The Resilient Mind - Powerful Message From 103 Year Old Doctor - Dr. Gladys McGarey

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

Dr. Gladys Taylor McGarey (1920 - 2024) is a pioneering physician, educator, and advocate for holistic health. In 1989, she founded The Foundation for Living Medicine, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the principles of holistic health and bridging the gap between conventional and alternative medical practices.Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Download Now⁠⁠This episode is brought to you in partnership with The Icons by Motiversity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXi_ZdT8sQY&t=131s Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to a powerful life message from a 103-year-old doctor, Dr. Gladys McGarry. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. Why do you think your message is being so, is being received so powerfully? Because people are injured. They're scared.

They don't know what to believe. They don't know. where the light is and darkness is all around. So people are just frightened. Young people are frightened. The teenagers don't know what to do. You know, where do we go with this life? They're looking for life guidance and somebody who can help them find the light and direct it.

So that's what my mission is, really, is to carry a torch for, those whose torches are kind of dim and they need more light. Why do you think your message is being so, is being received so powerfully? Because people are injured. They're scared. They don't know what to believe.

They don't know where the light is and darkness is all around. So people are just frightened. Young people are frightened. and the teenagers don't know what to do. You know, where do we go with this life? They're looking for life guidance and somebody who can help them find the light and direct it.

So that's what my mission is, really, is to carry a torch for those whose torches are kind of dim and they need more light. what do you think we're getting stuck with when we're trying to embrace living medicine because we really don't understand our own power see i have this kind of idea that when god created this earth whoever god is to whoever you are is it was it was created the earth and it was beautiful and everything was in place and the way it should be but then he

he created the human being. And he said to us, now you are the only creatures on this whole place that have the right to choose and have free will. So therefore, I give you dominion over the earth

and we, being who we were, decided that what he meant by dominion was dominance. And so we've taken over the earth and done what we darn well choose with it and look where we are. So it's that reality that within us as human being

I think that like E.T. who was reaching for home, I think that in the inner part of us we're all reaching for our true humanity. And that true humanity

understands that we are the ones who do the healing. The healing has to start with it. It doesn't matter anything if I can explain to a patient and they're thinking about something else, they're not listening

and they're not taking in anything, and they won't do what I'm asking them or what they begin to understand what I'm asking them or whatever. If they don't do what they need to do as part of their healing process, they'll just shuck it off. See, I've come up with what I call five Ls.

The first one is life and love. Without life, there's nothing, you know. You can be a seed in a great pyramid for 5,000 years and nothing happens until love, which is light and water and so on. softens the shell and the feed opens up and it grows. Life and love are one unit. They work together.

It's like a pregnancy. When a mother is pregnant, see and that baby are one unit. What she eats, the baby eats, what she thinks the baby thinks. It's a constant process. but that aspect of reality that is that baby that is being nurtured and grown within the womb doesn't really find its own identity until it takes its first breath

and then it becomes who it is takes the reason why it's coming into this earth So it's this reality that life and not one unit and that as we work with us, each other that way, we can really understand aspects of ourselves, but aspects of the world around us and aspects of other people too. It really interesting, I've heard you describe that you believe that everybody has a special purpose on earth. And I think that a lot of people know that, but they've buried it. or they feel like they're disconnected from their special purpose. How would somebody find that? Like, obviously you did.

How would somebody else tap into that purpose within themselves? Well, you know, you'll never find it if you don't start looking for it. When you start looking for your purpose, it's like that jigsaw puzzle idea. When you start looking for that particular puzzle piece and you find it, you know it. it's that kind of an inner knowing when something maybe it's a song maybe it's something that some

part of your family is doing maybe it's something that somebody says that makes you think yes when you can affirm that inner it's sort of like

a gong you know it rings and you, oh, yes, I get that. Look for it. If you find it, then follow it because it's your message for your soul to tell to the world and the world needs it. What advice do you have for people who are about 20 years old right now? Try to find joy and happiness. Find something that makes you laugh, really gutting it, laugh, not something mean, but something that really makes you feel like, oh, that's really, really funny. And look for that kind of a reality in your lives. And then spend time looking for what I call the light, you know, I kind of see myself walking along with a flashlight in the dark on my path and it's dark and I can just go as far as my

flashlight takes me but as I'm walking along sometimes there's a on the side of the path there's a light that it's not very bright it's just kind of shimmering if I shine my light over there all of a sudden that light becomes great it comes the In other words, as we reach out for each other, as we're walking along and we see someone else who's struggling, and we reach over just with whatever we have. You know, my mother's mate do, whatever there is there, whatever the opportunity is, and you use it and you work forward with it. you're helping people in ways that you know not. I hope 20-year-olds can hear that. I hope a lot of others can hear that too.

I think that's really powerful. I heard a quote of yours once that absolutely stopped me in my tracks, and it says fear is one of the major reasons we stop moving as a response to pain. We don't want to hurt anymore. And I think about that because I feel like there are a lot of people who don't want to hurt anymore. how would they start moving again? If you can look at the hurt

in any way that allows us, when I say you, I'm talking about us as physicians, if you can look at any way in which that hurt doesn't, you know, it's like taking a bad,

bad tasting medicine. if you can get the understanding that this is not here to hurt you, but the doctor is reaching to you with love because they need to help you. So if the loving act is done, it's done with a loving light, and the patient can accept it that way. It feels like you exude love and light, and I feel like that must be one of your gifts that's been around for a long time. But I've also heard that there's been moments in your life when you've been in

the darkness, that you've been in a tough spot. And even a particular time in your 70s, are you willing to share any part of that period of your life with us? Sure, you know, we all have our dark places. I'm repeating two years in grade school where I was the class dummy was one of the really dark places. I was, the teacher calling me the dumb one

and the others, you know, but that was my, I could go home in my home situation really allowed me to put this

in some kind of context where I couldn't, wasn't dealing with it. But the thing that really broke me apart was Bill and I had been married

for 46 years. We'd created the American Holistic Medical Association. We'd written books together. We'd raise six children together. And we, I thought life was the way it was supposed to be. And then one day, he asked me for a divorce. I absolutely, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't understand it.

I didn't know what he was saying. And I remember the moment when, It hit me so hard. I was coming home from work. Since when he left, I was practicing with my youngest daughter, who's still working as a physician here. And I was on my way home,

riding down I-10 in the car, and screaming and yelling and just, I was awful. I mean, it was terrible. You don't want to even think about how terrible that was because it was just the worst thing that I could think of I was saying and repeating it. It was just terrible. And at the top of my voice,

and finally I pulled over to the side of the road and I got out of the car. And I'm standing here looking at my car was the door open. and I'm thinking to myself, ooh, that's horrible. What you were doing in the car is just terrible. And I thought,

am I going to spend the rest of my life like this? This is what it's done to me, and this is who I am. And so I'm tearing on this discussion with myself. And the wonderful quote came down into my head. This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. There was my name.

Right in right there. I was to be glad. And my license plate from that day on read, Be Glad. Because every time I went out to my car, I had to see that. And everybody to ever got in line with me in the traffic in Phoenix for the next 60 years saw that, be glad. So it was something that I was affirming to myself, yes, but to the world around me. So it took the whole ugly, nasty, dark, horrible place and just put it out of it. it wasn't important anymore.

The car door was open, windows were, you know, I was finished with that. But what I could do was to take a deep breath and be glad. Your message has reached millions of people. And what's fascinating, Dr. Gladys, is that we typically reach 20-year-olds. And through this interview, we've reached 60-year-olds, 70-year-olds, 80-year-olds who were tuning into technology to hear this message. and I think so many of them are are potentially in that moment where it feels like their life force, their life movement, their life purpose has taken, has been slowed down by something,

whether it be age or it be an event that's that's so significant. And I wonder about what helps them pick up speed again. And I think that that story and just your ability to change perspective and to choose perspective and what that's meant for you, What would you offer as advice for those who are in that stage of life? Look at your life, not critically, but just look at it to see what you're doing and see if it's really something that you really want to keep on choosing to do. And maybe it is.

Maybe it's exactly the right thing. Maybe you're just in a different department or maybe it's a different aspect of looking at what's your doing. You know, no one else can tell you. But look at where you are. And as in a dream, if you want to do it that way,

I find a lot of help in the dreams. But ask yourself, ask people that you trust, If you have a good girlfriend, talk it over with her. If you have a good friend, if you have a physician that you want to talk, talk it over, pull it out, pull it out of the drawer, and look at your life and see if it's really where you want to be going, not where you are, and if it's where you want to continue to be.

And if it's where you want to continue to be, then find out a way to make it so that it's what will make you rejoice and be happy in it. Because if you can find the part of the work that you're doing, the life that you're doing that makes you happy, latch on to it and let that grow. but if there's nothing there but you see something that you start reaching around and looking for what's there, what's available and you'll find it

but you'll never find the light and thus you start looking for it. I've heard that you have a mantra and I'm curious about this that never give up. How would you use that mantra in your life? Well, it started with my dad and I remember being probably nine years old and I was doing something and I said oh I give up and he looks at me and he says are you critter and I thought oh man that's like being a liar

no no I'm not a quitter and if I you know look back there's statements but it's so important for us to understand what we teach our children. And these are things that were really brought to me so that I could understand the kind of life that I was going to actually live. And so, yeah, I had the make-do. I had to let go. I had to, my mother taught me how to not take things in

and say that was horrible, I hurt my feelings, and I could just let it go and say Kuchmurwani, it doesn't matter. The things that you accept and really understand to be the kind of the core, you know, I'm about, oh, 15, 20 years ago, I came up with the, for myself, a kind of a structure for philosophy that I was building and all. The first L was life and love. Those two came together, and I understood those.

But the third one was laughter. Laughter without love is cruel. It's mean. It takes families apart. It has caused wars, you know. Laughter can be cruel. But laughter with love is joy and happiness. And the fourth L is labor.

Labor without love is drudgery. You just got to go to work. You just got to do this. Too many diapers. But labor with love is bliss. It's why we sing or sing, why painters paint. It's why I do what I do. It's why you do what you do.

It's what makes our heart sing. It's that inner aspect of our being that comes alive. And we'll work five times as hard as we were when we were driving ourselves along with the drudgery thing. And the fifth one is listening. Listening without love is empty sound. It just doesn't make any sense you don't understand. but listening with love is understanding.

So these five loves, I mean, these five Ls have been very helpful for me in structuring and understanding the philosophy and the lives that I'm working with. When you mentioned that the center of holistic medicine or living medicine is love, and you describe these five L's living love, love, laughter, labor, and listening, and you kept relating it back to love, it really does feel like at the center of this philosophy is love. Yes, yes. It really is because life and love are

one unit. You're 103 years old and we're having a conversation where you're drawing back on memories from 80, 90 years ago. Has love been your secret? Yes, absolutely. Because Because my mother was the epitome of love. My mother was an osteopath, a physician. She went to India, they went to the villages of North India, and she treated the lowly of the lowliest, you know, with loving care. I watched that. I loved watching what, as she worked.

She was really the patients. She would take a baby in her arms, and one time she did that, and the baby had smallpox. Well, she got smallpox, and she almost died. But it was her ability to understand that these people who were coming from the villages, who were the sick people, they weren't just sick. They needed love, they needed caring, and she was there to do it. And I watched that.

I watched her treat an elephant. I watched her take care of anybody or any living thing that was needing help and do it with love and understanding. She didn't ask them if they understood what she was saying necessarily. She might have. But basically, she reached out to these people. She knew the language, of course.

She spoke their language. But the people reached to her for a place that was bringing light and love into their lives. And they crowded around her. My dad, too. But, you know, you grow up in an environment like that. And it's a blessing.

It truly is. And if we can take it and then give our children the same message, then we're carrying it on. When you think about the future, what's your greatest hope? for the world.

With our technology, the fact that we can do something like you and I are doing right now, think of the people who would never be able to think of these things, the things that we're reaching out to people all around the world. This couldn't happen. I mean, this is an absolute impossibility, but it's happening. and so our technology has evolved to the point

where I didn't even know what a telephone was when I was a kid you know there weren't such things but look at what we have now and who knows what's going to I can't even begin to put my mind around

what the future is going to hold but I know that if we're cut If you're looking for the future evolving in the light and our part in that being part of shining the light and love, it's going to be something that's awesome. Because life has to grow, life has to move.

It has to be part of the whole loving process. Has to be part of it. And when that happens, amazing things happen. Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes. Download the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes.