How A Near-Death Experience Transformed My Life | Guest: Nanci Reed Ep 112

Evolving Humans host Julia Marie interviews Nancy Reed, a sacred embodiment coach, intuitive, and author.

Nancy shares her experiences growing up as a highly sensitive child, feeling overwhelmed by her surroundings and struggling to fit in.

She also discusses her near-death experience during a car accident, which led her to start writing as a form of therapy.

This writing was later shared with her mother and her mentor, Ken Watnick, who encouraged her to continue.

 Nancy's writings, which she describes as similar to the teachings of A Course in Miracles, became the foundation for her current work.

The podcast ends with a teaser for part two, where Nancy will discuss her second near-death experience, a precognitive dream, and her book "Happily Ever After Now".

Many thanks to Pixabay musicians Cinematic ambient piano 118668 by Alexsey Chistilin and piano moment 9835 by Daddy's music for the music beds for this episode.

RESOURCES:
Nanci's Website

Thank you for listening to Evolving Humans!
For consultations or classes, please visit my website: www.JuliaMarie.us

Transcript

This transcript was generated by ai, and therefore may contain some errors.
Nanci Reed (00:00):
Sometimes in life you need to let go in order to be saved.
Julia Marie (00:08):
Welcome to Evolving Humans, the podcast for Awakening Souls. I'm your host, Julia Marie. Settle in and get ready for another spirited conversation. Nancy Reed is a sacred embodiment coach, intuitive and author who supports successful empathic and mission-driven women to embrace their perfectly imperfect
selves with curiosity and gentleness so they can learn to trust the wisdom of their soul and live for their dreams. She encourages people to live their happily ever now, and not to wait until everything is perfect.
Welcome to Evolving Humans, Nancy, and thank you so much for sitting down with me today.
Nanci Reed (01:09):
Thank you so much, Julia. This is quite an honor.
Julia Marie (01:13):
Our listeners would love to know a little bit more about you. Let's start sort of at the beginning. I read that you call yourself a sensitive child growing up, and so I'd like to know a little bit what was it like growing up in Nancy's house?
Nanci Reed (01:34):
That's a great question. Yeah, it was very different I felt from most of my other friends and certainly from my other family members, where that, gosh, from one of my earliest memories is of me going into a space and literally being overwhelmed by what I was feeling in this space. And it didn't make any sense to me because just a moment before I'd been feeling one way, and then I came into this space and I felt all this
heaviness, and I didn't know the words for angst or anything like that then, but it was just this sense of overwhelm. And so I would go through just my days at school and I'd be invited to go to things with my friends or even a party or something, and I'd be so excited to go. And I remember I would say, yes, yes, yes, I want to go. And then we would show up and I would feel everything, and I would immediately feel
like I just wanted to cover my ears. I didn't feel ready for this world, and I didn't feel like that it was my home really. And I felt overwhelmed by those feelings. And so I became very good at becoming invisible.
I became very good at trying to adapt to what the energy was around
Julia Marie (03:00):
Me, chameleon
Nanci Reed (03:01):
So that I could fit in. And so I became very, very, very astute at observing people and being able to read energy and read the room, but I hid everything I was feeling. But then through that time, I also became very good at starting to dull those feelings. So yeah, so I started out with these knowings with being able to feel spaces, feel people feel energy, and also having these really, really, really lucid dreams. These really where I couldn't tell if I was awake or dreaming, and I would even get up and I would turn on the
light and I would still be in the dream. And some of them were nightmares, and some of them were good dreams. And so again, it was just this really, what is real and why is this happening to me? How possibly am I going to navigate this world while having all these feelings and not be either burned at the stake or put in some white coat somewhere or something else? And it was very, very, very isolating. So even though on the surface it looked like I should have been popularity, I was terrified to be in really close circles with people that I didn't feel safe with because I was so worried they were going to unmask me or that they were somehow
Julia Marie (04:19):
Going to figure out fear being discovered. I call it fear of being discovered. I know that one will help.
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. That's a tough one to overcome too.
Nanci Reed (04:28):
Yes, yes. It's
Julia Marie (04:30):
As souls we know instinctually, we've come here for a purpose, even though we may not consciously understand that, and yet that fear of being discovered makes us feel unsafe
Nanci Reed (04:43):
On one level. I looked literally like Barbie growing up, and I had the dream house and the dream, all these things and everything. And yet inside I felt a complete mess. And I felt also like that I really didn't belong here. I felt like almost that I had memories of something beyond here that I couldn't explain, and yet I could feel and I would see them in my dreams, and I would get sensations of things from people. And I,
my parents were going through their divorce. I was so, so, so sad. And even though we weren't super religious, my grandmother, I remember her telling me that, well, Jesus, that he is there to help children.
And so while I was really sad one night, and it had so many nightmares, I can remember saying this little prayer, and I said, Jesus, please help me. Please, please, I'm so afraid I don't know what it's going to be like not to have my parents together.
(05:39):
I can't sleep. I'm having these awful nightmares where I'm being chased by something and I can't see its face. Please, please help me. And then I got this sense that there was this light that came into my room and it was just this bright, bright, bright, comforting light. And for me, everything had to be pink. So it was like this kind of pinkish light that was comforting. And then I looked up into the ceiling and I saw the
only thing I could describe it as is as though somebody was shaking a jar of glitter and it was coming down from the ceiling, and I called them my sparkles. And my sparkles came every night from that night on for probably about almost a year. And I didn't have any bad dreams and I was less anxious. I was more able to go through everything that was happening outside of our family and everything else like that.
(06:29):
And then I remember one night after about a year of them coming, I said, sparkles, thank you so much for coming. Please go help another little girl that needs you. Now I think I'm going to be okay. And so that was another experience that again, I couldn't tell my friends about. I think I mentioned it to my mother and my grandmother in passing sort of, and they were like, oh, you see glitter falling from the ceiling?
That's interesting. And I was like, yeah, but it's really beautiful and there are all these different colors of pastels and they fall down from the ceiling and they're there to protect me. They're there to comfort me.
And so I don't think they were too worried about it because I wasn't having anything bad happen from it.
And again, I only kept it within the family too, but that was another experience that I couldn't explain, and yet it was happening. I could feel it, I could see it. It was very real for me.
Julia Marie (07:20):
How old were you when that was going on?
Nanci Reed (07:23):
I was about five.
Julia Marie (07:25):
Now I've noticed that the universe wakes us up in a lot of different ways, and one of the things I like to have my guests do is share their awakening journey. And correct me if I get this wrong, but it seems to me you were on a pretty solid life trajectory going for your PhD. You already had an undergraduate and a graduate degree, and then something happened that changed your life. So can you tell the story of what at
first look might be considered the worst bad date ever?
Nanci Reed (07:59):
Oh yeah, absolutely. It was definitely the worst bad date on the surface. So by this point in my life, I had become very good at tuning out that inner voice, that inner guidance that had always been there with me.
And I had basically told her to get lost because all she ever did was brought me this sense of overwhelm, this sense of isolation, and I just wanted to be normal. I just wanted to fit in. And sure, I wanted some cute guy to think I was pretty right. That was definitely where I was in that point in my life. And so I went on this date with this guy and he'd been drinking, and I didn't know it. I didn't even know the signs to look
for at that point in my life. And before we went out to dinner, he was like, Hey, I want to take you on a drive and show you this car, or whatever it was, some old sports car.
(08:47):
And I was like, okay, sure. And then at that point, I heard the little voice inside of me that had now become very quiet, and it was saying, don't go, don't go, don't go. And I was like, are you kidding me?
He's so cute. I'm going to go right. You can't be right about this. So I got in the car, and then as we're in the car for even just a few moments, I'm like, oh, this is a really big mistake. I got to get out of this car.
And so I'm asking him to slow down because he's going so fast, and the bald tires were going on as well that I didn't even pay attention to or notice at that point. And so as we're going faster and faster and faster around this two directional road, but only had one lane, so both directions can fill the same space, it was very, very, very narrow, really windy.
(09:34):
And it was kind of one of those commuter in the nose only. So people that were trying to avoid the traffic of the freeways, they knew these little bypasses they could get to on the side roads. So it was one of those.
So it wasn't very well traveled, but certainly it was direct, but it was also just windy too. And so we're going around one of these crazy turns and I tell him, I'm like, Hey, could you slow down a little bit? I'm kind of nervous. And I remember him saying like, oh yeah, babe, around the next corner, I got to show you what this baby can do. And so as he did that, the car started to fishtail and then he hit the brakes,
which of course made them lock up. So then the car started spinning and spinning and spinning. And this whole time I'm like, oh God, why didn't I listen?
(10:21):
I knew not to get in this car. And so all this is happening, and basically, thank goodness no other car was coming the other direction. So as the car is spinning, it's spinning so fast, it actually takes out a bush that is rooted in the ground on the road with us, and it just flies up in the air and there's all this dirt and everything flowing around. And at that point, I heard the voice, again, the same voice that said, don't get in this car this time. I listened to her and she said, push up. And I was like, push up. And I just took my
arm and I wedged it up as hard as I could into the roof of the car because it was an old fashioned seatbelt that I was in, and it wasn't self adjusting, and the person that had ridden in it before me was much larger.
(11:05):
So there was a lot of give to the seatbelt itself, and all I was thinking was that I'm either going to hit the dashboard or I'm going to go through the windshield. There was so much force that was happening. So by wedging myself up, I actually kept myself stable enough not to fly forward, but I also ended up twisting my thoracic spine, separating my right AC joint in my shoulder. So these other things happened that it
didn't come out at that moment, but I didn't get seriously injured as I would have. So as all this is happening and I listened to that voice, once again, I do have this experience that I talked to other people that have had near death kind of things called the Life Review, where that all of a sudden it was as though I was watching a movie, but I was watching the movie on 1000 amount of speed.
(11:55):
So it's going as fast as it could, but somehow I'm still able to make out the individual frames of understanding the significance of it. So what I was being shown was not just my entire life, but only moments where there had either been intentional or unintentional unkindness or resentment or unresolved issues in relationships between me and somebody else. So I'm seeing that my best friend at the time,
again, I even hadn't even told her all these things that I've been sharing today about the empath and all the knowing experiences that I had. And so she'd invited me to be in her wedding, and I was so excited to get to be in her wedding. And then that little voice inside of me, the inner perfectionist as I call it, and the ego, however you want to say it, spoke up and was like, you can't do that.
(12:46):
You're going to freak out when you get there. You're not going to be able to handle this. You're not going to be able to be able to be in this room with all these people and these different energies and everything like that, even though you want to be there for your friend. So rather than tell her that I came up with this lame excuse about that, I had just started work at a company which I had in PR while I was doing school
and everything like that, and that they wouldn't let me take the vacation off and the time, and she knew that I was completely lying. And so it really, really, really damaged our friendship. And I remember her kind of just being like, oh, so you can't even make it to my own wedding. And I was just like, I'm like, I am really sorry.
(13:23):
They're not going to let me go. And it was just this paper thin excuse. But that was my response was that I was so scared from all the other feelings that I'd been trying to negate myself from for so long. So I saw that experience between she and I on this life review. I saw another thing where I'd had a resentment
between my dad and I, and another thing where I was a resentment between my brother and I and all these different things showed up. And yet all this is happening within just an instant basically. So this is so interesting is that it seemed like time was expanding when all this was happening. The car's spinning, there's all this noise, there's all this feeling of panic inside of me, and yet I'm watching this movie go by
on full speed, and somehow I'm getting the individual pieces out of it.
(14:09):
So it was really, really, really strange. And I'm like, why am I being shown this? Why is this the last thing that I'm going to see believing fully that I'm going to die as soon as the car stops spinning and either goes over the edge of the road, like a hundred feet up, or it gets smashed by some other car coming the other direction? Because one of those two things that seemed like was the only outcome. And so all this is happening and we're going over the edge, and we actually launch because it has a really low center of
gravity, the car. And so we land at the bottom of this steep ravine, and there was so much force from the car coming down that all this dirt came down with us, and my window was open on the car, and all this dirt came inside, so was literally buried inside.
(14:52):
And when we finally came to a stop, I was like, I'm dead. I must be dead. That's it. It's over. Basically. I didn't feel anything at all, and I couldn't even tell about the guy next to me. He didn't care about that at all.
At that point. He was relaxed. It turned out. So he was fine from the drinking, and I was so convinced that I had died, and I was like, so that was it. I didn't get to fix all those things. I was being shown how awful.
And then that little voice inside of me who's now a little bit louder again, she says, get out. And this time I'm like, yep, I'm listening. And so I crawl out the window through the dirt, covered in dirt from head to toe at this point, and crawling up the side of the hill trying to get back up to the road.
(15:40):
There's no cell phone reception where we are in the middle of nowhere. Basically, nobody can see the car from the road because of the angle of the ravine. And so I'm trying to climb up, trying to climb up, trying to climb up. And as I'm climbing, it turns out what I climbed through is poison oak. So on top of everything else, I've now got this terrible case of poison oak that's going to show up a few days down the
road from this whole experience. And it actually cut my arm so that I got this systemic reaction to it. So I went into my bloodstream. So then as I'm climbing up and climbing up, all of a sudden I see these lights coming around the corner of the road that's still above me, and I'm like, oh my gosh, there's a car.
Someone's going to be here.
(16:20):
And the car stops and it's this huge white truck. And so this burly voice cuts through all of the tension, all of the craziness that I'm feeling, the adrenaline and everything like that. And it's like, are you okay? What happened? Is anybody else down there? And I'm like, we were in a car accident. Please help us. Our cell phones don't work, dah, dah, dah. And he's like, are you hurt? And I said, I don't know. I can't tell. I don't think so. I don't know. And then he said, okay. He's like, well, I can't reach you from where you are. You
have to reach up. And I was like, if I reach up, I'm going to fall. I don't know if I can climb back up here again, but I know I'm going to fall if I let go. And he's like, you have to reach up.
(17:01):
And I'm like, but I can't. Can I just wait there? And he's like, no, you have to come up here. And so I was like, okay, how do I do this? And he said, I've got you baby girl. Sometimes in life you need to let go in order to be saved. And those words just imprinted in my memory. And so I took a huge deep breath and I let go, and I reached up, he grabbed my arm, brought me up to the surface, and I couldn't believe what
had just happened. And I was still in total shock. I never saw him again. I never had any, I don't know his name. I don't know anything else about him personally other than he was out there. Apparently they thought I was a deer on the side of the road. And then they were like, why is that deer in clothing?
(17:49):
Because my hair caught the headlight. And so then they were like, oh, these two guys were out together.
And they were like, we had to stop and see if someone needs help. And so then they just happened to be there by the time they had either called for help or somebody else had called for help. I don't even know.
It was such a blur. They were gone, and I never saw him again or anything. And I literally have doubted my entire life because the guy behind me never saw him either. Was there really a person there? Was it really this man? Was it some kind of angel? Was it some kind of spirit? Was it some kind of, I don't know, I can't even tell you to this day, but that was my experience of it. The next morning when I woke up, still covered in dirt from head to toe, so I didn't go to the hospital or anything.
(18:32):
I just got back home basically. I was in so much shock. And I was living with my uncle who's a physical therapist, and he sees me and he is like, Hey, so what happened to you last night? And I was like, oh, yeah, I was in a car accident. And he's like, does shoulder hurt? And I was like, yeah, I guess it kind of does. And he's like, we need to get you to the hospital. And so I was still covered in dirt, hadn't even looked at myself in the mirror. I was in that much shock. I really thought that I hadn't come back, that I
was still in that car. There was a part of me that still believed that I was buried in that dirt. And so I went through the next few weeks of rehab and everything else, and I was having these terrible nightmares.
(19:18):
So way worse than even the most lucid dreams that I had as a child. I had this PTSD where these nightmares were recurring of the accident, and it was like each time there was a different face to the driver. And then one night the face to the driver was me. And I recognized that, oh, that's right. I heard not to get in that car. And I didn't listen. And so I was so overwhelmed with guilt from that experience that I was like, there has to be something else I can be doing here to help myself. I was in so much
physical pain still from the shoulder. I was in emotional pain. I was in cosmic pain because again, why had I been shown all this stuff about relationships and resentments and all these other things? How was I supposed to process all of this? So I began to write, and I sat down and I noticed as I was writing, the pain lessened and my anxiety lessened and I felt more calm. And the first thing I ever wrote was called The
Instant is All There is. And I wrote it completely. There's no errors in it or anything. I just opened up this little journal that I had, and then I went and I read it afterwards and I was like, oh, this is really interesting. I wonder where this came from. It almost didn't feel like it was from me, your first channeled message.
(20:37):
So I continued doing that for about probably two months, and I was still having all this emotional pain. I was having the nightmares, but not quite as strong, and I was still in physical pain so much. And I did my physical therapy. I was trying to find something that would help me feel better, and nothing really seemed to be doing it. But anytime I felt this sort of nudge to write, I noticed things felt a little bit better. So I shared my writings with my mother after about two months, and I was like, Hey, mom, I've been doing
this thing ever since the accident, and I don't know why, but I feel like I'm supposed to show it to you.
And so I showed it to her. So another thing I should add is that my mother, who had been a follower of Edgar Casey and the a RE, and then she had gotten into a course of miracles when I was young.
(21:27):
She had had study groups in our house when I was growing up, but I had never actually opened the book. I'd just seen it stacked up in our living room, multiple copies of it. People would come to her study groups, I'd seen her go to classes and everything. And I knew that something about this book was helpful to her, that she was becoming a much more kind of grounded mom, that I could see the relationship between her and my stepdad improve, and even how she was with me and everything. So I was always
curious about it, but I never actually opened it, so I should say that. So then she read my journals and she was like, wow, these are really beautiful. She's like, you wrote these? And I said, yeah. And I said, they're kind of different from what I normally write. And she's like, yeah.
(22:08):
She said, is it okay if I share this with a friend of mine? And I was like, okay, sure. So she shared them with a friend of hers who worked in the office with who was to become my mentor, Ken Watnick, who was the original teacher of a Course of Miracles at his foundation for a Course of Miracles. And she shared those writings with him. And then about a month later, I get a phone call and it's from Ken, and he's like, hi, I'm Ken. I know your mother was, they shared your writings with me, and I just wanted to
know if you could talk with me for a few minutes. And I was like, okay, sure. So he's like, how do you feel about these? I'm like, well, I like them. They're very comforting to me that whenever I write, I feel less pain.
(22:54):
He said, that's good. He's like, do you feel like a force to do it or an urgency or anything? And I said, no, they're very gentle, basically. And he said, that's really good. He said, well, if you take my 2 cents here, he said, you don't have to, but if you do, I'm happy to guide you through this. Because he said, I feel like what you're going through is something that can be very helpful. And so I was like, okay, sure. And then he said, oh yeah, and one thing, don't open any other spiritual texts while you're doing this. He said, you
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haven't read a Course of miracles. And I said, no, I never have. And he's like, don't do that. He said, stay away from anything else. Let this be only between you and this experience of writing. And so I was like, okay, I can do that.
Julia Marie (23:42):
You talk about being encouraged not to read other spiritual texts. And that was the same thing that Spirit told me that I was not to read other spiritual writings. Because what happened for me was in the beginning, I started writing things I call messages from my father. They're just these things that come out from time to time when I feel inspired. So I find it very interesting that you're talking about the same kind
of advice. So I appreciate the validation that you're giving me right now in this moment. So then what did you do after he advised you not to read those other texts?
Nanci Reed (24:30):
So I continued to do the writing anytime I felt the intuition to do so. And I did that for about another probably six months. And I would send him anything that I wrote like he had said to feel free to do that.
And he would always call me back and we would kind of download it together and talk about it. I didn't read anything else like he said. And I really kept it only between my mother and Ken and I. That was it.
Nobody else knew this was going on. And after about six months, he called and he said, okay, today's the day. And I said, what's the day? And he said, go ahead and pick up that blue book. And he said, if you're curious, go ahead and open it. And he said, doesn't matter where you open to. He's like, you'll know. So I opened it up and I opened it to the section called The Forgotten Song.
(25:25):
And as I was reading it, I was like, wow, this is kind of similar to what I've been writing. And he's like, well, yes, because truth is true. And he said, you're hearing it in a different form. He said, but it is the truth. And he said, if you'd like to meet me, I would love to meet you. And he said, next time I'm teaching a class as such and such date, please come on down and say hello. And so I did. And that began my journey, not only with the Course of Miracles, but with my mentor Ken. And I tried to see him as often as
I could, and I was able to call him, ask him any questions. I continued to write for about seven years, and then I kind of put those away. And on the last day of me doing the writings of those original journals, he said, okay, so now what do you do with this? And I was like, hide it, keep it, bury it away. Never let anyone see it. Never let anyone know it. And he said, no, you integrate it and you live it. Oh, okay. Yes.
And so I, and did, and I haven't shared those writings with more than a handful of people in my entire life,
(26:53):
But it did also inspire me with all of the work that I'm doing currently,
Julia Marie (27:00):
And that all of that is going to be the, like you said, it's the foundation. It's the platform upon which you will stand as you share your message moving forward. So Ken was exactly right. You have to integrate it because the wisdom only comes through the experience. You can have the knowledge of these teachings,
but unless you've applied them in your waking life, you don't have the wisdom or the context that you can then be able to share them with other people. So that's beautiful, and I can't wait to see what you do moving forward on your journey. I'm sure it's going to blossom between Ken and the writing of the book.
Is that when you had your second NDE?
(28:19):
Well, that's our time for today. In part one of this two-part conversation with Nancy Reed, she shares what it was like to grow up as an extremely sensitive child. You heard what can happen when we don't listen to guidance. This incredible first near-death experience changed the trajectory of her life forever.
We touched on the channeled writing she started doing after the NDE and hinted at our upcoming conversation about her book. This book encourages all of us to learn to accept being perfectly imperfect.
In part two, you'll hear about Nancy's second near death experience, her precognitive dream that preceded that experience and the miracle of her daughter's birth. We'll also discuss her book Happily Ever After
Now. So stay tuned for that. And now here's a quote for you to ponder as you go about your day. True love isn't sacrifice. It's a choice made once and experienced as eternity. Dr. Kenneth