Jena Pincott - Healing: Advice for Recovering Your Inner Strength and Spirit from the Worlds Most Famous Survivors

To Peter, who has healing powers

It is easy to go down into Hell; night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide; but to climb back again, to retrace one's steps to the upper airthere's the rub, the task.

Virgil, poet

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Of families, Leo Tolstoy famously observed: happy ones are all alike, unhappy ones are unhappy in their own ways. The same can be said of individuals: happy ones feel connected to others, unhappy ones feel alone in their suffering. Depression, heartbreak, betrayal, abuse, illness, accidents, miscarriage, rejection, career setbacks, divorce, drug and alcohol addiction, the death of loved ones, and so on are so personally devastating that those experiencing them often believe others couldn't possibly relate.

But it's not true. With more than six billion people on the planet, there's a pretty good chance that others share similar hardships. And among us are survivorsthose who have endured physical and emotional pain and come out wiser. Those who managed to heal.

Healing is a collection of insights and advice from such survivors. I have trawled through interviews, articles, broadcasts, autobiographies, and speeches to find advice and insights on the healing process. Many of the people quoted in this book are well-known business leaders, actors and actresses, singers, writers, artists, and philosophers.

Included here are Steve Jobs on what he learned from his cancer diagnosis, Elton John on rebounding from drug and alcohol addiction, Hilary Swank on surviving divorce, and Bruce Willis on accepting the death of his brother. Here, too, are Gladys Knight on coping with her son's death, Patch Adams on generating hope, Kylie Minogue on beating breast cancer, Sharon Stone on surviving a near-death experience, and Eva Kor on forgiving the Nazi doctors who violated her during the Holocaust. These survivors and others have used their fame as a platform to talk about how they survived, and in some cases thrived, in the aftermath of personal tragedy.

We heal in a variety of ways: by accepting, believing, changing, connecting, coping, creating, forgiving, laughing, living, persisting, and transcending. These are the themes of this book. Many of the excerpts focus on finding a reason and purpose for your problem (When you understand there is a purpose, then you can handle a lot of stuff.Rick Warren). Others offer specific remedies for mind and spirit (No matter what you're going through, pick up a phone and call somebody at home [who's] sick, or go down to the shelter and help somebody learn to read.Laura Schlesinger). Many address life changes (Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. There is no reason not to follow your heart.Steve Jobs.) Others address the healing virtues of spirituality (You're born. You suffer. You die. Fortunately, there's a loophole.Billy Graham).

My hope is that Healing will be a salve for sufferers. Use it to help distance yourself from your problem, or at least understand it better. More importantly, may the ideas and advice of these survivors remind you that suffering can be overcome. Even Tolstoy, whose characters are often the embodiment of human misery and tragedy, believed this. He wrote, The most difficult thing of all yet the most essentialis to love life, even when you suffer, because life is all.

Acceptance is commonly

known as the final stage of grief (after denial, anger, bargaining, and depression). It's also the first stage of healing. Only after you've accepted your situation can you begin to recover from it. Look at it this way: The storm has passed. Your personal landscape has changed. But you're beginning to accept the new terrain, the new reality. You're beginning to heal.

BE STRONGER THAN YOU KNOW

In the moment, life's setbackssickness, death of a loved one, career setbacks, fractured relationships, and so onmay seem permanently disabling. But everyone goes through them at some point, and their lives go on, perhaps altered but not broken. People are hardwired to survive. You're tougher than you think.

One of my favorite lines from [a] book that I have always loved is, Life is difficult from the road less traveled. That's the first line of that book. And life is difficult. I think most people have the expectation that it's supposed to always be happy. But if you're an adult, you know that there are always valleys and mountains. And at some point, many of us will face life-challenging trials that knock us to the ground. And what I know is that it's how we pick ourselves back up, how you take that pain and you turn it into something powerful for yourself and for other people, that really matters. You are stronger than you know. Oprah Winfrey, talk-show host

Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
William James, psychologist and philosopher

I think everybody has tragedy in their life. Everybody has hurdles in their life. Everybody has tough things to overcome. My kids say to me, This isn't fair. I said, Life isn't fair. Everybody has their issues. It's how you handle your issues that distinguishes you.
Maria Shriver, journalist and niece of the late President John F. Kennedy

You need to accept your situation if you want to be empowered to change it. Once you accept that the disease or other misfortune has become a part of your life, you can marshal your forces to eliminate or alter it. If you avoid thinking about it, deny it or feel hopeless, you cannot play a part in changing it and your life. Accepting the situation does not mean accepting someone else's prediction about what will happen to you. No one knows what your future will be. Individuals are not statistics.