Sean C. Morgan
Struck by lighting, Beth (Stafford) Peterson’s life changed radically.
It became a life of surgeries and learning simple skills over again, and then lightning struck her a second time, ultimately sparking a career she hopes will inspire many others learn to overcome their fears, their pain, to stop simply existing and to live.
Peterson, a 46-year-old Iowa resident, stopped in Sweet Home, where she lived through the third grade, on the West Coast leg of a national book-signing tour to visit family and speak at the Vet’s Club on Aug. 13.
She is touring in support of her book “Life After Lightning,” released last fall. It tells of a journey of “spiritual and self discovery.” The book is a series of motivational essays and poetry through which Peterson offers advice and insight into several topics, including family, the trials of personal loss, the joys of spiritual recovery and lessons on discovering true meaning and direction in life.
Readers will find ideas on how to overcome internal turmoil and adversity and ultimately identify their own path. It is not a how-to manual for surviving a freak natural accident but rather a tool on living life to its fullest, overcoming odds and emerging wiser and better prepared to embark on a meaningful life journey, turning the most painful moments in life into the most meaningful.
Her first personal encounter with lighting came while she was serving in the U.S. Army and stationed at Ft. Benning, Ga., Peterson was working a 24-hour shift inspecting trucks arriving at an ammunition storage point on July 20, 1992.
“I was watching the storm,” Peterson said. “I watched it split a tree. I watched it hit the razor wire.”
Then lightning hit her, entering through her foot and exiting through her mouth, throwing her 30 feet. She was badly injured. Her heart had stopped. She said she had a near-death experience, a subject she will discuss in her next book.
“I got to stand over the other side. I was one step over the threshold.”
But, she said, she chose to return to Earth to a life she knew would have to be dedicated to other people. “The fire came back over me, and the explosion of my head came back over me.”
Peterson’s memories were gone. She had to learn to walk and talk again. All she remembers from before the lightning strike are traumatic events. She had grown up beaten and abused, and she remembered that, although she couldn’t remember how to add 1+1 or how to spell “dog.”
She had forgotten relatives, which in Sweet Home, includes the Stafford and Grandorff families.
“It was for a reason,” Peterson said of the lightning strike. She believes she was meant to inspire people to redefine their lives.
The second lightning strike came a year later, on July 19, 1993. A doctor had told her to go home and watch another lightning storm, essentially telling her “to suck it up” and get over her fears. She took off her shoes, opened the French doors and stepped onto a metal threshold to watch the storm, with water running over her.
The lightning bolt threw her 9 feet into the house.
Peterson doesn’t know how much, if any, additional damage that lightning strike had caused. She was already hurt from the previous strike. She stayed conscious, and she was angry with that doctor. She never spoke to him again.
Her left foot has been reconstructed, and, 14 weeks ago, her last toe was amputated. She has undergone numerous surgeries to her mouth to remove burned bone and repair her jaw and teeth.
And it’s inspired her.
“It’s about just not giving up and not letting what happens define you,” Peterson said. “I redefine it and use it as a positive tool to help other people be inspired through the trauma of their lives. I’m very much trying to inspire people to not live in the pity.”
Now she speaks to veterans and incoming soldiers and at schools, hospitals, Boys and Girls Clubs and wherever she can to reach out and let people know how to overcome their pain, from the smallest paper cut to the worst traumas.
Life is a constant physical pain for her. Her body feels like it’s still burning, but Peterson said she “packages it up” and throws it aside each day or mentally allows the water in the shower to wash the pain away. She has yet to control headaches that can put her down for three to five days, but she’s working on it. She said she has very few days where she is controlled by the pain.
She helps veterans cope with their traumatic experiences, through their healing processes.
“I have helped them through all those experiences I remember,” Peterson said. “When you are a soldier, and you become shattered and broken, you feel less than, but you don’t want to tell anyone.”
She is no longer in the Army, but she considers herself a soldier helping soldiers, children, the grieving and victims.
She didn’t remember the name of the doctor who sent her to watch the storm that led to her second lightning strike, but today “I hope that he sees me, that I’ve become a soldier again.”
Peterson urges people not to be afraid of dying. To be afraid of dying is to avoid living. She urges them to follow their dreams and passions.
“Nothing is impossible,” Peterson said. “I’m still walking. I’m talking. After 21 years, I can chew food again.
“Everyone has pain. Don’t let the traumas and tragedies define you. Let’s experience life. Let’s celebrate life.”
Peterson’s book is available from Amazon.com as an audiobook and for the Kindle. Ebooks also are available through Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Flipkart, Scribd and Kobo.
More on Beth Peterson:
Website: http://www.bethpetersonauthor.com/
Facebook: http://facebook.com/bethpeterson.author
Twitter: http://twitter.com/en_lightning_u
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/beth-peterson/86/682/14
Google+: http://plus.google