Leading on the Frontline

A note from the author:

How it all began

I had always heard that a near-death experience can change your life. It’s true.

I was getting by, making a living as a single mum. People told me I should be proud of myself. By the last day of our annual sales conference I just felt wired. Sell, sell, sell. I was worn out and desperate to get home, to pull the duvet over my head and sleep forever. I decided to drive home that night, as I often did, to avoid traffic. Luckily, the road was almost empty.

One second I was driving along, struggling to stay awake, the next I was blind. A moment of stabbing pain behind my eyes, then everything went black. I don’t know how I managed to pull onto the hard shoulder — instinct, I suppose. Anyway, there I sat, whimpering in fear. Praying to a God to whom I hadn’t given a thought in decades.

My sight returned a few hours later. But in that dark time something in me changed. It wasn’t a nice feeling. It was disturbing, even frightening. What I saw in those hours of blindness was that the life I had been living was stifling me.

I had become a single mother in my early twenties and that, understandably, had reduced my scope for adventure. I adored raising my two children, but the free-spirited life of wide horizons that I later found so exhilarating simply wasn’t open to me. So I did what mothers in my situation do: I got on with the job, my own needs well and truly buried. I watched my two wonderful children grow and I got in the groceries, paid the ...