�Some people say there is one moment in their life that made them who they are today.   Do you have a defining moment?  Tell us about it.�

I think my life has been a series of defining moments.� I think the biggest moment was when I was struggling with life in college.� I was unhappily married and had just been told by a professor that I did not have what it takes to become what I wanted to be.� I felt let down by life, by love, by God (I was studying to become a music minister/teacher).� I attempted to take my own life that day.

It felt as though it had been coming for a long time, and I wasn�t scared.� I didn�t leave a note or anything.� I remember putting on the CD from the movie Dying Young (how ironic huh?) and I took 42 sleeping pills and just went to sleep.� I think it was around 4 o�clock in the afternoon when I took them.� I woke up around 9 o�clock from a dream.� I was under water and above me were the faces of all my friends and family floating� looking down at me.� Then suddenly there was an enormous hand that reached down through the water to pull me up.� That�s when I awoke.� I walked down to the showers/bathroom area in the dorm and splashed cold water on my face and attempted to make myself sick to get rid of any of the medicine that might be left in my stomach. There was nothing there.

I went back to my room and dialled 911 for them to come out.� I was worried that I would still suffer from the medicine in my system and I didn�t really want to die.� The paramedics and the woman on the phone made me laugh because they thought that I was still intending to hurt myself.� I assured them that I didn�t want to die.

I spent a week in the psych ward.� I didn�t belong there.� I didn�t belong dead either.� I wasn�t crazy, I was glad to be alive.� If that�s not a defining moment, I don�t know what is.