Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you.
—Byron Katie
On May 19, 2000, Melissa Hull was at her home in Yuma, Arizona. Her husband was away in Phoenix for work for a few days. Melissa was exhausted. Her three-year-old son Devin was very sick and having a hard time sleeping. Melissa had tried to call her husband multiple times to get help with Devin but couldn’t reach him.
Around five in the morning, Drew, Melissa’s four-year-old son, was ready to wake up. Melissa helped Drew get breakfast, start watching Thomas & Friends, and play with crayons. She then went to check on Devin and fell back asleep while lying down with him. She slept from around 5:30 to 7:30 a.m.
When she woke up, she had a horrible feeling in her stomach that told her something was wrong. The house was silent. Drew was usually loud. Melissa spent the next fifteen minutes looking all over the house for Drew. She noticed the sliding glass door was open a few inches and realized he had gone outside.
She looked through the trees on their property and saw Drew’s footprints on the dusty paths around their rural home. She followed the prints in the dirt, which led to an irrigation canal near their home. She could see the dirt embankment that had collapsed under Drew’s foot and the recent splash on both sides of the canal from his fall.
She started to scream for help. A Border Patrol officer found her soon after and the search began. More than seven hours later, Drew’s body was found, eight miles from their home.
During those seven hours, Melissa had been questioned over and over, by the police, by her husband, by other members of her family. What happened? they all wanted to know.
Once Drew was found, the questions kept coming, but they sounded different.
How could you let this happen?
Her husband blamed her for the death of their son and left her one month later. Melissa’s whole world corroded. Her identity was shocked. She no longer felt like a good mother. She hated herself. She blamed herself for the death of Drew. She felt like she had lost everything—her son, her husband, herself.
She was below rock bottom.
The pain became so bad that she could barely get herself out of bed. She stopped eating and showering. She did what she could to help Devin during the day, but aside from that, she stayed in bed.
At nights after work, Joey, Melissa’s husband, would pick up Devin and spend a few hours with him before dropping him back off to sleep at the house with Melissa. During those few lonely hours when she was by herself, Melissa would often drink or take pain pills. Those were some very dark and painful moments when things hurt the most.
Within a few weeks after the accident, life went back to normal for most of the other people in Melissa’s life. But she was still fighting a silent battle. Those who cared about her could see that she was struggling, but they didn’t know how to help. They ended up avoiding her. Melissa saw clergymen and therapists to try getting help, but nothing was really working.
A few months after Drew’s death, Joey took Devin after work and, for the first time, wasn’t going to bring him home. Melissa would be home all by herself for the night. She planned to kill herself.
She had saved a bottle of pain pills that had been prescribed to her. She was going to take the pills, drink a lot of alcohol, go to bed, and never wake up. She felt that killing herself was the best thing she could do for Devin, so that he wouldn’t have to watch his shell of a mother decay into nothing.
When she went into the kitchen to get the pills and alcohol, she saw a pile of condolence letters on the counter. Over the previous few months, she had gotten many letters in the mail from random strangers who had heard her story in the news. She opened one of the letters, written by a stranger named Theresa.
In the letter, Theresa told Melissa that her six-year-old daughter had been hit by a truck. The accident happened while Theresa had gone inside her house for just a moment. Theresa wrote that she initially blamed herself for her daughter’s death, and it took her a long time to stop doing so. She encouraged Melissa not to fault herself for what happened. She told Melissa that she was a great mom, and that this was a tragic accident. She wrote that there could still be joy and happiness in Melissa’s life, but she would have to choose it, and choose it again and again every single day.
After reading this letter, Melissa broke down. She grabbed her picture of Drew, held it to her chest, and sobbed for hours. She let all of her bottled-up pain and emotions fully out.
This letter gave her hope. It was the turning point in her life, at the exact moment when she needed it. Theresa was her empathetic witness. She felt heard and seen.
She dumped the pills down the drain.
Instead of the goodbye note she was planning to write to Devin, Melissa wrote an apology letter and a promise to her son. She apologized for falling asleep that morning when Drew died. She apologized that Devin would grow up without a brother. She also apologized for how she had been acting in the months since Drew’s death, and how sad she had been.
She made Devin a promise that she would be the best mom she could be for him. She promised him that life would be good. She thanked him for being her reason to try and stay on this planet. She apologized that she might lean on him too much in the future because he was her reason to live. She poured out her heart.
Ten years later, when Devin was thirteen years old and in Melissa’s eyes ready to read it, she gave him the letter on Christmas Day. Even though she’d held on to the letter for ten years, she had been true to the promises she wrote. Theresa’s letter had changed and saved Melissa’s life. She had her ups and downs, but she had hope and purpose to move forward in her life.
Then something else happened.
Less than a year after she gave Devin his letter, Melissa and Joey learned that Joey’s assistant had embezzled millions of dollars from their business over the previous decade. While being questioned by the police, Melissa was informed that her husband was having an affair with that same assistant. Melissa didn’t believe it.
When she went home one night after being questioned, she told Joey she had been asked the craziest questions about his cheating on her. He didn’t make eye contact with her but continued staring at the television set.
“It’s true,” he told her.
In an instant, something clicked in Melissa’s body and the words came out without restraint.
“Oh my God, you were with her when Drew died!”
It was like her whole world collapsed on her at once. The pain was almost too much to bear. She was heartbroken and shattered. She remembered trying to reach her husband that entire morning. Devin had been sick and Joey wasn’t answering her phone calls.
It turned out that Joey had been cheating on Melissa for over twelve years. In his own guilt and shame, he had made her life a living hell. He had blamed her for the death of Drew. He had made her feel like less than dirt.
For the next eighteen months, Melissa was tied up dealing with the legalities of the embezzlement and affair. Near the end of the trial, her attorney told her, “Sweetheart, I’ve been in law for forty years. I don’t know anyone with a story like yours. You should write a book about it.”
She thought about it and decided to go back through all of her journals, which she had kept throughout her life. While poring over her old journals, she saw a girl who had dealt with a great deal of pain, confusion, and trauma in her life. While reading through the journals, and while journaling and praying at length, she had a paradigm shift.
She began to see her past differently. For most of her life, she had felt like a victim. She had felt like she was cursed by God. But while reading those old journals and reflecting on her experiences, she saw her previous experiences differently. Rather than curses, she saw compliments.
“God really trusts you,” she thought to herself. “Everything I’ve gone through is a gigantic compliment from God not only for what I can handle, but for what he wants me to do.”
That’s a profound and fundamental shift that all people, including you, need to make if you’re serious about extreme transformation: Your past isn’t happening to you. Your past is happening for you.
Everything in your life has happened for you.
You’re the beneficiary.
You’ve gained much.
You’ve learned much.
And as a result of all the pain and challenges you’ve gone through, you have a powerful purpose.
It was 2011 when Melissa found out about the affair. In 2014 she started writing her book, which was published in 2016. She’s an entirely different person than she was on the morning she woke up in a silent home.
In her own words, “I’m purpose-driven now. I want to dedicate my entire life to helping other people who don’t feel heard.”
Melissa’s purpose is what drives her, not her “personality.” Her purpose drives her to do things far outside her comfort zone. Her purpose transforms her and her personality.
Over the years, she’s tried to contact Theresa, her empathetic witness. She’s made public statements on social media trying to get in contact, but to no avail. Regardless, that letter gave her hope and changed her life. Melissa’s entire purpose now is to give hope to those who have lost it. She wants to share her story, to provide people the space to connect with their own inner voice. Her book and her story is her own “letter” to the world, because it was a letter that saved her life.
When I asked Melissa what was most different about her now, she said she is now willing to involve herself in other people’s problems. Before all of these transformational experiences, she would just pass by people who were struggling. She was too busy dealing with her own mess to pay attention to other people. But now she’s in a place where she has the desire to help others.
When I asked her who her future self was, she said her future self is a powerful force for good. She sees her future self as a bold messenger of hope and healing. She sees herself inspiring and helping many people throughout the world.
When I asked her how her story and past had changed over the years, she said that she has nothing but extreme gratitude. She feels that everything has happened for a reason. Although she’s been through hell, she feels it was all worth it because now she has amazing experiences every day.
Recently, she was able to talk to a couple who had lost their daughter in a boating accident. She has such conversations regularly. She gets to be an empathetic witness every single day. And for her, none of this would have been possible without the experiences she’s had.
She loves her past.
She loves her life.
She and Joey have forgiven each other and moved on. When Melissa told him she wanted to write a book, detailing everything about her life and marriage, he totally supported it. As a family, they’ve all made their peace.
Their future is brighter than their past.
Their future continues to change their past.
We’ve covered a lot of ground. We’ve discussed trauma, story, subconscious, and environment, and how all of these forces can keep you trapped in unhealthy and repetitious cycles. We’ve also discussed the cultural and pervasive myths of personality, which if you embrace them will lead to a life of mediocrity and “average.”
You are now equipped to increase your imagination, motivation, faith, and courage. You are equipped to embrace your future and change your past.
Throughout this book, you’ve been asked dozens of questions. Go back through those questions and answer them in your journal. Use your journal every single day to imagine, design, strategize, and conspire to create and live your wildest dreams.
Personality isn’t permanent, it is a choice.
Your personality can change in dramatic ways. The life of your dreams can eventually become something you take for granted—your new normal. Once you arrive at your wildest and most imaginative future self, take the confidence and faith you gain and do it again, but this time bigger and better.
Life is a classroom. You’re here to grow. You’re here to live by faith and design. You’re here. You’re here to choose.
The choice is yours.
Who will you be?