THANK YOU to everyone who has reached out to tell me how much 37 Seconds has added to their lives.  Not only does it make me feel better having purged my deepest fears from the cells in my body into a book, but it makes me feel 1000% better than I have ever felt before, knowing people are getting affected in such a positive way.

As we start the international publishing of the book, I am recognizing just how many people, worldwide, from many different cultures, feel the exact same way I do.  And there is no way I would have known any of this, without the power of the internet, making connections much easier.

I received the email below last week from a young lady in Scotland. (She gave me permission to post it) Her mother told her about the book in Denmark.

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Dear Stephanie.

I was really honoured to be able to read your book, and I was so captivated by your writing that I for hours forgot all about the world around me and finished it the same day. I currently study a joint honour degree in Anthropology-Sociology in Scotland, and I minor in Religious Studies, and I dream to work with Women’s Rights in the Middle East.

Growing up, I’ve always been very spiritual and believed there was so much more than the world we experience in our daily lives. I always had a strong intuition, and in secondary school, my class teacher was away for some days. My best friend said that is was a pretty serious flu she must had caught, and I looked at him and said ‘no. It’s the tumour in her neck that gives her issues. She’s probably waiting for the cancer results’. He stared at me and then said that I shouldn’t joke with serious diseases. I tried to explain him that I didn’t. After about 1.5 weeks she came back and said that she’d been scanned last week and they’d found a tumour in her neck. He looked at me and wrote on a piece of paper ‘how did you know this?!’. I later explained him that I had just had a really strong feeling.

I have many more examples like this, that kept popping up in my mind when I read your book. But your visions recalled something that now makes more sense than ever. I’ve always wanted kids, but there was always an inner voice that said I shouldn’t get pregnant. I tried explaining this to my parents every time we talked about the future.  I kept having dreams of miscarriages where I saw the foetus, bleeding as a result of miscarriages, or being about to give birth but I would then die at the hospital – and my baby would die too. Those dreams stopped occurring when I finally said that I knew that if I ever have kids, I want to adopt them. I told my mum about it, and she said that it was just the stress. But after I finished your book I mentioned those dreams to my mum again, and she said that maybe there was something about them, but she hoped that one day I would experience being a mother in one way or another.

Your book truly made me reflect upon listening to these things, and although I am not thinking about having kids in the near future in any way, things started to make a lot of sense to me when reading about your visions – despite the fact what I experienced was dreams. To me, intuition and spirituality have always played important roles in my life, but I have also experienced that people want proof and science rather than seeking answers in the world beyond. To me, it was a great joy reading your story since I felt that I wasn’t alone. I feel very blessed to have read your work, thank you, it’s really played a significant role in my consciousness since I received it.

Kind regards,   Mie Astrup Jensen

How can I not be affected by this?  How can I not feel blessed that throughout this journey, the pain, the suffering, the revisiting of it all, the healing, the hurt, the torture of reliving it while writing it all down… how can I not look at this email or any of the other correspondences I have been receiving and not feel: it was worth it.  It absolutely was.  OK, I wouldn’t wish what happened to me on anyone, but since it already happened, I see the positive of the experience.  My amniotic fluid embolism and all that preceded and followed it, helped me focus on why I survived.

I am on a mission to help people find their voice, believe in themselves, speak up when they are trying to be silenced and to brave the painful and tumultuous waters to heal themselves.  I am telling you, if I can do it, you can.  And I am happy to know in this world, I am not alone.

IF YOU SENSE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING!