Lesson #7: “First, Do No Harm”

To learn more about Lauralyn, or to schedule an appointment, please visit www.heavenhealingarts.com.

©2010 Heaven Healing Arts

I created my disease. I created it because, like you, I am powerful. My thoughts about myself, and my perception of the world are powerful. They create my reality. To become healthy, I had to change. I had to step into my power and take control back. I did this by changing the thoughts and behaviors that weren’t working for me, and accepting responsibility for my health and well-being.

The planet helped me heal. Pure water, herbs and organic natural foods provide my body with what it needs to be well. With ego running the show for so long now, we’ve forgotten that everything we need to heal is right here, in our backyards. To me, good health is Heaven on Earth.

Holistic doctors and energy healers helped guide me through the healing process, and they can guide you, too, but the human body receives the real credit. My body did all the work. My body was so forgiving, so loyal, so committed to teaching me, to helping me. If it were not for my body being so vocal all those years, and for me finally choosing to listen, I wouldn’t be in the position to help others heal today.

Thank you for reading my story. Please take this parting gift with you. Recite it daily. Recite it when you look in the mirror. Recite it before you decide what to eat. Recite it when you feel the need to criticize or judge yourself. Recite it when you think of others.

Personal responsibility is not the same as blame. Blame is binding. Blame is shameful and condemning. Owning responsibility for all you are and all you have become and can be is liberating! It’s empowering! When we take personal responsibility for our life, we can see the choices and opportunities to change, grow, to make life better. Blame blinds us, limits us to remain in the same dark cycle to be repeated over and over again until we decide to grow.

Prescription drugs, the Standard American Diet, stress and denial helped plunge me deeper into the darkness, and into the binding identity of victim. When I was ill, I felt disconnected from it all, and very much a victim of my disease, but the truth was I was a very active participant. It was what I did not do that was creating this disease within me.

I did not think positively.

I did not take personal responsibility for my life.

I did not love and care for myself.

I did not seek to empower myself.

I did not seek to educate myself.

I did not confront my fears.

I did not express my emotions.

And when it came to my health care, I did not trust myself.

When it comes to health care, whether it’s body, mind or spirit, my advice to you is trust your intuition. Trust your feelings to where you are guided and what feels right for you, and let the results of your decisions be your living proof. You hold the wisdom, the power, within you.

Remember, a good healer is a great teacher.

I wasn’t only healed from Crohn’s disease. In time, I was completely cured from Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and all the other diagnosis, like eczema, depression, anxiety, insomnia and irregular menstruation, disappeared. I was free.

Healing was intense work. Taking care of myself was a full-time job. I learned healers are the guides that point our body in the direction towards health. It is our willingness to change and commitment to the process that creates miracles. The body is so incredibly intelligent. It speaks to us, sometimes subtly at first. It’s our job to listen. Our body is our responsibility, an amazing gift for us to nurture, love and learn from. The state of our body reflects the world we’re living in. As a society, we tend to take better care of our cars than we do our bodies. When it comes to the human body, people feel ignorant, intimidated and scared so they automatically begin to feel powerless.

We may not receive an instructional manual to the body at birth, but there are many right in your local bookstore. There’s a wealth of knowledge available to those who are ready to break through those old patterns and and discover a new way of living. There are many resources now available to learn more about your body, and many tools to help you regain homeostasis, balance, which was the original mission of doctors in this world.

Since I’ve been healed, I’ve fallen in love with food. Food, which was once my source of pain and misery, is now a beautiful sensory experience – the textures, the aromas, the colors! I now love my body. I love being free of toxicity and the symptoms associated with it, so I chose my foods accordingly. The earth is a food emporium, and everything she makes tastes so amazing!

One of the greatest lessons I learned from being healed is how little I appreciated the daily benefits of feeling well. To be able to move without pain, to be able to wake up in the morning and actually feel rejuvenated with natural energy to start my day, to be able to digest food with no pain, to be able to walk as far as I want to, and go anywhere I want to at any time, is a blessing to me. I didn’t appreciate this freedom of living before I experienced what life felt like as a prisoner. I learned not only the meaning of gratitude, but I feel and experience it deep in my soul.

Some skeptics have said to me, “Maybe you never had Crohn’s disease.” I have plenty of medical documentation from many different doctors over the years that prove that I did, in fact, have a pretty severe case. I have learned not to take others doubt personally, as I too was once a skeptic. I too once forgot that anything is curable, anything is possible.

For some, illness has provided an opportunity to leave behind inspiration for friends and family to consider taking better care of themselves. For others, illness serves as a higher education you can then use to help others. The greatest gift you can receive is to see the light and the lessons that illness teaches you. It’s from here that we transcend from victim to hero, from darkness to light.

I did receive a second opinion from a doctor. Not an ordinary doctor, a holistic doctor. Previously, I had dismissed anything holistic. I was raised to believe that there was simply no proof. It was all a waste of time. Wishful thinking. The same doctor that treated me in the hospital told me that medicinal herbs were dangerous and could hurt me, so I should stay away from them. My gastroenterologist who had been given me strong doses of antibiotics for Crohn’s told me to ignore the advice of my enlightened pharmacist to take probiotics. Again I was told there was no proof.

The truth was the belief that Western medicine could heal me was wishful thinking. Believing that a synthetic pill was not harmful to my body and and was the only answer to disease, when it was no answer at all, was a sham. So, every week I made the two-hour long trip upstate New York to visit the man who my mother jokingly referred to as the “witch doctor.” This doctor, this healer, helped saved my life.

Within two months of detoxifying and drastically changing my lifestyle, I was cured from an eight-year battle with Crohn’s disease. I was instantly humbled, and enlightened. This holistic doctor informed me that if I had not trusted my intuition to try something different and instead went through with the chemotherapy treatment, I would not be here, writing this today.

The cure was just the beginning. Damage had been done, especially to my liver from years of taking powerful medications. It was now time to repair and rebuild.

A new chapter of pharmaceuticals had begun. But this time it was different. This time I was told if I didn’t take the fifteen pills a day for the rest of my life I would die. There were side effects. Fifteen pills soon turned into forty. A day. I moved to Seattle, where I felt less stress, gained weight and physically felt better. My apparent improved state of health really supported my denial. I decided to ditch the pills and go about life as if I had never been diagnosed with Crohn’s. Within months, I was 100 pounds and shipped back to New York in a wheelchair. I was given my own aisle on the plane. People asked me if I had AIDS. I had quarter-sized, bulbous red blisters all over my legs. My legs were sticks of bone, but my right ankle was grossly engorged, which made me look even more freakish. I was a skeleton, my skin stretched tightly on my bone, and my appearance scared people. No one would come near me. I was stared at. I was dying and everyone who looked at me knew it.

My doctor, a big wig with the Crohn’s and Colitis foundation, looked me straight in the eyes and told me if I didn’t admit myself to the hospital that moment, he didn’t think I would survive the week. He also added that there was no guarantee that it was not too late to save me, even if I was hospitalized. I took a moment to consider my options. My mother looked at me, aghast, as if I had only one option. My many hospitalizations at this point had left me traumatized and I thought for a moment that I would rather die than lie in another hospital bed. Before I reluctantly agreed to be admitted, the doctor asked permission to take pictures of my blistered legs for his next book about Crohn’s.

After years of suffering, I felt ready to die. My organs were failing, my body was so starved it was eating it’s own muscle.There was a point in the hospital when the excruciating pain ceased and a beautiful tranquility came over me. A priest gave me the communion. I smiled. I was on my way out. I was on my way back home.

But it wasn’t my time. I hadn’t even started my mission on earth. So all the love in Heaven made sure my spirit stayed put.

The doctors took heroic measures to bring me back. One of the top Crohn’s doctors in New York was brought in to check out my case. He brought with him a small crew of medical students who studied me like a specimen. Miracles did happen. Everyone acknowledged them. Like the morning I was due for a blood transfusion, suddenly my tests came back saying it wasn’t needed. The doctors couldn’t explain the overnight change in my chemistry. It was just another mystery. I can still remember the sweat on the doctor’s brow, the look of relief on his face when I showed signs of coming back to life.

It was a long road back to my previous condition. I had sunk to ridiculously poor health. I couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs. I looked like a puffer fish and was balding from steroids. One day at a time, I worked my way back up from disabled to chronically ill.

Somehow, through sheer determination, I managed to achieve my childhood goal of becoming a writer. I was a reporter for a local paper, and got a side gig writing for an entertainment magazine. I eventually became an assistant editor.

I was also diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/The Epstein Barr Virus and Fibromyalgia and was given more pills. One Crohn’s specialist believed I had IBS, Crohn’s and Colitis! For years, hospitals were an integral part of my life. I received weekly IV’s for dehydration. I vomited daily, including at work. No one knew. I’d get right back to my desk and start typing away. I had headaches, felt heavily exhausted, irritable, sometimes fuming mad. I was in intense pain every minute of the day. Every time I moved, I felt a fiery sensation rip through my muscles. Behind closed doors, I cried a lot.

I never shared with a single soul what I really experienced in my daily hell with disease. My condition made others feel uncomfortable, and it was uncomfortable for me to talk about it. There was so much fear around disease. It felt like no one wanted to know or talk about it because it was scary, like a curse that could be caught. My friends didn’t understand why I never wanted to hang out. I couldn’t leave the house. I was a prisoner in my body. All my effort went into getting to work, which was a huge feat in itself. I had nothing left to give to anyone, including myself.

I remained in this pattern until another major crisis – my third – presented itself to me. Another opportunity for change! Just three years after my last near fatal bout with the disease, my condition was still so progressively deteriorating that my G.I. doctor told me chemotherapy was my last resort. When I hesitated on his advice, he assured me to get a second opinion. He was confident, remarking that any other doctor I went to would agree with his prescription.

What he assumed is that the next doctor I spoke to would think like him.