louise on health

via tweet [https://x.com/maximumpain333/status/2079385879806697518?s=20]:

A month before her passing in 2017, Louise L. Hay wrote something that still resonates deeply:

“I’ll be turning 90 this Saturday. My younger years were filled with fear, but now my days are filled with trust and confidence.

My life didn’t really start to make sense until my mid-40s. At 50, I began writing—on a very small scale. My first year, I earned just $42. At 55, I ventured into the world of computers, which terrified me, but I took classes and overcame my fears.

Today, I own three computers and travel everywhere with my iPad and iPhone. At 60, I planted my first garden. Around that time, I joined kids’ art classes and started painting. In my 70s and 80s, I became even more creative, and my life just kept getting richer and more fulfilling.

I still write, give talks, and teach by example. I’m always reading, learning, and growing. I run a successful publishing company and two nonprofits. I’m an avid organic gardener and grow most of my own food. I love people and parties, have many loving friends, and have traveled the world. I still paint and take classes. My life has become a treasure trove of experiences.

I want to encourage you to consciously shape your later years and realize that they can be the most rewarding chapter of your life. Your future is always bright, no matter your age. Let these years become your treasure years.

With love,
Louise Hay

from wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Hay]:

Louise Lynn Hay (October 8, 1926 – August 30, 2017) was an American motivational author and professional speaker. She authored several New Thought self-help books, including the 1984 book You Can Heal Your Life, and founded Hay House publishing.

Early life

..physically abused her and her mother. When she was about five, she was raped by a neighbor. At 15, she dropped out of University High School in Los Angeles without a diploma, became pregnant and, on her 16th birthday, gave up her newborn baby girl for adoption.

She then moved to Chicago, where she worked in low-paying jobs. In 1950, she moved on again, to New York. At this point she changed her first name, and began a career as a fashion model.

Career

Hay said that about this time she found the First Church of Religious Science on 48th Street, which taught her the transformative power of thought. Hay studied the New Thought works of “positive thinking” authors.

Hay described how in 1977 or 1978 she was diagnosed with “incurable” cervical cancer, and how she came to the conclusion that by holding on to her resentment for her childhood abuse and rape she had contributed to its onset. She reported how she had refused conventional medical treatment, and began a regimen of forgiveness, coupled with therapy, nutrition, reflexology, and occasional colonic enemas. She said in the interview that she rid herself of the cancer by this method, but, while swearing to its truth, admitted that she had outlived every doctor who could confirm her story.

gabor on childhood trauma et al

In 1976, Hay wrote and self-published her first book, Heal Your Body, which began as a small pamphlet containing a list of different bodily ailments and their “probable” metaphysical causes. This pamphlet was later enlarged and extended into her book You Can Heal Your Life, published in 1984. In February 2008, it was fourth on the New York Times paperback advice bestsellers list.

Around the same time she began “Hay Rides” by leading support groups for people living with HIV/AIDS… Her work with AIDS patients drew fame and she was invited to appear on The Oprah Winfrey Show and The Phil Donahue Show in the same week, in March 1988. Following this, You Can Heal Your Life immediately landed on The New York Times bestseller list. More than 50 million copies sold around the world in over 30 languages and it also has been made into a movie. You Can Heal Your Life is also included in the book 50 Self-Help Classics for being significant in its field. It is often described as a part of the New Age movement.

Legacy

In addition to running her publishing company, Hay ran a charitable organization called the Hay Foundation, which she founded in 1985. Its mission is to build futures and support organizations that enhance the quality of life for people, animals, and the environment.

In 2008, a movie about Louise Hay’s life was released, titled You Can Heal Your Life.

In September 2011, Hay and Cheryl Richardson released their book You Can Create An Exceptional Life.

The 2021 documentary film Another Hayride, built entirely from archival footage and narrated by writer/minister David Ault, explores how Louise drew hundreds of gay men with AIDS by teaching them self-love in 1980s Los Angeles.

Criticism

Hay was best known for her 1984 book You Can Heal Your Life. In this book, Hay attributed various illnesses and medical conditions to psychological causes, or “mental patterns” including lack of self-love, fear, and guilt. For instance, Acne was due to “not accepting the self. Dislike of the self.”

missing pieces ness

Hay has been accused of “brutal dismissal of actual people with AIDS” and profiting off of the sick by ruling out physiological factors that may be responsible for diseases and lending weight purely to mental causes that she perceives is the origin of diseases.”

American writer, activist, and AIDS historian Sarah Schulman wrote that Hay “made a lot of money exploiting desperate people with AIDS” as Hay’s publishing company, Hay House, made a reported $100 million in 2007 alone.

Peter Fitzgerald, an activist and filmmaker who witnessed Hay during this period said, “I understand that she provided hope at very dark times to a great many people, I also know all too well that her clay feet were deeply mired in the guilt of being an AIDS profiteer, a disloyal friend and purveyor of false hope.” Fitzgerald labelled Hay a “spiritual fraud” who “had let me and a great many of my people down.”

Beryl Satter, a history professor at Rutgers University with expertise in early New Age movements, says “What’s horrible about [touting benefits of relaxation and meditation] is if it prevents you from actually getting medical help, and that it so drastically turns the attention on your inner self and not the world around you.”

Ideas and teachings

Hay’s two best-known books, Heal Your Body: The Mental Causes for Physical Illness and the Metaphysical Way to Overcome Them and You Can Heal Your Life, directly associate physical problems such as cancer with specific negative emotional patterns and assert that healing the emotional components will also heal the physical conditions. Hay wrote in You Can Heal Your Life that thoughts—not just sexual behavior—could help cause sexually transmitted diseases:

It is my belief that VENEREAL DISEASE is almost always sexual guilt. It comes from a feeling, often subconscious, that it is not right to express ourselves sexually. A carrier with a venereal disease can have many partners, but only those whose mental and physical immune systems are weak will be susceptible to it.

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