A Healthy Mind is Just As Important As a Healthy Body

My mother always said as a child I would always ask, “Why?” “Why am I here?” “Why does this work like that?” “Why do I have to do this that or the other?” I asked this question again and again after coming into the world and after each time my life has been saved after many nearing death experiences. This question developed into, “What is the purpose of my life?” I am coming closer to the answer to this question through three things. Surrender. Acceptance. Service.

At the age of 7, I opened up my mouth to belt out the song “Tomorrow” from the musical, “Annie”. I hit every note and soon went from my grandmother’s parlor trick to singing in community, dinner and regional theaters in New Jersey. I was never not in a show. I longed to finish up high school and start pounding the doors of New York theaters until I was on Broadway. Right after graduation, I was signed with a manager and ready to take the plunge. My body had other plans for me. I was struck down with severe Inflammatory Bowel Disease(ulcerative colitis) and two years later, I found myself in such a weak state that not only did IBD strip me of my dreams, it also isolated me from friends, family, and I camped out with a pillow and a blanket on the floor of the bathroom in my childhood home.

While on that floor, I would read. I was looking for help. I picked up my father’s copy of “The Road Less Traveled” by M. Scott Peck. I read the first sentence until I memorized it. I can still paraphrase it today. Life is difficult. Once we truly accept this, than life ceases to be difficult because we don’t expect it to be easy. This was my first self help book. The next book I picked up was Louise Hay’s, “You Can Heal Your Life”. I also had the opportunity to meet Louise in 1991. Little did I know that Hay House would become a large part of my life 20 some years later. Although Bernie Siegel, Gerald Jampolsky, Leo Buscaglia, to name a few of the several hundreds of books I dived into at that time (I had a lot of down time on that bathroom floor), my colon (large intestine) was about to perforate, and I was headed into Mount Sinai Hospital in NY for emergency surgery. I woke up a week later from a medical coma without a colon, however, I gained three things, a temporary ileostomy, a J-Pouch, and a Near Death Experience.