If I die today

I woke up at 4:15 am last night, a few minutes before my flat started swaying, and my bed started shaking. I got out of bed and joined my cousin in the living room as we both stood there like, wtf just happened? It was an earthquake and a bloody strong one, the strongest I've ever felt, 5.9 in magnitude strong. An emergency alarm went off on the street, birds chirped, and dogs barked like crazy. Once I got into bed, I couldn't sleep. My thoughts started racing. I thought about the earthquake in Turkey, the fact that we live on a third floor of a high story building, and that my mum hasn't spoken to me in a month. My body felt tense, and my heart was still racing. It took me a while to calm my nervous system down, and it got me wondering, what if I died today?

It wasn't long ago I thought about this question. On my flight from London Heathrow to Bogota El Dorado, our plane unexpectedly hit turbulence mid-flight. Now I've flown a lot, like a lot, so I have a sense of what's normal and what's not. First, our plane had an accelerated nose upwards, and then the nose-dived dramatically downwards for longer than usual. You know it's bad when you hear a chorus of screams rippling down the aisle. Again, my body tensed up, and I thought a million things in those seconds. I asked myself the question again, "what if I died today?

The first time I asked myself the question, "What if I'd died today", was on Friday 13th November, when I was in Paris with friends. We had planned to go out the night I arrived, and I had asked a friend for bar recommendations. I'd picked your typical French bar with a terrace outside from his list. We got ready and headed out. On the way to the bar, a friend mentioned a cool venue: a fully functioning laundromat where you walked through a door disguised as a washing machine to a hidden speakeasy. "Let's go there then. That sounds way cooler." I didn't realise we were making a life-and-death decision in that split second. It would be a few hours before I would get a text from my brother asking if I was okay, followed by everyone's phones lighting up one by one in this dimly lit room with the news that there were coordinated terrorist attacks, of which one was at the bar we were due to go.

The days following shook me and made me question whether I was living the life I wanted to live. It's funny that these questions only get thought of when our life is in danger or threatened, but I also learnt that these questions surface on behalf of others. Just three months prior, I had reconnected with a childhood friend I'd lost contact with, and we had bumped into each other more than twenty years later on the street. In the six months that followed, we kept missing each other and relying on social media to connect, until we missed each other altogether when she died in an avalanche in Mont Blanc. I remember seeing the BBC article on my Facebook feed whilst on a work night out. I broke down crying and felt an overwhelming regret of not making more of an effort to see each other. In that moment I had the impulse to go to her place of work for whatever reason, and I heard from her colleagues about how much "she lived for the weekends and how much she loved her passion, mountaineering."?

At a time when I was living for the weekends and depressed dreading the work weeks, that one sentence was a catalyst for looking at my own life and knowing changes needed to be made.?

When I had an ectopic pregnancy, three years ago, I realised that this was a potentially life-threatening situation. It made me question, "if I died today, have I done everything I wanted to do?" This led to a long string of actions, from moving to a different country, ticking more items off my bucket list or, as I prefer it called, my fuck-it list. There was also a realisation that I couldn't do those things with the relationship I was in. Many people often talk about the courage I have to move countries, explore my ancestry as a personal project, and enrol on a Death Doula just because, and I think a lot of it comes from this underlying philosophy of "If I die today…". I always believe that there's always a way if we want something, no matter the circumstances. It might not be easy, but there is always a way.?

To live the philosophy of "If I die today" is to listen to our intuition, that gentle whisper we sometimes drown out. Listen to our soul's agitation when it's not on its path. To listen to what our heart truly desires.

The beauty of last night was that two things happened. First, at midnight just before I went to bed and before the earth quaked under my feet, I felt a deep sense of love for my friends back home. So one by one, I texted them an old photo of us with the simple text, "I miss you". This morning post-earthquake, I wondered if last night would have been my last night, I am so glad I told people I love how much they meant to me, even if it was only eight characters long and took me a few seconds to send. The second thing was that when I was catastrophising with high levels of fear, I asked myself the question I always ask myself in these near-death experiences, "If I die today…" I replied, "I would be happy with the life I lived" and I noticed how far I've come with living a life true to myself.

With love and magic,

#AuthenticAlex

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Upcoming news and events…

I recently launched the Café of Endings and New Beginnings with my wonderful friend Tracey McEachran. The Cafe is a virtual place created to explore all our griefs within community. There is power in the group, because everyone is holding up a mirror to allow us to see ourselves more fully by exploring what we cannot see on our own. Our next Café is this upcoming Monday 13th March and is by donation, you can?sign up here.

I've recently launched a new creative writing course based on my current Ancestral exploration, which you’ll be reading about soon. If you’re curious to connect with your ancestry, then?you can?find out more here. Beginners and experienced writers are all welcomed.

Lastly, I stopped coaching this time last year as I needed the space to get clear if it was something I wanted to continue to do and if so how my approach needed to evolve. I realised what needed changing was incorporating a more holistic approach that includes both the practical and the spiritual. I specialise in guiding people to cross the threshold. If you’re curious to know more, please?reach out.