In Memoriam: How to Live Well from the Mother of Holistic Medicine, Dr. Gladys McGarey [Episode 937]

This week’s topic: The Six Secrets to Health and Happiness with Dr. Gladys McGarey

For this week, I wanted to replay our very special interview with Dr. Gladys McGarey, who just passed away at the age of 103. So our interview was one of her last interviews of her life. She had such a profound impact on me in this interview. She moved me to tears. She was amazing. Those of you that aren’t familiar with Dr. McGarey, she wrote several books one of them being the well-lived life. She started her medical practice when most women were not able to even open bank accounts. She was a trailblazer. She is known as the mother of holistic medicine. She was incredible. And in this last book of her life, she talks so much about moving through pain, opening up to love, letting love heal fear. And she shared some really personal stories of incredible pain in her own life and how she overcame. She was a mother of six. She was an incredible trailblazer. And it is my intention with today’s show to honor her work and her life. So please watch or listen to this episode today or rewatch or re-listen to it if you did already, but with an open heart as we honor Dr. McGarry’s life and her work.

 

About Dr. Gladys McGarey

Dr. Gladys McGarey is internationally recognized as the Mother of Holistic Medicine. Following a career in family practice for nearly eighty years, she now has a life consulting practice. She was the first medical doctor to utilize acupuncture in the U. S. and founded the Gladys Taylor McGarey Foundation to bridge the gap between holistic and traditional medicine, helping to expand the knowledge and application of holistic principles through scientific research and education.

Dr. McGarey also co-founded the Academy of Parapsychology and Medicine. She has received numerous honors and awards, including the Humanities Award for Outstanding Service to Mankind; the David Stackhouse Award for pioneering excellence in Homeopathy; the Lifetime Distinguished Service Award from Muskingum College in Ohio; and was honored by the American Holistic Medical Association as a Pioneer of Holistic Medicine.

She has pioneered holistic wellness. She has been just teaching this incredible wisdom that goes beyond traditional medicine for over 60 years. She began her medical practice at a time when women couldn’t even open bank accounts. Her wonderful last book is called The Well Lived Life: 103 -Year -Old Doctor’s Six Secrets to Health and Happiness at Every Age.

Guest Resources

• Gladys McGarey Website
• Dr. Gladys McGarey Book 

Episode Chapters

00:00 Introduction: Living a Well-Lived Life
07:05 The Power of Energy, Love, and Forgiveness
35:37 Trusting Yourself and Finding Your Purpose
43:46 Making Space for Miracles and Embracing Joy
55:42 Spending Your Energy Wisely and Focusing on What Matters

 

Episode Sponsors

HIYA

We’ve worked out a special deal with Hiya for their best selling children’s vitamin. Receive 50% off your first order. To claim this deal you must go to hiyahealth.com/FEELGOOD. This deal is not available on their regular website. 

USE LINK: hiyahealth.com/FEELGOOD. This deal is not available on their regular website. 

PIQUE

Get up to 15% off plus a rechargeable frother and cup when you shop my link when you purchase exclusively at piquelife.com/kimberlys

USE LINK: piquelife.com/kimberlys  Get up to 15% off plus a rechargeable frother and cup when you shop my link

 

[RESOURCES / INFORMATION]

SOLLUNA PRODUCT LINKS

• Glowing Greens Powder™
• Feel Good SBO Probiotics
• Feel Good Detoxy
• Feel Good Digestive Enzymes
• Feel Good Starter Kit
• Feel Good Skincare

KIMBERLY’S BOOKS

• Chilla Gorilla & Lanky Lemur Journey to the Heart
• The Beauty Detox Solution
• Beauty Detox Foods
• Beauty Detox Power
• Radical Beauty
• Recipes For Your Perfectly Imperfect Life
• You Are More Than You Think You Are 

OTHER PODCASTS YOU MAY ENJOY!

• Wellness Insights: How to Listen to Your Body for Nutritional Guidance [Episode 878]
• How the Power Foods Diet helps with Weight Loss with Dr. Neal Barnard EP. 877
• How Not to Age with New York Times best-selling author Dr. Michael Greger [Episode #873]
• How to eat to reduce anxiety with Harvard nutritional psychiatrist Dr. Uma Naidoo [Episode #867]

 

Powered and Distributed by: PodcastOne

Transcript:

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Kimberly Snyder (00:00.748)
Hi loves, welcome back to our Monday interview show. For this week, I wanted to replay our very special interview with Dr. Gladys McGarry, who just passed away at the age of 103. So our interview was one of her last interviews of her life. She had such a profound impact on me in this interview. She moved me to tears. She was amazing. Those of you that aren’t familiar with Dr. McGarry, she wrote several books one of them being the well-lived life. She started her medical practice when most women were not able to even open bank accounts. She was a trailblazer. She is known as the mother of holistic medicine. She was incredible. And in this last book of her life, she talks so much about moving through pain, opening up to love, letting love heal fear. And she shared some really personal stories of incredible  pain in her own life and how she overcame. She was a mother of six. She was an incredible trailblazer. And it is my intention with today’s show to honor her work and her life. So please watch or listen to this episode today or rewatch or re-listen to it if you did already, but with a open heart and even more open heart as we really honor Dr. McGarry’s life and her work. So please enjoy today’s episode and sending you so much love from my heart to yours.

ORIGINAL INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (00:00.366)

Welcome back everyone. I am so thrilled for our very, very special guest today. And I can’t say enough about how much I love this woman and her book. Her name is Dr. Gladys McGarey. She is 103 years old. She has pioneered holistic wellness. She has been just teaching this incredible wisdom that goes beyond traditional medicine for over 60

She began her medical practice at a time when women couldn’t even open bank accounts. Her wonderful new book is called The Well -Lived Life, 103 -Year -Old Doctor’s Six Secrets to Health and Happiness at Every Age. Dr. Gladys, thank you so much for being here with us today to share your incredible wisdom. Thank you for allowing me to do it, you know. This is amazing. It’s just amazing.

You know, I didn’t know what to expect from your book, Dr. Gladys, because I get a lot of doctor’s books and medical books. As someone who’s really interested in physical health and profoundly interested in spirituality and energy, your book hit me like a bomb because your six secrets aren’t about, you know, have more B vitamins or these really specific health protocols. It’s about energy.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (02:17.814)
and the creative life force, you call it the juice and love and forgiveness and all these incredible topics and your experience as this wise elder showing us that this is really how we create the lives we want. This is really how we live healthy lives. Dr. Gladys, your book just literally blew me away. I’m so grateful. You know, I wrote five other books that were all about medicine, about disease processes and so

but they didn’t have the essence of what medicine, treating people and working with people and all that, didn’t have the essence. So that’s why I had to write this book because it has taken how we do the work and how it works with the patient and how the patient works with it and makes it real. So that’s.

Why it’s important to carry on after the other books. This is really feels like the culmination of everything, all these amazing lessons you’ve learned. And you’ve worked in allopathic holistic medical medicine. You’ve been the mentor to Dr. Mark Hyman, who is such a big doctor here today. You also have a really interesting background where you mentioned how you grew up in India and you had an encounter with Gandhi.

Can you just speak a little bit briefly how living in India, living across the world had an impact on your perspective? Well, it gave me a worldview when I was starting out in life. The little Indian kids used to rub my arms to try and get the white off, you know?

It’s that kind of mixing the cultures in a way that was real. I mean, these kids were real and I was real and I was okay with me to get that white off so that we would be the same color. it was an interesting start in how there was some kind of division in this world.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (04:44.662)
And I didn’t understand it and the kids didn’t understand it. And we didn’t think it was important. And so to start life with reaching across the whole racial thing, it wasn’t an issue. What in the world are we fussing about? Yes. And also Dr. Gladys, I can say for me growing

Catholic in a certain way. When I went to India and I was learning about oneness, and which you talk about in your book, this energy that we’re all connected to that transcends dogma and different ideas. And I started learning about yoga and meditation. I realized, wow, it just gave me a whole different framework beyond like you’re saying, separation, right, wrong. This is the only path. The fact that we’re all connected into this bigger energy. Yep.

Yes. So, you know, that’s why my parents went to India. They wanted to take their love of the Christian concepts to India, where they could share that, the theology of love and life being a process of

with the Indian people. So it was a matter of taking what they knew as a loving process in life and allowing themselves to share it with the Indian people. For me, was just, of course, I mean, why not?

Now going to your book, Dr. Gladys, there’s so many takeaways. There’s these really punchy sentences that are bolded. And one of the ones that struck me, this is on page five, you write, to be truly alive, we must find the life force within ourselves and direct our energy toward it. So can you go into that a little bit? First of all, Dr. Gladys, we don’t always hear doctors talk about these terms. You hear about them in India, life force.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (07:05.006)
Prana energy and then you talk about and you in subsequent chapters as well How where do we put our energy? How do we direct our energy towards this force versus things that can deplete us? You know I I do Better telling stories so yes, my oldest son is a retired orthopedic surgeon and when he came through Phoenix

He stopped here. He was on his way to Del Rio to start his practice in orthopedics. And he said to me, Mom, I’m real scared. I’m going to go into the world. I’m going to have people’s lives in my hands. I don’t know if I can handle that. And I said to him, well, Carl, really, you don’t have a person’s life in their hand and you have what you have learned.

which is orthopedic surgery, which believe me, if I have something broken, I don’t want a barber trying to fix it. I want a good orthopedic surgeon who knows what he’s doing, who understands the process, doing the work of teaching orthopedics to the patient who has within them the whole process, the whole healing process.

which is the process that will allow the healing to happen. So if you handle this with love and caring and teach this process to the physician within that patient that you’re working with, that colleague of yours will take it and he’ll do the healing. So it’s not your job to do it, it’s your job to do your job.

which is orthopedic surgery. Now you hand it over lovingly to the colleague of yours who knows what you’re talking about, who understands orthopedics and understands what this patient is going through and how the patient is going to be able to use this. It’s loving life flow of one to another.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (09:32.49)
As we go through life, there is a whole healing process. This love you talk about so much, Dr. Gladys, and there’s a whole chapter on it, it also takes away fear, as you just described in your story. It also takes away ego, like I’m the doer here, I’m the most important, my role here, this, right? It changes everything. Yeah, when light…

shines in on a dark place. It changes everything. Yes. And the light that shines in is love. So love is the great healer in the long run in all aspects of it. You know, we kiss a baby’s boo -boo. We’ve done a great healing. Yeah.

It’s true. do that with my four year old and still my eight year old Dr. Gladys, just the hug, that comfort, that real connection that comes in. Well, know, my grown kids like it too.

I mean, there’s so many things I am so excited to ask you about, Dr. Gladys. One of the concepts that I’ve said, wow, everybody needs to know how to connect to is the juice, right? You describe it as this creative life energy, back to this life force. That is, you know, the way spirit, God, universe, whatever word we want to say, we’re all created in a unique way, a unique blueprint. Our souls have a unique soul journey.

Are there all these lifetimes or whatever we believe? can you explain a little bit about the juice and how you would recommend each person to connect to that energy inside of themselves? Well, each one of us are here for a purpose and each one of us have a special purpose and no one else fits into our spot. You know, if I had a twin, she might look like me, but she wouldn’t be me.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (11:41.782)
It’s individual energy that is who and what I am, who and what you are, each one of us. And again, like we talked about this jigsaw puzzle, the world is like a big jigsaw puzzle with each one of us having a special spot in there and no other piece can fit in that spot.

I’ve tried, I’m telling you, if you try to push a piece in or squeeze it in or something, it doesn’t, you can’t. And if you’ve ever worked on a thousand piece jigsaw and then lost the last piece, it drives you crazy until you find that piece. It’s an essence of the very reality of what that piece means.

not just to the puzzle, but to the whole world around us. I mean, if that puzzle is on the dining room table and it doesn’t have a piece in it, anybody that comes in the door is going to notice that, you know, and they’re going to start looking with you for that piece.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (13:09.346)
We all want to feel good, like the name of our podcast, which for me means feeling our most vital energy, glowing, having glowing skin, which is a reflection of our inner state, feeling creative, feeling alive. And how we take care of ourselves on a daily basis directly impacts this. One of the most important and simple ways that we can really support our vitality and feel good is by proper hydration.

which doesn’t just mean drinking water, but also drinking electrolytes, because electrolytes need to be replaced similarly to probiotics. So I love the element brand. I drink it every day. It’s become part of my morning routine, or I add some element into water as part of my room temperature water, even before I drink my hot water with lemon. And I love this brand because it doesn’t have added sugars.

It has a science -backed mix of potassium, sodium, and magnesium. It’s really important for that beautiful glowing energy, vitality, and glow overall. So I highly recommend it. And right now for our community, is offering a free sample pack with any Element drink mix. You can go to drinklmnt .com slash feel good to get your eight single serving packets for free.

Once again, that’s drinkelement .com slash feelgood, D -R -I -N -K, L -N -T dot com. You can also check out their new sparkling beverage, which is amazing for summertime hydration as

We are all so busy and our energy is so precious. And I always want to streamline healthy eating, which seems to take up a lot of time, but yet of course we know it’s so important. And I have to say that this week in particular, Hungry Root was a big part of that for me. Hungry Root is a high quality grocery and simple recipe delivery service. This week, I got some Cuban black beans, some packets of rice quinoa, which you can just reheat, which is amazing in a bind and keeps you from having to get

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (15:19.608)
some bags of fresh broccolini, which my kids love, and some fresh stir -fried veggie packets of cut up veggies. So you could just throw them in the pan. I also got some cashew cheese for our family’s taco night. It was so great and it saved me so much time coming right to my door. So what’s great about Hungry Root is that you can customize your order for your food preferences, if you’re gluten -free or plant -based or whatever. And I love it and I can’t recommend it enough.

So right now, Hungry Root is offering our community 40 % off your first delivery and free veggies for life. Please go to hungryroot .com slash feel good to get 40 % off your first delivery and your free veggies. I highly recommend you try it out. It’s so great. I love it. And they have great options. So once again, that’s hungryroot .com slash feel good.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (16:19.79)
It’s such an important message in today’s world, Dr. Gladys, because as you know, a lot of people are on social media. They’re looking at what other people are doing in their lives. They’re comparing. They’re judging. They’re feeling like they’re not important or they haven’t done enough or they’re not pretty enough or whatever. Whatever it is, right? The mind can tell you a lot of things and take you out of the heart. So what you’re describing is completely different. Yeah, yeah. Well, and it’s important to learn that lesson.

I was 93 before I actually accepted my own voice because I, you know, I would, I’d write a book and then, I’d have to have somebody else really go through it severely and let me know whether it was okay or not. I’d do a speech and then I, in my mind, go through that whole process.

again. And I would depend on someone else’s voice to say whether it was right, whether I’d said the right thing. I was 93 when I actually accepted my voice and it came in a dream. And that’s another thing I really want to emphasize. Let’s pay attention to our dreams.

They’ve been so important to me during my life. If I have a problem or an issue and I really don’t quite know which way to turn or something, I’ll ask for a dream. And the dream is what will guide me through it and allow me to really take it. Beautiful. Dr. Gladys, what was it like?

Well, you know, when you were getting started, you had four kids, you were a doctor, a lot of women at the time couldn’t even conceive of leaving the home. You know, just everyone was, most women were taking care of their kids. Like I said earlier, they weren’t opening bank accounts. Was it, I imagine it was just enormously challenging. I mean, I think about myself as a working mom today and I can’t even imagine, it’s hard for me. I imagine decades ago what it must’ve been

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (18:46.958)
It was really scary really because I was well, when I was in Wellsville, Ohio, it was a town of 9 ,000 people. And two years after we were there, Bill was called my husband Bill. And the two of us were the doctors in town. He was called in back into the Air Force.

And I was left there with this 9 ,000 people depending on me for medical care. And my life found no boundaries. In fact, when I got really sick with Monk’s hepatitis after my kids got Monk’s, my friends, the Gilmores, a couple who were men.

physicians in the hospital had to take me to their home to get me away from the patients. And they connected the IV to the curtain rod so that I could, the patients, know, I had to be set. Patients were coming up the back stairs. my gosh. And in fact, my life was so open to the whole town.

patients would walk in with a patient into my living room. And one time I was in the dime store with my kids. had the four kids, the older kids were holding my hand, holding the younger one’s hand. So the four of us, well, you know, walking through the store and a woman comes up to me and she starts explaining to me

gynecological problems. mean, and my kids are here listening and said to her, now, honey, why don’t you just lie down on the floor here and I’ll examine you. And she says, what? And I said, well, others have either that or you could get to the phone there.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (21:13.45)
the office and make an appointment. And she says, that’s a good idea. my gosh. mean, Dr. Gladys, did you encounter a lot of people in that town being, know, judgmental or nervous that you were a woman doctor back then? when I first went in, I was rejected. People said, one.

go home, you’re not a doctor, go back to your babies. I got that kind of stuff. And I would call Bill and I’d say, well, you get this one back. And so he’d come and do the same thing I had done and we’d go on. But it took two years. Wow.

And did you feel guilt when you had to leave your children or you were with patients and someone else was taking care of so hard? But those kids actually are the ones who focused me and to where I was. My son Bob was 18 months old when Bill was called back into the service. But when I came home, it might be…

If he was not in bed, he would be on the front steps of my house waiting for me. And I would come down and pick him up and we’d go up and sit down in my rocking chair. And I’d say to him, and he’d pat my shoulder until he’d fall asleep. And then I’d feel like I was back into

own place. But my kids, through the years, have been the ones who have actually made my life available to other people. That’s so beautiful. If John wasn’t here to help me, I couldn’t be doing this. know, life and love have to flow.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (23:36.152)
They have to grow, they have to reach on from where they are to where they can help others. It’s a living process. And so another part of your book that I really connected to when you talk about your holistic approach to medicine, which at the time was also groundbreaking, really looking at the whole person, because I can say personally,

Part of my story, doctor, is that I was always constipated for years. I didn’t know I ate lots of fiber. There was no reason I should be holding so much, but I wouldn’t let go of certain emotions and certain things. So there was this stuckness. And you talk about that in your book and were many different stories and examples where with patients, chronic pain or digestive issues, there was so much more going on than just what you learned about in your medical textbooks. Absolutely, you know.

Life is, everything in life is a living process. think medicine, the concept of medicine got stuck during World War II when we decided that it’s all about getting rid of the diseases. And I don’t think it’s a matter of getting rid of the disease. I think it’s a matter of understanding the disease with love and working with them.

so that we can be, so that the physician within us can work with that disease process and deal with it the way it needs to, because each one of us has to deal with it our own way. I try to teach somebody, a patient, how to work

a disease process the way I work with it, it may not work. Right. Because they have to take it and let it work for them. You have some really practical advice. Like you say, everything needs to flow. The energy needs to go through. And this is one of the fundamental teachings of Ayurveda and lots of these different medical traditions. And yet if we have these blockages, it could be in our GI tract, it could be…

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (26:00.792)
physically, could be emotionally. You said something in your book about, I’m paraphrasing here, but aligning where the energy is flowing, finding a trickle around where the blockage is and trying to go into that so that the energy starts moving again. Can you explain a little bit more what you mean by that, Doctor? Well, if you have something that gets stuck, no matter

what it is or how it is. Maybe you’ve been carrying your pain and stuff over your left shoulder like a bag. And if you keep looking at that bag and it’s there and you know it’s there and you don’t like it, but it’s there and calling you and it’s just there. If you don’t pull your neck head back, your neck’s going to get stuck.

I mean, you’re going to have a stiff neck that is really hard to work with. But it’s a matter of understanding that, okay, it’s there. I have to tell you this. I think this is one of my funny stories. I had this patient who actually had a sore shoulder for years, and I worked with her for years.

And we thought of all kinds of things about what was causing it and what was this, that, and this one time she came in and we were going over the same process of trying to figure out what it was that was causing the problem. And we didn’t come up with anything different. So she is ready to leave and she turns around.

and picks up her purse and hangs it over her shoulder. And it’s this huge purse. Her shoulder goes down. And the two of us looked at each other and we sat down on our chairs and just started laughing. We spent years trying to figure out what it was. And neither one of us had thought about what happens every time she left my office.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (28:25.9)
She picked up that load that was her. I went right back in it. it’s understanding that it’s always something that’s bad that’s happening to you. It’s something that you’re constantly doing. And when you can outline that

Either have a good friend that says to you sometimes, why do you carry a purse like that? Or something, you know, it’s, we’ll keep on doing it. But until we understand this and we do something about it, it’ll continue. Yes. That’s a funny story because we get into these patterns, right? I mean, I know I used to have a lot of back pain because I always carried my children on one

And then I hear it to be aware and make some changes. And then there’s the unseen forces, doctor, right? Like people holding onto the resentment or you talk about shame in the book. Can you maybe give us an example about back pain or chronic pain or something where you saw in your patient that there was something emotionally that was just eating them up or changing their energy, creating blockages. And you could see that that had to be dealt with, not

know, physical surgery or changing their diet or whatever. Well, I had to find that in my own self, in my own life, because my first two years in school, I was the class dummy. I really was. I couldn’t read, I couldn’t write. And everybody called me, Boodhoo, which is stupid one. in India, they called you that.

Yeah. So I was Buddha and, that, you know, that’s awful. That’s a horrible name in, in, and, I was, you know, and the teacher in first grade, thought I was stupid. And so for two, so I had to repeat first grade. So for two years, that’s what I was. So at that age, I had

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (30:53.8)
grace of God in my life. And that was my family. In the Himalayas, were at Woodstock School and the school was down a thousand feet lower and I had to climb up the mountain to get up to where our house was. By the time I got up there, my Aya, now the Aya is the Indian

She’s, I’ll use the word, she was ignorant, knew, she couldn’t read, she couldn’t write, she couldn’t do anything, but she was the epitome of love. And she would be sitting at the top of the path when I’d get up to the hill, and she’s sitting there on the ground watching for me. And when she’d see me, she’d yell, Isaral, come here.

and I’d go over and she’d hold out her chadr and I’d crawl in and sit there until my world came back into place. And when I got feeling like I could come out, then I could go and I could, you know, fuss with my brothers and sister and all, I kind of to what happens in families. But there is like two different worlds. mean, the Aya was the guardian of the world that was

precious and protected for me to keep on finding my own juice, finding who I really was, and then go on with it. And it was that kind of reality. I finally began to accept my own voice. the dream, let me tell you the dream because it

In the dream, I woke up laughing and singing and the dream wasn’t quite over. You know, sometimes you’re in a dream and out of a dream at the same time. Yeah. This time I could see myself as nine year old Gladys coming out of our tent in the jungle and peeking around the tent flap to make sure my brother wasn’t there because he would tattle on me and then I’d be in trouble.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (33:19.242)
And so he wasn’t there and nobody was there. I was able to run as fast as I could up the mango tree, clear up to the top. got clear up to the top of the mango tree. And I’m sitting there and I’m singing because in our family on, on Sabbath morning, we weren’t allowed to sing anything but hymns or pudgings. And I thought as a nine year old and I was, I thought I was

tree. You know, I don’t know, I I thought, of the bad thing. I didn’t want to do it. And so I didn’t want anybody else to hear me saying, but I was up on the top of the tree and I was singing. And then every so often I’d talk and I’d look over my right shoulder and there was Jesus up on the tree with me. And he said he’d been on the tree with me and he’s laughing. And

look at him and I say, he just loves a little children, right? And he says, yes, and he laughs more. And I go back to my singing and then I think, did he really say yes, it’s okay? So I go back and I say,

I’m still a little children, right? And he said, yes. So I go back to my singing. And then about the time that I woke up and realized, I said to myself, well, Jesus loves you for crying out loud. Why can’t you love yourself? And I began to trust myself. But it was that kind of a soul.

changing experience that took all 93 years of my thinking and feeling and knowing that I was stupid and I had to have someone else, uh, you know, check things for me to change that around so that I was able to actually accept my own voice. So I’m telling you folks,

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (35:37.974)
Begin to trust yourself because each one of us knows our truth No one else knew that I was hurting that badly all those years Because I why would I talked to anybody about that? Wow Just so beautiful dr. Gladys, It’s hard sometimes to get past that doubt

And I don’t know, we just encounter so much when we’re young because I’m half Filipina, Asian. I grew up in Connecticut, all white community. So I was called out a lot and called exotic. And you when you’re a little kid, you don’t want to stand out. So I tried to shrink myself for a long time. And I don’t know, it’s just a lot of complicated ideas we form about ourselves, like you said, we realize, and we are on this journey of realizing who we really

Yeah. Just so much deeper. And then someplace along the line, you found yourself and here you are. Isn’t that awesome? Where we are at this point, because the path, it hasn’t been easy, but it’s hugely joyous. Huge. Dr. Gladys, I was reading your book and I told you this before we started recording. I started crying.

And there’s this section, this chapter that I was not expecting you to talk about where you talked about what happened with your husband. You sort of do this divorce paper and you were like, know, blindsided. We have these moments in life, Dr. Gladys, right? I mean, I, being my mother’s from the Philippines, there’s no divorce, there’s no separation. I ended up separating with my partner, my first partner, and we had a child who wasn’t even a year old, my first son.

I remember crying in my closet, Dr. Gladys, and saying, such a loser, single mom, this isn’t what I want, so angry, know, like all these things. And you describe, you know, I think you were served your divorce paper at your office and all this stuff was going on you didn’t know. And then you go on and you tell a story about how you found this way to just take the lessons and not be angry. I mean, I just was bawling, Dr. Gladys, that was an incredible part of your story.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (38:03.95)
Well, it was a very hard time. We’d been married for 46 years. We had six amazing children. They were great, you know, doing great things. We’d started the American Holistic Medical Association. We started the ARE clinic. We had started the whole movement together. Yeah. And then all of a sudden,

He presents me with divorce papers. I just, I couldn’t put it in context with my life. So I’m on the way, we were living in Casa Grande, Phoenix, so it’s a 10 mile, I don’t know how long. Anyway, was riding in my car by myself down the I -10 to my home.

which was empty except for my dog. And I was on the way there and I was broken. I was so broken. I was so ugly. I was yelling and squealing and saying things that I’ve never thought. I don’t even remember what they were. I don’t know where the words came from. How old were you, Dr. Gladys? How old were you? 46. My car was a horrible place.

And I looked back in there and I said to myself, am I going to spend the rest of my life like that? Like that? And it was so awful. I said, no, no, I’m not. I’m not. And then the voice came down into my mind. This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

And there was my name, Be Glad. And I thought, wait, wait, okay, okay. I have to choose something now. I either choose that or I choose my own name. And I looked, you know, so I went back, I went on home and I explained the whole situation to my dog. And the next morning I went to

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (40:29.998)
city and I changed my license plate to be glad. So every time I got into the car, I had to see that. And all the time I was driving for 60 years after that, somebody behind me had to see it too. There’s just so much to take away from that. Cause like you said, there’s this choice that we all could make that we all have these hard moments.

And I’m sure you’ve seen in your clinic, Doctor, where these hard moments start to really take down people’s health. If they stay in anger, they stay in resentment, they stay in this victim mindset. I didn’t catch how long it was for you, Doctor, to go from that angry stage into this sort of rebirth, this shift into glad. Yeah, probably.

Almost a year, I was just really trying to fit where I fit, you know, trying to, but then I was able to write my ex -husband a letter and say, I want to thank you for giving me my freedom. Because for the first time in my life, it wasn’t.

I wasn’t responsible to anybody else. I had my freedom. I was now Dr. Gladys and I could sign myself. It wasn’t a bill of Gladys. wasn’t, you know, some, you know, it was my name with my life, with who I was. And I was able to take off in a second. I don’t know.

in the direction I’ve gone, which we now call living medicine. Wow. What a story, doctor. You’ve just been, when I just think about your life and you were forging ahead, being a woman doctor, growing up in India, and then you create all this, and then suddenly you’re blindsided by your husband. I mean, what a journey you have been on. It was hard, but…

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (42:49.25)
But think of where it brought me, you know? Exactly, this book that ties it all together, those are my notes. This book, The Well -Lived Life. See, I wrote that book for, the title is for each one of the people who read it. I use the example of my life.

So they have some kind of a place to follow something, but it’s not my life, it’s their lives as they read the book, as they can take it and make it a well -lived life. Because I’m telling you, if you can take it and begin to appreciate what our lives are, the good part and the bad part and everything, it’s a wow.

There isn’t anything else like it. It’s just a big wow.

Dr. Glez, can you share a little bit about your personal practices, your spiritual practices? Do you pray every day? Do you meditate? Or are you sort of in that space of connection all the time? No, I don’t want to do that because I want the people to find themselves. beautiful. So find it within yourself. You know, I get up and I take my breakfast and

do the work I have to do. go to the bathroom and I do the stuff that has to be done and I go on with my life. But I want people to find that for themselves. Don’t look to me or anyone else particularly. Look to yourself. Find it within yourself. It’s there. It’s there. It’s just right there.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (44:47.02)
You just, have some practical practices throughout the book as well where that’s available. Connecting in and learning to listen better because sometimes we’re so busy, Dr. Gladys or running around or, you know, the world is noisy now today, of course, with the phones and the internet. So we get pulled outside of ourselves. Yes. And so it is important. We’re all unique. We all have that unique journey. Yes. And you know, you got to keep moving.

If you stop moving, you get stuck and so forth. And the principles are there. Take them, use them as you use them in your own life. Because I couldn’t do the same thing that I’m doing now when I was in the jungles of North India. I didn’t have a walker. Now I have a walker.

And this walker’s name is, what’s his

Walker, you forgot your name. I have names for our cars too. I love naming some of these inanimate objects that become part of our lives. Yes. Yes. I walk. I was. Yeah. So it’s, that kind of a,

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (46:20.114)
vision, I think that’s what I’m looking for, that we have each one of us for ourselves. And as we look for that, we look for the light or we look for the darkness. like in my car, I had an active choice to look for the light, was that be glad thing there was, or this

horrible place. So anyway, for me, it was a good thing to do. Well, I could talk to you all day, Dr. Gladys. There’s one more thing I want to ask. And once again, for everyone listening, Gladys’ secrets include you are here for a reason, life needs to move. As we just talked about, love is the most powerful medicine. You’re never truly alone. Everything is your teacher.

Like we were just saying, experience with relationships and everything. Now this last one, spend your energy wildly. And then you talk about energy as an investment. What’s worth your energy? Can you tell us a little bit about that? Because that’s a little bit esoteric. You don’t usually hear in the medical profession talk about that so much, right? It’s very linear, things you can measure. But it seems to relate back to what you were saying with the juice and the creative life force and where we direct our attention.

Well, because the energy that we have changes. So we have to take what comes, what’s created for us, what’s there for us. Now, I don’t have the same energy I had when I was, you I’m blind, I’m legally blind. I can’t read. So I’m listening to audio books. I have John

read for me, you know, but my eyesight has gone dim, but my insight is better. I’m able to understand things better. And so as we grow, we change into what it is because the place where we live changes. You know, I’m in this house all the time.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (48:47.726)
Right now it’s 112 outside. I’m not going outside. So I’m in this house. It’s air conditioned. I had wasps that we had to get rid of last week. you know, you have things that happen and life goes on. it’s a, and you

Think about this, you and I can talk to each other. I mean, how awesome is that? Yeah, it’s incredible. You know, it really is. It’s just amazing. It’s amazing. the word for it is miracles. So chapter 33 in your book is making space for miracles. Yes, yes. And they show up in all sorts of different ways.

I have to tell you about my great grandson. He’s in, he’s living in Pennsylvania and his grandfather is my son John. Okay. So he was with three other kids and they were standing around a little bowl where they’d put their nickels and dimes and stuff. And this bowl was getting money to send to someplace.

where, I don’t know where, where were needing to dig a well and they didn’t have enough money. So these three are from their Sunday school class putting their money in so they can send it to. And the little girl says, when they were finished, she says, do we say a prayer? And the little boy, another little boy says, I don’t know. And Ian says,

Of course we say a prayer. He said, God’s all around us. Let us pray. Wow. So, you know, these little kids are coming up. God’s all around us. Beautiful. Let us pray. And that message comes flying over the ethers to me. And I think, my, yes, let us pray.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (51:17.474)
What a miracle, making one cry, Dr. Gladys, it’s like every day, everything’s a miracle in a sense. And I think this type of deep shifting and forgiveness that you talked about is also a miracle. I think a lot of the stories you talk about in the book, there’s so many miracles. People starting to redirect their energy. Yes. Thank you. You’re a miracle. Look at what I can do. I can see you.

Dr. Gladys, as we wrap up here, there’s not really see you like I would like to see you, but I can see you. My insight, it has enough juice in it that I see

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (52:12.589)
No.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (52:17.87)
You’re going to make me cry. Yeah. Your energy really is so, know, Vaughn, I think that, you know, ultimately we all want to be seen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for doing this. Thank you, Dr. Gladys. And yeah, you just, you know, like the words you say, have to, sorry, I’m crying so much.

I think one of the things that I’ve tried to overcome from my childhood is being seen. My parents were working a lot. I felt quite neglected and unimportant and not seen. just to say those really specific words really hit me.

Thank you so much, Dr. Glass. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anything we didn’t cover from your wonderful book, The Well -Lit Life? Well, think there were a few things that we didn’t cover. We had 103 years that were kind of hard to cover. But we did pretty good. We did good.

Pretty good. Anything you wanted to share today that we didn’t share. of course, please, know, everyone listening to this, watching this, please get Dr. Gladys’ book. can’t recommend it enough. The Well -Lived Life, 103 -Year -Old Doctors, Six Secrets to Health and Happiness at Every Age. It’s very full of wisdom, of course, Dr. Gladys. I have to say it’s also a surprising book. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Dr. Gladys. Is there anywhere where we can connect with you further or where we can get the book? Gladysmcgary .com. Did you hear? Gladysmcgary .com. Okay, great. So we will link everyone in the show notes to Gladys’s website, which is Gladysmcgary .com. Also this book you can get online, your local bookstore, wherever books are sold.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (54:27.48)
So thank you again so much, Dr. Gladys. I really just love you. I love this book so much. Thank you. Thank you. I love

I love you so much, Dr. Gladys. And for everyone listening to this, I don’t usually cry so much during our shows. We will have the show notes as always on mysaloon .com. We will link directly to Dr. Gladys’ site, as I mentioned. And we’ll be back here Thursday for our next Q &A show. Thank you so much for being part of our community. We honor you so much. We’re so grateful for you. And we look forward to connecting with you more. Thank you.

And life lives on.

Solluna By Kimberly Snyder (55:13.186)
Life Luzon, Dr. Glass, your energy, your heart is so big. this new book I wrote, I wrote a lot about Mother Teresa. I felt like she has this impact of love. And I feel like you have that kind of energy, just being around, it just changes the field. Well, it’s love, and love is a great healer. And love is what’s going to change the world. We have

bow to do the things we have to do, but in the long run, it’s the love that is the energy that changes things. So let’s love each other. And sometimes it makes us cry. You know, but they’re not cries of, my, it’s bad. It’s they’re cleansing, helping tears that allow us to go on.

Thank you so much for seeing me. It went right into my heart. Thank you.