Back to the Rapids: How One Near-Drowning Brought Me Back to Life
I stood on a rocky ledge above the Ottawa River, right on the border between Quebec and Ontario, wearing a white helmet, a blue life jacket and sandals. The river thundered below and the clouds swallowed the sun. I was looking at Coliseum, a rapid I knew maybe too well.
I had raft-guided there for years, learning the river and certifying in search and rescue and swift-water techniques. At 21 I worked at one of Canada’s biggest resorts to pay for college in outdoor tourism and business. I thought I could handle anything.
My childhood hardened me; my parents divorced when I was 11 and my mom raised my brother and me like a single parent while my dad was mostly gone. My granny taught me to pray and left me a Bible that mattered. I pushed away male authority figures and built a tough outer shell.
That day three weeks earlier started normal: a 12-foot raft, twelve guests, helmets and life jackets, a training talk on what to do if you fell out. We were a pool-drop river team, ready for the waves and cheering when the raft caught air. All was routine until we hit the top of Coliseum.
We struck the first standing wave and the raft popped up hard, maybe 15 feet that day. Two big guys in front went overboard when the guests momentarily stopped paddling. One flew past me and hit the water and I thought, No worries, We’ll pick him up at the bottom.
The second man grabbed my life jacket as he tried to hang on. I put a foot under a safety strap and tried to shake free, planning to recover him downstream. Instead his grip yanked me off balance and over the back of the raft, dunking my head under.
Underwater, my thoughts raced. I told myself, I’ve got to bail off the raft and swim free. I slipped my foot free and hit the water upside down, tumbling in every direction. My ears popped and I tumbled deeper than expected, into a place guides call the green room.
The green room sits about 12 feet down where sunlight and currents make everything murky and dangerous. I kept thinking, Don’t panic, Save your energy and your breath, and ride the current out. Logic tried to override my instinct, but instinct won and I inhaled.
The water slammed into my mouth and nose like concrete. My body convulsed and the sounds of the river and my heartbeat blurred into one. Then a numb quiet, a sense of being finished washed over me and I thought, I’m done, and whispered, I’m in your hands, Lord.
Images flickered: people hitting my chest, a vehicle roof, darkness, ragged breaths. I woke up in a hyperbaric chamber at the hospital, told later that another rafting group had found me unconscious two miles downstream. They had pulled me into their raft and rushed me to shore.
Doctors estimated I’d been without oxygen between 11 and 22 minutes, long past the point most brains survive. Yet I walked out of the hospital the next day with no lasting brain damage, eardrums intact and only damaged nasal cavities and slightly bruised vocal cords. It didn’t add up.
Physically I was lucky; emotionally I was wrecked and suddenly terrified of water. The resort stuck me in the kitchen to keep me out of the river and I wrestled with faith and fear. Scripture says we haven’t been given a spirit of fear but of power and love and a sound mind, and I wanted that back.
I told Rieger, the old-school head of river safety, that I needed to go back and swim the rapid with him on a Zodiac below. He agreed and we set a time. Standing on the same ledge again, rain on my face, I raised my arm and he signaled back with a paddle.
Eight feet down I stepped off, hit the water messy and swam hard to the middle, pushing faster than the current. I went upside down in the first standing wave and, unlike that day, my ears cleared and I popped to the surface. I punched through wave two and three and reached the bottom exhausted but alive.
Rieger picked me up in the Zodiac and drove us to shore without words, then left. I broke down crying with relief and gratitude and thought, Lord, now I have given you everything. A voice answered in my head: No, you haven’t.
I realized my deepest fear was not water but vulnerability, the refusal to rely on anyone, including God. From then on I vowed to be open to help and to follow wherever I felt led. That openness led me to unexpected doors, including a chance encounter that launched an acting career and a family I love.
Facing the river taught me that courage is not never being afraid but doing the hard thing anyway and letting faith replace the walls we build. Life gets bigger and more vivid when you trade fear for trust.