Unexplained Experiences: Coincidence or Connection? Part 2 – Motherhood and the Unseen Thread

In Part 1, I shared how my childhood was shaped by strange, unexplained experiences — like icy brain tingles that always matched my mother’s distress. Those early stories made me wonder if family connections could somehow register in our bodies.

But as I grew older and became a mother myself, the pattern didn’t stop. If anything, it intensified.

Unexplained experiences: Feeling My Children’s Pain

Me at the lab during my post-doctoral fellowship.

There were countless times when I knew something had happened to my kids before anyone told me.

The most compelling time was one day at the lab, I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my head. It wasn’t like a normal headache — it was abrupt, pointed, and insistent. Instinctively, I walked to the phone. Before it even rang, I reached for it, saying out loud, “Is Zakk okay?”

On the other end, someone was calling to tell me that Zakk, 9 at the time, had run his head into a brick wall at school while playing basketball, and he had passed out.

This wasn’t a one-time fluke. There are at least ten examples I can recall — moments when a sharp pain, a jolt, or an uneasy wave would hit me, only to be followed by news of one of my children being hurt. Sometimes small things, sometimes bigger. But the connection was consistent.

And never tell little white lies about a kid being sick (or you being sick) to miss work or events, as it will likely happen...possibly by the next morning. At least with me, I learned never to use that as an excuse.

Knowing the Unknowable

It wasn’t just injuries. Sometimes, I just knew things.

For example, I knew my daughter was pregnant before she told me. I had dreamed the whole story. She swore her friend must have spilled the secret, as she had just found out that day and hadn't told anyone yet - but the truth is: I woke up one morning with the knowledge in my head and couldn’t shake it. I had to call her and ask.

Whitney and Brandon gave birth to their amazing daughter on July 15, 2013

During my pregnancy with my son, my mother was also unnervingly accurate. She told me not to bother with a sonogram — that I was having a boy, that he’d have brown hair and brown eyes, and that she had already “held him” in her dreams. She was right on every detail.

She also said his name would only be “Zach.” There was a deal for him to be named Zakk (but legally spelled Zachary) after Zakk Wilde unless he was born on or around his due date. In that case, I would win and he'd be named after my brother. Well, he was a month late. Yes, a month FML - my husband was low-level military, and my prenatal care wasn't the best.

Statistically, you could argue this was guesswork and coincidence. But the certainty she carried — and the way she described it as though she had already held 'Zach' — felt far outside the realm of chance.

This is Zakk - the one that was held as a baby by his grandmother in her dreams before he was born.

The Thread That Binds

These stories leave me wondering if family DNA doesn’t just tie us together biologically, but energetically. Could there be some kind of shared signal, a tether, that lets us register each other’s experiences?

Skeptics would say it’s a coincidence. A mother’s intuition. Pattern-seeking. Maybe. But to me, the sheer repetition — the sharp pains that line up with accidents, the knowledge that comes before confirmation — makes coincidence feel like the weaker explanation. In the last volume of this series, I'll pose the question of DNA possibly being quantum entangled - so more on that later.

Why It Matters

Motherhood has a way of sharpening your senses. But in my case, it sometimes felt like more than instinct — as if I were physically and mentally tuned into my kids on a level science hasn’t fully explained.

Coincidence? Possibly. But the more it happened, the harder it was to dismiss.

Next in the series: Part 3 – Premonitions, Predictions, and the Strange

From dreams that play out in real life to an uncanny ability to predict NFL games, the pattern of “knowing” continues — sometimes in ways even harder to explain.