Louisa P.

Louisa Peck has taught literature and writing at the University of Washington, Evergreen State College, and several Puget Sound area community colleges. Her short stories have appeared in Calyx, Bellingham Review, and other literary journals, one having won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction. An intermediate ballet dancer through her 50s, she now relies on yoga and weight-lifting to stay fit enough for her ambitious wilderness adventures as a mountain climber and thru-hiker.

Shortly after graduating from Vassar College, Louisa ingested a gram of lidocaine sold to her as cocaine in a Manhattan nightclub, triggering a grand mal seizure and cardiac arrest. While her vital signs ceased throughout 3 minutes of unsuccessful CPR, her spirit was jettisoned into the spirit realm and the incredible love of the light.

Only 15% of people revived from death bring back vivid memories from the other side, Louisa did not welcome hers. As an active alcoholic and staunch atheist, Louisa rejected her NDE as nothing more than the hallucinations of a dying brain. She meant to continue cynically drinking her life away, but her NDE had left her with the aftereffect of hearing communications from the spirit realm, specifically a voice she now refers to as her guardian angel. It had to bellow at her the first time she acknowledged it on this side of death. What did it say? "This is the last time I can help you!" and "You DO know right from wrong!" -- enough to start Louisa on the path to sobriety at age 34, although, in the years that followed, it had much more to teach her.

Die-Hard Atheist focuses on her Near-Death Experience and its aftereffects, reflections on the nature of NDE and accounts of her guardian angels communications. (Published 2023)

A Spiritual Evolution focuses on her alcoholism and love addiction, covering her decline to a suicidal mindset and relating how a combination of AA Spirit gradually led her to a joy-filled life. (Published 2012)