Cracked Open
By Lisa Solis DeLong, Chief Spiritual Officer of the Thriving Leader Collaborative
I was born a healer and became a nurse. It was 1969, I was eight years old and my family went camping at the Kern River in California. It was a treacherous river known for drownings which in hindsight seems a bit odd to have brought ten kids! My older brother had been fishing and placed a few trout in a bucket. I remember leaning over the bucket happily watching their shiny silver bodies swimming in circles until one of them turned sideways and started to float.
I could tell it was dying. I showed my mom and she advised me to take the little fish by the tail fin, hold it in the water and push it back and forth. “Maybe it will force enough oxygen over its gills and it will live,” she’d said optimistically. I stepped into the river, slippery rocks under my feet and a strong current against my twiggy legs. I lowered the little fish into the frigid water holding tightly to the tail fin and pushed it back and forth as instructed. Back and forth, back and forth until suddenly it tensed up and took off out of my hands. I stood there in a state of wonder, ‘I just saved a life!’ It felt like a miracle, like the kind I’d been taught Jesus had done. That feeling led me to nursing school.
I graduated from Los Angeles County, USC Medical Center, School of Nursing in 1983. In those days, one of my favorite things to do was to go up to the rooftop of the dorms at sunset, when the city went from a dull grey metropolis to a bejeweled lady. Once, I recall thinking, “I wonder who’s going to get shot out there tonight!” I was eager for the opportunity to use my new skills on unit 9800 where we often treated patients with gunshot wounds and stab wounds. Little did I know then that I would need my nursing skills more for my own children than for strangers.
Justin was five when he was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. He maintained remission for ten years, relapsed and died at the age of fifteen. Six years later my youngest son, Jacob, was diagnosed with the same kind of leukemia. He is now twenty-three and as healthy as his two sisters who book-end their brothers. Navigating these treacherous waters has been a rough ride to say the least.
Justin’s physical death cracked me open to spiritual experiences, dreams, inner-knowings, intuition and a whole new way of seeing my world. Since then, I’ve become a bereavement facilitator, led grief groups, wrote a book, gave a TEDx Talk, traveled the United States and Canada as an Inspirational Speaker with a message of how miracles manifest through people like you and me. The pandemic pause led to two years of studying universal shamanism, where I learned ancient wisdom practices and guided energy medicine. I became a certified shamanic practitioner in 2022 offering one-on-one energy sessions, workshops, webinars and retreats. This brings my nursing experiences and my personal experience full circle.
Death taught me an awareness of the life force energy being breathed into all of us. Now, more than ever, when we are required to step into the treacherous waters of our current times, we need others to hold us along the way.
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” Rumi
