I Was Sixteen Years Old and Drowning in My Own Bathtub. My Father Saved My Life.

By Stacey Chillemi | Award-Winning Podcast Host | 20x Bestselling Author | Founder, Advisor Global Media

There are moments in a life that divide everything into before and after.

I was sixteen years old.

The bathroom was quiet. The water was warm. It was one of those unremarkable weekday afternoons that exist only as background noise in most people’s memories.

I felt the aura.

Anyone who lives with epilepsy knows this feeling with a particular and terrible intimacy. It is a warning — a few seconds of knowing what is coming without being able to stop it.

I was in the bathtub.

I remember the water. I remember the moment I felt my body stop cooperating — that specific helplessness that is unique to a seizure, when every instruction you send your muscles simply disappears somewhere between your brain and your body.

And then I went under.

The Sound in the Hallway

I do not remember what happened next. What I know I have pieced together from what my father told me. From the door he found locked. From the sound that stopped him in the hallway.

A gurgling sound.

My father was walking past the bathroom when he heard it. He called my name. I did not answer. He called again. Silence.

He kicked the door open.

He found me underneath the water.

He pulled me out.

What No One Talks About

I came back to consciousness on the bathroom floor with my father’s hands on my shoulders and a look on his face that I have never forgotten — the look of a parent who has just witnessed something no parent should ever have to witness and who is holding himself together by sheer force of will because falling apart is not an option when your child needs you to be present.

I was alive.

And I was embarrassed.

I was sixteen years old, and I had just nearly drowned in my own bathtub, and the first feeling I remember after the fear was a profound and consuming humiliation — the particular shame of a teenager whose body had once again betrayed her in the most private and vulnerable of spaces.

That is the part nobody talks about when they discuss epilepsy. Not the seizures themselves. Not even the danger. But the indignity. The loss of privacy.

I wanted to disappear.

What My Father Did Next

My father did not lecture me. He did not make me feel worse.

He sat down on the bathroom floor beside me and said nothing for a long time.

He simply stayed.

That is what I remember most. Not the seizure. Not the water. Not even the fear.

His presence.

The specific grace of a father who understood that in that moment what his daughter needed was not words but simply another human being willing to sit on a bathroom floor and refuse to leave.

Sent Back

I was sent back that day.

I do not say that lightly. I say it because I believe it — because I have spent decades living in the aftermath of that afternoon, building something from the life that was handed back to me.

The 1.3 million people I reach through my podcast.

The twenty books.

The Congress testimony.

The thousands of people who have written to tell me that something I created found them in their darkest moment and felt less alone because of it.

None of it exists if my father does not hear that sound in the hallway.

None of it exists if he hesitates.

None of it exists if I stay under the water.

What I Know Now

I was sixteen years old, and I was drowning in my own bathtub.

And the world was not ready for me to leave yet.

Death sent me back.

What I have done with the life I was given back is the only answer I know how to give to the question of why I survived.

I tell the truth about what it cost.

I sit on the floor with other people in their own versions of that bathroom.

And I refuse to leave.

If you have someone in your life who has ever stayed when you needed it most — tell them today. Those people are rarer than we remember to say.

Read the complete From Seizures to Success series: staceychillemi.com/my-story

Book a free strategy call: calendly.com/carecoachingonline/booking-link

Stacey Chillemi is an award-winning podcast host, 20-time bestselling author, epilepsy advocate, and founder of Advisor Global Media. Featured on ABC, NBC, CBS and five times on The Dr. Oz Show. Her podcast reaches 1.3M+ listeners worldwide and won the NYC Podcast Award for Best Host.

Explore how we can work together: staceychillemi.com/work-with-me

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