The Shattering Patrice Donnelly   © Copyright 2025 by Patrice Donnelly

Photo by NASA Hubble Space Telescope at Unsplash

Back in 1987 something unbelievable happened to me that changed the course of my life. The impact it made and the many incredible experiences since, which I documented on the pages of my journals, has lead me on one crazy ride through life. For nearly twenty years I have attempted to write these experiences into a book which hasn’t been accomplished… yet. The desire to complete this challenge is before me. What I may have considered fiction previously at some point in my life is absolutely true. I experienced them first-hand. The story below is the first.

Part 1- The Incident

It was my mom who helped me find a foundation to help cover the medical care that my young daughter required. The United Way, United Foundation picked up the entire cost for my daughters healthcare when she was just eighteen months old. The year she turned five I was asked by the foundation if I’d permit her to become one of their “Torch Lighters”. It was an honor that we accepted as thanks for everything they had done for us. She starred in a commercial for them and later I was asked speak to employees at several businesses sharing how the United Foundation had helped. Being an introvert and my having to speak in public was terrifying. The positive side was the lasting friendships we made with the other Torch Lighters.

One of these new friends was Will, a man in his eighties who had survived throat cancer and talked through an electro-larynx, a devise that helped him speak using the vibrations of his throat muscles. He had no family after his wife died and no children. We kept in touch after the Torch Lighter engagements were over sharing dinners and bringing life back into his empty home.

Will was an architect having built beautiful, Frank Lloyd Wright like estates all over the country. One evening over the spaghetti dinner, he brought up the home he had built in the Rocky Mountains just north of Estes Park, Colorado, and the time-share that he owned which he invited us to. We were beyond excited for this new adventure and began making plans that night.

Before embarking on our cross-country trip we outfitted his full sized van with a curtained area for a small porta-john. We thought of everything we could to make the trip go smoothly. Our camping gear was included when we packed for a night under the stars. We arrived at dawn early that spring morning, wasting no time arranging our things in the van before were off. All were in high spirits traveling comfortably together, seven of us in total. Besides our family of five and Will, my seventeen year old brother decided to join us too.

We planned the drive over two nights to arrive on the third day. This gave us plenty of time for short breaks and a visit or two to places of interest. Our last night, just after crossing into Colorado, we looked to camp as planned. It never dawned on us that finding a campground open would be so challenging. April was not considered warm enough for campers and most didn’t open until Memorial Day. Luckily, we were able to find one off the beaten path. Not another vehicle or tent was seen as we drove the winding road through the park. The day was mild and we felt fortunate to have the choicest spot to set up our tent. Enjoying our sandwiches and sodas we decided on the sleeping arrangements- Will and my daughter slept in the van’s full size bed, my brother slept in one of the captain chairs and me, my husband, and two boys slept in the tent.

In the middle of the night I was awakened to a sound that resembled the rotating blades of a helicopter directly above us. I sat up startled to see our tent filled with light as though it was daytime. I looked around only to see everyone else sleeping soundly. How no one else woke from the noise and light I didn’t know.

And then, it happened. Something scared me so much that I yelled aloud. I hid inside of my sleeping bag, my hands clutching the flap tightly closed and continued to yell “Jesus help me now!”

My heart pounded in my throat and with the sleeping bag over my head, I heard a soft, soothing voice in my mind telling me I had nothing to fear…  

I don’t know how long it had been from the time I was in the sleeping bag to finding myself leaning up against a large rock a few yards from our tent. I remember looking up at the night sky in a sort of daze at the Milky Way full of stars. It was so bright that the image has stayed with me all of these years. I’d never seen the Milky Way as clear before and I sat gazing at it for quite some time with only the sounds of night for company.

Eventually my mind came back to the present and when I did, the words, “prepare yourself now” came too. These words brought a sense of urgency which filled my body with a rush of adrenaline. Shakily, I stood and returned to the tent quietly unzipping the door flap enough to grab my backpack near the entrance. In it I kept a notebook and pen for journaling which I had done for years.

“I need to write everything” I whispered to myself again and again until I made my way back to the boulder.

I wasted no time recording everything I experienced while it was still fresh in my mind. My hand cramped from writing with such fury, but I wouldn’t stop until I had finish. Once done, I returned the notebook to my backpack for safe-keeping and then woke everyone up. Although the sunrise was still a few minutes away it was light enough for us to see. Their complaints of being too early went unheard.

I wanted nothing more than to get to our destination. I felt shaky, withdrawn and unfocused. My behavior was strange and I knew my husband was concerned, but I kept silent about what I experienced. Instead of talking with my husband or brother I took my son Bill aside, only seven years old at the time, to where no one could hear us. I grabbed him by the shoulders and shook them saying, ‘we have to prepare ourselves now’. His wide eyes only stare at me as I repeated the phrase over and over again. Why it seemed important to say to a child or why I couldn’t tell my husband or brother, I didn’t know. Perhaps I was still in shock…

My anxiety increased during the four hour drive to our destination as the memory of the incident began to fade from my mind. By the time we reached the house I had forgotten everything that I had experienced-- everything except the warning to ‘prepare yourself now’. In my fear, I believed that I was losing my mind. The only thing I clung to was the knowing that I had written something down in my notebook and reading it would help me to remember.

I rushed to retrieve the notebook in my backpack that I stowed in the back of the van. I was desperate as it held those memories I could no longer recall. It became a frantic search when I could not locate it in my bag or the van. Our suitcases were brought up to the large open loft where we would be sleeping and I ran upstairs to look. The windows across from our loft faced the beautiful view of Pike’s Peak but I was blind to it. Nothing mattered except finding my notebook. I threw the contents of our suitcases onto the beds knowing it had to be somewhere. Clothing was scattered around the room but the notebook had vanished, just like my memories.

My husband came up and looking around at the mess I had made, stood quietly assessing the situation.

“What the hell are you doing in here?” he asked in a low, alarmed voice.

“My notebook! It’s gone. Did you take it?” I asked accusingly. “I know I put it in my backpack this morning and now it’s gone. Did you take it?” I asked again angrily.

“You wouldn’t let anyone touch you backpack” he said in hushed tones. “You put it in the back of the van yourself.

“It’s gone and someone had to have taken it” I yelled, my voice echoing through the house.

“I think you’re ill. I think you have altitude sickness and need a doctor” he said concerned.

I pushed past him and stomped down the stairs to ask everyone, but no one had seen it. The notebook simply vanished without a trace…

Part 2- The Encounter

Twenty years later…

I lived in the woods of Northern Michigan having left my husband and all traces of society for a life in the wilderness. I ran away from my marriage, I ran away from my job and I ran away from a life that held me depressed for years.

I met a hunter one day who seemed fascinated by a woman living alone in the woods. It was a strange meeting. I felt like I had known him all of my life even though we had just met. I was usually very reserved and avoided people and conversations, but with Jim it was different. We met and talked often after that first encounter. We enjoyed long conversations over the next several months on many topics that we were both interested in. Because he felt so familiar I was not really surprised to find out that he had a cottage on Lake Huron, not far from my parent’s home.

Getting to know him better I learned that he was a licensed hypnotherapist. Once I understood more about hypnotic regression I asked if he would do a session with me to find out what happened to me in Colorado. I described the incident inside the tent, of being terrified and then losing my memory of what had happened. He didn’t want to take me back into this type of experience saying that the terror of the incident could be dangerous.

My persistence won out. I finally convinced him to give it a try although he was very reluctant. We were in a rented cabin with my two cats that lived with me. The process of going into the regression went well as I had no problem relaxing. As I was taken back to that time in the tent I saw nothing but darkness. All of a sudden my heart was thundering wildly in my chest and I couldn’t move or speak.

No matter what Jim tried he could not bring me out of the regression. At one point I found it hard to breathe and Jim frantically shook me, but it didn’t help. I was hovering in a place that he couldn’t reach. It was only when my cat, Milo, jumped up on me and laid across my chest with his paws on either side of my head that I was able to come out of the darkness. Just for reference, Milo was not a lap cat. In the twelve years I had him, not once did he ever jumped up on my lap. But there he was, calming me and bringing me back from God only knows where. I believe that in some way he saved my life that day.

Eventually I moved back downstate to Jim’s cottage with my travel trailer parked on his property across the street from Lake Huron. It took five more years of persistent pestering before Jim would agree to a second session. I didn’t want someone else to facilitate the regression because I trusted Jim, even though the first attempt wasn’t unsuccessful. He finally agreed to put me into the scene as a third person witnessing the incident. I would be sitting in a theater, watching a movie of myself seated on a couch viewing the experience on a television. Thankfully, the second time was a charm…

Found myself lying on my back on what appeared to be an exam table. It was blinding bright. I sat up and looked around but the light was so intense that I was only able to see a few feet in front of me. The place glowed with a white green brilliance and I could only see if I squinted. To my right was a panel on a slight incline which formed a semi-circle. On its surface were some sort of raised geometric shapes.

I swung my legs over the side and looked down but I couldn’t see the floor underneath me. It, too, was so bright that it looked like a fog. When I jumped down three small shadows approached. As they grew closer I felt a wave of love so intense that I could feel it penetrate my skin. This isn’t the kind of love that you feel when holding a new kitten. It was a love so powerful that it moved through my entire being like an electric current.

It reminded me of the time I once swam in the ocean with Humpback whales. While in the ocean a mother humpback, her newborn child, and a giant male arrived. I watched the mother and newborn whales interact as the male sang his “song” behind them. The vibration that was felt was so intense that I could feel it resonate in my spine. This experience filled me with such love that I cried like a child. The experience that I had with the whales dimmed in comparison to what I felt from these beings.

The strangest part of this encounter wasn’t their looks which was very similar to the descriptions others have given of extra-terrestrials with their large black eyes, long thin limbs, and short stature. The strangest part was that I knew them. I had absolutely no doubt as to who they were. Moreover, I felt a deep love and happiness to see them.

These three beings stood before me in a semi-circle and spoke directly into my mind. They wanted to show me something important and I watched a large clear crystal, the size and shape of a basketball, rise up between us. It was a multi-faceted crystal that hovered in the air without any support above or below. The crystal began to spin counter-clockwise, slowly at first, and then picking up speed. From below, a laser light shot up into the center of the crystal sending out refracting light from every facet. The effect reminded me of a disco ball with the colored beams shining out in all directions. As it spun faster, the lights began to form a pillar and within it I could make out shadows moving.

These shadows coalesced into an image of the ocean as seen from a distance high above. It was as though I was looking at the ocean from the height of a plane. I saw at a huge wave, hundreds of feet high, traveling across the surface of the water toward a coastal city. It was only a matter of seconds until the tsunami hit coast and continued further inland before it retracted back to the sea. Everything that had once stood- buildings, houses, trees, animals and people- were carried into the ocean with one single wave. Nothing but rubble was left.

When that scene faded back to shadows another began to form. As the image became clear I found that I was closer in distance to this scene than I was in the last. I seemed to be looking down from the height of a tall building at what appeared to be streets in San Francisco. I heard a loud rumbling- a sound that reverberated through me- as I watched the streets of the city roll up and down like waves. As the earth heaved upward, giant cracks in the roads opened and buildings, cars and people began tumbling down into them. People were screaming and trying to run to safety but there was nowhere to hide from a land that heaved and swallowed. As I watched in despair, the earthquake leveled the entire city to ruins. Although I felt sick watching it, I was transfixed to the scene until, once again, it faded.

The shadows formed into a new scene and I found myself looking at it from ground level. I watched as a field sparsely covered with grass came into view. I could hear a high pitch whistling sound as a group of men in uniforms ran toward me. I saw fear in their eyes as the sound grew louder and felt my heart pounding. A blinding flash made my eyes close involuntarily and when I opened them again, I saw huge clumps of dirt flying upward along with the bodies of men.

Now I was crying, pleading with them to stop.

“Why are you showing me these disasters?” I asked as tears spilled down my cheeks.

“It is your future” they said inside of my mind.

This horrified me even more than the scenes.

“No, please, no”, I begged. “I have three small children and this cannot be their future”.

“It is, as of this moment… but it can be changed. You must help change it”.

“What can I possibly do to change this outcome?” I sobbed with a heart filled with despair.

“What you observed is the future and a direct result of your planet’s collective fears. Fear has the energy to affect the weather as you saw with the tsunami. Fear has the energy to affect the earth as you observed with the earthquake. And fear has the ability to affect the minds of men as you witnessed in war.”

“You must prepare yourself now by letting go of fear in your life. That is the only way to change the outcome. The opposite of fear is love… Trust in the One Source and use the power of love to overcome fear.”

“But how is this going to help change what I saw” I asked confused.

“The time will come when anchors will be needed when the world appears to be in chaos, people will look to you and ask, ‘why are you not afraid’. Then you will share your story”…

Part 3- Epilogue

Later that week, after the regression, my son Bill came up for a visit. We were sitting on a deck looking out over Lake Huron when I brought up Colorado.

“Do you remember being in the tent the night we camped?” I asked.

“Of course”, he answered. “How could I forget? It’s been something that I’ve been trying to forget for years and I don’t want to talk about it.”

I wasn’t going to let him drop the subject now. “I thought you were asleep”, I said. “I sat up and no one in the tent moved, so I assumed you were all asleep”.

“No Mom. I was paralyzed. I couldn’t move a muscle, but I had my eyes open”.

“Do you remember the sides of the tent shaking?” he offered.

I couldn’t speak.

After a long moment, he added, “Do you remember the shadow of the hand on the side of the tent?”

Now my heart was hammering in my chest as that memory came crashing back to me.

“How many fingers did it have” he asked.

“Three”, I said in a soft whisper, “three long fingers and one thumb”.

I felt myself begin to shake as I recalled the images of the tent flapping and the shadow of the hand outside of it. I hadn’t remembered these things until he reminded me of them. This was what made me dive into my sleeping bag and cover my head terrified…

A few weeks later I drove down to visit my son Joe and his wife Kris in Ohio. While we were sitting on their front porch Joe asked, out of the blue, if I would tell Kris what happened in Colorado.

 “You remember Colorado too?”, I asked astonished.

 “Of course and so does Dad.”

The regression had opened a kind of “Pandora’s Box” for my family and I concerning our time in that tent in Colorado. It was a subject that none of us had ever talked about before and now, more than twenty years later, it had become an ordinary topic of conversation…

I’ve lived many profound experiences through the years and this was the precursor to them all. Each incident brought with it another “Shattering”. My definition of ‘shattering’ is the destruction of a belief once held about the way the world is- about reality itself. I no longer look through the same lens at the world as I once had and which many still do.

Over the years I questioned certain infallible truths, put myself into situations that pushed back boundaries, and manifested circumstances that broke through my fears. The world is a lot bigger and much more dynamic that we are lead to believe. WE are much more than what we’re taught to be. When we are finally open, the world will show just how remarkable things can be- things that others could only imagine as fiction…

By the way, I never did find the notebook.