Book Review: You Can Heal Your Life – Louise Hay

This book is super sentimental to me, in addition to being one of those books that I think everyone should own.  It’s like a classic in the self-help genre. First let me start by telling you why this book is a must have/read and then I’ll tell you the sentimental significance.

Louise L. Hay is a bestselling author and is an internationally known leader in the self-help world. Her key message in You Can Heal Your Life is this: “If we are willing to do the mental work, almost anything can be healed.”  I totally believe this with my whole everything.  It took me years to wrap my head around this concept but now I find myself preaching this same message to anyone who will listen.  She has a great deal of experience and firsthand information to share about healing, including how she cured herself after being diagnosed with cancer. “What we think about ourselves becomes the truth for us. I believe that everyone, myself included, is responsible for everything in our lives, the best and the worst. Every thought we think is creating our future. Each one of us creates our experiences by our thoughts and our feelings. The thoughts we think and the words we speak create our experiences.”

It’s a simple read with such a powerful message.  Her own truth of healing her cancer to back up her message makes it much more intriguing than most self-help books.  In addition to sharing her testimonial as to how she cured her own cancer, within the book there is a section which includes an alphabetical chart of different ailments and their probable metaphysical causes and healing affirmations to help you eliminate old patterns.  I keep this book close to my bed and anytime I am feeling any physical illness or affliction, I open the book and look up the probable cause and corresponding affirmation.  Often times I write the affirmation on a sticky note and place it somewhere visible so I am reminded to repeat the affirmation over and over until it manifests and becomes reality.

But here’s where it gets really nutty, you seriously can’t make this stuff up.

My friend Demina had been telling me about this book for years, prior to my diagnosis. Not that I wasn’t interested but I just never got around to buying it.  I would make a quick mental note that was soon forgotten.  She would randomly bring it up months, maybe even years later like, “Hey did you ever buy the book You Can Heal Your Life that I keep telling you about?”  My answer was always the same, “Ohh crap.  I haven’t yet but I will.” One day, as I was writing my lesson plan (when I was an English teacher), I was on Amazon and somehow stumbled across the book and thought I’m pretty sure this is the book Demina has been telling me about forever.  Let me just buy it already.  So I did… not having the slightest clue what the book was even about.

This was around the same exact time I had first discovered the lump in my breast and I had just gone for ultrasound and biopsy not even thinking a cancer diagnosis was in the realm of possibilities.  I was getting ready to go teach my night class on the evening of June 7, 2011.  I was scurrying to get out of the door and on the road when the phone rang.  I was told that the results of my biopsy would take a week and to expect a call then.  This was the very next day after my biopsy so I didn’t anticipate the doctor calling so soon.  But it was the doctor on the line, who bore the news that forever changed my life.  She called to tell me that I had cancer and needed to come back into her office as soon as possible.  That whole next few minutes is a total blur.  I think I just sat on the floor, called in sick to work and called my parents and close friends.  I truly don’t recall but what I do know is that in a short period of time my apartment was full of my closest friends with my mom in route by plane.  Anyhow, my point being in telling you allllll of these details is this…  When I went downstairs to let the first person inside who arrived to my apartment, I opened the door and this book was on my doorstep.  It had just been delivered by Amazon, minutes prior to me finding out the news that I had cancer. Coincidence?… I think not.  The Universe sure works in mysterious ways.  I opened the package and stared at the cover for a sec thinking, This is weird.  What are the chances it arrives today, and right now?!  I brought it inside and placed it on my dresser.

I began reading it a few days into the midst of the chaos of my new diagnosis, having no clue that it pertained to anything I was about to go through.  Nor did I know Louis Hay also had dealt with cancer in her past.  It was like a gift sent from heaven to help ease the transition into this new journey I was about to embark on.  I read it then and re-read it about a year later, grasping more that I had the first time around.  It really helped me understand the power of the mind and healing.  It’s a book you can and should read again and again and refer to when you are in need of any type of healing. I will forever have a profound love for this book due to it’s crazy significance and timing. Some occurrences in life are totally unexplainable and just meant to be.  This book was and still is a reminder and blessing for me.  I hope you find it as helpful and healing as I do!

XO