Gladys Taylor McGarey, M.D. has been a family physician for more than 60 years. She was a co-founder of The American Holistic Medical Association and has been called the mother of holistic medicine. This month she sent out a wonderful letter that is published here as an extra WINN post for March:

Dear Friends,
As most of you know, I fell during the night just a few days after we celebrated my 99^th birthday together. I broke 4 ribs and punctured my lung, which caused a hemopneumothorax. My wonderful daughter Helene, who is also an amazing doctor, and her husband Nick were able to get me to the hospital. I was admitted to the ICU and had wonderful care for 24 hours and then spent another 36 hours in the hospital before I was released to finish healing at home. According to experts, a fall of that severity and by a person of my age could have been fatal! It wasn’t and I am so grateful. What the fall and its aftermath have done is to deepen a very important understanding. How is it that I suffered the injuries that I did but my healing has gone so smoothly in spite of being in my 100^th year? In fact, just 24 hours after the fall I was able to control pain with an occasional ibuprofen.

Let me share with you what I have known that has certainly deepened through this experience: love is the great healer. The waves of overwhelming love that you all gave to me during my birthday celebration were just awesome. I have never felt a great tidal wave of love flowing to me with such force before. It was enormous! I was literally challenged to find a way to take it all in. Little did I know that through the overwhelming love that you expressed to me that night my immune system was being strengthened with every cell in my body being bathed in that love. It did not stop there.

Throughout this whole six-week period, I have been healing. Your love has continued to wash over and fill me. From you, I have felt waves and waves of loving thoughts, prayers and healing intentions. There hasn’t been one moment when I didn’t feel surrounded and lifted up by the amazing loving healing energy in which I felt immersed. Your flowers, prayers and cards filled with loving thoughts that I received, have allowed the healing to flow so smoothly. Since love is the real healing energy that underlies all healing there is no way that my body could not be healed. This is what Living Medicine is all about. Cell by cell, my body received the love from all of you and, cell by cell, my body has regenerated. I have not had an x-ray of my lungs or of my ribs since then but it doesn’t matter. I know my body. I know that my lungs are clear and my ribs are recalcifying. I know I am healthy.

I also know I have much work yet to do. Thank you for blessing me in such a way that I can continue this important work. Many of you have been concerned that I have day-to-day help through the healing process. Since the day after getting home from the hospital, I have been blessed to have my wonderful daughter-in-law, the Rev. Dr. Bobbie McGarey, stay with me to help me and keep me out of trouble. I am also in awe of how much love surrounds me.

Additionally, we’ve received a number of inquiries about the Coronavirus. This is a unique period of time. The Coronavirus has brought the world to a standstill. We are being forced to focus on what our lives are really about. We are being given a chance to stop and look at what is really important in our lives. It is encouraging us to stop and ask, “What do we really want to live for?” It is a chance to let the healing energy of love to permeate our lives. And, as our bodies take it in, the energy is spread to the world.

Our immune systems thrive on our healing energies and our intentions to live and grow and become the people we truly can be. As we allow our bodies to understand how much we love them we can do the things that we need to do in order to stay healthy. If we are consumed by fear or by denying the reality of this pandemic, our bodies will not know what to do. We must remember: the sun still rises every morning. The moon still knows what she is supposed to do. The rain still comes and the world still continues.  It is time for each of us to feel the loving energy that surrounds us and allow ourselves to be part of the healing that this world needs.

If there is illness, allow it to play its course, but do not focus on the fear that it tends to bring into our lives. The physician within each one of us understands our emotions. Love is what heals no matter what modalities are used. I think that these last six weeks were in some strange way an opportunity for me to feel the reality of this love and its true healing capacity with every part of my body. I know I am now healed.

To each of you that contributed to my healing and deepened my understanding regarding the power of love in the healing process, I can only say thank you.

Love,
Gladys

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To learn more about the work Dr. Gladys is doing now, please go to,
thefoundationforlivingmedicine.org.

Here are titles of books that Dr. Gladys has written:
THE WORLD NEEDS OLD LADIES
THE PHYSICIAN WITHIN YOU: Discovering the Power of Inner Healing
BORN TO LIVE: A Holistic Approach to Childbirth
LIVING MEDICINE: The Dwelling Place
BORN TO HEAL: The Life Story of Holistic Pioneer Gladys Taylor McGarey

(Next week’s post will be about how to send – and receive – love.)

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