During March 2016, my daughter suffered a heart attack from a spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD). We learned that it is a very rare condition that can occur in postpartum women with fluctuating hormones. It happened just one day after coming home from the hospital with her newborn son.

We were already grieving from the loss of my husband, her father, who had died from heart failure just 4 months before. Feeling desperate, I briefly worried about how they would take care of their new baby. In my old life, the story I would have concocted about a husband, his daughter, and their hearts would have sent me into a tailspin, but I remembered my improbable story and it saved me.

For much of my adult life, work had been my primary focus. I’d lose track of time finishing some project or getting ready for a presentation. Our daughter heard her father say more than once, “Let’s call your mom at work. She should be home by now.” It wasn’t that I was passionate about my corporate job. In fact, I was unhappy because my performance anxiety kept me tightly wired. I had moved up the corporate ladder, but had this need to succeed that overwhelmed almost everything else.

The crazy life I had been living was based on a major misunderstanding. The wound came from a mistaken belief that I learned very early in life growing up with an alcoholic father in an enabling family. I believed that in order to be loved, I needed to succeed.

I was rewarded for being good. Whether it was achieving good grades in school, developing new friendships or finding new jobs, if it was acceptable to my parents, I received a lot of attention. I was second of five girls, one of whom accused me of being the successful, favorite child. That made my anxiety worse.

These kinds of beliefs are just misinterpretations from growing up. We all experience them. Mine just happened to be deep seated. Because I received recognition from my parents that was performance based, I had difficulty feeling the love that was certainly behind their praise. Instead, I felt the intense pressure to succeed.

I tried all kinds of remedies to get rid of the shame for never being enough and to calm the anxiety that ensued, but there was no resolution until I met an intuitive teacher. He taught me about universal energy and how our thoughts create our reality. He suggested that by changing my thoughts, I could learn to trust the inner wisdom that exists in all of us. Ask it for help, he said.

It wasn’t long before I started experiencing some amazing situations, like the sudden appearance of a significant amount of money, almost to the penny, that I needed in my work budget. Or the debilitating back problems that challenged me for decades. The pain was worse after surgery, but resolved itself during a 20-minute session with my intuitive healer. Even my husband and children were noticing their own inexplicable experiences.

There was still a nagging feeling that these stories could all be coincidences, but because there were so many examples, I just knew I was bringing them to me by the way I was thinking. Then an extraordinary episode happened.

Our daughter was out of town and her then fiancé was unavailable at a remote location when she called me sobbing on the phone, struggling to share what had happened. The intern caring for their dog accidentally left the door ajar. Her beloved rescue dog, Clyde, had escaped earlier that morning.

As dusk descended on the northern California Preserve where they lived, Clyde was at risk of being attacked overnight by the coyotes and other wild animals that live in the park. In a few weeks, my daughter was to be married and the panic in her voice told me the confluence of events was pushing her beyond her limits.

I crawled into bed late that evening still thinking about how this might affect her wedding weekend. I decided to listen to my recorder and capture one of the conversations with my intuitive teacher, hoping I would find something that would help ease her worry and guilt.

My husband was sleeping next to me and I didn’t want to wake him by turning on the light, so I walked to the kitchen to grab my mobile phone and got back into bed. I put on my headset to listen to the recording, and used the phone to make notes from our conversation.

Without my glasses, I typed words into the phone but didn’t send anything to me. I planned to wait until morning to read what I had typed, and then email it to my daughter.

I must have dozed off as I continued listening to the recording. I woke up in the middle of the night to a flashing light on my phone. I thought it was odd that I had received an “out of office” message from one of our corporate executives, but I quickly let go of the thought and drifted back to sleep.

Early the next morning the red light on my phone was blinking again. I noticed an email from the head of our compliance group and briefly read the first two sentences of the note. “Thanks for this, but it’s a little cryptic. Is all okay?”

My eye had caught the next email from someone on my own team. “I need to talk with you. It’s urgent. Please call me,” he implored. He answered his phone with “How is everything? Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” I responded. “What’s up?”

“Someone forwarded me the message you sent them. You better check your email,” he said.

I could hardly believe what I saw: “We become what we believe; all you have to say is to want to become (feel) energized; you can never tell life how to bring you what you want; you can tell life what you want but not how to bring it to you; main reason we’re here is to learn we create with our thoughts and to work with the energies.”

What the f*** just happened?! Oh my God! The email went out!

For some inexplicable reason, my thoughts intended for my daughter had gone to a random group of executives and staff members throughout the company. Over 40 people had received it!

I found my husband sitting in our living room. I could hardly breathe. How could this have happened? I don’t have any of these names in my phone! There is no distribution list! I did not send this out! What is going on?

An executive in risk management, whose job it was to ensure our corporate systems and processes were never vulnerable, sent an email suggesting I contact a staff member in our technology security group to find out how this happened. “It could be a major problem if something like this was sent outside the company.” I called the staffer in security and he investigated, and then called me back. They had no explanation.

I sent a note to my boss as a heads up and she replied that the top HR officer, who had received the email, had already forwarded it to her. I thought the corporate cyber world was on fire with my story and I felt overwhelmed with embarrassment.

Shortly afterwards, though, two encouraging communications with trusted advisors calmed me. One was with a senior executive who told me she had been riding in the car with her husband when she saw my email and shrieked so loud that he almost ran off the road. She couldn’t stop laughing. She sent an email that said, “There are no coincidences or accidents in the universe!!” I began to relax. There was a kindred spirit out there in the corporate hierarchy.

The other conversation was with my coach who was very familiar with my struggle to show vulnerability. How could this have happened? I needed to know. She responded, isn’t it amazing? Without technical or rational explanation, we laughed together at the significance of this unexplainable occurrence.

Then I remembered my most recent pleas for help. They went something like this: Show me how to be vulnerable, to take myself less seriously, and to laugh more. Help me share my true nature and intuitive gifts. Let me talk freely about how I overcame my struggles. Help me use my spiritual skills to create a new life.

No longer fearful or embarrassed, I was now thankful that this not so random event had occurred. The people who received my email were the last people I would have wanted to share those thoughts with. I was not prepared to speak with any of them about universal energy, but they had unknowingly become the breakthrough group for my coming out.           

The email was the absolute shift that enabled me to begin to accept the unexplainable. I now understood, in an undeniable way, that what I think about is what comes back to me. The spontaneous events that followed Clyde’s escape exposed my vulnerability. And he came home unharmed.

When I received the call in March 2016 and we rushed my daughter to the emergency room, I remembered the email in the middle of the chaos, and began to calm myself. I trusted that she would be okay. Today, she is happy, healthy and thriving as a Conservation Medicine Veterinarian and the mother of an active 11-month old boy.

After that infamous email, I opened my heart to the universe.

I had tried for many years to leave my corporate job, going to great lengths to qualify for a retirement package. I even called my HR representative while she was on vacation, to ask if I could be included on a newly created list. She said no. My role was considered critical to the company.

As my husband’s health deteriorated and the expensive medical bills started to mount, we knew it was important to have a secure income with good health insurance. But now, instead of worrying about not having enough, I remembered the email story and asked the universe for help.

My retirement did not materialize as I thought it would. I was shocked at first. After 20 years of reviews that exceeded company expectations, I was told that executives could not trust me. I still had emails from many of them thanking me for a recent contribution or congratulating me on an accomplishment. I couldn’t imagine that there was a trust issue.

I was given an option to work very quickly to restore their trust in me. Or I could retire. I didn’t think about it at the time, but wondered later if this was caused by the telepathic email that went to many of them the year before.

My retirement package arrived just when my husband was admitted to the hospital. I was able to spend the last year of his life focusing on him. What a gift that was to both of us.

My retirement couldn’t save him, the man I had loved for 36 years, but it did give me the gift he wanted me to have. It allowed me to help care for our new grandson. Within the year, I traveled with my son to Europe on his business trip, flew my family to Maine for a vacation, and drove across the country to live in California. I could also now spend time on a new business idea that would allow me to help others.

I’m convinced that my willingness to believe and trust in something that cannot be seen or heard, and can never be proven, is how I’m drawing these experiences to me.

Experiences are the only way to discover the truth.

Make your intentions clear and then let them go, as if they are already here. Don’t tell the universe how to bring them to you. Trust that the wisdom within you already knows.

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I’d love to hear your thoughts and stories.

Blog: www.glass-full.me

Email: margaret@dimidia.com

Twitter: Margaret Simeone@Meg_Simeone

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Amazon.com: Avery & Me: An Intuitive Healer, Skeptical Seeker and A Life Transformed