My parents owned a book called "You Can Heal Your Life" by Louise Hay along with a matching set of affirmation cards, which my mother kept in her nightstand. Hay claims all illnesses result from fear and anger.
I went to the library and checked it out, wondering what am I afraid of?
Confident I could solve the problem with mind power, I visualized myself as healthy.
COMMENT
Of course, the writer is not healthy. She is diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, an incurable lung disease. Her parents, however, are so committed to positive thinking that they are unable to offer helpful emotional support for their daughter who is facing a lifetime of chronic illness and the probability of dying young. The self help book is worse than useless.
The irony is that libraries are a public institution that stands against the current onslaught of fake news propaganda coming out of Washington D.C. But library shelves offer plenty of fake news -- fake self-help, fake diet advice, fake politics. A library would probably not buy a book by say, a Holocaust denier, but right there on the shelves was a book of science denial that places the blame for illness on the person who is sick.
Yet even this fact-free book serves a function. The author's parents own the book and believe it offers helpful advice. Because the library has a copy she is able to understand why her parents seem so dismissive of her worries. Later the parents give the author more self-help books for a Christmas present and because of what she learned from the library book her reaction to these books triggers the conversation that parents and child should have had much sooner.
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