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"We store in memory only images of value. The value may be lost over the passage of time...but that's the implacable judgment of feeling: This, we say somewhere within us, is something I'm hanging on to." -Patricia Hampl, I Could Tell You Stories
Early in 1980, Evy McDonald felt her body begin to crumble. The middle-aged nurse lost the ability to control her movements, and soon enough she couldn’t walk at all. Her doctor diagnosed amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. Lou Gehrig’s Disease. It was a death sentence. The doctor predicted she would not survive the year. Her muscles wasted away. She felt, she said, “like a bowl of Jello in a wheelchair.”[1] She hated her body for all the ways it had let her down. For a few months she stewed, depressed and angry. But after enough time had passed, she couldn’t help but remember what she often taught others about the connection between the mind and the body—and she got curious. What could she do to make the most of her last few months? She decided she needed to change her relationship to her body. All her life, [Read More …]