I was born Constantia Maria Oomen on December 2, 1967 at 2:44 PM, time according to my father (or 1:44 PM, time according to my mother) at St. Anna Hospital in Geldrop, which is in the south of the Netherlands. I arrived a few weeks late. I was a Saturday child and a Sagittarius — not a Scorpio, a possible first sign of my free will.

As a toddler, my favorite toy was my stuffed rabbit. The cuddly animal was inextricably linked to my chubby arm. When I lost it, it was a great tragedy and I kept crying until I had an exact substitute back in my arms again.

I had a lazy eye and had to wear a patch for a whole year. Then my stepfather got me some blue-framed glasses. Later I had a squint, especially when I was a little tired, and then I became nearsighted.

When I was seven, I got my tonsils out under anesthesia, and this was when I had my first out-of-body experience: I saw the entire operation from a distance. Only when I was in my teens did I realize that – according to established thought – I had seen something I could not have seen. According to many sources, a spontaneous out-of-body experience during anesthesia is quite common. It took a long time before I had another one, and this time it wasn’t while I was under anesthesia.

A special phenomenon manifested itself when I was 18. I began to experience spontaneous out-of-body experiences, and with such a frequency that my life was steered in a certain direction.

Since leaving home at 17, I consistently kept diaries and wrote down my dreams every day. From 18 on, I started writing down my out-of-body experiences as well. I also wrote a lot about my feelings, crushes, disappointments and other things suitable for the diary. Every time I reread it, I’m struck by the intensity of my feelings and my adventures in the past.

I have done a lot of drawings too, using various materials, but mainly pen and Indian ink.

All this time I had written diaries (starting when I was 11), but not consistently every day. Since so much went through my head and I easily remembered dreams, writing them down was an obvious choice. If I don’t write things down, they keep going endlessly through my head. Writing keeps my brain cleared. I now have about 350 diaries. I also have five large out-of-body experience notebooks, in which I kept a record of my astral experiences.

After becoming a licensed high school teacher in German and Dutch in 1990, I decided to study at Utrecht University (UU), and in 1993 I got my doctorate (Bachelor + Master) in German Language And Literature, With Honors.

One time we had a very difficult test on the German Middle Ages, in a course taught by Professor Lambertus Okken. We had to learn quite impossible German verb conjugations by heart. I knew the conjugations, but I wasn’t clear on what tense to use when (present, perfect, pluperfect, etc.), so I wrote the verbs in two tenses. It annoyed me very much that I wouldn’t get a straight A, as I knew I had done the rest of the test flawlessly. But in the end I did get a straight A, because Professor Okken corrected my test from a different point of view. I conjugated that very difficult verb in two different tenses perfectly, and although that was one too many, it was no reason for him to deduct any points. This incident is only one example of how I can be too hard on myself.

One year after graduating from college, in the fall of 1994, I went to the United States, a country that has always attracted me like a magnet. In Ohio, I had quite some adventures and met the lovely Maria and Joe, who invited me to stay with them. I also got to know the sweet park ranger Janine, who actually had wolves under her care. She had found these wolves as abandoned cubs and took good care of them. Wolves are different from dogs, as they’re not tame and have these very intense eyes that seem to look right through you.

In 1994 and 1995, I worked as a freelance translator, which I didn’t like much, and since 1996 I started working at public and private secondary schools as a German and Dutch teacher.

Throughout the 1990s, I spent six years on and off on my book THROUGH THE WINDOW. Only when it began taking shape did I start to work it more intensely. I finished it around 1997 and began to look for a publisher.

The reason I wanted to write a book about out-of-body experiences originated from my own broad experience in this area, and I didn’t want to keep this to myself. The many positive comments on my website and book THROUGH THE WINDOW made me realize that the out-of-body experience is universal. That said, there is still a lot of work to be done to get the phenomenon the recognition it deserves. My main goal is to spread knowledge about all kinds of astral phenomena.

Dr. Jos Scheerboom, a good friend of mine, got Sigma Press enthusiastic about my book, and so THROUGH THE WINDOW was published in 2000. In 2004, THROUGH THE WINDOW was republished by Schors Publishers in a revised and extended version.

My second book THROUGH THE GATE – Experiences with Astral Love was published on May 11, 2007. My third book THROUGH THE NIGHT was released on August 1, 2008.

In 2009, I finished my first children’s book: THROUGH HEAVEN – Everybody Has Wings, which was published in 2011 as an e-book in the iTunes Store. This book is also about out-of-body and near-death experiences, but this time from the perspective of children.

In 2009, my now ex J and I took a one-month trip to the U.S. and visited Washington, Oregon and California. We had the time of our lives and this again made me realize that my dream was to live in America. I felt like California was my true home.

Now this dream has become reality: my now ex J won the 2011 United States Diversity Lottery after *I* had submitted us both separately in the US Diversity Lottery and we emigrated to California in 2011. We started living in Davis, California in October 2011, and after my ex left in 2017, I’ve continued living here on my own.

——–