People ask me when I began my journey with Good Blood and my answer is always the same “when I was born.” I laugh when I say it, but it is true.

As a child in Montréal, I would curl up next to my dad, and beg to hear the stories of his childhood, his family and his incredible war stories.

“Dad, tell me again how you had the bullets taken out without pain medicine and you didn’t even cry. Dad, tell me again how you healed.”

“Dad, tell me again,” was my favorite line.

With my mom it was different. It was forbidden to talk to her about the holocaust for fear that she would faint and I was always afraid she wouldn’t come to.

Yet as a child, I did know three things about her war experience, and those three things made a deep impact on me.

1) She had exit papers to leave but she stayed to help her parents.

2) A Christian family hid her and her parents and it was a Jew who informed on them.

3) Her father gave her a gold chain when they went into hiding which she kept hidden in a compartment in her shoe. On the day of liberation she took it out of her shoe and put it around her neck and never took it off again. It was her most important possession and she wouldn’t trade it for any amount of money.

However, it took me over 50 years to get her to share her actual experiences.

I used a strategy on her that my mom had used on me all my life to get her to open up – Guilt. “How would your grandkids and great grandkids feel if you were the only one who did not share?” I said over and over again until she finally agreed.

My parent’s stories of survival impacted everything in my life. The stories sparked my never ending quest to learn more about the healing powers within us, the resiliency of the human body and spirit, and our ability to overcome and transcend.

That is a big theme in this book, following me from my youth and days as a physical education teacher to my life as a healer with a Master’s of Science degree in physical therapy.

When I was in physical therapy school, another key event in my journey took place. I was injured and suffered debilitating pain. I was told I would just have to “live with it,” even though no one knew what was causing the excruciating pain.

It was my dad’s experiences and his innate ability to heal that kept me believing that I would recover and that the impossible was possible. It was then that the idea hit me like a lightning bolt. I had to write a book about healing and get his story down. The seed of GOOD BLOOD came to be.

I decided to travel to Europe to meet the family I knew and loved through all my childhood stories. Their kindness, warmth and love is something I will always cherish.

The most amazing thing is that none of them had ever uttered a word about any of their wartime experiences, even to each other, until I visited. But when they spoke to me they opened up and they all said in unison “we are doing this for Zoli.”(Zoli is my dad.)

They shared not only what happened to them, but also how they managed to keep believing in hope. They shared what had allowed them to continue to believe in the good of mankind after all that they had endured.

My upbringing instilled in me beliefs that allow me to be in constant wonderment of how we heal. It has influenced my ability as a physical therapist to help people on their healing journey.  In my book, you will meet clients who have been my amazing teachers of possibility.

* * * * * *

Fast forward to 2014.  In September of 2014, my Mom became ill and I flew to Montreal to be with her. She wanted me to have her gold chain.

On December 31, a week after she passed away, I put on the chain because I was heading back to San Francisco the following day. The chain felt like an incredibly heavy weight, and it belonged in a museum and not on me.

On January 2nd, I was feeling for the chain…and it wasn’t there. My mom had it for 70 years, through all that she went through, and in two days, I had lost it. The chain, the reminder of unconditional love and light was nowhere to be found. Her neighbor, Muriel, who was like family to my mom, checked my mom’s old apartment, as did Julie her caregiver, with no results. I was devastated beyond words. I had sleepless nights and could not share any of this with any family members.

All I could do was focus on letting go of how bad I felt about losing my mom’s most important possession. It represented the miracles of her survival and I kept saying to myself, there must be a reason for this.

Three weeks later I received an email from Muriel. The night before, it suddenly occurred to Muriel to ask Julie to check and see if, by chance, the gold chain was in the carpet runner I had given Julie. It was still rolled up because Julie hadn’t had time to bring it to the cleaners before putting it in her home.  Miraculously, the gold chain was found and is the gold chain on the cover of the book. The gold chain is the reminder to me of the miracles of my parents’ experiences, and that hope is always possible, that we are not alone and that there is a light that always shines. It is now in a safe place and I will never wear it again.

All these stories are true. It is the truth that I remember, and the truth as others relayed it to me. Some of the names, places and addresses have been changed.

The many voices of knowing in the book have inspired me. I look forward to you, the reader, meeting and getting to know them, and I believe they too will touch you in a special way. Welcome to Good Blood: A Journey of Healing.