The Latte and the Log

The last Wednesday of May this year, I sat at my kitchen table, hands wrapped around a warm ceramic mug, sipping a latte I’d made just right. The weather was finally nice again, the kind that draws you outdoors on two human-powered wheels. As I stared out the window, looking at the trees and feeling very relaxed, a realization surfaced that shook me more than any fall off my bike ever had.

In August of 1998, I should have died or at least been significantly paralyzed. I was riding downhill mountain bike trails in Winter Park, Colorado. 

It was a solo training day. After a weird argument with my boyfriend, we decided to go our separate ways, him to ride up a technical trail with lots of rocks and then ride down a service road, and me to go up on the ski resort chairlift and then ride down a trail. We would each do repeats of these and meet at home for dinner.

Riding up the chairlift was beautiful and peaceful, and riding down I pushed myself hard. While waiting in line for the fourth ride up the chairlift, I had a feeling, something like a pause… to stop… to not take the chairlift up again. I ignored it. Flying downhill as I had done for the previous three runs, I passed another rider on a full suspension downhill racing bike. He was wearing full padding, including a spine protector and a full helmet. I was riding a hardtail (front suspension only) very lightweight titanium bike, one that had previously been ridden by my boyfriend’s deceased wife who had died of cancer about a year before I met him. I had my own bikes, but this was the perfect bike for uphill training, and when he took it out for me to ride that day, I didn’t ask or object, because it was an amazing bike to ride.

After passing the rider, my confidence soared. Until it didn’t. A log I’d easily jumped the previous three times – this fourth time I did not.

I hit the log with the front wheel, went flying, hit the ground, felt my brain hit the inside of my head, and my helmet cracked. Then I left my body.

There was something like a light or a presence. And there was someone I instantly recognized yet had never met before – my grandfather, Adam, dead in Poland decades before I was born. He didn’t say much, something muted like “Not now,” and then very clearly “Stop being so reckless.” It was amazing!

Then I was back, lying on the trail. The rider I’d passed had caught up and was asking if I was OK. 

One moment I was with Adam in the presence, in the love, and in the truth. The next moment I was back on the ground, looking up at the sky through the trees, dirt in my mouth, time slowed, and feeling stunned. I made sure not to move, especially my head. 

The voice of the rider I’d passed was now close by: “You were flying, do you race?” He was standing over me, kind, casually lifting his helmet’s visor, unaware that I had just left my body. “Yes” I said, though my racing is more uphill. “I’m OK.” He rode off. But I wasn’t okay. I just wanted to be, and it made no sense for me to tell him I was okay.

There was something very, very wrong. And then it came – like a wave. It was not pain or adrenaline as I would have expected; it was more like a presence or a current. It was me, running energy through my body. Quiet. Focused. Intentional without trying. Like some deeper part of me knew exactly what to do to keep me from being paralyzed … or maybe even actually leaving the planet. I wanted to go back there, wherever that love was with Adam, and my soul overrode my intense human desire.

Ok, fingers first, then toes… all good… wait. Then, from the ankles all the way to my arms and shoulders, slowly and methodically, waiting just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. Then, slowly and carefully, I moved my head and waited. Then I just got up, picked up the cracked helmet, got on the bike and continued down the trail to the base of the ski area.

Not because I felt okay or strong, but because there was no alternative in my mind. And then I rode back home, each turn of the pedals… I am… breathing. I am…breathing. 

I started to speak out loud I am… riding my bike… on a paved bike trail along a tributary of the Colorado River… riding over a nice bridge… riding through a campground and there is a smell of wood fires and steak grilling and people talking and laughing. And then there was the bottom of the small hill leading to home. Still feeling no pain, I rode up the hill.

In the bathroom, I began filling the tub with cold water and got some ice from the freezer. I stood near the tub with my clothes on, just listening to the water, unsure what came next. My body felt foreign. Seemingly intact, but alien. Watching the water rise, I think I wanted proof that I was really still alive, apparently believing the water would tell me for sure.

Later, when my boyfriend returned from his ride and saw the cracked helmet, I asked him to look over my body. He scanned the bruises, scrapes, and swelling and said flatly, “You look like you got hit by a car.” I told him what happened. Not about Adam, just the crash, and that I took an ice bath and didn’t want to go to the clinic. The next day, he inspected the bike and saw the damage: the seat stays snapped and other connections cracked. “You broke a titanium bike? Who does that?” His face seemed to go white, then red. Rage overtook him, then something else. He collapsed. It was the bike that had belonged to his deceased wife, the bike he had asked me to ride that day, and now it was dead too. I understood. And I didn’t. It was a moment of quiet endings that echoed forward for months.

Time passed and life changed, as it does. What stayed was that feeling of love. It wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t parental. It wasn’t spiritual in any dogmatic sense. It was something vast, soft, complete. It held me in the moment I left the world, then followed me back into it. Like music I couldn’t unhear.

For years, I analyzed it, comparing it to the closest thing I had felt in this lifetime: the love of my father. That came close. But this? This was different. Impossible to name. I simply called it: The overwhelming feeling of love for which I have no reference.

Eventually, I told my father about the accident. He listened quietly and didn’t ask many questions. But the next time I visited my parents, I noticed something new: a photo of Adam, something I knew right away, framed and placed on the wall near where my father sat. No words. Just presence. When my father passed, just over a year ago, I felt him, too. The night of the day he died when I was driving home, I clearly heard him say: “This… is amazing.” When he was alive, he’d joked that death must be good: “No one seems to come back.”He did come back, at least to say hello.

And yet, even that love from my father, as tender and strong and true as it was, still wasn’t as same as that love. The crash love. The NDE love. That Adam love. And I never quite figured it out. Until May 28, 2025, more than 25 years after the experience.

✨AI Generated

It was just a latte. A Wednesday morning. The kind of quiet you don’t plan but fall into. I was sitting at my kitchen table, staring at the trees outside, the sunlight streaming through the window almost directly onto the mug. I’d made the latte well – creamy, warm, exactly right – and as I sat there, something opened. No warning. No drama. Just… truth. The memory of the crash had been circling again lately. It always comes back this time of year, maybe because of the return of the bike riding season. Especially on the downhills, especially when I’m flying, I found myself thinking of that day more and more. Of Adam. Of that feeling. Of the love.

And then:

It is me. That love… is me. 

The feeling of love I have no reference for isn’t foreign or something outside of me. It is the love I have… for myself. I sat with the mug in my hands and felt it wash over me. Emotions rose like a tide: tears, a laugh, disbelief. And a thought: ?!?! ?!?! (Actual more like “Holy Sh*t. It took me over 25 years to figure out what this feeling is?”) And then, I felt the same current move through my body, like it did on the day of the crash.

An hour later, I was in a doctor’s office. It had been on the calendar for weeks, a second round of trigger point therapy for tight knots in my right and left trapezius muscles. Nothing special. It was only the second time I had seen this specialist, but he is a doctor who talks of intuition and also works with hospices. Sitting on the exam table, the current from earlier was stronger now. I felt like me was finally inhabiting me. 

As the doctor placed his hand gently along my neck and shoulder, I mentioned the bike accident, not expecting anything. He said, simply: “Things stay in the body until they are ready to be released.” It was as if he’d been handed a line from a script I didn’t know I was living. He continued the treatment, needle in place, pressure applied, and it felt like more than fascia was loosening. It was like the past itself was softening its grip. Finishing up, he said “Your labs look good. I’ll see you when you need me again.”

I stepped outside into the sunlight, unsure of what kind of world I was walking into. Because everything felt the same. And completely different.

That night I slept well. Deep, dreamless, undisturbed sleep… just pure rest. But in the morning, I did not want to move. I stayed in bed until noon, and a kind of heaviness set it. Not sadness or despair, it was just… stillness. As if some part of me was stunned, not by anything new, but by what had been there all along. Or maybe it was mourning all the years I’d lived without realizing that precious feeling was me loving me. Eventually, I got out of bed, put on my shoes, and went for a gentle run-walk. My body moved, my heart beat, and the current was still there.

Since that morning with the latte, the realization, and the current, something shifted. No fireworks. Nothing on the outside changed. But inside? Something landed, this time without the crash.

The feeling of love I have no reference for was just there, and familiar and integrated. It was always there when I needed it, but that morning at my kitchen table, I saw what I hadn’t before: It wasn’t something from outside of me, it was mine. 

My love. My energy. My presence.

And now I know:

I can feel the current and still be tired. I can feel steady and still lock myself out of my home. I can feel deeply okay and still have waves of grief. 

That’s the AND. The Human and the Master. The current and the weariness. The energy and the everyday.

Crimson Circle has been saying it for years: It’s all your energy, and I thought I got it. Really, I did. I nodded while watching Shouds, and repeated it like I knew, but I’d missed it. Completely.

What part of me thought I understood? (The smart part that says “yes, yes, of course” out loud during channels.) And yes, it turns out Adamus is right. The smarter you think you are, the longer it may take. 

What’s funny now is realizing how long I stayed out of my body after the crash. Functioning fine but floating above it all. Not fully in. For me, grounding helped me recognize what had been there all along.

And that latte? That was the Allow.

No effort. No technique. Just presence. That was enough.

The time is now.

Por fin.

“The time is now” – A line from a song titled Fall

“Por fin” (At Last/Finally) – The title of this song