IT IS HERE!!! Today is the kick-off of my 30-day November to Remember, No Excuses November, Challenge 2022! Okay, everybody, let’s do this!
Click here to review the challenge. I am so excited about how many of you I have heard from verbally and by email who are making a commitment to yourselves to do the scaled-down version of the Parkinson’s Recipe for Recovery® for the 30 days of November.
Congratulations to all of you on giving yourselves the gift of working on your Parkinson’s recovery. To kick-off the challenge, here is some inspiration.
In November of 2011, I posted my first (not knowing then it would be annual) November to Remember 30-day Challenge. A week and a half into the challenge, my dear friend Marie had her full recovery. It was overwhelming. She was proof-of-concept that the Recipe could work for others as she was the first full recovery after me.
Today, I am re-posting the announcement of Marie’s recovery to help inspire all of you to the depths of your core that you, too, can have your full recovery from Parkinson’s.
Fighting Parkinson’s, and Marie is symptom free!
(Originally posted on November 11, 2011)
“MARIE IS SYMPTOM FREE HAVING FOLLOWED THE RECIPE FOR RECOVERY FOR NEARLY A YEAR!!!
Here is what she had to say, copied and pasted from her comment posted yesterday in comments section of the post “Fighting Parkinson’s, and believing in yourself”:
“Marie says:
November 10, 2011 at 1:07 pm
I accepted an internal 30-day challenge from myself when I discovered
fightingparkinsonsdrugfree almost a year ago. And that was just the beginning. I made a promise to myself that I would do whatever was necessary and change my life in whatever ways would support recovery, if it was really possible to have my condition improve rather than degenerate. As Howard so often says, ” What did I have to lose?” I trusted Howard as my guide, and the bearer of good news that penetrated the bleakness of my fear and despair . I put my faith in my power to heal myself. The Recipe for Recovery was my lifeline. AND it is why I can happily and gratefully report to you today that the reason I am not accepting this challenge now is that I am symptom free! YES! Symptom Free!!!
Cheering you all on as you courageously overcome the disease. I am a happy example of the success of the Recipe for Recovery.
With love to you all~ Marie”
Marie, you inspire all of us. CONGRATULATIONS!!! Also, we have been fortunate to have your periodic posting of comments in the comments sections of blog posts, and I am posting them below as they provide a rare glimpse into various aspects of this healing journey to full recovery from Parkinson’s. (Note: Some say they are posted by Floramania instead of Marie; Floramania is Marie; on each comment below, it provides the date of the comment, so if you wish to read the blog post and the comment in context of the post, please use the Archives Section on the right-hand side of the screen).
“floramania says:
March 25, 2011 at 4:36 pm
Thanks, Howard. I appreciate reading this today. I was making progress with the recipe for recovery and overall feeling much more positive and hopeful, with symptoms diminishing, and then I got a bad case of the flu; for three weeks now, it has been off again/on again, feeling better, then relapsing into illness. And I thought, “How can this be happening when I have been living a more healthful, more balanced life, following the recipe for recovery and feeling so good? Shouldn’t all that medical Qigong be making me healthier overall? the meditating? the affirmations?”
It felt very discouraging. Plus at the start of the flu, my tremors got more frequent and increased in intensity again, the worst they had been in months. Throughout, I have kept up (sort of) with the meditating, chanting, Jin Shin Jitsu, and Qigong, though my energy and enthusiasm…and okay! I admit it…my faith….have been less.
Reading your post today, I recognize that, having seen the scummy pool and even swum in it, I pulled back. I have been going through the motions, and not putting my full heart and soul into it like I was before.
What you wrote makes sense.
A good reminder.
thanks.”
“Marie says:
July 7, 2011 at 4:57 pm
Hello, Howard,
And thank you.
As the person mentioned above who sometimes finds it challenging to hold on to the life changes I’ve made in following the Recipe for Recovery, I will add….”OKAY”.
That is how it is. I’m grateful to have had the slow work months to really focus on
my health in very profound ways. And now the demands of work make it trickier to fit in all of what I want to fit in within a day. OKAY.
I would like to share with others another part of the conversation. It was very helpful to me when you asked if my feelings were a generalized anxiety and irritation, or tied to specific things in my life. It was interesting that the things that came out of my mouth are not the day to day obstacles and setbacks and minor inconveniences that I seem to be reacting to. Instead, there are some larger, unresolved life issues involving important people, and I have major decisions to make. Just recognizing that, and acknowledging that these are serious things that I must consider helped me to feel more settled, and to give myself some slack.
Computer viruses get fixed. Decisions get made. things eventually get done, even though by giving myself time for healing, some other things get put off. That’s fine too. The gift that Parkinson’s gave me, was to shift my priorities towards my own well-being. Sometimes I lose sight of that. But not always, and not today.
thanks for your help. Marie”
“floramania says:
July 9, 2011 at 3:57 pm
Meredith! Congratulations to you on beginning Qigong classes. My introduction to Qigong was through this website. Now I am 3 months into this new and exciting realm, and finding it to be
a very positive, health-enhancing addition to my life. May your high hopes be
realized…… and surpassed.”
“floramania says:
September 10, 2011 at 7:45 pm (In comment section of September 8, 2011 post)
As always, Howard, your words are a great inspiration….and reminder.
I also appreciate hearing from other people how they are applying the Recipe for Recovery, so I would like to add a tidbit of my own. I still have a lot of mind chatter, and a lot of it tends towards the negative, but I am doing a better job of living with it, balancing it in my life.
My antidote is to stop and really take in the moments when I feel good. So often I used to brush aside the good news, the beautiful moments; they didn’t need my attention, I thought, so I raced right by those, so I could apply myself to all the problems, all the things bothering, irritating and stressing me. The simple shift I have worked on is to sit in those good moments really paying attention and savoring them, letting them soak in, even if it is just for 15 or 20 seconds. Usually when I do this I experience calm and gratitude.
It is a small change, but still seems very significant in my life.
Just the sun on my shoulders, the light coming through the window right now as I type this, I’m really enjoy it. I pause to reflect on the tremendous gratitude I feel for
the hope and faith and easing of the grip of fear that have come to me since the first day anxiety-ridden day I found “fightingparkinsonsdrugfree”. I was desperate then, and I’m not now.
I breathe in that gratitude, let it expand my chest. The changes, small in themselves, are adding up to some major shifts. It is amazing. Wonderful.
Thank you. Thank you . Thank you.”
“floramania says:
September 27, 2011 at 12:36 pm (In comment section of September 26, 2011 post)
Thank you, Howard. The shift from believing that Parkinson’s is an incurable degenerative disease to believing I could heal myself has been one of the most profound and amazing experiences in my life. I remember it as a specific moment when I really got it, when I realized I did not need to follow the horrific progression of this disease that I had been reading about obsessively. It was one of the happiest days of my life, like being released from prison. When I first encountered your blog and realized that people can and DO, in fact, recover, I switched from thinking about at what stage I would kill myself to a willingness to at least try believing in my power to heal myself. Such a great alternative! And for me, it is working.
Though I know that not you nor anyone other than myself has the power to heal me, I will always be grateful to you for the gift of your Recipe for Recovery, your friendship, and your support along the way.
With love and best wishes to you, Marie”
“floramania says:
October 6, 2011 at 1:18 pm
Thank you, Howard. It is so beautiful that you have taken all the experiences with your mother’s Parkinson’s and then your own disease and recovery and brought them all together to become who you are today…able to coach others in their own recovery.
A beacon of light!
Happy Birthday, Lorraine. And thank you for your part in all of our journey towards recovery. Thanks for Howard.”
“floramania says:
October 13, 2011 at 4:48 pm (In comment section of October 12, 2011 post)
Howard! I LOVE thinking of myself as a garden!
Thanks for sharing this with us all.
Happy gardening to you and our wonderful community of fellow
gardens.
Marie”
“floramania says:
October 25, 2011 at 4:29 pm
Yes! Yes! Yes!
Yes, Howard and Yes, Barry!
The concept of the adrenaline ingredient in Parkinson’s Disease and the dopamine ingredient in
the Recipe for Recovery really hit home for me when I first read your blog, Howard,
almost a year ago.
I knew as soon as I read about it: This is true for me.
I could see myself in overdrive, see how stressed and unhappy I had become in the time leading up to my symptoms developing. I was doing a pretty good job of hiding that from most other people, most of the time, since part of my “image” that I was trying to maintain was that I was a mellow and joyful person. But for myself, I knew the lion was at my heels and all I was doing, no matter how it looked from the outside, was running full out. There wasn’t any joy in it.
When my hand started shaking…I didn’t know it was possible to run even faster and harder, but I did it, and still tried to keep up the image that nothing was wrong until the day I first encountered “fightingparkinsonsdrugfree”.
What a revelation.
“Life reorientation”, as you put it Barry, is exactly right. It is a huge change.
It works. For me, it works in ways that go so far beyond what ever I imagined “recovery” might be. Lucky me!!
This is the busiest and most demanding time of my work year. I can remember being absolutely enraged through this period a year ago. But not now. I am enjoying my work enjoying my life. Keeping the dopamine flowing.
Thanks, Howard. I am so grateful to you for your help, and also grateful to everyone forming this wonderful, supportive community.
With love, Marie”
As you can see, if you believe in yourself and are willing to do the work, the Recipe for Recovery can work for you. And, you don’t have to just take my word for it. Marie has joined me in symptom free Parkinson’s recovery, proving that the Recipe for Recovery works. Who’s next? And next? And Next?
“I have the power to heal myself.” And I did.
“Marie had the power to heal herself.” And she did.
“You have the power to heal yourself.” And you are.
“Together we have the power to heal the world.” And we will!
Follow Marie’s lead. She began her healing journey accepting a 30-day challenge to herself to do the Recipe for Recovery. The Recipe for Recovery worked so well in the first 30 days that she stuck with it for nearly a year until she achieved symptom free recovery. It is never too late to start. Accept a 30-day challenge to yourself by accepting my 30-day challenge and get started on your path toward recovery by doing the Recipe for Recovery.”
Wow, wow, wow! I am inspired and I hope all of you are as well. So, my friends, here we are 11 years later on the kick-off day of the November to Remember, No Excuses November 2022.
Please remember this:
Do your best.
Your best is good enough.
You are worth it!!!
Happy November everybody!
All my best,
Howard
NOTE: I am in the midst of improving this website and have turned off certain features to accomplish the work I am doing. One of those features is “Comments” on the blog posts.
