Identity Crisis Extraordinaire!

“Life was trucking along pretty well for me, and then, wham-o.”  Damian Reilly got knocked off his snowmobile one fateful New Years Day.  It is a tragic story.  It is a story about life, death and everything in-between.  It’s about what we see, what we are blind to and how we learn to see again.

Damian Reilly was born in Edmonton, Alberta in 1969 but moved to Ontario and raised in a few small towns before kindergarten, Toronto became his hometown, now it’s Parry Sound, Ontario.  He also calls it his spiritual home.

Attending University in Quebec, then returning to Toronto in the early 90’s, Damian started a corporate career quickly finding himself of the forefront of marketing leadership advancing through many blue-chip corporations with growing responsibilities.  He was living the Canadian dream as taught in high school and before.   He amassed a lifetime of once in a lifetime experiences because of his work, his zest for life and the desire to try it all.  You name he can drive it.  He has travelled the world, built businesses from within, and from nothing.  He built his own vacation home by 33 and was lucky to add many friends along his journey.

At 40, it all changed.  Not radically, but radically.  Involved in a horrifically tragic accident involving a close friend he calls a brother, he was badly injured with over 20 broken bones, damaged multiple organs and ripped most of the soft tissue below the waist and for a period of time, he died.  Sadly, his friend did not return that day, but Damian did.  He is a research participant on the study of near-death experiences and has done his own deep research on the subject and the study of consciousness and currently assists Canadian Indigenous people to heal from intergenerational trauma to help his country reconcile an ugly chapter in its history.

Damian also shares his story to inspire us all to live life as it was meant to be lived.