As I travel around the country, I am often asked how a Hemingway became interested in healthy living.
Healthy Living From The Inside Out is actually my second book. I wrote a book four years ago called Finding My Balance: A Memoir with Yoga . In it I describe my childhood, my mother's cancer, how I was her primary caretaker for several years and how my sisters both had suffered from mental disorders. Also my father suffered from the legacy of his father, Ernest Hemingway. It became too difficult for him to live up to his father's reputation and expectations and led him to a lot of drinking over the years.
Anyway, it was not that I thought my story was so fantastic and different from any one else's or particularly Hollywood-ish. What I thought was, "Hey I have dealt with a lot of big issues and I have dealt with them through trying to be the healthiest person that I could be." I was first drawn to healthy living as a way to survive.
Then when my husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer in the midst of my writing my first book I realized that the principles by which I had lived were principles that needed to be shared with others. It was beyond survival; it was lifestyle. These were principles that my husband decided to undertake as part of his healing from disease. The great news is that he did heal: He is cancer-free three years now and he attests a great deal of his recovery to the choices he made in food, exercise, home and silence.
When he became ill the second time was first ask if he wanted my help (the first time I made everything about me, and the truth was his healing had to be his own choice). I needed to learn through that experience to give up control. I was not the person who was going to heal him or the world or anything else. I was merely with him, to guide him to his personal road map to health and he did just that. He became a poster child for eating well, which was honestly a miracle because he was a white and brown food eater -- he liked Twinkies, Doritos and beer, and saw nothing wrong with that (he hates it when I say that).
He changed because he saw that eating had such an important role in stopping his cancer cells from mutating. Cancer cells, like all cells, eat sugar and when you get rid of cancer cell's food, you can at least eliminate new growth and he did it. The man who ate like a good ol' American boy--while his wife ate seeds and rainbows--became aware of his food.
Then I began to look at my home and thought about how I could create an environment where Z (my nickname for him) feels supported and peaceful...a healing place. So I changed all the colors in our house and made rooms places of calm or energy or solitude. He felt it and frankly the whole family did, too. Then he exercised regularly hiking with our six dogs daily instead of stressful basketball games once a month that usually resulted in injury.
And finally the piece that Z considers the healing wand of Grace...SILENCE. He began to find, every single day, a time for silence. At first for 5 to 10 minutes now he meditates for 30 minutes twice daily and he loves it. Now I always say my husband is so Type A, he's AAA. He could never slow down. He is a changed man because of it. We've both changed, and my two daughters have changed.
Our perspective on life has changed since Z's illness. We're more present as a family: we make better choices for ourselves individually because of having had to face Z's cancer. Because of it we are all better. I realized if through these choices that we as a family and one sick man can make and change the course of his life and our own then I thought I had to share that with everyone. We all have the ability to get healthy and more peaceful and I know it.
To feel the best you can feel by figuring out how to live in balance is doable, tangible and sustainable. What a tremendous joy it is for me to share this with the public and the greatest news is that it works for each and every person because it is their health by their design. It is not about being like me. It is about being YOU. You are the one that inherently knows the way to live that makes you feel good, healthy and present.
What I am here to do in this world is help you find that personal path of your well-being, by asking you questions (which I do in in each section of the book) that lead you to making possibly better choices in your life. It also leads you to asking yourself questions so that you become the artist of your lifestyle and you create the most exquisite You that you can be! Okay, so that sounds a bit like a hair commercial (or is it the Army)? Oh well, some statements just work.