Well told, stories can transport you to new realms and possibilities. They have the capacity to absorb you, bring you to the edge of your seat, and cause you to wonder ‘what will happen next?’ and ‘what would I do in that situation?’.

And while there are no surefire, perfect, cookie-cutter templates you can apply to craft a winning story every time for every audience (vive la difference, right?)…

…There are a number of factors or ingredients that tend to cause some stories to connect with audience more readily or effectively than others. The most important of these is that your audiences can find reasons to identify with your characters, situations, the events (especially challenges or problems) that unfold, the journeys you describe, and story resolutions. The more they care about and find meaning in what’s going on, the better the reaction will likely be.

And speaking of topics that capture attention, today’s case study addresses a subject you’ll likely care about and cause you to think about meaning. It’s about what’s likely to happen to you after death.

Please join me in welcoming the founder of Artist of the Light and author of the new book ‘Taking Heaven Lightly‘, Roisin Fitzpatrick to share her story about what happened to her when she had a near death experience at just 35 years of age.

On Stories That Intrigue and Inspire

Listen in as we discuss:

• Events that led up to Roisin’s near death experience
• Why this story needed to be told
• A shock while lying in an ICU bed and thoughts of “is this it?”
• What it’s like to step out of your body and into unknown realms
• Being free of your body and physical trappings
• A conscious choice to return to loved ones
• Why nothing could be the same again
• Thoughts for sceptics and nay-sayers
• A central insight into the meaning to life

Over to You

What are your thoughts about why some stories you share tend to connect more readily with audiences than others?

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Interview Transcript

Eamonn: You’re so welcome to the Reluctant Speaker’s Club Expert Series. And coming up today, we’re going to talk about stories that should and must be told. And I’m delighted today to be joined by Roisin Fitzpatrick. And Roisin is the founder of Artist of the Light and has recently written a book called “Taking Heaven Lightly”. And it’s just an extraordinary story. Roisin, you’re very welcome.

Roisin: Thank you so much, Eamonn. I am delighted to be here.

Eamonn: Good. Tell me, the book “Taking Heaven Lightly”, what is it about?

Roisin: Ooh. The essence of the book is about sharing a near-death experience that I had a few years ago. But really, it’s more about sharing the beauty of that experience. So I call it my near-life experience, because since then I’ve absolutely no fear of death and it’s given me the freedom to live life.

Eamonn: Wow.

Roisin: And I encourage people to live their best lives.

Eamonn: Fantastic. What prompted you to write it?

Roisin: I have become an artist since I had the near-death experience, hence Artist of the Light. And I’ve had so many exhibitions in America, and every time I’d open an exhibition, people would ask me to tell the story. So I would tell the story about the inspiration for the art, and each time people would come up to me and say, “You have to write a book. You have to write a book.” And that was when I was first inspired to write it. And since then I’ve been writing and thoroughly enjoying the whole process and sharing the beauty of this light.

Eamonn: I’m sure. Now tell me though, and obviously we’re talking about the story so we have to talk about the story. So tell me, what happened and what led up to this event, I suppose?

Roisin: Well, I was 35 years of age, completely healthy, happy, salsa dancing three to four nights a week, full of vitality and vibrance. And then suddenly, I found myself with a blinding, excruciating headache. And I was brought into the A&E unit, and then I was told by the doctors that day that I had a brain hemorrhage. And very high risk, possibly of dying or of having a stroke and being paralyzed, and they would do an angio and they would more than likely have to operate the following morning. And so my life literally turned upside down. I went from being healthy and vibrant to in an ICU unit, staring up at the ceiling going, “Oh my God, is this it? Is my life over?”

Eamonn: Now what were you thinking at that time?

Roisin: Well, I wasn’t exactly thinking, “Oh bother, this is not the best day I’ve ever had.”

Eamonn: Thank you for keeping it clean. This has to be a family friendly recording.

Roisin: Absolutely. It was daunting. I mean quite frankly, it was really frightening. When you’re 35 years of age, you don’t think about death.

Eamonn: Yeah.

Roisin: You’re thinking about living. You’re thinking about, “What’s the dress I’m going to wear tomorrow night when I go out salsa dancing?” You’re just thinking about life. And to find myself suddenly in a situation where it might all be over was very overwhelming.

Eamonn: Absolutely. Yeah, then what happened?

Roisin: Then what happened was I found myself coming out of my body. And I know that sounds strange and if you had tried to say this to the Roisin Fitzpatrick who was the Trinity graduate and expert in privatization working for the European Bank, that person in her 20s, about having a light experience, there’s absolutely no way I would’ve heard you. But I had that experience. And I found myself coming out of my body, and I was surrounded by beautiful, radiant light. And at the same time, enveloped in a peace. A silent, silent calm sense of peace which transcended anything I’d ever experienced before. But most importantly I experienced a love. A warm, embracing, enveloping, pure, unconditional love like nothing I’d ever experienced before. And I felt like I was home.

Eamonn: Yeah. A home, yeah. Now tell me, that light, now how would you describe that light?

Roisin: The best way to describe was, initially it was like as if, you know that really… that haze. Imagine a summer’s day and there’s that haze and you’re looking through that haze and it’s like as if it’s rising off from tarmacadam. And then it changed then, into this vibrant light, where the way I describe it, it’s like as if there were loads of those fireflies at night time. But instead of having hundreds, there were thousands and then millions and I was surrounded by them. And then these turned into waves of energy. So like when you’re in an airplane, and you’re rising above the clouds and it’s sunrise or sunset and you’ve got beautiful tangerine colored, orange clouds, except they’re very static. These weren’t. These weren’t static. They were actually waves of energy. And instead of being separate from them the way you are on a plane, I was a part of it. So this light, it was a vibrant, pulsating with energy. And it surrounded me absolutely everywhere I looked. So I had 360 degree vision. It’s not like here. Because I was out of my body, I had full vision everywhere around me and it was infinite and extended on and on. And I understood, this is what physicists are talking about when they say that we are pure energy. Which makes no sense, ’cause you look at a solid table, you think, “Right. I whack my leg against that solid table, that isn’t really gonna feel like energy in motion.” That’s gonna feel very sore.

Eamonn: Of course it is. I’ve found that to be the case, yeah.

Roisin: Yes, on many an occasion. But I realized that this is actually that energy that the physicists are talking about. Where everything is pure energy before it forms into a physical…

Eamonn: And how did you react? So you were hit by or surrounded by this light and this warmth. How did you react? What was going through your head as all this was happening?

Roisin: Really interesting because… well, first of all, we get so involved in society with the things that are supposedly important. You know, your house, your car, your degrees, la-la-la-la. And first thing was, I wasn’t in my body anymore. House keys were not with me. Car keys were not with me. My iPhone, whatever, was not with me. So none of that.

Eamonn: There’s no iLight then?

Roisin: No, no, no. No iLight, I’m afraid. None of that. I didn’t even have my body anymore. I still existed. But I was part of a much larger, infinite form of pure love.

Eamonn: Hmm.

Roisin: And it’s the most bizarre feeling because… and it’s interesting asking what was I thinking because my thinking was more lucid than ever before. Because all of the stress and the craziness and the frenetic detail that we get so caught up in in society, just wasn’t there. Wasn’t relevant. So everything was completely pure.

Eamonn: Yeah.

Roisin: And it was a reality that was more clear and real than ever I’d experienced before. And I was thinking, actually, “Oh my god, I still exist! But how can I exist, because I’m not in a body anymore? But if I’m not in a body then who am I? What is this? And is this death? If this is death, this is great!” It was just so blissful. It was wonderful.

Eamonn: And so you’ve gone into that stage…

Roisin: Yeah

Eamonn: And so, how long were you in that…

Roisin: That’s the thing!

Eamonn: Did you have any sense of time?

Roisin: No sense of time. None whatsoever. No sense of space, because it’s infinite.

Eamonn: Hmm. And then what happened? So you’re in this realm for…

Roisin: In this ecstatic realm, and blissful, blissful sense of pure love and I realized, “Ah ha! So this is what life is all about.”

Eamonn: Ah ha. That is a good one, yes.

Roisin: This is what life is all about. And then I realized that I couldn’t go at that stage. Much as I wanted to and I’d have love to have stayed there, my parents were still alive at the time and it would have broken my mother’s heart. Her greatest fear was to lose one of her children. And I couldn’t do that to her, so I made the choice to come back. Which was really tough, and trust me, since then I’ve thought, “Oh no, I made the wrong decision!”

Eamonn: Oh, well, at least you know where home is. And so tell me, how did that affect you then in the aftermath? So you went through that experience. How did that colour your attitude towards what you did and where you were and…?

Roisin: Absolutely every part of me has changed because I have no fear of death whatsoever. Which, ironically, gives you freedom to live life because well, what’s the worst that can happen? I’ve already been there, it was fabulous. So, next! Totally no fear of death. I now focus my life on integration with as much of that love and light as possible. And it took me about a year for me to… first of all when you have a brain hemorrhage, your body is fried, is really the only way to describe it. Because what happens is so much energy comes through your body that it’s very, very difficult for it to cope with it. So all my senses were heightened to the extreme.

I had to rest for a long time. I could barely construct a sentence. It took time to recover. And I’d say after a year I fully recovered. And in that time then, I connected as much with this energy as possible to the point where I now can feel that energy all the time in my life. So there’s very little distinction for me between that other realm and this realm because I can feel it all the time. Now obviously, I’m human. I completely lose the plot. You know, I’m running for a train, and I trip up and it’s pouring rain or whatever. But, I can very quickly center myself again.

Eamonn: Very interesting. Now tell me, what would you say to the skeptics? To the people who say, “Well, did you actually experience that or did you imagine it?”

Roisin: I say I absolutely hear you. And if you had tried to say that to Roisin Fitzpatrick in her mid-20s as I said, who was this expert in privatization in the European Bank, no way I would’ve heard you. And particularly because, growing up in Ireland, in the 1970s and 1980s, we, as you well know Eamonn, had the situation where the Protestants were killing the Catholics and the Catholics were killing the Protestants, and they were doing this all the way in the name of “God”.

Eamonn: Yes.

Roisin: And by the way, thou shalt not kill is one of the commandments. And so I grew up with that backdrop and just threw the whole lot out. It made no sense to me whatsoever. So I could say absolutely, I hear you. I understand you. Having said that, this experience was more real than anything I’ve ever experienced in my life.

Eamonn: It’s an extraordinary story. And so if you were closing out and allow me to ask you to kind of summarize the one thing that maybe you’d share with other people as a consequence of your experiences, what would it be?

Roisin: We are always part of this eternal light. In Gaelic, one of the Gaelic ways of saying “May he rest in peace” is “Suaimhneas síoraí” which means “the eternal light”. And if you open your mind to the possibility that there might be a bigger picture in life, you can not only embrace that fear of death, but more importantly you can live a wonderful, amazing life now, here, in the present.

Eamonn: Wonderful. Well thank you so much. Roisin, thank you for coming in today. I knew it would be an interesting conversation.

And you have been listening to Eamonn O’Brien and this is the Reluctant Speaker’s Club Expert Series and until next time, happy speaking.

Photo Credit: Matthias Zepper