Native American Near-Death Experience

Sharon Ward describes some intense real-life experiences as the context of what happened.

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

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, language barriers, and addiction as a teenager — 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

[Laird]

Powerful and moving. Wow.