From Near Death to a Created Life
A near-death experience helped a Glenariffe woman create a life of which she is manifestly proud.
By Mandi Millar
As Amanda St John drifted in and out of consciousness at the bottom of a 300-foot drop in the wreckage of her mangled car, she faced a choice: life or death.
She chose life. In fact, she fought for it.
Now this mentor, musician and mum from Glenariffe is using her remarkable story to help others transform their potential through personal development podcasts and retreats she calls A Created Life.
“It’s beautiful work to do. I work primarily with women, empowering them to realise their worth,” says Amanda (46), whose own story she believes is testimony to the power of personal development and manifestation.
From a near-death experience to singing for the President on Capitol Hill, from the music career she’d always dreamed of to the Covid crash that killed it overnight, Amanda has faced some existential challenges.
“But I was always looking for a deeper meaning to life. When you’re a child you can’t wait to grow up, then when I reached my mid-20s I remember thinking, is this it?” she explains.
“There was nothing wrong — I had everything you’re meant to have — but I knew there had to be more to life.”
In her 20s she found it through the Landmark Forum, a US-based organisation specialising in self-development.
“It opened my eyes to self-awareness and how shut down I’d been in my thinking. I realised too I hadn’t processed a lot of feelings; I was being stifled by layers of past experience and limiting beliefs, all making me doubt myself,” says Amanda, who went on to do more personal and spiritual development and gain further coaching qualifications.
All this was alongside her full-time job in recruitment, raising her daughter Sophia — now 17 — and pursuing her singing career.
Life was good and her fan base growing, yet despite her obvious talent, Amanda never quite had the nerve to take her music to the next level.
The accident changed all that.
“The car went 300 feet down the side of a mountain near Ballycastle and I’d no pulse when the Fire Brigade found me. I wasn’t expected to make it,” says Amanda.
“It wasn’t that I saw the white light you hear people talk about in near-death experiences, but I just had this feeling of utter bliss. It was such a peaceful feeling and a sense that I could just collapse into it — follow the bliss.
“I was in and out of consciousness but then I rallied at one point and realised I was in trouble. It sounds a bit hippy, but I remember asking ‘what can I do to get out of this?’
“I didn’t want to leave my daughter, who was three then, and I felt disappointed in myself. I’d thought I had all this time and now it was gone and I’d wasted it.
“Then I heard a voice that just said ‘sing’, and I vowed that if I got out alive I would.”
Miraculously she did — and it was the epiphany she needed to finally go after the music career she’d always wanted.
Soon Amanda was playing to sell-out crowds across the UK, US and Ireland and enjoying airplay around the world. She released two albums, following in the footsteps of The Rolling Stones and Aretha Franklin to record in the famous Fame Studios in Alabama.
As the first Northern Ireland artist invited to perform at the St Patrick’s Day lunch on Capitol Hill, she sang for President Trump.
By 2020 Amanda was looking forward to one of her biggest years, with a 20-date US tour booked.
But the day before she was due to fly out, the world locked down — and everything changed.
“The tour had been a massive investment and I lost everything when it collapsed. The world had changed fundamentally too after Covid. I had very little work for a couple of years, yet I still needed to earn a living,” says Amanda, who decided instead to put her life-coaching skills to work online, though she still does some gigs and runs a dementia choir and music sessions for vulnerable young people.
“I describe it as music empowerment, so it ties with the premise of A Created Life, which is that you get back from life what you put in. I help people see the subconscious beliefs they’ve been carrying around. It’s about stepping into a higher version of yourself and recreating yourself how you want, rather than how past conditioning has made you.
“I believe we can manifest energies too. I used to think that was all a bit woo-woo, but science is now actually quantifying this with neuro-imaging. It’s incredibly exciting.
“If you’ve years of low self-worth, well, that’s you manifesting, even if you don’t realise it. Once I realised that — holy shit — I’d created the drama and struggle my life had become, I had to re-programme!
“And once you understand you can do something about your situation it’s incredibly empowering.
“So when life does throw wobblies, see them as learning experiences. Have grace through those periods but look for growth rather than letting them break you.
“Once people realise that, there’s that a-ha moment! They don’t even look the same when they let go of the self-limiting fears and insecurities and reconnect to who they were supposed to be before they became conditioned by the world,” says Amanda, whose grounding in manifestation and personal and spiritual growth, she maintains, are what got her through her toughest challenges.
“From difficult periods in my life I was able to use them to look forward, turn things around, create and rebuild a life on my terms — something I’m proud of.
“But I needed those challenges to create what I have today. They gave me a voice so I can show others what’s possible. I can say, look what I was able to manifest — the career I’ve been able to build.
“And once you’ve discovered that, well, you can’t not share it!”
