In this profoundly moving episode of Epic Begins With One Step Forward, Zander Sprague welcomes poet and survivor Cyndee Dhalai, whose life story redefines resilience. From growing up in Trinidad and Tobago, challenging cultural expectations, and facing ostracism for speaking her truth, to flatlining five times and living allergic to all medication, Cyndee’s journey is nothing short of miraculous. She shares how faith, self-conversation, and sheer determination helped her move from a wheelchair to walking again—without medical treatment. Together, they explore the power of mindset, commitment, and gratitude in overcoming impossible odds. Cyndee’s wisdom—born from pain, patience, and persistence—reminds us that healing begins within. Her story proves that every day truly is a second chance at life
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Six Lives, One Spirit: How Cyndee Beat The Odds Again And Again
I have a great show for you, and I’m so honored to be joined by Cyndee. Cyndee, tell us who you are and what you do.
My name is Cyndee Dhalai. Who am I? I haven’t quite figured out yet. I do know I’ve played a lot of roles in life. I was a child, a sister, a student. I was a teacher, a wife, a mother, and a counselor to many people. I was a patient who nearly died. I died a few times. I was disabled in a wheelchair. I became a widow when my husband died. Now I’m a writer, poet, and I’m still searching for myself.
Challenging Traditions: Cyndee’s Childhood Journey
To say the least, that is an epic journey, Cyndee. I want to get into it because I know from doing my research that you’ve got quite the epic story, and I’m fascinated to learn different aspects of that. Let me start off with, I know when I was doing my research, and I found you, you were writing about the information I had about being ostracized, because that’s a really challenging thing, especially as a child. Can you talk a little about why you were ostracized and how you came over that?
We get ostracized in a lot of ways, and I think most of all face ostracism, but we just don’t see it as being ostracized when people leave us out of like events, or when people reject our friendship or when our families don’t understand us and we get the silent treatment or on the converse side where you get too much bad attention. In my case, I grew up in a small country, like I told you, and it’s a multicultural, multi-ethnic, beautiful place.
Lovely people, when everybody and stuff like that and things. Sometimes, when you grow up in cultures that are restrictive and you have to follow traditional rules and you end up being somebody who has a mouth on you and who questions things and who speaks out. That was my case in that don’t tell me, do as I tell you, but not as I do, because I want to know if you tell me to do this, then why are you quarreling with me?
Are you doing something else? I would get criticized for that. I’ve gone mischievous, troublesome. I never listened to anybody. You felt it even in a large family. These are my personal feelings of how it was. Other people might see it differently from how I see it. No, that didn’t happen, but just to an extent, it was how I felt because you couldn’t exactly speak out and say what you wanted. The rest of them were quiet. I was the one who had been demoted.
I would always say, “No, that isn’t right,” or “That’s not something you should tell somebody.” After a while, you began to realize that there was a separation between everybody around you and yourself. You felt the separation. Yes, you might be related and you might have blood with people, but you feel a separation because they don’t sync with how you think or what your natural inclinations are, and how you, as a child, may see the world.
Just for the audience, you live in Trinidad and Tobago, and you reference that. People are like, “Where is she from?” I certainly get it sometimes, as you said, in a more traditional society, the expectation is that children are to be seen and not heard, and that. A kid goes, “Why?” Explain that and not accepting the answer of, “It’s because I said so.” That’s not a reason. It doesn’t explain it.
Cyndee, I totally get. Obviously, I’m a son, I’m a brother, I’m a dad. I get the curiosity that children have, and I deny information. Sure, you may change it or say, “Look, it’s complex, but here I’ll give you a simple answer.” Sometimes you’ll have to wait to get that answer, because sometimes kids are precocious and they ask questions that it is not the time for them to know the answer to, right?
Yes. I know sometimes, like when you grew up, even though you might grow up in a multi ethnic, multi-cultural society like mine is. Things have changed a lot now, but I’m talking about the 1970s or so. Fifty years ago.
We really don’t need to put a number on there, Cyndee. I, too, was growing up then, but we could just say, “It’s because it doesn’t seem that long ago to me.”
I know. Me neither, but in terms of how society has inspired. Anyway, but like when you go up in a traditional family, like with traditions and religious settings and stuff like that, you’re supposed to conform to it me and girls in dresses do not climb trees. You don’t speak out in religious things because, like in some religions, you know that the males are the dominant ones and they have the most respect, and you’re not supposed to question things. I did.
When you grow up in a traditional family with strong religious and cultural traditions, you’re expected to conform to the system.
The ostracism came from like all the isolation, and in a sense, to also came from everybody around me because as I grew older and when you go to school in a school that has all the different religions and different races and beliefs and stuff, you do develop the sense that, “Wait. I am not singular in the sense that what my religion or my beliefs are, the only thing there are other people too.” I was more open to reading a lot. I read about Buddha and Islam and Sai Baba, and when I was a Hindu. I would read things. I cannot give you an insight into things outside of the scope of what you traditionally would find at home.
I agree that exploration, especially when they say the two things you shouldn’t talk about are politics and religion at the dinner table. Funny enough, that somehow seems to always get into dinner table conversations, and there are hurt feelings. However, I do agree that curiosity to say, “Yes,” there’s not just one way. There isn’t one belief system.
You can read about Islam, you can read about Judaism and Buddhism and Jainism, and Hinduism, and go, “I understand that, but this is what I believe,” or “I like this idea from this religion,” but understanding that the human experiences, you and I could look at a painting and see completely different things in that painting. It doesn’t make you right or me right. It simply means we’re seeing different things. That’s part of what makes the human experience unique. If we all believe the same thing, we all saw the same thing. It’s boring.
It would be very boring because I don’t think any of us would need to be a clone. I think we were all cast in our own mold. We have a right to, you may say, situation one way and I may say situation the other way, but who is right and who is wrong?
Defying Medical Odds: Surviving Lupus & Allergic Reactions
Absolutely. I’m sure that was really challenging for you. You mentioned when you were introducing yourself that you died a couple of times. You were sick. You were in a wheelchair.
Yes, I did. As you said, you talk about Epic. I guess we all have our life experiences, but some of us may get a bit more out of our experiences than others. I didn’t know, like a bar, that I may have had these illnesses in my body. I say my body, I don’t say myself because my illnesses are my body. They’re not who I am. I started getting really ill. You go to the doctor, and they’ll give you like 1 or 2 little pills.
As I grew older and went to a school with many different religions, races, and beliefs, I developed a sense that I am not singular.
They will treat what symptoms you go to them with. Everything started getting deeper and deeper. I found out that my buddy had many illnesses, among which were lupus and chronic kidney disease, and a whole set of other things that come with not being treated because they didn’t know what it was, and stuff like that. It had progressed to the extent that it was affecting my body very badly. They had recommended that I try a drug that was now coming out, named Plaquenil, at that time.
I flatlined on it. I was out for eighteen and a half hours. I acquired a medical report, and they didn’t know how I would be when I came back because I just flatlined in less than five minutes after taking it. That happened, and then I went to the fog for four years of being ill. I don’t have much recollection. I tell everybody, “My body was here, but my mind wasn’t here because I didn’t really know what was going on.” The experiences I’ve heard are from my late husband, my children, people who are around, the doctors, and then reading my medical reports. Those are the things I knew, but I did flatline five times. The thing about it is that I’m allergic to all medications.
All medications.
Even a baby Panadol can kill me. We did go to see like, homeopathic and he naturopathic because we wanted to see if there’s anything that could help because it was getting really bad. At that time, I ended up in a wheelchair because, for some reason, I started falling. I would stand and I would try to walk and I’d fall, and the doctors say, “We couldn’t find a specific cause for it. It was all neurological,” because I had flat lines. They didn’t know what happened, and they couldn’t go in and find out or do any tests because the diet they would have to inject me with could kill me. It was like a catch-22.
The Unexplained Recovery: Life Without Medication
Cyndee, I just have to say that so far, you are wonderfully unique, which certainly doesn’t make it easy for the people in your life. I’m not saying that in a bad way, but I’m like, doctors are like, “We want to help you, but we don’t want to kill you just trying to find out why you’re sick or what’s going on.”
Yeah, because my doctors always said that I was a medical enigma, a miracle. Most people who know, I’m not telling people who know, but now people are beginning to know about my history of my body being sick because I don’t look ill, I don’t sound ill. I don’t act like an ill person. Unless I tell you, you wouldn’t know.
That is absolutely true.
When most people do find out, because the illnesses are not going to magically disappear from my body. I cannot take treatment, and I have not been to a doctor since 2013, and I have not had a single illness since 2013. Everybody wonders, “What am I doing?” I said, “I’m not on medication because they cannot treat me.”
“What are you doing?” I tell everybody, “By the grace of God,” because as we say, I can think of any because how else could I live without medication after suffering for four years of everything you can think of, from fingers and toes turning in blue to blood eczema to flatlining, to having to get thirteen pints of blood every single day because I had zero platelets, zero red blood cells. That was the whole history of it.
Suddenly to wake up, and tell everybody that, and when I was in a nursing home for three weeks the last time, to wake up and pull out all the tubes and say, “I’m ready to go home now.” I was in a wheelchair for over eleven years, and for over eight years again. My husband died, and that was like really hard because he died after a short illness and was unexpected. I got told, “Why didn’t you die instead?”
I had to find a way. Now I have two wonderful children who are fantastic and supportive. To be honest with you, they turned out a lot better than I could have expected. I am really blessed in that sense. I was trying to handle everything because I was in a wheelchair. This was on Christmas Eve 2021, my husband died. In 2022, I was trying to get a grip on everything because I was by myself.
I was married for 33.5 years, and that was a long time. You have to organize everything and stuff. I was getting tired because I didn’t want to be a burden to anybody, because I’ve always been independent. Even in my wheelchair, I was always independent and stuff like that and things. I just sat down and I said, “God, we have to talk.” I said, “This is not how I want to be. I don’t want to be a burden to anybody.
You’re the reason why you brought me back. I have no idea why I’m still here, but help me. I don’t want to be in this wheelchair anymore.” After that, well, I did try walking in between all the years, and like we had walkers and stuff. I had a walker, and I had everything you could think of to start. Every time I try to walk, I’d fall, and the risk was that if I damaged myself, they couldn’t treat me.
Finally, my children got upset with me, and my husband was always telling me, “Don’t do this because it is a risk you take.” My children, I remember because I was stubborn and I was being selfish, and I wanted the life that I had before, being independent and being able to drive and to pick myself up and go wherever I wanted to go and to do things.
That makes sense.
It was also selfish because I understood what they went through, but I wasn’t there to see how they experienced it or what they went through with me. They said, “Mom, you have no idea what it is.” My husband told me, “I don’t think I can stand you flatlining again, because I don’t think I could go through that again.”
Understandable, Cyndee.
It hit me that I was being selfish, and I was always the supportive one, and I was the one who would do everything for everybody, and be there for everybody, and counsel and help and do everything for my family and my children and stuff like that. Suddenly, at the time I thought I stopped and I said, “What are you doing? You are being so selfish because you have no idea what you put them through. You had to tell you, but like it doesn’t click in you because I wasn’t present.”
My body went through it, and like, “I wasn’t really present to know what they went through.” I said, “I was being so selfish.” That’s when I adjusted to being in a wheelchair. Afterward, after my husband died, I didn’t want to burden my children because they’re both married. They have their own families. They cannot be running back and forth. Every time I have to do something, they have to go and do whatever. I said, “My husband was okay.” It’s huge stuff, like whatever.
That’s what he signed up for.
Sickness and in health and whatever. I started trying to move, and little by little, I made a few more steps and a few more steps. I did fall, and just my ankle a little bit, and things like that, and stuff. I did get a big scratch on my foot. It took months to heal because I could not take any medication. I would just use honey and clean out the cuts and stuff like that.
You couldn’t even like, if you had a scratch, you cannot even put on like an antibiotic or anything? Have they ever determined why or how you’re allergic to literally every medication?
What the doctors had surmised, and I had also gone to the London lupus center. What the doctors had said is that because it’s lupus, your body’s fighting everything, and what it does. They said that everything your body sees everything an invasion.
I got it. Makes sense.
That’s what happened. I couldn’t take the risk of putting anything on it. What I would do is use my own natural thing. Clean it with salt and water, and put honey on it. It takes a long while to heal because my blood-clotting factor is not really present, and I bleed for a very long time.
I got it. Now, do you still have lupus and the symptoms of that, and you just deal with it?
Mindset As Medicine: Embracing A New Life Daily
They cannot test to see the extent of anything that I have, even the chronic kidney disease. They cannot test to see because, like I told you to do a biopsy, they’d have to use things and stuff like that, and I’m allergic to everything. The doctor says, “Cyndee, catch-22, and if you want to find out how bad your kidneys are and your other organs are, we’ll have to do a biopsy, and that involves like anesthetic and stuff like that.
We can kill you trying to find out how bad your body is. Right now, your body seems to be going fine. We’re not going to do anything.” Yes, I do have some things that show up in my body, but in terms of managing it, because I’m not healed. I know I’m managing it. In terms of managing it over the years, through all I’ve been through, with all the trials and tribulations that have come my way, through struggling and things like that.
How people treat you and all the adverse things that have happened in life, I find myself I did slip into the mindset that, “Listen, I’m going to take it day by day and as far as I’m concerned, this is my sixth life. I am going to live it as it is a new life every single day.” That’s what I do. Bit by bit. Yes, I have migraine that’s always on the right side because you would do lupus and stuff like that.
I do have to be careful in getting allergies or whatever, but I am very mindful of what to eat and stuff like that. I think it all comes down to the mind because in my mind, I made up my mind that, “Listen, there is nothing that I cannot do, and I will determine what I do and what I don’t do. Yes, my body might reject, and my body might come back to me, and people might like what I do, but I only have one life, and there’s only one me, and I’m going to just be me.
Absolutely, Cyndee. I’m a mental health professional also, and I’m a firm believer that our mindset, the story we tell ourselves, and what we believe is incredibly important, especially if you are facing an injury or an illness or something. The people who tend to get better when, by all accounts, you shouldn’t get better or you shouldn’t walk or you’re not going to survive. A lot of it is, I’m not actually buying into that.
I am going to, just like you said, every day I take it, and I’m here, and here’s what I want to do. I’m clear about what I will do, what I won’t do. Sure, maybe something you choose to do. You scrape your foot. Something happens. You want to know what that’s like. We’re going to make mistakes. Stuff is going to happen to us. Certainly, for you, I hope some little thing doesn’t turn into a big thing again. However, I do believe that our mind is one of our most powerful healing tools. Believing that you will be okay goes a long way toward you being okay.
Yes, it does. You see, you will always experience things in life. People will always have to give you their opinion, whether you want it or not. One thing I’ve realized is that you should never let anything determine your expectations and what you feel for yourself in life. Very often, because what you have to realize is that when you talk about the mind, people say, “It’s all mental, yes, but I don’t know it because you have to have determination, and that takes a lot sometimes.”
I tell myself, “Listen, who do you live with 24 hours a day?” Even when you’re asleep, you live with yourself. You talk to yourself 24 hours a day. The same way when you ask someone, “How are you today? How are you going?” You listen to them and you express compassion and you express support and whatever. Why can’t you do that for yourself? Why can’t you say, “How are you today?” Your mind will probably say, “What?” You can always go through like things that happen today and say, “These things happen.”
I felt bad, or I felt good, or it was nice, or it was horrible. You tell yourself, “I will try to remember next time, probably to do better or just put it away because that’s what it was in that moment, but I’m still here and I can do something now.” Learn something else now. That’s what you have to do. That’s what I did because even though I wasn’t in the wheelchair, I said, “What am I supposed to learn from this experience?”
I was a teacher before, and I love teaching. I had to leave because when I got so sick, you have to retire medically and fit. I had to leave teaching. I couldn’t drive anymore. I couldn’t just pick myself up and go and do stuff. Even with my children, they were getting older, they were doing their own things and stuff. My husband was working, and he used to work as a chef. Yes, I was cooking, still cooking in the wheelchair, and cleaning up and doing things I want.
I said, “What are the advantages of my being in a wheelchair?” That’s a strange thing to ask, “What are the advantages of you not being able to do all the things that you had before?” Yes, I lost my independence, and I lost some things that I valued before, but what were the good things about my being in a wheelchair? I realized that even though I was patient as a teacher before, I learned what being patient really was because I couldn’t just go out and do things.
I had to sit back, and then I learned to live with myself and to see myself as I am. To see where I thought I was better, I really wasn’t so good. I learned to listen, not listen with my ear while my mind is planning. “I have to do this later,” or “What am I going to respond to the composition?” or “I wonder what this person expects me to tell them.” Those things go through your mind. You don’t realize it, but you do.
When you’re in a conversation with somebody, you’re listening. Yes, you’re hearing their words, but your mind is also thinking about how you’re going to respond to them. Instead of just listening to the words and hearing what is unspoken sometimes, or seeing the body language and stuff like that. I saw that I was becoming more aware of the whole person, not just what somebody was telling me.
Unlocking Inner Wisdom: Intuition, Commitment & Growth
It’s interesting. It taps a little into, I had some guests on a prior podcast where their whole thing is talking about getting in touch with your intuition again. A funny thing is, we have like a million years of evolution where we got here because our ancestors listened to intuition. “That feels dangerous. I should be careful.”
That doesn’t look safe. Nowadays, with all of the vast information we have on the internet and social media and all of this stuff, a lot of us have lost the ability to actually pay attention to our intuition. In the counseling I do, I talk to my clients all the time about if you have anxiety, before your conscious mind knows it, your unconscious mind is aware that something’s anxious.
If you start to pay attention to what those symptoms are, like, “That feeling, if I’m feeling anxious, I start to feel it in my stomach. I feel like I have butterflies.” Pay attention to that. That’s a way to help lessen what’s going on. Your body will tell you, our bodies are fantastic machines that, again, work really hard to keep us alive. If we pay attention to what it’s telling us, funny things happen. We actually are okay.
Sometimes you might think, “I cannot do this anymore.” Sometimes you have to shift your perspective because it’s not like you cannot do something unless you try it. Sometimes when you try something, you’re following somebody else’s method. I am going to do these things, and I’m going to have all these affirmations and do these manifestations and do this course and do that course.
In between you find yourself, “This doesn’t feel right, but no, I have to finish a course because I paid for it and stuff like that, and thing or whatever. I’m going to do it. I’m going to get up every day and do these things,” but you’re not committed. That is very important because sometimes we want to do things, and commitment is the underlying source or the foundation on which anything can be done. Because you have an illness like me, or you are suffering from a relationship breakup or a loss, or whatever, and you keep going back and back to how it was before, and you find yourself going in this cycle.
What you do is sometimes you have to sit down and say, “Why is this happening? Why am I going back and going over the same thing? Why am I keeping myself stuck in this same place? All I’m doing is like, I’m spinning a top and mud.” That’s an old saying, spinning top and mud. You’re not getting anywhere. You’re going to go to the outlying part of it, and you think you’re going to progress, but you haven’t let yourself really commit to moving forward or acceptance or agreement or commit yourself to something that you want to do, and commitment is very hard.
Sometimes you think, ‘I can’t do this anymore,’ but you have to shift your perspective — how do you know you can’t do something unless you try?
Cyndee Dhalai’s Epic Journey: Gratitude & Resilience
Change is hard. Cyndee, you and I could talk for hours here. I want to thank you so much for sharing your truly epic journey through all of this. I am so happy that you are where you are, that you are doing well and thriving. That is just excellent and such a testament to all the things that you’ve talked about in the way that you live your life. If people want to get hold of you, they want to find your books or your poetry. How can they do that?
My books are available on Amazon.com. There’s Pieces of Me: Touch My Soul, which is a poetry book by Cyndee. There’s also Grief is the Price You Pay for Love by Faialian, which is a pseudonym I used. They’re both available on Amazon.com.
Cyndee, thank you so much for joining me.
You’re welcome, Zan. It was very nice being with you.
Thank you. Thank you for listening. If you’re ready to begin your epic journey, go to EpicBegins.com. As always, remember that epic choices lead to the epic life that you want.
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About Cyndee Dhalai
Who am I? I have had many roles. If you have ever known rejection from very young in life, isolation from family because you didn’t fit into their mold or thought differently, if you’ve known ostracism from everyone because you chose to be you, if you’ve been disowned for marrying your own choice, if you’ve known starting from minus zero to build a life and family, if you’ve known losing four years of your life in a fog of severe illness, flatlined a few times, defied all odds as you’re deadly allergic to all medications, had to readjust to life in a wheelchair for over 11 years, suffered grief and loss suddenly then been asked by a relative why you didn’t die instead, if you had further ostracism from most friends and family because you are alive, if you asked a higher being and learnt to walk despite being told it wasn’t possible, if you wrote two books from your soul.
One poetry book called Pieces of Me, Touch My Soul by Cyndee, and a book dealing with grief and loss called Grief is the Price You Pay for Love by Faialian, my pseudonym, and “live not survive,” give you an idea of my life experiences. I am seen by many as a living, walking miracle, an inspiration, and a medical enigma. Life is a miracle and magic, salt and light, goodness and beauty. I see life through my own eyes.