What if you died...and came back with instructions?
My guest today, Dr. Holly Porter, spent 70 days in the hospital after COVID took her to the very edge — respiratory failure, two intubations, sepsis. And somewhere in the middle of it all, she crossed over. She had a life review. And she came back carrying a message that has honestly not left me since we talked: “Love ‘em where they’re at.”
Not fix them. Not judge them. Not drag them to where you think they should be. Just love them, exactly where they are.
This one hit close to home for me. Because years ago, standing on a beach in the hardest season of my own life, and thinking about my brother in the height of his addiction, I was given almost the exact same words: "Love him through it." And that shift changed everything between us before he passed. So when Holly shared the message she was given on the other side...it made the one I heard feel even more real, even more important. Like it was being validated right there in front of me. Two different women, two different hard seasons, the same instruction: just love them.
In this episode, Holly opens up about her near-death experience and what her life review showed her about love and purpose. She shares the assignments she was given on the other side — the nonprofit she was told to start (and got running in 25 days!), the business deal she was told to walk away from, and the book she was nudged to finish, Near Death SHIFT: What Dying Taught Me About Life, Business, and Purpose, released on 11.11 — the very date she walked out of the hospital.
But we don’t stop at the miracle. We go into the hard beautiful middle of it: her “two years of hell” after surviving, the grief of losing her singing voice, learning that surrender is the hardest part of her own SHIFT framework (Surrender, Hope, Intuition, Faith, Transformation), and the heartbreak of loving her daughter through addiction — including the truth so many families carry quietly: sometimes grieving someone who is still living is harder than grieving someone who has died.
We talk about intuition and trusting your “knowings,” how to stop living in victim mode, why her hardest lessons taught her she can do hard things, and the one thing she’d say to anyone lying in their own version of a hospital bed right now: pray — because on the other side, she saw the thousands of people who were praying for her.
This is a conversation about resilience, healing, grief, faith, hope, and the lessons our hardest seasons come to teach us. It’s about spiritual awakening, personal growth, and finding purpose after everything changes.
💛 Your Living Room question this week, inspired by Holly’s life review:
If your life flashed before your eyes today, what’s one small, ordinary moment of love that you’d want to see again?
Share yours below on this episode. I’ll post mine first!
Find Holly:
* Everything in one place: linktr.ee/hollyporter
* Website: hollyporter.com
* Book: NearDeathSHIFT.com
* Nonprofit — Adventure Bucket Wish Foundation: AdventureBucketWish.org
* Instagram: @hollyporterinternational
* Her near-death story in full: search “Holly Porter near-death” on YouTube
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