The Worst Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me

How Losing Everything Became the Ultimate Gift

If you suddenly couldn't use your body or your mind, if you were forced to lie flat on your back for months with nowhere to go, nothing to do and no one to talk to, could you survive it? And what would be left of you?

I had to ask myself this question recently, and it's why I've been absent from writing (and life) for the past year.

In a nutshell, I went through the most brutal, debilitating health crisis I’ve ever experienced. At its worst, I couldn’t walk. I couldn't sit up. I couldn't do almost anything for myself. Brushing my teeth felt like an Olympic event. Turning over in bed felt like turning a boulder. I needed a bib to eat, a stool to shower, and a mechanical bed to raise and lower my body.

This is absolutely nuts, I thought. I've turned into a 100-year-old overnight. Or an infant. Or both. Either way, I'm one stop short of a nursing home.

Soon, my inability to tolerate exertion extended beyond just physical exertion. Apparently, mental, emotional and even vocal exertion can stress a vulnerable body just as much as a heavy workout. Which meant that this writer could no longer use her arms to type or her mouth to speak.

Obviously, this was devastating, both professionally and personally. But also, on a purely practical level, it left me with no way to communicate.

I'm effectively mute, I realized in desolation. Well, besides scrawling a few chicken scratches on a notepad or engaging in a ridiculous game of charades, which was as maddening as it was miserable.

From there, things went from bad to worse. Even the smallest of sensory inputs now fried my nervous system like a scrambled egg. Listening to music became grating, the notes pinging inside my head like steel pinballs. Taking hot showers sent my heart instantly racing. Straining to read while lying flat and without using my arms (which, admittedly, was already a losing battle) became impossible, not to mention the strain of visually tracking and processing the words.

This is so unfair! I fretted. I'm being stripped of the few remaining activities that are keeping me halfway sane!

Then, things went from worse to what-the-f*%& when I became so energetically sensitive that I couldn't handle having another human being within a 10-foot radius. Even if I lay there like a mannequin and just had a friend hold my hand or read to me from a distance, their energy completely overwhelmed me. And if they walked in anxious or angry, forget about it. They may as well have walked in with a thick plume of smoke around them, suffocating me with their toxic fumes.

And so, the muteness had now become a two-way street. No human connection of any kind.

Which left me in total, tormenting silence. Twenty-four hours a day. Every day.

Basically, I'd become a conscious vegetable. My nervous system was simply too wearied and weak to handle any aspect of life.

And, ironically, it all started right after I changed my name to Lisa B. Strong.

To B Strong or Not To B Strong

As my life shrunk to the size of my bed and I lay there about as impotent as a human being can be, my inner critic saw its opportunity and pounced.

"You’re a joke," it chortled. "Lisa B. Strong?? You’re anything but! And who are you to be a voice for healing and inspiration? You’re using all of your tools, and you still can’t heal yourself! How could you be this sick and this stuck, even after all these years of work?"

At first, I believed her. Mostly because she was the only voice in the room. But after enough endless hours with myself, I eventually turned inward. I went beyond my inner critic's voice and all the other voices that I forget aren't really me. Beyond my mind and my ego altogether. Tuning into the deeper, stiller place inside me. The Soul within the self.

Of course, given my profession and training, I'd attempted to go inward many times before. However, I'd never done it from a fully open place. Yes, I was earnest and willing to do whatever it took. But my approach included a tinge of shame. (Okay, more than a tinge.) I met the pain with self-judgment rather than compassion. Plus, I always had a hidden agenda: Just make me better. Just tell me how to make this go away. I wasn't interested in the possible purpose behind it, or the gifts it might bring. I just wanted the suffering to end.

But this time, I sat back and waited. And waited some more. And then, I listened.

And that's when everything changed.

Shaken

One summer afternoon, as I lay in bed wrapped in my fuzzy white blanket, I endeavored to meditate from a more surrendered place.

Okay, let's try this again, I said to the Universe, my Soul, my spirit guides, and whoever else would take my cosmic call. Why is this happening? Especially after all the inner work and healing I've done. Am I causing it somehow?!

At last, my Soul spoke back to me. (Or, as my Soul is now playfully urging me to clarify: I finally shut up and listened.)

What's more, my Soul didn't just speak to me. It shook me. Literally. For over an hour, my body involuntarily trembled and gyrated as clear messages and visions flooded my consciousness.

There's no doubt that this came from beyond me. It generated such intense emotional releases that I never could've consciously conjured. It spoke in words that were nothing like my own.

And what it said shocked me.

Sacred Solitude

As it turns out, my debilitation wasn’t a reflection of my lack of skill or effort. It wasn't a spiritual failure of my not being "high-vibe enough" or my trauma not being "healed enough."

It was my Soul’s divine plan. A soul contract that I volunteered to take on before my birth, to learn and grow in ways I never could have otherwise.

Aha, I realized with a sharp intake of breath. All this isolation and suffering isn’t just isolation and suffering. It's sacred solitude!

What looked like a prison cell was actually an incubator. A cocoon. And what do cocoons do? They dissolve you, before they transform you. Just like the butterfly in the chrysalis.

So, my Soul had dissolved all distractions, all interactions. And it did this not to break me but to awaken me. To facilitate the utter stillness required to see every piece of myself clearly--the way the surface of a lake must be perfectly still for you see yourself in an accurate mirror.

Viewing myself in the still mirror of that lake, I began to see the layers of ego I'd identified with as "me" that weren't the real me. For instance, I witnessed the impossibly tight grip I held on life--and, consequently, the gut-twisting grip it held on me. All the fear and worry and angst. Trying to control every variable. Trying to plan for all possible outcomes.

I knew that controlling everything made me feel safe, and I further knew that control was just an illusion. However, the illusion still looked so gosh-darn real.

Now, like taking off foggy glasses, I saw the illusion for what it was. Trying to control everything wasn't making me safe. It was just making me miserable.

Plus, I recognized that my world didn't end when I couldn't control it. Things usually worked out. If not immediately, at least eventually. Sometimes, even better than I would've thought.

At that realization, this recovering control freak automatically loosened her grip and "got a grip." And, whaddya know, a subtle yet powerful peace settled into my system. The kind of deep, abiding peace that doesn't evaporate with the shifting winds of change or disappointment or really annoying people.... The kind of peace I'd tried to achieve by force a thousand times.... The kind of peace that can't be acquired by fighting to capture it, but rather by surrendering into it.

Happy Joy Joy

Even more surprising to me, I also became a genuinely joyful person. Not all the time, of course. I wasn’t a crazy person. But I felt happier than I’d been in my entire life. And most of it seemed to arise just from being more present.

Finally, I understood what Jackson Peterson, a Tibetan- and Zen-inspired spiritual teacher, termed "the natural bliss of being." This bliss wasn't coming from any conditional, external factor. It wasn't from anything I was doing (especially since this conscious vegetable wasn't doing anything). It was simply from the awareness, the aliveness, the delight of Being.

As a result of living in this beingness, authenticity came much more naturally to me, too. No longer smothered by the self-consciousness that always lingered on me like a bad smell, I felt freer to think, speak, act and be the real me.

Once I could talk a little, I said what I wanted to say, not what other people wanted to hear. I opened up about my struggle and difficult emotions, instead of hiding behind a perfectionist facade. I even let a few close friends see me without a stitch of makeup--which, if you know me, is tantamount to me parading naked through the streets.

The mask had evidently come off.

Wow, talk about paradoxical, I thought to myself. It took almost every freedom being taken away for me to gain true freedom.

It's a Miracle!

Incredibly, this inner awakening also sparked an almost instant physical healing. We're talking the kind of miraculous revival I'd only read about in books or seen on TV, often with skepticism. And yet, there was no denying what was happening to me. Practically overnight, I went from being bedbound to bouncing all over town.

On paper, this should've been impossible. However, the Soul doesn't do "on paper" or "impossible." The Soul is magic. Real magic.

What's even more magical is that I gained a huge expansion of my psychic gifts out of this ordeal. I received multiple premonitions that turned out to be true. I became able to read people's energy much more accurately. My intuition heightened as well as broadened, giving me instant "yes" or "no" answers to almost anything and extending into new, even more otherworldly realms like clairaudience and clairvoyance. Plus, so many you-can't-make-this-sh*t-up mystical experiences began happening on a daily basis that I filled an entire journal with them all.

"It's like you got an energetic upgrade!" one friend observed in awe.

Bizarrely (or perhaps not), a lot of my possessions also needed an upgrade during this same time period. Left and right, electronic items from my oven to my laptop to my hair dryer petered out and had to be replaced, as if the Universe were putting an exclamation mark on my "life upgrade."

Life is Bru-tiful

Listen, I'll be real with you: I would never choose to go through what I did. And, if I were back in that godforsaken mechanical bed tomorrow, I won't pretend for one second that I'd be gleefully thanking the Universe for the opportunity to do some more good work.

But I also won't pretend that the most painful times in our lives can't become the most potent times in our lives, too. Strengthening us from the inside out. Steering us toward a higher purpose.

In my case, that purpose wasn't just individual. I believe that my Soul chose to upgrade my frequency and intuitive gifts in order to better serve others. So that I can meet you from an even more embodied, authentic, empathetic place. So that I can inspire you with my story. So that I can step more boldly into helping you connect with your Soul--with the real you beneath your temporary human skin-suit.

Rise and Shine

While this life-changing experience brought many gifts, one of the most unexpected ones was that it helped me to finally embrace my name. To feel that I deserved it.

Until then, people often told me how strong I was, but I didn't fully believe them. You know, the ol' if you really knew me, you wouldn't say that nonsense.

But now, I don't just believe it. I know it.

I finally see how worthy I am of that powerful name.

I AM Lisa B. Strong.

And guess what? So are you.

Okay, maybe not the name itself. But you are infinitely stronger than you can conceive of.

You are a precious, powerful Soul with a reason to be here and a Light to shine.

So, let's shine our asses off and light up this world together, shall we?

Soulfully yours,

Lisa B. Strong

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Lisa B. Strong is an inspirational author and soul whisperer devoted to helping awaken people's divine inner power. She is also the author of a forthcoming self-help memoir.

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