Wishing YOU a Happier, Healthier New Year Full of Life

B'SD

29 Elul, 5774

I pray that the world will be blessed with genuine, enduring peace this eve of Rosh HaShana/Jewish New Year. 

The classic Jewish custom is to bless people for a "Good, sweet, healthy" year, not a "happy" year. Happiness is fleeting, sometimes based on mistaken ideas. Focus on decency, compassion, patience, forgiveness. For YOURSELF, and for others. Progress happens when you are kind towards yourself. 

So does happiness.

I was offered employment suitable for a person under thirty this week. Puzzled by the phenomenon, I asked friends what they thought of the situation. 

Several people remarked to me that I appear young and energetic, shocking as that may be when we consider the physical/emotional ordeal I faced with that long-ago benign-but-a-killer brain tumor. 

My present appearance and behavior deceive onlookers unfamiliar with my realities.

The secret is in the sauce, so to speak. I knew on the day I learned of the diagnosis that I had only one chance to remain alive and thriving. I seized it, indulging in compassion for my clumsy efforts to survive

I went on to make medical history, seeing again after having been blinded by a brain tumor and seeing ever-better over time, shocking  the teaching doctors handling my case.

Had I indulged in bitterness, anger, hatred, vindictiveness (name the negativity), I'd have died a miserable death - inside and outside.

Heaven has rewarded me with astonishingly remarkable friends and achievements. I am wealthy in the truest sense. I feel the love lavished on me hour by hour. 

Negativity destroys lives inside and out. I sweated and struggled my way to life, never knowing if my efforts would pay off. My self-respect grew. So did other true riches in my life.

I pray that my experiences can help other people to stop flailing and failing to meet difficult goals.

I share this essay, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, with the wider world, and pray that each reader absorbs its universal lessons. 

Returning to Our Best Selves

As I once taught when I used to be an EMETT leader, "You don't need to feel positive when you begin to improve your character and outlooks on life. You need to behave positively. Your actions will convince your mind that you are indeed happy. Then the universe opens to you. GOD fills your life with blessings. Learn to recognize them; they are specific to you and your needs."

Want to know how I achieved that life-giving mindset despite a dire diagnosis? Buy the E-book or print edition of EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge. It teaches you the steps I took to stay alive emotionally and physically.  

Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity. Face Your Future with Optimism. 

Forgiveness begins with YOU. Forgive Yourself.

 

לחברינו ולקוחותינו היקרים!

שנה טובה ומתוקה

שנת בריאות, שנת אושר

שנת ברכה והצלחה

מתוקה מדבש!!!

Medical MIRACLE Report: UP Close and Personal!

B'SD

8 Av, 5774

Life in Israel remains in the headlines.

Please read http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/thanks-for-asking/

Now you can better understand why I hope you'll appreciate the punchline hinted at below:

***

Are you in the mood to share nice news? Hang on for the punchline: 

For reasons too dreary to describe, I have not succeeded in accessing the disability-ending surgery that all my doctors - including hospital eye clinic professionals - want for me. I would see as normal people do within a mere 10 minutes and the stitch of 1 muscle. But Heaven decreed that this surgery was not to be. So...

My private eye doctor the one mentioned in the December 2011 Family First magazine - that tells the story of how I went blind and recovered - came up with a BETTER PLAN! 

She and her college students gave me specific daily exercises to strengthen my eye muscles and nerves. We held our breath and hoped for the best starting June 16 2014 and planned to meet again in September.

BUT...

We had a serious situation these past few weeks due to my increasing struggle to read a PC monitor or a book with my reading glasses. 

I was called in for a full workup at the optometry college where my doctor teaches. The appointment was July 31st, a mere month or so after starting to do those healing/strengthening exercises. Top students examined me under the doctor's direction, after she stepped out of the exam room to let them proceed.

The exam results so startled the staff that they ran to get my doctor.

The shock was so strong that it seemed as if almost the whole class crammed into the exam room to meet me and to have a chance to examine my eyes.

We went from a serious emergency eye exam to a party atmosphere during the extensive checkup.

during the extensive checkup.

The exercises have so improved my vision that I probably have a whole 'nuther news article coming up. The new prescription for my eyewear, lower power than previously (as usual, thank GOD), has already been made for me. What blessings my doctor, her students and those exercises are, in my life!

I'd like to give a hat-tip to Robert Williams of the Neuro-Optometric Rehabilitation Association, as he has been an important part of my vision recovery.

And, I want to make this public THANK YOU to Av HaRakhamim Rofeh Cholim (Hebrew for Compassionate Father, Healer of the Sick)!

I'll add a plug for The One Above with an FYI on more medical blessings helping the whole wide world: 102 Ways that Israel is Helping the World.

Face Your Medical Problems with Dignity. Face Your Future with Optimism. 

Feel free to try medical innovations that can help you. Open the door to wonderful possibilities.

You can read about how to open that door, 

and how to keep it open, 

in the 

E-book or print edition of 

EMPOWER Yourself to Cope with a Medical Challenge.