The beginning of my life was meant to take
place in America because my father and mother planned to come here when
I was about to be born. However, this was not to happen – I was born
prematurely and very sickly in Lithuania. My father, who was a very
stubborn man, told my mother that since I was a girl, I had not a chance
to live and that I should be put in back of the barn for the wolves.
This is not uncommon in many European countries.
My grandmother
was to live at the homestead after my parents departed for America.
Another grandparent also stayed behind. It was customary for the
grandparents to move in with the children when they became old or sick.
But my grandmother was very active in the field of health. She was a
nature doctor. She immediately rescued me and took me into the barn,
where she fed me with goat’s milk through an eye dropper, so that I
would survive. She kept me there for some time - until my health
improved and I was able to move into the house. I stayed up there until I
was five years old. My grandfather was an alcoholic. Life was not very
pleasant either for my grandmother or me then, so my grandmother moved
out and took me to another village until World War I broke out.
During
the war, life was horrible and dangerous - simply a matter of survival
and moving from place to place. At that time, however, my first and
greatest interest was to be with sick people. I remember climbing
through a window and entering a yard where casualties were brought after
the battles. Some of their legs were cut off, some had been shot. I
remember that there was a great deal of screaming.Occasionally we had to
go to the root cellar in the yard, because it was unsafe to live even
in the basement of the house. Three or four different families lived in
that cellar. My mother was able, in spite of all the flying bullets and
all of the dangers, to get hold of some food in the form of grass and
seeds or whatever she could find that was not destroyed. Most of the
gardens were trampled over. The food in the house was taken by the
soldiers. The only life-giving foods available were grasses and weeds.
Before
the soldiers came, there was a great campaign to save foods, because we
were told that when the Russians came, everything would be taken in
that village. All the horrors were displayed in sketches explaining what
would be done to the people if they would not cooperate and leave the
village. My grandmother and I stayed behind for quite awhile, but then
were forced to flee because there was no food available anywhere in that
village. There was a battle, with bombs flying everywhere. We could see
the explosions and fires burning all around us. My grandmother finally
had us move in the middle of the night from a hollow full of water that
would eventually have drowned us all, as we were waist deep in water.
In a remote section of war-torn Europe during the bloody First
World War, and with hand encounters between Russian and Germans
occupying two solid nightmarish years, I came to know the most wonderful
physician in the world - my grandmother. Only the Almighty and nature
could have given her the knowledge she bestowed everywhere. Resourceful,
kindly, considerate, she was the unnamed leader of the few remaining
villagers who huddled waist deep in water in the root cellar of that
shell-blasted orchard.
Our hastily gathered provisions were
gone and we gnawed bark from the tree roots which had pushed through the
walls and chewed ordinary grass and seeds that my grandmother had
brought back from her forays into the darkness of the nights. But rising
water, drowning two of our little band, made our shelter a morgue, so
grandmother led the scurry for life across the open fields as bullets -
angry bumblebees - zipped past our ears. Some went down as we, like
frightened chickens, dodging around the prostate forms, scattered in all
directions.
But today, what I recall most vividly of that
terribly drawn-out ordeal, is that grass and seeds brought me, a frail
and sickly child, through alive. Yes, grass and seeds can also save
people from the ravages of slow starvation leading inevitably to the
huge premature death rate that so many countries are experiencing.
We
traveled furtively through fields, hiding between bushes and trying to
move into areas of safety - however, safety was nowhere to be found.
Finally, we came to an empty house and moved into the cellar, where
there was a fireplace. We stayed there for several days but then had to
move again, and all during the time of moving, we could see the soldiers
fighting, riding horses and running about, and the people scattering to
different ditches, screaming.
Finally, we settled down in a
haunted house where no one had lived since the family had been killed. I
remember vividly that in this house my grandmother cared for sick
people during the whole year after the war. We were able to get some
sheep, customary in primitive countries where people had to make their
own clothing in order to keep warm. Luckily, we had a spinning wheel in
the house and somehow we were able to get some goats for milk. When we
found the food which was stored by the family which had been killed, we
were not only able to feed on it but to share with others.
There
was a white kid, orphan of a goat the raiders had killed the week
before. He was brought to my cousin and me in the cellar of the
"haunted" house. Before daylight, I would visit the cave in the swamp
where our remaining goat was hidden, get the milk and, with my cousin’s
help, feed it to the tiny animal through a nipple made from an old
rubber glove. The warring Russians had ruthlessly stripped the valley of
all food, driving my grandmother from her home. The approach of biting
winter weather frowned upon a starving village and we finally found
shelter in this deserted farmhouse. For several days my cousin and I
nursed the kid, ignoring the pitiful whimpering of little Whitey, my
grandmother’s dog, begging for more milk.
This morning, the
cries of the puppy annoyed my cousin who struck the wall near the
animal's nose. This slight blow was enough - a crack opened wide as it
spread upward, and a moment later I pushed into a well-concealed root
cellar, crammed ceiling high with grain, seed, and root vegetables. It
seems this precious food had been carefully hidden by people who had
since been killed, and my grandmother, as she gathered us in her arms,
whispered softly, “You four have saved this village from starvation. We
now have enough food until spring.”
My job was to help my
grandmother. We had a room full of bunks with sick people and ailing
soldiers, battered by the war and left behind. My grandmother knew no
enemy; either Russian or German wounded was welcome to be healed with
her nurturing grass juices and poultices. Some of the villagers came to
help with the soldiers. It was my grandmother’s job to act as a natural
doctor. She always knew what to do. No matter what the problem, she
always helped the people to get better, just as she had helped me to
survive during early childhood. She told me how she used to put me in
mud baths and how she would give me certain chlorophyll-rich foods.
She depended upon grasses, which were always available and she would
use these on the soldier’s wounds. Before dawn, I was sent into the
woods and fields to gather these wild foods. I traveled through fields,
swamps and woodlands before daybreak and vividly remember how sleepy I
was when my grandmother would wake me up. She would feed me with warm
goat’s milk and dress me while my eyes were still closed. I was very
young then, perhaps only six or seven years old. Every single day I
would go through dangerous pastures and meadows to collect weeds, but I
always had an animal with me, a dog, goat or sheep. This was the way I
got acquainted with all kinds of wild creatures because I was very
fearful at first, until I got in tune with them.
It was
instilled in me that if I heard a dog bark or saw an indication that
someone was coming, I should immediately flee from the area, as there
were many robbers and murderers left after the war. Many times I would
run through the woods with the goats, sheep or dog, as they tried to
protect me. Occasionally, I would encounter a very dangerous place where
farmers' cows and other animals were killed for meat by some robbers. I
was in constant danger, yet I had a feeling that this was the greatest
contribution I could make to help my grandmother - taking care of the
animals.
A cow was given to her, but it had to be sold so that
the money could be spent for things that were necessary for the house.
All of our foods had to be grown in the small garden. Grandmother would
be gone practically all day to take care of sick folk in the village.
Our neighbors were very generous with their time and would come to help
me for many months when I got sick with malaria and other illnesses, but
my grandmother was always cheerful and assured me I would survive. She
always told me I had a mission.
When I was able to get back on
my feet, my grandmother decided that I should go out to work on a farm
to earn money for my trip to America: I was then about nine years old.
She always considered my future, and she thought that I should have more
experience of being with other people, so she sent me to work on a
farm. She felt that I should always be in a good environment.
On
that farm, the father had passed on, and the mother took care of it
with the help of five unmarried daughters. The oldest one was the
director of the farm and the other daughters were under her supervision.
I was to receive (in American money) about $12 a month, which was to be
saved for coming to America to fulfill my mission.
I was very
lonely at first on the big farm away from my grandmother, but I tried to
adjust myself to being away, although I would cry way into the night.
The work was very hard. The oldest girl planned continuously to sell the
farm, because the other girls were not interested in it; they did take
care of the animals well. I had to feed the horses, cows, sheep and
goats. I used to be in the stables most of the time, taking care of the
horses. They had a little colt that was deformed and much smaller than
the others. They had planned to sell it, but I begged them to let me
care for it and raise it myself, so that later I could sell it and save
the money towards my trip to America. I liked to take care of sickly
animals and bring them back to health.
I watched the colt grow
into a beautiful horse through my love and care, improving and becoming a
very useful horse on the farm. One day, I saw a farmer beating a horse,
one that was different from all the others, a war horse that had been
left behind by the soldiers. The horse was very sickly, so I asked the
farmer to sell it to me. I bought it, using some of the money I was
saving for my trip, but I was bound to have that horse, and to rescue it
when I saw that it was not healthy, as I do for other animals even to
this day.
So, when I brought it home, the girls thought it was
silly of me to buy this kind of weak, poor-looking horse that would be
of no use with the farming. I fed him and tried to ride him, but he
bucked and didn’t seem to respond. We tried to put a harness on him and
he rejected it. Finally he became cooperative and loving and I was able
to ride him without a saddle. Every Sunday I would ride him to the city,
a distance of about 13 miles, to visit my grandmother.
By this
time my grandmother had returned to the city and I used to see her once a
week. Most of the time, I would walk or ride my beautiful horse. I
needed to sell the horse but for no other reason than to get money to go
to America. I needed to work very hard to earn enough money so that at
the age of sixteen I would be able to go to America, as my grandmother
had continually insisted. I even went out to various farms to do extra
work, especially during the period of harvesting.
I remember on
one particular day, we cut the wheat, rye and hay by hand. The oldest
girl was the main farmer and I was her assistant. We would bring in the
seeds and thrash them by hand. It was a very exciting time when we took
the seeds to market, perhaps once a month. We had to go long distances
to the city market.
On other special Saturdays we had to take a
sauna outdoors for a bath. There would be about three or four women from
the village also, for there was a separate time schedule for men and
women. I remember running from the house to the sauna without any
clothes on and in winter I would roll in the snow. One of the girls was
quite playful. She would always make eyes at the boys and try to lure
some of the suitors who came to court the older girls (who were supposed
to be married first). The younger girls were not allowed to participate
in this courting; therefore, she would always run away from the farm
but always came back to tell her sisters about the experiences she had
had. She even fell in love with one of the farmer’s sons, but could not
marry him.
The oldest girl, who was supposed to be married
first, was not very pretty, but she was a real farmer type. There was no
heat in the house where I lived, except for a wooden stove that was
used most of the time only for cooking and baking. A small oven-type
settee was in the living room, which we could sit on to warm ourselves
during the baking and cooking time, but outside of that the house was
very cold. We had to keep warm by being very active, although the
invigorating steam bath made us warm on Saturday evening.
As the
years went by, I had accumulated nearly enough money to go to America.
One day I had to go to the city for my inoculations to enter the States.
When I returned, I felt very drowsy, and the girls could not rouse me
in the morning - I could not move or speak. Then the excitement really
began when they took me for dead. All of the girls started to cry,
wondering how they would bury me without my grandmother present. All
this time I could hear them talking, crying and carrying on. They had
distributed among themselves the scant few clothes that I had prepared
for the American trip. I was desperately trying to scream or move, but
nothing happened. It was the most frightening thing that I have ever
experienced. I was afraid that I would be buried alive, as so many
others had been before me. There were no doctors, but the girls searched
for my grandmother. Then I heard a commotion - my grandmother coming
through the field with her little dog, Whitey.
Whitey had come
so often to visit me, and now he came running from about twenty feet
toward the house, through the door, jumped right up on my chest and
began licking my face. As my grandmother approached, everyone was
saying, “She’s dead!”
Grandmother said, “She’s NOT dead - a dog
wouldn’t lick a dead person.” My grandmother began to put me into cold
water, then hot water, and began to massage me to bring me back to life.
Gradually I was able to move, and in a few days to sit up and get my
health back.
Just when I was ready for my trip, the value of the
mark went down. The situation was very serious for many who sold their
property. I remember going thirteen miles to town to see about the money
values but it seemed useless to try to get any help - there was nothing
to do but start over again. I remember before the devaluation of the
money, people were selling their homes for very high prices. But when
the value of the mark reached the bottom, people committed suicide and
many of them died from starvation. Many families left for the big
cities, looking for a way to start again, but the situation seemed to
get more and more difficult. Fortunately, my uncle had planned to go
with me to America, and he was some help, so we managed to arrive after
many delays. It took us over two months before I left for Middleboro,
Massachusetts.
I went to the passport office to make
arrangements only to find that they had sold our reservations to someone
else. We had to borrow money for another passage and buy someone else’s
place. My uncle refused to go home until we had secured our tickets,
and we rented a little room in that big city to stay in until we had
secured passage.
Meanwhile, I was very curious about big city
life. I wanted to know how the electric lights worked. I thought it was
strange how the city lights burned without oil and lighted the room -
they looked like big candles. I took the little light bulb out of the
lamp and put my finger inside the socket to see what made it burn. I was
knocked out cold on the floor and remained unconscious for a long time!
From then on, I began to think, “I must not rush into anything so fast
without understanding what it is.” But I was, and still am, a very
curious person. I had had no formal schooling, but this did not stop me
from doing things. With God’s help, I thought that nothing was
impossible.
When we finally reached the boat, I was down to skin
and bones. I was very sick on the ship and I was continually gagging
and vomiting - unable to eat anything. The only thing I remember eating
that was very soothing was an orange - my first one, although I did not
eat them later on in life. We were lodged way down below the decks. It
was a horrible place, with such a foul smell that it was difficult to
stay there, so I stayed on deck most of the time, as the boat rolled and
rolled. I asked God to let me be pushed into the ocean, so that I
wouldn’t have to go down again into that hole which was my room, because
I could not stand the smell of vomit.
Finally we arrived in
America, at Ellis Island. There the people looked at me with my very
long, golden hair and told me I had attracted some lice and they would
have to cut my hair off. I learned later that more than likely they sold
my hair to a wig maker! This unnecessary act made me very unhappy
because I didn’t want my parents to see me for the first time with a
bald head. They would think that I was a sickly person because I was so
thin after losing so much weight. I was down to about seventy pounds.
When I arrived my father was disgusted because he had thought he
would have someone to work hard for him, which was why he let me come to
live in his house. When he saw me, he was more disappointed than ever.
Neighbors came to help me, bought me American clothes, and prepared me
for the new life in America.
My mother was very humble, never
having anything to say or disputing my father’s ideas. Those time were
very difficult for me – going from one adjustment to another. From the
very beginning, my father and I didn’t get along. He wanted me to settle
down and get married because I was about sixteen. I began to work for
him in his bakery and candy store, where my job was to deliver the
bread. I had to be up before four o'clock in the morning for this. He
also had me feed the pigs and cows that he had grazing on the other side
of town. I used to bring garbage to the pigs through the town, which I
did not like to do.
I was very disappointed in American life
because I thought it would be entirely different, as my grandmother had
told me that the streets were lined with gold. I did not mind the hard
work as much as the very restricted life with my father, which I
resented. It was not like the hard life with my grandmother, where there
was a lot of love and togetherness - life with my real family was very
cold.
I became sick from eating candy and donuts from the
bakery and my teeth began to fall out. I became very sad and was sick
most of the time. One day I was driving the wagon to deliver bread when
one of the horses got scared and began to run, so I pulled on the reins
and dropped one. As the horses turned around, they tipped the wagon over
and it fell on top of me and began to crush me. Both my legs and an
ankle were broken, and I was choking to death until someone came along
just in time to lift the wagon off of me.
They took me out and
on to the hospital. After a two-week treatment the doctors said that
gangrene had set in and my legs would have to be amputated, because
there was no way that I could possibly live with the gangrene. I said
no, that I wanted to go home. The doctor and the nurses were upset and
would not attend me anymore. My parents wouldn’t come to visit me. My
body burned with fever and I wanted to die. I didn’t see how I could
live without legs.
God will always send someone to help if you
just pray and call out. It was my alcoholic uncle who answered my call
and helped me through these trying times. He placed me underneath a tree
in an area where there was grass, and I kept chewing the grass and
weeds like dandelion, purslane and lambsquarter. I wanted some water,
but no one would come near me because my father said I was in that
condition because I had disobeyed him. It was months before I could even
walk with my crushed legs, but they healed. As I got better, I ran away
once to a farm, but was discovered and brought back home again because I
was not yet eighteen.
My father got very angry at many of my
actions, because I didn’t eat what they supplied in the bakery anymore,
neither the candy nor the dairy products they sold. He punished me over
and over for disobeying him. I knew if I ate the flour and milk or
cheese that I would never get well. After nearly a year of abuse from
him, I heard him downstairs one night making arrangements to have me
taken away and married to a person I did not know who was much older
than I was. He was going to get money for forcing me to go with that
stranger!
Because of this, I ran away again and my parents were
unable to find me. I was eighteen by now and was, for the first time,
strictly on my own. I had many jobs, such as child sitting, house
cleaning, and restaurant work. While in the restaurant, my legs gave out
again completely, and the woman I worked twenty hours a day for got
very angry when I had to leave, and didn’t pay me my wages. I walked
with an old suitcase for about ten miles with terribly painful legs and
then decided to go to Brockton Hospital where I had previously worked. I
asked them if I could stay there until my legs healed, and when I was
better I would work there again to repay them.
They agreed and
when I improved, they put me in a cancer ward to help patients suffering
in the most severe stages. This is where I learned what it was to pass
on from cancer, and I would go into the bathroom and cry. It was very
hard for me to understand why people had to go through so much suffering
and pain. This was when my real interest in cancers began, because I
didn’t think it was necessary for people to go through such a horrible
experience before they died. For a year and a half, I was very joyful in
a way because I loved to work with the patients and try to help - but
to hear them crying and screaming was almost more than I could bear.
I turned twenty-one and my real struggles were to begin. A friend
introduced me to my future husband, who looked like a gentleman, and he
wanted to take me out. I was very shy, reluctant, nervous and afraid to
go out with this person, for my grandmother had warned me before coming
to America never to let any boys take advantage of me.
I did
finally consent to go out with him. He used to shower me with gifts of
candy. I ate them to be polite, but got migraine headaches. So, I asked
him to bring me fruit instead. I was always afraid to take expensive
gifts from the opposite sex.
The time came when he really
wanted to marry me, and he brought me home to meet his mother. His
family lived in Stoughton, where his father was a contractor. His
mother, who was very dictatorial, was always finding fault with her
husband. When he could get out, he would sit in the barn by the hour,
not wanting to come into the house because his wife was always nagging
and complaining. There was always some sort of argument in the house. I
desperately wanted to adjust to that environment and although it was
very difficult, I did everything possible to do so.
I finally
married him, and it wasn’t six months before his father died, and my
husband bought the house. We had to live there with his mother, who did
not feel well - she always argued and was unhappy and turned her nagging
and complaining toward me and her son, who then took it out on me. I
felt like a whipping boy.
Eleven years passed and I could not
get pregnant so I decided to change my diet and eliminate meat and
sweets. I became ill and when I went to the doctor, he told me that I
was pregnant but because of tumors in my uterus, he didn’t think I could
possibly survive the birth. I had great problems during labor, and when
I came back home, I was never really well there afterwards, even though
I had the joy of my life, my precious child. My headaches were getting
better, but I was never really happy there, because of the way I was
treated.
I needed to find people who treated me respectfully and
lovingly, and joined various church groups and served as chairperson of
banquet committees. We had a huge estate with over one hundred acres of
land, and I worked very hard and planted a large beautiful garden with
every fruit tree and flower available. My little baby girl was always by
my side in her cradle, watching the butterflies, clouds and birds as I
worked in the garden. This was the only time I was happy, when I was
with her.
The baby girl became very sick and my husband gave me a
harder time. He was jealous that I could not give him as much attention
as before because I needed to care for my daughter, and he was
disappointed that the baby was not a boy. Our relationship worsened and
my husband became more dictatorial. The more time I gave to our
daughter, the more difficult things became between us.
I had
very serious blood poisoning in a finger and went to a doctor who
operated on me and gave me my first drugs for the pain. As before, I
lapsed into a coma. In the mornings, the doctors would pass my bed in
the hospital and say, “Well, I don’t think she will live anyway, so we
don’t need to do anything.” That went on for awhile and I came out of
the coma. Then I began to understand why I had to come to this country
and go through so much struggling, unhappiness and sickness - so that I
could learn lessons about sickness and be ready to help other people in
similar situations. I began to pray for guidance, which I always
received.
One early morning I was lying on a couch reading a
Bible and asking God what I should do. I asked why I must be in this
predicament. Why was it necessary to find solutions for so much sickness
and unhappiness? Then a revelation came. It was almost like a voice
saying, “Become a minister and build temples.” It was nearly three years
before I understood that "temples" meant "holy healthy bodies." I
thought, how can I become a minister?
For help, I went to a
Methodist minister and asked him what to do. He looked at me and told me
I was crazy and that I should forget all about it because I was a
woman, and at my age, I could not become a minister. He said I had other
obligations – with my husband and my family. I said to myself that I
certainly could not forget the revelation that was given to me by God…
it was God speaking to me through ideas. I thought there must be some
way to fulfill my mission.
Then I got in touch with a woman I
read about in a newspaper. I called her up and told her that I wanted to
belong to one of her groups. She said that every person who came into
her group had to be investigated, so I told her to come and investigate
me and see for herself that I was a reliable person. She invited me to
join her professional women’s group. At the time, I was a furrier
working from my home - I had gone to school for a year to learn the fur
business. This woman, I learned later, was studying for the ministry, so
she immediately gave me literature that opened a way, a correspondence
course from the Unity School of Christianity.
After I had
finished the course, I had to go to Missouri and study at the main
campus; thereafter, I had to go back for a one month refresher course
every year for four years. My husband resented it, but I was determined
to continue to the finish to follow God’s request.
As I was away
so much, my husband and daughter spent more time together. Finally, he
asked me to choose between him and my career. How could I turn down God?
He took a shotgun from the closet and told me he would kill me before
he let my career come between us. I was not at all upset or fearful and I
sat at the kitchen table and looked up at him and said that I would be
going back to Missouri. I added I would leave him soon and he could kill
me if he wished because I had to follow God’s mission for me. He then
laid down his gun and cried like a baby. So then he told me that if I
went, I could not come back. I kissed him goodbye, said goodbye to my
daughter and proceeded with my plans, hoping that he would come to his
senses when I returned.
When I got to school in Missouri I found
an article my husband had printed in the hometown paper, saying that I
had run away from home, deserting my sixteen year old daughter. He made
many other false accusations in it, because he was out of his mind and
was determined to ruin my character. I needed him to support me in this
holy work, and he was fighting me. I felt pulled in two directions but
knew I had to follow God’s plan for me.
I stayed in Missouri to
finish that month’s course but then returned and filed for a divorce,
as he wished. I signed papers his lawyer wrote turning the entire estate
over to him, giving everything away to him, if he would only promise
not to have our daughter involved in the court sessions as I wanted to
protect her from the pain she and I would feel in hearing lies about me.
He broke his promise and brought her to court anyway, and she was
exposed to horrible lies about me. I prayed that one day she would know
how much I loved her and wanted to protect her from those awful
proceedings. He paid the divorce lawyer one thousand dollars.
I
was completely without a penny, but borrowed money to go back to school
where I had to start from scratch again. I stayed with friends for about
a week, and finally stayed alone in a room I found. I continued with
the fur work and started a massage business also, to help put me through
school.
One day a friend asked me to go help her sister on Cape
Cod who was afflicted with cancer and I agreed to go for a few days to
take care of her. When I got there, her sister Frances wanted me to stay
with her and also help her to study. I wanted to become a Doctor of
Divinity, so I helped Frances and studied for the ministry at the same
time. After she passed on, I stayed for one and a half years more.
Because of the emotional problems and finding out that I had cancer
of the colon, it was a great help for me to be able to stay at a quiet
place to gather together my resources for my mission. It was good for me
to be alone and I prayed a lot. I was given twenty-five dollars a week
by the trustees to care for the estate, and this helped with my
schooling and my work in overcoming the cancer problem. I put a great
deal of effort into completing the work that I so loved, helping people
spiritually, mentally and physically. This effort helped me to survive
all of my loneliness for my daughter. My stay on Cape Cod opened a new
life for me and afterwards I went to Boston to give classes on spiritual
enfoldment and to continue with the help I was giving my body for
self-healing.
My first experience on the Cape was to visit some
rose gardens. As I sat on a bench, I enjoyed the scene of beautiful
roses and gorgeous colors. I looked down and saw some birds. One was
struggling and sick; the other was dead. I looked at it, curious to know
what had happened. Asking the caretaker what had caused them to become
ill, I was horrified to hear that he had just sprayed the roses and this
was a consequence of the spraying.
So, I went back to the
estate and started a little garden in the yard. The land was sandy, but I
took compost from the kitchen and began to enrich the soil. I
remembered the neighbors’ gardens close by, where everything was
sprayed, but which still had flying insects, and I planted some beans.
When they sprouted, I noticed that no bugs came close to those in my
garden. I wanted to prove that when the soil was healthy, insects and
pests would not touch fruits and vegetables planted there anymore than
germs would not touch a healthy body. From this point on, I became
interested in organic gardening even more than before.
Work
started almost immediately after that in Boston, even though I was still
living at the Cape. I was sent to visit a woman suffering from back
problem. I kept asking her what I could do about starting a nursing home
and she told me of a man who was interested in health care who was
retiring. He had been publishing a paper on health, and he might be
willing to help me. Finally, I was able to make an appointment to meet
him in a hotel on Copley Square. I waited in one hotel for him, while he
waited in another. I made another appointment to meet him in the
library. We finally met, and he seemed to be very much interested in my
persistence and in what I was trying to do. He invited me to come
occasionally to Boston to help him with his paper, which I did.
When
the time came for me to leave the estate on the Cape I moved to my
sister’s in Connecticut, but my brother-in-law did not agree with my
ideas about health. I baked on a hot plate and lived on less than
twenty-five cents a day for over eight months. I had to live on cooked
food there and I became very sick again. I traveled to Boson every week
to work on the paper but then decided it was time for me to be on my
own. I didn’t have any funds to work with so I borrowed money from my
cousin and rented a room on the sixth floor of a building on Cumberland
Street.
The colon cancer had returned when I came to Boston
from the country. The air was polluted as was the water. There was no
place in the city that had good healthy food or even fresh vegetables or
fruits. It was important for me to get healthy again, so I went to the
Charles River bank for weeds and grasses. This improved my health, which
was very bad from eating the cooked baked foods at the Cape and in
Connecticut.
I was given the health magazine to publish! One
evening I was on my way to my sister’s house in Connecticut. I was very
tired and pulled off the road and went to sleep in my car. I was
awakened by the morning sun, which shone so brightly in my eyes that
this brightness took on a new beginning. Then and there I knew that the
Rising Sun Christianity had to be born. It was a new beginning for me
and a way to share with others. Since then, I have never stopped
working, day and night, for a better world, first physically, because
then the mental and emotional self would gain strength in order for the
spiritual union with body to take place. I sent a paper on this to
thirty-five different countries. I mailed the information on health
through sprouting, living food and easy-to-digest nourishment and
corresponded with people all over the world.
During my ride to Connecticut, everything
seemed to unfold slowly and I began to understand what I was to do. From
then on, I was guided daily, step-by-step, toward this ultimate goal,
which is now in existence. There was much discouragement. There were
problems I was facing for the first time, alone, and I had no funds and
no home.
Boston was the place where I felt I must unfold. For
nourishment, I went to the vacant lots where I gathered weeds and
grasses and used them for food. In doing this, I returned to the source
of nourishment which had, in the past, greatly improved my health,
although this took considerable time.
During that fall, I was
able to work in many areas, mailing out information, studying, working
on the magazine, etc. I will still quite tired and had to sleep long
hours and this bothered me very much as I felt there was not enough time
to do all of the things I had to do. Winter was coming and I was
concerned about where I was to obtain the grasses and weeds that I had
been gathering from the outdoors to live on. At that time, I asked God
again to help and protect me.
One beautiful thing happened
regarding sprouting, which I considered a great step toward better
nourishment. I adopted a sick monkey from a pet shop. At that time, I
was helping ill animals wherever I found them. I had been nourishing
myself on dry seeds and fed these to the monkey. I noticed she was
having difficulty swallowing or digesting the seeds and discovered it
was because she was toothless. I wanted to soften the seeds so I put
them between two moist towels and, lo and behold, I was led to
re-discover the timeless act of sprouting – the seeds opened and put out
little tender shoots or sprouts within several days! These easily
digested sprouts from softened seeds led me to explore further and
that’s how I came to give the world the benefit of my discovery of
sprouting - through the love of a pet.
I gave her some fruit
also, but her main diet was soft seed in the form of sprouts. I decided
to use the same sprouts myself, and I know the Creator gave me the idea
of how to add more nourishment to my body through loving that monkey:
“as ye do unto the least of them, ye do unto Me.” I began to grow wheat,
buckwheat, rye, timothy grass, cats, etc. There must have been six or
seven different grains.
Two of them grew very fast - buckwheat
and wheatgrass. I kept giving the buckwheat to the monkey, which she
enjoyed, and I also began to use it in my salads. These replaced the
weeds I had been using before winter came. I was happy because I now had
a replacement for the weeds and grasses and felt well prepared to
nurture my body. I continued to grow the different grasses and greens
and fed them to my pets, observing which ones they liked best. By that
time, I had a raccoon, monkey, two cats and a few other animals which I
kept in friends’ homes as I was not allowed to have pets in my room. I
enjoyed taking care of sick animals and watching them get healthy.
My observations showed me that every pet preferred to eat the
wheatgrass and buckwheat, but especially loved the wheatgrass. The cats
not only kept eating the wheatgrass, but would lay about in it, as well!
About this time I began to be curious as to what were the best
nutritional elements contained in the wheatgrass. I discovered that
after seven days, wheatgrass was more powerful than the previous six
days to heal wounds or make me healthier. I was to find out later that
on the seventh day, the wheat grass puts out negative ions, which make
us feel great. These are the same ions we feel during a shower, or at
the beach when the waves are crashing, or after a rain. Before the
seventh day, the grass is pulling the negative ions out of anything or
anyone around it, and leaves one feeling depleted.
-
contributed by Dr. Flora van Orden III
Learn more about Dr. Ann's
Raw Living Foods Lifestyle at http://chidiet.com.
Peace and Love Be With You,
Flora
offers readers the same simple, nutrition-based plan that dramatically changed the lives of this patients forever. With this eating plan, sufferers of heart disease will maintain cholesterol levels low enough to ensure that they will never have a heart attack. Best of all, the book offers more than 150 delicious recipes that Dr. Esselstyn and his wife, Ann Crile Esselstyn, have developed over the years - showing readers how easy it is to enjoy their new way of eating.
The
holidays are over, your resolutions are already falling by the wayside,
and you're starting to settle back into the same rut you were in last
year. Sigh...
Dr.
Flora van Orden III has a PhD in nutrition, was Dr. Ann Wigmore's
personal assistant for 22+ years, traveled the world with Dr. Ann, and
has been a Wigmore Practitioner for 40 years.
