Amber Kavanaugh: A Choice Made in a Garden of Light

Medical Details

On December 22, 2021, at age 40, Amber developed a severe headache from a left carotid artery dissection. She woke around 4:30 a.m. paralyzed on her right side and unable to speak. She had a completed MCA (M2) ischemic stroke and a secondary frontal lobe stroke; she says she is missing about two-thirds of the left side of her brain. She was given tPA, which did not help, and was life-flighted for possible brain surgery. On arrival she had a grand mal seizure from brain swelling. Doctors decided surgery would not help. She walked to the bathroom for the first time on about December 27.

The Experience

Amber Kavanaugh was 40, at the top of her game, and spending a happy December day making gingerbread houses with her family when a severe headache sent her to bed. She woke before dawn unable to move her right side or speak. In the hospital, doctors found a massive stroke. When clot-busting medication failed, her family was told to say goodbye, and she was flown by helicopter to another hospital, her husband allowed to ride beside her.

As the helicopter climbed, sunlight came through the window and touched her face. In that instant, she says, she was on the other side. She could still see her husband and her body, but felt little attachment to it. She closed her eyes and opened them in a beautiful garden. The grass and water felt like nothing she had ever known, and she admits she spent a long time simply feeling the grass under her feet. Everything glowed, she says, with the light of God, and love radiated from everything.

She was not alone. Her guides sat on a bench with her. She saw her husband and children, whom she understands as their higher selves, along with animals she had lost, her mother-in-law who died in 2011, and one beloved animal that, unknown to her then, would pass before she left the hospital. To one side stood a large crowd of people she did not recognize at first. Concentrating, she understood they were her other lives, gathered to support her.

She appeared to herself as the best version of herself, looking about 25 in a white eyelet dress, without pain or heaviness. She knew she was there to make a decision, and that no one would make it for her. Her guides showed her what each choice would bring. If she stayed, she saw how her family's lives would unfold, and felt peace even about that. If she returned, she would write books and speak about the gift of learning, but the next eighteen months, especially the first six to eight, would be the hardest of her life. She felt that every choice she had ever made now made sense, and that there was no judgment.

Communication was telepathic. She did not see God as a figure, but felt God as a guiding energy. Though it felt like fifty years, she believes it was only minutes. Her guides told her that if she chose to die, it would follow a seizure on December 23rd.

When she chose to come back, she was instantly out of the garden and in a light-filled space where she could watch her body. Not wanting to feel the seizure, she waited until it ended and her body fell into deep sleep, and then rejoined it. Days later, against every expectation, she walked.

How It Changed Their Life

She describes it as the most peaceful time of her life and wants people to know that we come here to learn and that, in her understanding, everything on the other side is love, with no punishment or judgment. She was shown that she would write books and speak about this, and she walked within days despite being told she would likely need continuous care.