MK "Kathy" McDaniel: From a Place of Darkness Into an Ocean of Love

Medical Details

At 53, after months caring for her best friend through leukemia in Seattle until his death in November, she caught a severe flu that became pneumonia and then acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). She says she was given a 38 percent chance of living, placed on a ventilator and in a drug-induced coma for almost three weeks, and her family was told she probably would not survive. She woke with a tracheostomy, unable to move anything but one finger and to blink, having dropped to 86 pounds from tube feeding. She was in the hospital about a month.

The Experience

Kathy McDaniel was raised a devoted Catholic and believed everything she was taught. At 53, she moved to Seattle to care for her best friend during his leukemia treatment. After he died, worn out in every way, she fell ill with a flu that turned into ARDS and was placed in a drug-induced coma.

She says she became conscious in complete darkness and silence. A reddish glow appeared, then a swirling fog, heat, a terrible smell and the sound of shrieking and moaning. A booming voice asked, "Do you know where you are?" When she answered that she hoped she was wrong, it laughed. She turned and ran into the darkness.

What followed, she describes, was a series of distressing scenes: a ruined, burning city where ragged people told her they were all alone; a strange stage where a relative and her friends mocked her; a demon who promised to free her if she cut down an endless field of thorny blackberry canes with child's scissors, which grew back as fast as she cut them; and a long, empty road where a relative refused her food, saying it was for the important people. She was attacked by a crowd of figures on the road, then led with other weeping women through deep, freezing snow to a cabin. Throughout, she was told to despair and give up.

In the cabin, she was told it was Christmas on Earth. Refusing to give up, she began singing her favorite carol, "Away in a Manger." The other women joined her. The figure guarding them lunged, Kathy closed her eyes, and everything went dark.

When the light returned, she was filled with tremendous love, joy and bliss, as if every part of her were swimming in an ocean of love. In a white space like a cathedral stood her best friend, who had died a month earlier. He looked about 35, healthy, wearing the sweater she had given him for Christmas, and was so happy he was skipping. Beside him was a table with a great open book. He told her, "Mary Kay, you've got too much left to do."

She then found herself beside a stream in a lovely meadow, where women speaking an unfamiliar language gave her a handmade quilt and lacy gifts. She feels this was a gentle time out before her return. Then she woke to her family saying, "Mom's awake," and telling her that a prayer chain had been going around the world.

How It Changed Their Life

She says she was depressed and haunted at first, and that people didn't want to hear her story, so she wrote it down. Ten years later she found IANDS. She now believes God is all-loving and all-forgiving and would never condemn anyone, and that she experienced that dark place because she believed she would. She no longer feels like a victim, feels freer, and knows she is going home. She wrote a memoir about her experience.