Ten years ago last week, my life took an unexpected turn.

It was a rainy October evening, and I was driving home from work on one of those winding country roads—no lights, just darkness and headlights cutting through the mist. I was following another car when, out of nowhere, it swerved hard into the ditch. Before I could process what was happening, I saw bright lights in my lane—an oncoming car had crossed the center line.

Then came the impact.

The Night Everything Changed

I don’t remember the details after that, although I was vaguely aware of what was happening. My body went into survival mode. Somehow, I didn’t lose consciousness, but when the car finally stopped—driver’s side down in a ditch—I realized I couldn’t move my feet.

Lucky for me, the driver of the car behind me saw everything and rushed over to help. I signaled through the windshield that I was okay. He broke the back window and crawled inside to tend to me. As fate would have it, he was a former EMT—calm, skilled, and exactly who you’d hope would show up in that moment.

He talked to me and kept me calm—though truthfully, I already felt calm. Later, I couldn’t help but realize it was like the right person had been placed there at the exact right time.

When the ambulance arrived, they carefully extracted me from the car and the ditch. Before he left, that same man went back to my car find my phone—which had bounced and pinged around the car—and my purse. I was coherent enough to think, I’ll need that insurance card!

Many long hours and tests later, I learned why I couldn’t get out of the car on my own: a Lisfranc fracture in my left foot, a comminuted fracture in my left ankle, and both the medial and lateral malleoli shattered in my right. Two broken feet. Two broken ankles.

And yet… I was calm.

At the crash site.
In the hospital.
Even before and after surgery.

Everyone else was worried or angry—angry at the other driver, who turned out to be uninsured and under the influence. But I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t afraid. I can’t explain it any other way than to say I just knew I was going to be okay.

What I actually felt was intense gratitude. The feeling was so strong—maybe it was the pain meds, maybe it was grace—but I can still tap into that exact vibration today whenever I want to embody it.

The Diagnosis and the Doubt

Before the surgery, my doctor told my family the injury was very serious and the damage was bad—so bad that he wasn’t sure he could save my left foot. (I was there when he said it, but I didn’t hear that part; maybe I wasn’t meant to.)

But he did save it. He repaired everything in one surgery that should’ve taken several.

Later, another doctor told me I’d never do CrossFit again.
I smiled quietly and thought, We’ll see about that.

What he didn’t know is that the last thing you want to do is tell me I’ll never be able to do something.

In this case, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he was wrong—even as I lay flat on my back in a hospital bed with a hard cast on one foot and a soft, heavily wrapped soft cast on the other.

The Shift: Choosing Imagination Over Fear

The road to recovery was going to be a long one. With both legs immobilized and in a wheelchair in my basement, my world suddenly felt small—but my imagination didn’t.

I didn’t know Neville Goddard’s teachings then, but I started living them immediately. I knew that the mind is powerful and that the body has the ability to heal anything. I decided right then and there I would heal this completely, and fast. I made a vision board. I visualized my feet healing, imagined myself standing, running, and jumping again. I listened to lots of uplifting content, mostly Wayne Dyer, and focused only on what I wanted to experience, not what I feared.

My car had been totaled. It was practically new—I’d only made one payment. I remember laying in the ER feeling disappointed about my car, but soon after, I imagined another one. The same car, but a different color, with more upgraded features that were just out of my price range before.

A few months later, that’s exactly what I got. I was still in the wheel chair when I signed the papers!

I imagined doing CrossFit again.

And I did.

About 7–8 weeks after the accident, I started training—light at first, but moving, sweating, healing. Within three months, I was jumping, running, lifting.

The surgeon who had repaired my feet was amazed at my progress. He said, “Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.”

The Power of a Decided Mind

Looking back now, I see that I wasn’t “hoping” to heal. I was embodying healing.
I wasn’t asking life to give me strength—I was living from the version of me who already had it.

That’s exactly what Neville Goddard taught:

“Assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and persist in that assumption.”

My conscious mind didn’t need to figure out how to mend bones or rewire nerves. The subconscious already knew. It handled the how. All I had to do was know that it was done.

From Physical Healing to Conscious Creation

That experience taught me something I carry into every challenge now.
Physical challenges? I rise to those. They’re tangible. I can see progress.

But the emotional or invisible ones—like creating financial freedom, trusting the process in business, or staying peaceful in uncertainty—those can feel harder.

Yet the strategy is the same. The law doesn’t change. Neville says it is just as easy to manifest big things as it is to manifest small ones.

I know that whether I’m healing bones or building a dream, the process is identical:

• Imagine the end.

• Feel it as real.

• Trust the unseen process.

• Let the Infinite handle the rest.

Ten Years Later

It’s been a decade, and I can physically do anything I could before the accident. I can hike eight miles if I want to, backpack, lift heavy weights. My feet feel normal and do everything I ask of them.

But the real healing wasn’t just physical.

Before the accident, I was in a negative state of mind—frustrated, dissatisfied, and sure that my circumstances and other people were the problem. I was working at a college and had just stepped into the dean role, and the new campus director and I clashed right away.

I thought she was the issue, but now I see that relationships always reflect who we’re being. Back then, I was reacting to everything. I believed life was happening to me.

The accident changed that. It woke something in me—an awareness that we are never at the mercy of circumstance. We are the cause.

If I could go back and erase that night, I wouldn’t. What I gained from it changed my life. It gave me new life. In many ways, I died that night—to my old self, to the version of me who believed she was powerless to create her world.

I still carry permanent hardware in both ankles and my left foot—screws, metal, scars. For a while, it felt strange. But now, it feels like me.

It’s part of the story of who I’ve become—stronger, steadier, and more aligned with who I truly am.

Charles Haanel once said that everything happens for your benefit. Even things that seem dire, difficult, or traumatic contain something for you to gain. I didn’t understand that before the accident, but I do now.

What once looked like destruction was actually creation in disguise.

When you stop reacting to what’s in front of you and start feeling what you choose to experience, you give the Infinite permission to rearrange reality in your favor.

A Final Thought

If you’ve ever doubted your ability to heal, to change, or to create something new—let this be your reminder: sometimes the hardest moments aren’t detours; they’re initiations.

The law works.
It always has.

Even when you don’t yet know its name.

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