In the late 1990's and in 2003 I fell a couple of times and hit my head really hard. The last time, I should have gone to the ER but it was late in the day, I was very dizzy and had no one to take me there. I lived in the countryside and many miles away from the Hospital, so, like so many other times where life circumstances did not allow me to seek medical help. I decided to wait and work with my healing helpers.  I ended up fine, but in 2004 I had a mini stroke while driving down my driveway on the way out of town. When I came through I was pretty disoriented and everything felt very strange as if I was in a different reality, but again, not knowing I had a mini stroke, I went to work the next day as if nothing had happened. A colleague at work who was also a volunteer Paramedic was very alarmed when I told him of the incident.
I didn't notice any major changes in my brain function so I went on with life.
Fast forward to 2016, I had a scary episode I am sure it was a stroke. I was outside digging weeds  when it happened. I'm sure my Guides brought me inside as everything was blacking out and I was going down on the asphalt fast. I really don't know how I made it inside, and I was praying "God, please, not yet.." My Guides were quick and swift and it didn't take long I started to come back to a sense of "normalcy".
After that I started to notice changes in my ability to analyze and rationalize things. Short term memory was sketchy for quite sometime but it finally came back a year later. The right hemisphere of my brain was alive and well and I learned to use it to locate myself in time and space. It is now a normal thing for me.
For example, if I have to go to a place I've never been before, obviously I get directions first, but I rely on the visual memory of the Google maps rather than the written directions, as sometimes my brain scrambles to process them. My brain became visual, my ability to process things rely on feeling and intuition, body sensations and inner knowing.
Before all this happened, I had the ability to solve Math problems and had a very good understanding of Physics. I also had a very high I.Q.
Well, today I took the MENSA test online just for fun. It wasn't fun. The number sequences and letter sequences were incomprehensible to me. I could not get my left hemisphere to engage.
I understand this does not make me less intelligent, but that I have a different type of intelligence. One that most people do not know it is available to them. The right hemisphere is like an uncharted map I am populating now.  I miss the quickness of response I had from my left side of the brain but life is full of challenges and this one fits me.
As a Shaman, the overuse of the left hemisphere gets in the way because it is always trying to figure out why, how and where,  So maybe this was meant to be. I don't' question why and how anymore, I just AM.

In an NPR interview today with Barbra Streisand, the singer / composer was asked what motivated her to write the song "Don't Lie to Me".
Besides the current political climate, she mentioned early childhood events that shaped her sense of justice and truth. This deeply spoke to me, as I too was constantly lied to for most of my childhood by my close family members.
Because of my early NDE I developed a kin sense of knowing what the truth is behind people's facades. I just knew that the words being spoken did not match the energy or body language behind them.

Nobody ever told me truth. Nobody ever told me anything, as if I didn't matter.
Nobody told me my mother had another man in her life after she and my father divorced.
Nobody told me why nobody cared about me or my existence.
Nobody told me why I was being replaced with another child. All I knew was that one day a baby was brought into the family.
I had no idea where it came from. I was told he was my brother, but my grandmother was quick to correct that statement to "an adopted brother". My grandmother felt shame that my mother had a child out of wedlock, and worse off, with someone not of the same religion.

When I was seven years old, I was pulled out of Hebrew school and enrolled in the Catholic school down the street where I learned the meaning of being bullied, humiliated and ridiculed, not only by the children, but the teachers and nuns. My mother never told me the truth.
I understood forty years later that, as an Architect, her income fluctuated with the market. When the economy was bad, she had no work and had to cut back wherever she could., thus no more Hebrew school. I don't think she understood the consequences of not choosing a public school for me. It was just her poor decision.

I spent my entire life not able to relate successfully with others because of this inner knowing that they were not being truthful. I learned to just accept that most people have their reasons for lying, because maybe the truth is just to painful to express.  On the other hand I cherish those in my life that openly speak and live their truth, no matter how alienating from society that might be.

As a Shaman / Healer, my ability to "see" beyond coping mechanisms in others is what enables me to cut to the chase and address the issue that brought someone to me for healing.
So after all I feel there is a blessing in my pursuit of the truth.