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You Can Heal Your Life

This book is actually dangerous. I can't remember ever having said that about a text?  I read thirty pages of it, before having to shut it and run far away.  Every single copy of it should come with a huge trigger warning for ableism, fatphobia, and victim blaming of every variety.   Louise Hay claims two things that are odious: 1. All illnesses - including cancer - are caused by negative thinking, and not loving yourself enough. Thus, all illness can be cured by positive thinking, and self-love. She claims one of her patients fixed her poor eye sight by dealing with a childhood trauma. 2. Everyone chooses their parents, and our "energy" attracts people. So those who have bad energy, and don't love themselves enough, attract abusers, rapists, and financial poverty.  What more can be said about this book, than those two main points?  Actually, a few more things can be said. Louise Hay came to fame during, and because of, the onset of the AIDS crisis in the United States. She takes beautiful, enriching concepts such as self-love, affirmation and forgiveness, and then tells people their illnesses are a result of not doing these things well enough. The word "charlatan" comes to mind. Also, "immoral."  I absolutely believe in the mind body connection, that our mental health affects our bodily health, and that our mental states can lead us to greater or poorer physical well being. But to take such a giant leap, to claim (without any evidence except self-serving anecdotes) that you can cure cancer by loving yourself more? That people who are poor are just attracting bad energy, and don't love themselves enough?   Oh, also, were you aware that fat thighs are caused by anger toward ones father?   She takes excellent, inspiring concepts - self-love, forgiveness, compassion, and adjusting one's negative self talk - and coats it all in a big repulsive swath of victim-blaming and willful ignorance about biology, anatomy and medicine.   My heart hurts for people who read this text and love it. It is full of great concepts that are overshadowed by Hay's belief that if one can control the mind, one can control the body. Even Buddhist monks know that you can't eliminate pain, that you can only be mindful of it, and be mindful through it. Louise Hay seems to think she can eliminate all pain and illness with mindfulness and self-love, which is a fantasy. Life is more complex than that - we can use self-love and affirmation to get through illness, but to think that we can eliminate pain by sheer force of will is setting ourselves up for failure, disappointment, and we're left blaming ourselves for not being able to sufficiently heal our bodies perfectly and completely with self-love. Bodies are incurably fallible, they cannot be perfectly healed - none of us get out of here alive. Self-love is important, but equally so is tenderness and acceptance toward our own mortality, and fallibility. Louise Hay sells the idea that positive thinking and self-love can help us get around this truth. But we can't get around the truth of our own mortality - we can only get through it, with self-love and affirmation.  This book is repulsive. I can't wait to take it back to the library and get it out of my house.

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