LCM Spotlight on
Louise L. Hay
The author of You Can Heal Your
Life self-published to get her book
in print because her mission was to
spread love, healing and peace to
those who so many pushed to the
background. Her life is a lesson in
overcoming challenges in order to
live the best life possible.
Born in Los Angeles to a poor mother,
Louise had a violent stepfather who
physically abused them both. When
she was about five years old, she
was raped by a neighbor. At fifteen,
she dropped out of high school and
became pregnant. On what should
have been her sweet sixteenth
birthday, she gave her newborn baby girl up for adoption. She moved to
Chicago and worked in low-paying jobs until 1950, when she relocated to
New York. There, she changed her name, began a career as a fashion model
and achieved major success, working for Bill Blass, Oleg Cassini and Pauline
Trigère. In 1954, she married an English businessman, only to be hearbroken
fourteen years later when he left her for another woman.
Convinced that she could not have been born strictly to be burdened with
constant pain and disappointment, she began studying the works of authors
like Florence Scovel Shinn, who claimed that positive thinking could change
people’s circumstances, as well as that of Religious Science founder Ernest
Holmes, who taught that positive thinking could heal the body.