“My family practice doctor heard about your work and referred me here. I’m desperate. Two years ago I came down with a terrible flu. I was so weak that my knees buckled and I couldn’t even hold up my head. My doctor called it chronic fatigue syndrome. It took a year before I got my energy back. Two months ago it started all over again, which surprised me since I did receive a flu shot last fall.

“People would call me a recluse. No partner and no support from my immediate family. That leaves a giant hole in my life that I try to fill partly with cigarettes. I’ve smoked for fifty years. Each time I inhale, I try to fill the void. No matter what I try, part of me just doesn’t want to stop smoking. That part of me wants to kill myself, but not with emphysema. You’re my last chance for hope.

“My childhood was horrendous. At sixteen my mother became pregnant. It was obvious that she never, ever wanted me. When I turned twenty, she actually told me how she’d tried to abort me with a clothes hanger. I almost starved to death during my first week of life because her nipples were inverted and I couldn’t seem to keep any formula down. I’ve been starving ever since.

“I don’t remember my mother touching me as a child. Not even once. Or protecting me. I never felt she was my mother and she did not feel I was her daughter. When I was six, she’d leave me at all-night movies and lock me in the car while she drank herself into oblivion at the bar for hours. I’ve blocked out most of my childhood.

“I didn’t belong anywhere. I was so withdrawn in high school . . . almost catatonic. I started out with ten strikes against me and I’ve spent my whole life pulling myself up. Two poor choices of husbands, a son who was difficult from day one. My depression was so bad. It felt as if someone put a black bag over my head. Suicide seemed like the best option. Antidepressants helped for a while. Now the fatigue and depression are back. I’m going downhill again.”

Edith noticed that when she bent forward, she felt as if her heart was in a vise. She had a long history of transient ischemic attacks (mini-strokes). Never rested, she awoke in the morning just as tired as she was the night before. She also complained of urinary dribbling and incontinence and had a lifelong aversion to eating. Although she had two grown children and grandchildren, she had next to no contact with any of them.

This is the kind of profound emptiness and disconnection that I spoke about. It’s no accident that Edith suffered from transient ischemic attacks. Her heart was broken—so shattered that life no longer seemed worth living.

Edith’s health and happiness have improved significantly, with the help of homeopathic Aurum metallicum (gold), over the past five years. She felt dramatically better within five weeks of taking the first dose and has needed ten or so doses in all. Edith reestablished contact with her children, her heart condition has been stable, and her outlook on life is much more positive. When I talked to her quite recently, she estimated the overall improvement in her health and emotional state to be 80 percent. Edith’s deep alienation from and disappointment by life could have resulted in her suicide or death due to heart failure. Instead, she has to a large extent been healed. She still works on letting go of her smoking and, by her admission, has a ways to go, but she recognizes where she was five years ago and how far she’s come. Her recovery, which I believe is more impressive than any she could have achieved with antidepressants, is a tribute to the healing power of homeopathy. Edith’s heart is now much healthier, inside and out.