My NDE (Near De*th Experience) wasn’t pretty lights and tunnel clichés. It was a hospital room in 2016 after multiple strokes. Stress had me in a chokehold and I was popping too many pills just to stay pain free, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually just to keep moving, just to keep the mask from slipping. That almost cost me my life.
I remember leaving my body. I remember The Crossroads.
Esu Ogbara was there. He didn’t drag me. He didn’t demand. He stood with me at the split and let me choose. In front of me: a beautiful tree, pasture of grass so green it didn’t look real, peace you could sink into. Rest. Finally. To my right: my body, my kids, the mess, the work I hadn’t finished.
This moment was horrifically beautiful. Horrific because I could feel how easy it would be to lay down. Beautiful because for the first time since I was 4, I wasn’t being forced.
See, I already knew my life was in jeopardy. In the days before the strokes, I was praying like a woman drowning. God, save me for my kids. Please. Don’t let them find me gone.
So when I stood at The Crossroads, gasping without lungs, the first thing I uttered was the thing Catholic school & Methodist Church beat into me: “I WONT BE GAY ANYMORE”.
I said it because I was terrified. They taught me I’d burn in hell for loving who I loved. That my queerness was the sin that would kill me. In IFA, hell nor Satan exist. But I didn’t know that yet. All I knew was fear.
And that’s when the voice came. Not booming. Not angry. Firm. Loving. Ancient.
“I DONT NEED YOU TO CHANGE WHO YOU ARE, I need you to change what you are doing”.
It knocked the wind out of me — except I wasn’t breathing.
What was I doing?
At that time I was BOSS LADY of The Box Secret Society. Outsiders called us a sex cult. We called ourselves an erotic entertainment group. We curated desire, power, secrets. We opened Pandora’s box every weekend and thought we could control what came out.
We couldn’t.
Weeks before the strokes, the darkness started visiting. Not metaphor. I mean shadows in corners that moved wrong. De*th sitting at the foot of my bed. Evil spirits pressing on my chest at 3am. I told people. They started calling me crazy. You need sleep. You need meds. You need Jesus.
But my gifts weren’t broken. They were reactive. I’d been running an operation that pulled in spirits I had no business feeding, and my Ori was screaming through the only channels left: nightmares, visions, illness.
Esu didn’t judge me at The Crossroads. He just showed me the tree and he showed me my kids’ faces. Then He waited.
I chose to come back. Not because I was ready. Not because I was clean. I chose to come back because that voice told me I didn’t have to amputate myself to be worthy. I just had to put down what was killing me.
When they pulled me back into my body, I wasn’t gasping for air. I was gasping for me.
That’s when the exile ended. That’s when I started collecting myself.
Piece by piece. Cowrie by cowrie.
Trauma made me an orphan. My NDE made me an heir again.
I’m Iya IfaRinsola Ogbenigun.
And she’s still here. In the water. In the white. In me.
To Be Continued…….
Have you ever stood at your own Crossroads?
What did the voice tell you when you thought you had to change who you were?
Drop a 🤍 if you’re choosing to come back to yourself too.