Deborah A. Forrest, PhD, MS, MSN, BSN is a scholar, award-winning author and speaker on the topics of spirituality, dementia, grief, and the use of quantum energies for personal transformations. She brings a unique approach to the fields of clinical psychology and medicine by integrating her passion for shamanism, connection with the spirit world, deep research into the death and dying process, and her career as a registered nurse and biomedical laser researcher.

Dr. Deborah’s personal journey into the eventual work that she is now known for began around 1993, when she had a near-death experience and suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) in a car crash. In 1997, she was diagnosed with possible lung cancer. Unsure of her fate and facing the possibility of impending death for five long years, Dr. Deborah began to write her first book in order to preserve her acquired knowledge and wisdom for generations to come.

Over the years that followed these life-altering events, Dr. Deborah also learned to adapt to the brain changes created by her TBI. On the macro level, this drastically altered her world view; on the micro level, it created lingering deficits in language comprehension that continue to inform her writing and teachings to this day. She stresses that the importance of using concrete rather than abstract terms to describe new concepts is critical for persons living with a TBI or any other form of cognitive deficits. This is based not only on her personal experiences but her academic training during her fellowship at the University of Kentucky’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.