for everything she gave, even for the moments when the world seemed to fall apart beneath my feet. She is the most beautiful of mothers, giving me all her love, tenderness, and care despite all she faced. Her persistence and her belief that I was a ‘normal child,’ that I did not belong in any special school, saved me from a life lost to misunderstanding. I am deeply grateful for her faith in me. I love her deeply, and my heart is filled with compassion for all she endured. Failing to see the greatness in her suffering would dishonor her journey and overlook its deeper purpose. But it is not to say "Thank God she suffered." Rather, it is to find the light in the darkness.

For a long time, my parents believed that my last visit to Russia had made me sick, and it weighed heavily on them. Imagine your child coming home only to fall terribly ill – how devastating it is for a parent to think their child can’t even be home without suffering. From a limited perspective, it was easy to assume that my trip had caused it all.

But that wasn’t the cause. It wasn’t my childhood trauma, my family, or Russia. My cause extends far beyond this world - it was the contract I agreed to before I was born. Nothing and no one could have changed the direction my health – and ultimately my path – needed to take.

At first, I didn’t think I’d survive, let alone make sense of any of it. When I finally began to see the truth, I thought, “What kind of idiot would sign up for experiences this horrific?!” And yet, by the end, I found myself saying, “How fortunate I am to experience a life as beautiful as this. The growth it gave me is immeasurable, and who I’ve become will remain with me for eternity.” Would I do it again? Absolutely – without hesitation – because I know who I am and what the purpose of this life truly is.

All the pains of my early life were gifts that shaped me into who I always longed to become. My delayed language development, poor comprehension, and being considered scholastically ‘not so bright’ were not deficiencies but beautifully designed supports for my growth. They kept me from getting pulled too deeply into the outer world and instead guided me inward – to observe people’s energies, to feel, and to learn in ways no school could ever teach. Most importantly, they helped me stay close to my heart, to the guidance of my own essence.

Much later in life, I realised that very little truth is taught in traditional education. The world we are shown is far from what it truly is. ‘Thank God’ I couldn’t absorb their garbage – what a blessing it was to be unable to learn it. The deeper truths were never in a pill or a surgery; they lived in everything I could already see as a child – the nonphysical realm where all is in plain sight.

However, I needed to be pulled away from the inner world so I could fully experience an ordinary human life. But it was never meant to stay that way. Eventually, my body forced me to wake up, withdraw my attention from the outer world, and pull me back into my inner world – as if it were saying, “That’s enough. It’s time to do our work.”

At first, I resisted like a child refusing food, until life closed my nose and left me no choice but to open my mouth – and to my surprise, it was tasty. Now my life feels like that first bite of a ripe tropical fruit: sweet, alive, and utterly blissful.

My heart and soul came to a complete alignment, where I no longer must chase health or a fulfilled life – because I am already everything I have ever wished to be.

I fled Russia to find peace, love, and a sense of belonging, my home. I have finally found them all – they’re in my heart; I am that peace, I am that love, and I’ve never left my home.

Every moment of my life is a fortune – from laughter to sorrow. I’m blessed to live this life. Life is a true gift to experience and cherish for eternity, and I can’t help but fall in love with it.

What an unforgettable life my parents gave me. I will forever be grateful for every tear and every burst of laughter – for the chance to live this extraordinary story. In my darkest days, I wished only to die or to have never existed at all. Now I say with a full heart,

“‘Thank God’ I was born!”

My journey to health felt like shedding layers of heavy illusion – the weight I once believed I needed to survive. At first, all I sought was health – but in the process, I discovered something far greater: a truth that reached beyond the body and touched the very essence of my being, awakening a life where heaven resides.

What began as a desperate search for physical health became the awakening of my soul – a remembrance of what it truly means to live in heaven, here on Earth.