I Had a Near-Death Experience at Age 3. Here is How It Healed My Life
Host Irene Weinberg welcomes therapist and author Sally Dukes to discuss her incredible near-death experience and journey of spiritual awakening after surviving open-heart surgery at just three years old. Sally describes the purple wave of love she met in the dark tunnel, a memory that completely removed her fear of dying and guided her back home to herself. She shares how she used Sandplay Therapy to translate the unconscious memories of her early trauma without relying on sterile language. Even when facing breast cancer, deep grief, and a major move to a Greek island, she’s always chosen conscious resilience over the swamp of suffering. Her beautiful memoir, Drummer Girl, invites us to find genuine joy in life by looking at our obstacles as opportunities for a profound rebirth.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL HEAR ABOUT THINGS LIKE:
- How a near-death experience at age three became a lifelong compass for understanding consciousness and suffering.
- The therapeutic power of Sandplay Therapy in recovering childhood memories and healing unconscious trauma without language.
- How a surgeon’s simple sketch of an elephant witnessed and resolved night terrors after open-heart surgery.
- The choice to meet major life challenges like breast cancer with conscious resilience instead of despair.
- Why a bold move to a Greek island during the pandemic brought a simple, joyful connection to nature and self.
SOME QUESTIONS IRENE ASKS SALLY DUKES:
- What was it like as you were pulled through the dark tunnel, and what did the purple energy of love feel like?
- How did studying Sandplay Therapy in Zurich help you find a language for your unconscious childhood experiences?
- Can you share the story of the green dog and the hand-drawn elephant, and how they acted as your guides and keepers?
- How did writing your memoir allow you to witness your own journey and understand the interplay between life and death?
📖➡️ Get Sally’s Book, Drummer Girl: The Story of Life after Death Here: https://bookshop.org/a/93249/9798897470549
GRIEF AND REBIRTH LINKS
✨Grief & Rebirth Resources and Healing Tools ✨
Welcome to a space for finding healing modalities, inspiration, and growth. Below, you’ll find some of the most important resources to help guide you through your journey.
📧Begin your healing journey today—sign up to receive all 10 days of guidance, comfort, and hope: https://ireneweinberg.com/#signup
—
📰 Stay updated on new episodes and reflections, resources, events, and healing tips by subscribing to our Grief and Rebirth Substack: https://substack.com/@griefandrebirth
—
🎧Grab the audiobook They Serve Bagels in Heaven by Irene for FREE! Sign up for Audible’s 30-day trial today using her special link 👉 https://amzn.to/4dG4l4w and start listening instantly 🥯✨
OR
🥯 Grab Your Hard Copy of ‘They Serve Bagels in Heaven’ Here: https://amzn.to/3XrE995
—
📚 ‘Good to the Last Drop! Embracing Your Life’s Third Chapter’
Embrace your third chapter in life with this empowering anthology now available on Amazon or Bookshop!
📖Get Your Copy Here: https://amzn.to/3VJgEa5
—
🛍️Curated Collection of Irene’s Recommended Healing & Self-Care Books and Essentials
🔗 Check it Out here: https://www.amazon.com/shop/irenesweinberg
—
📚Grief & Rebirth Bookshop
👀 Find your next source of healing, inspiration, or spiritual wisdom at our online bookstore, featuring books from our Grief and Rebirth guests!
🔗Explore Here: https://bookshop.org/shop/griefandrebirth
—
📽️ Watch Irene’s Spiritual Awakening Story
✨Hear about the spiritual journey that led Irene to create the Grief & Rebirth Podcast.
🔗Watch Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0mJWKfg5PM
—
🎤 Become a Guest on the Grief & Rebirth Podcast
🕊️Are you a grief or trauma specialist, psychic medium, charitable organization, healer, or individual with a story of loss and healing? Irene invites you to share your voice and story with our global Grief and Rebirth community.
🔗Submit Your Application Here: https://ireneweinberg.com/be-on-the-podcast/
—
💖Affiliate Disclosure
Grief and Rebirth LLC may earn commissions from purchases through the links above. Your support helps us continue providing resources and valuable content for your healing journey. We only recommend what we’ve personally used or believe will benefit you.
—
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
I Had a Near-Death Experience at Age 3. Here is How It Healed My Life
I hope this message finds each of you very well. I’m speaking to you from my studio in West Orange, New Jersey. I could not be more delighted to welcome Sally Dukes. A woman’s life has unfolded through many rich and varied chapters, from running a seasonal business on Nantucket to earning her Master’s in Counseling Psychology to studying Sandplay Therapy with the late Dora Kalff in Zurich.
Sally has worked with children and adults. Also, taught middle school for seven years and weaving together for her love of history with her deep understanding of adolescents. Sally’s new memoir, Drummer Girl: The Story of Life after Death, the story of a journey home. It’s a story of resilience and Sally’s lifelong search for what is radiant, true and soul-awakening beneath the surface of ordinary life what she offered refers to as the luminous.
At the center of her journey, is the near-death experience Sally had at just three years old during open-heart surgery. An experience that stayed with her for 70 years. She describes being pulled through a dark tunnel toward a clear radiant light and meeting a presence of unconditional love. That moment became the compass for her life, shaping her understanding of consciousness, suffering and what it means to come home to ourselves.
Drummer Girl unfolds in vignettes. Some are first person and some are third weaving symbolism, memory, and metaphor into a narrative that reads almost like a novel. Characters like Green Dog and a hand-drawn elephant appear across decades as guides, keepers and reminders of the inner world Sally has been exploring her entire life. Through illness, loss, breast cancer at 45, and even a bold move to a Greek Island during COVID, Sally shows us how meeting life’s obstacles with awareness can open the door to awakening rather than despair.
Her Memoir is a powerful reflection on the tension between life and death, the mysteries that shape us and the courage it takes to heal. I’m looking forward to talking with Sally, who joins us from Syros, Greece, about the near-death experience she had just three years old during open-heart surgery, and how meeting life’s obstacles with awareness can open the door to awakening rather than despair.
We’ll talk about how it is in our management of these obstacles that we grow into the people we are meant to become. How true healing comes when our stories are told to someone who truly listens, and more. Sally’s story will surely help each of us to see how each experience of grief can become part of our own unfolding rebirth, guiding us toward a deeper, more awakened version of ourselves.
Sally, a warm welcome to the show.
Thank you very much. It’s nice to be here.
It’s a pleasure to have you here. It’s lovely. Let’s start from the beginning because how many of us have been near death experiences when we were only three years old? During open-heart surgery, no less. The fact that you’ve remembered this for 70 years is very profound. Could you share what happened as you were pulled through that dark tunnel towards the clear light? How did meeting the presence of unconditional love shape your understanding of consciousness and suffering? What does it take to come home to ourselves?
That’s a big question, Irene.
Start with what was it like as you were pulled through the dark tunnel?
The Childhood Tunnel Journey to Purple Love
I have a recurring dream as a child that I was pulled into a black tunnel. I was pulled along and I was screaming because it was frightening. On the outside of the tunnel, they were people that I didn’t know, but they didn’t help me. I went into the tunnel and there was a loud noise. I remember just being terrified.
What was the loud thing you were hearing?
I've never feared death because I know that on the other side it's pure love and beauty. It's just home. Share on X
I don’t know. It was like I was on a conveyor belt. It was chugging along. I was terrified until I saw this light. It was just a little light and it calmed me. I was being pulled towards the light and that was the luminous. With that, a wave of purple energy, which I call love. I don’t know what they would be because I don’t know what state we were in to have a language, but purple love. A feeling that you’ve never felt or I’ve never felt in this world, but a beautiful comforting energy surrounded me.
You hadn’t been away from home that long. You were just three years old. That’s considered home. You were coming home in a way before you were right. In what way has this near-death event that you had influenced your choices, perceptions and compass of life?
The problem was I never knew that it was in your death experience because I was three. For most of my life, I had this dream. I go to bed and I get the dream. I’d get all the feeling and love. I always wanted to go back to that space because that was pure beauty. That was pure oneness. I’ve always looked to go back. So much so that it’s been a thread through my entire life. It’s just home. I wanted to go home and I never feared death because I know that on the other side it’s pure love and beauty.
That’s so true. The other thing I want to ask you is, we’re talking about that home. By the way, it took away your fear of death, I would think.
It did.
You’ve never been afraid of dying. Your life has unfolded in so many rich chapters. You’ve brought a seasonal business on Nantucket. You’ve earned your Master’s in Counseling Psychology. You studied Sandplay Therapy with Dora Kalff in Zurich. You forgot middle school. That’s a lifetime just to those seven years teaching middle school. How did those experiences shape your understanding of the inner world of preparing to write your book?
Decoding Unconscious Trauma with Sandplay Therapy
It was the search. I was always searching to get back home. I was always searching. When I went to Zurich to study, I studied with Dora Kalff, who did work with adults and children in recovering language before there was language. It was a symbolic act. It’s a Sandplay tray and you work only with figures. You don’t speak. You can speak but you are not counting on language to uncover or recover a situation.
That was why I went to find out what happened. I wanted to know what happened. In the 1st century, there was the entire scene. It’s not conscious. It’s all unconscious. That’s usually the diagnosis, like, “What’s wrong?” There it is right in a tray. I had three huge train cars in the middle that were bigger than anything else in the tray. They didn’t have an engine. They didn’t have a caboose. They didn’t have a track. They were just stuck. The same number as the age I was when I had the surgery.
I had the tunnel and the nurses and the baby alone. There was a search. I went to find out what happened. That’s the same with going to grad school because I thought I could find a language for the experience. It was a program based on depth psychology. I knew that I would be able to find some depth language. I wanted language for the unconscious experience. In middle school, it was very cool.
It was cool because I have two middle school age children.
They need to be seen. Kids need to be seen. In my opinion as a teacher, they thrive if they can be seen. They don’t have to learn. I never tried to teach them the content of the learning. They did, but I wanted to teach them to love, learn and see who they were in relationship to learning and to get to know themselves. I was an English teacher, a history teacher and an Algebra teacher, but a lot of the writing was for them to come forward themselves. It was great. It was good.
I want to ask you. Your life has included illness, loss, breast cancer at 45. You’ve had a very easy life. Sally just put a piece of cake, and then you made a bold move to a Greek Island during COVID. How have you learned to meet obstacles with awareness rather than despair? Did that come from your experience? What has taught you that healing requires courage?
When I wrote the book, a few reviews that I got said this was her childhood trauma and I understand it was a trauma. What I would like for readers to see is that the other side of trauma, there’s resilience. We face obstacles. We face trauma to find a way through trauma or a way around trauma or a way to shift the consciousness around the trauma because we’re all human. We’re all going to have trauma. We all have pain. Those are our emotions. We’re also given the great gift of rebirthing or learning how to get around it. Go around the obstacle or go through the obstacle. I have a lot of resilience and there’s a way to get through. I know it takes time.
We face trauma to find a way through it or shift our consciousness around it. We're all going to have pain. Share on X
Choosing Conscious Resilience over the Swamp of Suffering
Do you think that it’s a choice? I think people who go through trauma, some of them don’t want to move forward and heal so they hang their hat on that issue that happens to them. In a way, maybe because of what you had learned during your death experience and all, maybe you had more awareness that I’m going to try to move through this consciously and heal us. Would you say it was a choice that you made?
Definitely. I always make that choice in everything. Move forward.
Good for you. You’ve been through a lot to keep moving forward. Let’s go to your Drummer Girl: A Story of Life After Death, the story of a journey home. Now everybody knows what the journey home is about. It reads almost like a novel. It unfolds vignettes across decades. Can you introduce us to your symbolic characters? The green dog and the hand drawing elephant who appear as guides, keepers, a reminder in the inner world you’ve been exploring your entire life. Why did you choose them? How did you know that they were guides, keepers and reminders? How did you structure all of that?
Drummer Girl: The Story of Life after Death
I didn’t do it on purpose. When I had the near-death and when I came home from the hospital, I would scream at night. They put me to bed, I’d go to sleep and I’d scream.
Is this after your open heart surgery and after the near-death experience?
This is afterwards. I’d scream and scream. My parents went crazy, so they took me back to Columbia Presbyterian in New York. I met with the surgeon and I met him alone. I remember this and people said, “How do you remember something at three years old?” It’s because you do remember. I remember I sat there and he said, “Tell me your dream.” I’m three and I don’t know that I could articulate it very well, but he did something cool.
How Being Witnessed Can Cure Night Terrors
While I was talking, he drew a sketch. I thought he was taking notes, perhaps. He was on a yellow pad.When I got done, he ripped it off and handed it to me. It was a sketch of an elephant on a yellow line on paper. He said, “Hang this over your bed and you’ll never have the dream again.” I did hang it over my bed and I didn’t have the screaming. I still have that dream now, but I had been heard. I had been seen and witnessed.
He gave me a way out, a way around it. People ask, “Do you still have it?” My parents are like, “Get that thing off the wall.” When it fell off the wall, they’re like, “Sweep it up,” because it didn’t mean anything. The green dog, the day I was leaving for the hospital, the neighbor on the corner gave me the green dog and that was the thing I took to the hospital with me. I’ve had it ever since.
When you talk about the green dog in your book, it’s very touching about how you took him everywhere you went and that comforted you when you were so little.
I can’t let him go.
Has your understanding of the luminous evolved over time, like a change?
What’s interesting is that I’m not looking for it anymore because of what I realized in all my searching. Have you ever read The Alchemist? Santiago goes out to find the treasure and he ends up going all the way around and meeting all these obstacles. He comes back and it is at home next to the tree where he first got the vision. That’s when I realized that this is home. It’s all good. I understand death and life are the same. We go through the shadows. We go through the light and what we need to do is to be able to undulate like that because this is it. This is life.
This is cool. Life is cool. We each come here with lessons to learn and you set up a bunch of lessons in your life to learn. Me, too. What the heck? Sometimes, you wonder at the beginning of that lifetime before you manifest, “What was thinking?” We’re talking about how in life we’re meant to encounter obstacles, large and small and how we meet them as who we were meant to become. Would you like to talk a little bit more about that? Are we programmed that these obstacles are part of a soul purpose?
Kids need to be seen. They thrive if they're witnessed and given space to show who they are in relationship to learning. Share on X
I believe that but I don’t know that other people would believe it, but I think they make you. It’s like I’m making a diamond and making it shine because you come up against it. You work it and you learn, then you go this way. No life is without obstacles. Some people would back away from them but we’re here for a reason.
Let’s talk about your Memoir. What inspired you to bring it into the world? I want you to talk about how your near-death experience shaped your sense of death so deeply that you no longer fear death, and I feel the same way because I had a near-death experience during the car accident also. It does change your, I call the angle on the dangle in life. Do you want to talk about how that influenced you? Now, you go through life and you go, “Whatever’s happening to me, it’s a lesson.” I was supposed to go through this and you’re not afraid of the endpoint.
I know what’s on the other side at least initially because I’ve experienced it. It’s a wonderful thing. It is. Also, when my mother died, she came that night. I didn’t know she had died. The purple energy came and surrounded me when I was in bed. I was like, “I think mom died,” and then the next morning I got up and she had died. I know that the other side is not that far away.
I always ask people, “What happened when they died when you were next to your loved one?” My grandmother sat up and she said, “They’re all here.” You’re met. You don’t die alone. You’re met. You’re guided. You’re with your loved ones at. I don’t know what they’re like, but you’re with them and I know that. Why would you fear that? You meet love. You’re with your loved ones. The only thing I fear is dying.
My mother used to refer to it as the age page like, “As the age page keeps going.” I’d be like, I have a passion about trying to keep myself healthy. I take care of myself because I know I’m not afraid of dying but until I get there, I have a lot to do. I want to feel good as I’m telling that. What would you say your story invites people to do? Does it invite them to understand about the healing power of coming into the light and going home? About the transformative power of being witnessed. How did writing Drummer Girl allow you to witness yourself in a new way? What were you hoping to accomplish with people who read your book?
One thing is, it’s a contemplation. It’s me contemplating. This is some journal entries and a lot of things. I put them together. There was always a time when I was troubled and I would write about it. That’s important to do. I don’t want anyone to dwell on sadness or trauma. I want them to see the interplay between life and death. The contemplation, thinking and being aware of it and the way it plays on in almost everything that we do daily.
What would you say is the difference between a person who lives consciously? Which happened to you. It happened to me after our experiences.
It’s very difficult to be with people that have no reflective capacity because the reflection, the looking inward is a very important thing, too.
If you’re looking inward, is that important?
Yes, because then who you are and you know you’re congruent and you present as who you are. You’re not faking.
You don’t have a mask on.
I can’t go to cocktail parties.
You’d walk in and you’re realizing all the different things that are going on beneath the surface.
You can take a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. Healing is our own job as evolving human beings. Share on X
Exactly. I’m also intuitive from the near-death experience, so I know a lot. When I get that incongruency, it bothers me. You can’t call people out on it because they’re not there yet.
Absolutely not. I liken it to my life. They’ll get it when they cross over. That’s how I always think about it when they’re ready. Is there anything else you want to tell us about Drummer Girl that you’d like our readers to know about your book?
It’s a very small book, so it’s not a big read. Everyone that has read it and has talked to me has found something in it that has been, I don’t want to say useful but something that they’ve thought about themselves or they’ve had that experience. They’ve been very happy to have it as a companion.
It’s beautiful. I want to know if you have a message about the importance of healing to share with our readers, especially about the role of story, presence and deep listening.
One time, I applied to this program at Columbia because it was called Narrative Medicine. At the medical school, they realized that this was a new phenomenon for them. Those patients healed better and quicker if you listened to what they had to say.
What a novel concept.
I applied and I got into the program. They said, “What do you want to do this for? You already write. You don’t need to learn how to write,” but I knew how to listen, so I didn’t need to be in the program. There was a novel concept for them that people heal if they’re witnessed, listened to and join them genuinely. You’re like that because you can come from that place of heart.
What you say is important for people to become conscious, if they can, and to heal their wounds and heal what’s going on in their lives. What’s the benefit of that as they move through their lives?
It’s very difficult because you can’t take a horse to water. You can take them to water, but you can’t make them drink. This is their job as an evolving human that they should be healing.
A lot of people reading this are probably going, “All this stuff that I’m going through, maybe I need to work with somebody and work out myself.” Otherwise, I may have to come back and repeat it all over again.
Why would you choose suffering when you can choose life?
Do you have a tip for finding joy in life, Sal?
Finding Joy in Life through Simplicity and Nature
I follow my own path and I have a family, but we are now in Greece. I’m on my sixth year of my visa. It’s the sea, the sun, and the earth. I find joy in life being here and all the senses. Someone said to me, “You’re so privileged.” We’re not privileged. We made a decision. We made a decision to live simply somewhere that fed us. Not where we had to feed our energy.
That sounds to me like a conscious choice.
Follow your heart. Follow your instincts.
Would you say, when you heal, you can tune into joy more easily?
You have to.
You don’t have a lot of interfering brain waves coming in.
Exactly.
Sally, as we close, I am reminded that every soul carries a story. Your journey invites us to look tenderly at our own lives to honor the obstacles that have shaped us and to trust that healing is not only possible but waiting for us the moment we choose awareness over fear.
I like that a lot. That’s perfect.
Your story encourages each of us to bring what has lived in the shadows into consciousness, as you remember that we are never alone on the path home to ourselves. Tell us about what you feel when we say, “Home to ourselves?”
Why would you choose suffering when you can choose life? Follow your heart and your instincts to live simply. Share on X
That’s our home. You have to trust yourself. That’s one thing I have learned from this. I’ve come up against a lot of obstacles. You can’t give yourself over to something you don’t believe in. Home, to me, is trusting right or wrong.
You’re not playing to what everybody else thinks. I get that feeling. You learn to listen to your own wise person inside to tune into your own intuition.
That’s right.
I want to thank you because this is a powerful interview. A lot of people are going to learn a lot from it. I appreciate you and I wish you abundant blessings always.
Thank you so much. It was a pleasure being with you.
Thank you. As I like to say, to be continued.
Guest’s Links:
About Sally Dukes
Sally Dukes owned and operated a seasonal business on Nantucket Island for 18 years. During that time, she earned a Masters in Counseling Psychology and studied Sandplay Therapy with the late Dora Kalff in Zurich.
She founded a therapy practice with children which later transitioned to working with adults. She became the editor of the Journal of Sandplay Therapy. In her fifties, she became a Middle School teacher.
With her BA in history, coupled with her therapeutic understanding of adolescence, this made for a rewarding way to spend the next 7 years. Upon moving to the West Coast, she became an independent editor. Her memoir, Drummer Girl, speaks to her near-death experience and her lifelong search to understand the numinous.
