It was late on a Friday night. Storms were pouring down across California that spring evening, delaying flights at both ends of the state. My team and I were trying to get home after two long days of client meetings in Silicon Valley. Our return flight to LAX was pushed into after-hours.

No one knew I was on this flight except those sitting beside me. The office was closed. My family didn’t know I was traveling again. I didn’t want to worry them. I wasn’t in a relationship then. It was one of those moments in life when you’re “off on your own.” Everything’s fine… until it isn’t.

As we descended into LAX, the rain had eased, but the air was still unsettled. Then, in an instant, the plane lurched violently upward. Sharply. I can still feel the force of it in my body. A moment later, the captain’s voice came through the speaker: “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve had to maneuver to avoid another aircraft.”

I looked out the window and saw it — another plane, way too close. In a flash, the reality sank in: we almost collided. The realization rippled through me — if we had hit, we wouldn’t have survived. I would be dead.

In that moment, high in the sky, I did what I had always been taught to do — I prayed. I reached for God, for the comfort of the faiths I had studied and practiced. I was raised Methodist, educated in Christian theology, and later drawn to Judaism, which I eventually learned ran through my family’s lineage. I had lots of religion. But there, in the air, when I needed divine presence most — there was nothing. No comfort. No grace. No sense of being held by something greater. No feeling of grace. Just silence.

That silence was more terrifying than the near miss itself. It was as if the soul-connection I had trusted all my life had suddenly gone dark.

When we finally landed safely and I returned to my empty apartment, I reached for what was familiar — a glass of wine, a late-night call to my therapist, an attempt to move on. But something had cracked open and would not close again.

A few days later, standing in the Century City Mall parking garage, I broke down completely. Two kind strangers helped me home. It was 1991, long before we had cell phones or the ease of reaching someone with a text. I had never felt so human, so vulnerable, or so profoundly alone.

That near-death experience became my wake-up call. It forced me to see how well-armored I’d become — the high-performing executive who could navigate an executive meeting or Fortune 500 client meetings yet had lost connection to her own soul. Fly around the country and wear silk suits. Galivant in and out of encounters and relationships with abandon, and not much thought to my own value. Play the game of life, manipulating consequences emanating out of expected social norms and not inner soul guidance. My faith had been intellectual. My success, external. My life, performative. The armor had served me, until it didn’t.

Over the years, I had built very strong armor. It was shiny. It was thick. But the crack was no less real. And the results were profound. Discovering what I had invested in religiously had no dividends for me when I needed to make a withdrawal was a jolt.

The crack, painful as it was, let light pour in.

The realizations from that weekend altered the rest of my life. They set me on a journey of spiritual exploration. I needed to understand why there was no inner connection to that thing we call God in the very moment I needed it most. There were other ramifications, indeed. But the greatest was also the most profound blessing. 

Later that year, I discovered the teachings of Science of Mind or New Thought and the idea that we are not separate from Source, but expressions of it. That discovery lit a path I have walked ever since: a path of consciousness, integration, and awakening.

What is the path? In my experience, it is letting go of the small to embody the expanded. It is aligning with grace, joy and gratitude. It is moving into alignment with our own authentic power. This path awakened in me a deep chasm of desire for others to play in who they truly are, amidst the glaring reality of the current world we have co-created. The way is not always easy. Uncovering the misbeliefs we hold about ourselves and working to release them, also not light work. Worth it all? Profoundly, yes!

Over time, that crack in my armor became the opening through which my true purpose emerged, to bridge business and consciousness, achievement and awakening. It’s what I now bring to executives, teams, and organizations through Permission to Bloom: guiding them to lead not from armor, but from alignment. To ground performance with presence. Strategy with soul.

That night in the air, I thought I might die. In truth, something did — the self I’d built around doing, achieving, and proving. What was reborn was the essence of who I really am: a being of light and love, here to help others awaken to their own beauty and authentic power.

For that, I am profoundly grateful.
For that, I am alive.