A Native Woman's Near-Death Experience: Sent Back with a Purpose | Sharon Ward

Sharon Ward, an Ojibway woman from the Brokenhead Nation in Manitoba, shares a deeply personal account of intergenerational trauma, survival, and healing. She traces the devastating impact of Canada's residential school system through her own family — her mother was taken at three and a half years old and spent nearly a decade at Fort Alexander, enduring severe abuse and witnessing atrocities. Sharon describes how that trauma rippled forward, turning her once-gentle mother toward alcoholism once Indigenous women were legally permitted to drink in 1966, pulling the family into poverty and further abuse. Despite her own struggles — including navigating cultural identity and language barriers — Sharon found her way through a 40-year healing journey rooted in Ojibwe spiritual tradition, self-forgiveness, and the belief that every person has a sacred purpose. She closes with a message of resilience: that Creator only allows people to face what they are strong enough to bear, and that sharing her story is the work she was put here to do.

“Creator's only going to allow people to go through what they are strong enough to go through” - Sharon Ward

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00:00 - Opening: Sharon describes crawling through a light and feeling overwhelming love on the other side
01:36 - Introduction: Who is Sharon Ward? Ojibway Nation, Manitoba, raised on the trap line
02:42 - Residential Schools: What they were and how Indigenous children were forcibly taken from families
03:39 - Sharon's Mother: Taken to Fort Alexander at age 3½, siblings separated across Manitoba
04:00 - Horrors Inside the Schools: Mother witnesses murders, experiences abuse by priests and nuns
04:49 - A Community Destroyed: 1966 law allows Indigenous women to drink; mother's alcoholism spirals
06:00 - Survival Childhood: Family becomes self-sufficient, then alcohol breaks everything apart
07:31 - Sharon as a Teenager: Marijuana as coping, beatings by her mother, thrown out in a snowstorm
09:53 - Mother's Death: Cancer, drinking through chemo, a peaceful passing — then Sharon's grief unravels her
13:23 - The Overdose: Consumed 270+ pills and whiskey, hoping not to wake up
14:26 - The NDE Begins: Dying, Sharon hears her siblings' voices and feels the pain she would have caused
15:57 - The Voice and the Light: Told to "turn around," walks toward a distant speck of light, crawls through
17:05 - Meeting the Messenger: A being whose face cycles through all races tells her Creator has a job only she can do
19:46 - Sent Back: She begs to stay, is returned anyway — wakes on the couch as her sister calls the coroner
22:32 - Processing the Experience: Realizes over days that it was real; decides to begin healing
23:21 - Return to Indigenous Ways: Smudging, sweat lodges, traditional medicines as the path back
28:51 - The Philosophy of Forgiveness: Healing begins with self-kindness; forgiveness is for you, not them
30:11 - Closing: Life is sacred; Creator loves everybody