Positive Matters: Words, Quotations, and Stories to Heal and Inspire

By Helen Evrard

The expression Words have power holds special meaning for author Helen Evrard. When she found herself under suicide watch in a locked ward after losing everything, while receiving suboptimal care for chronic depression and pain, she discovered the power of positive words. Insightful therapists helped her start on the road to recovery, beginning with the simple process of writing down positive words as she fi lled the empty hours in the hospital with reading.

Positive Matters explores eighty words of a deeply affirmative nature, starting with the definition and etymology of each. This is followed by inspirational quotations from both famous and lesser known people statements that can make you see the word from a novel viewpoint. Evrard then presents a short, personal reflection on the word in which she shares the meanings, lessons, and valuable insight that arose out of illness, loss, and renewal.

Intended as a tool to empower personal transformation or to just lift your spirits, Positive Matters helps you explore, learn, and investigate the incredible,positive power of words.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9781475963601

Helen Evrard

Helen Evrard is a specialty physician originally from a small cement town in Pennsylvania. She was in solo practice until 2009. She currently writes and volunteers to help others cope with loss and depression. Evrard is the mother of twins and lives in Middletown, Connecticut.

Book preview

Positive

Matters

Words, Quotations, and Stories

to Heal and Inspire

Helen Evrard

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

Words, Quotations, and Storiesto Heal and Inspire

Copyright © 2013 Helen Evrard.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.t

Front cover art by Corby Enfiejian

Back cover photograph by Patrick Connelly

ISBN: 978-1-4759-6361-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-6359-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-6360-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012923562

iUniverse rev. date: 1/11/2013

Contents

Preface

The Words

Acknowledgments

References

To my wonderful twins,

Squeaky and Corby,

and to

Paul, Ahni, Betsy, and Cynthia -

thank you for helping me open the door.

Preface

Once upon a time I was all wrapped up in my profession. I was a practicing medical specialist raising twins by myself in the middle of bucolic Pennsylvania cow country. On the surface, I seemed to have everything. I certainly had a lot more than I did when I was growing up. I lived in an old farmhouse that I had restored room by room, situated on two beautiful acres with a little stream. I was able to start a small garden with vegetables and herbs and had added new shade trees to the lot. I used to sit on the kitchen porch in the evenings and listen to the kids play, have a glass of wine, watch the birds at the feeder, and try to analyze the weather by watching the clouds.

Once upon a time I was making a very good living. My kids went to the local school and, compared to their peers in our rural farming area, were considered rich. I certainly didn’t see myself that way. Yes, I had built my own practice, even my own building, but was burdened every day with a sense of noncompletion, and a persistent dread of the upcoming years when the children would be gone and I would be seeing patients day in and day out without achieving some vague, other, greater purpose. I wanted to be able to teach future doctors, to impart my hard-earned knowledge to the next generation. I wanted to be in a more urban environment so I could attend classical music concerts, not have to drive thirty miles to get anywhere, and develop a basis of support to keep me up and running during the latter part of my life.

So I sold my practice for less than it was worth, because by the turn of the new century no one wanted to buy a solo medical business. I bought a very rundown practice near Buffalo, New York. I knew it was in bad shape, but figured I still had enough time, energy, and smarts to turn it around. How wrong I was.

Immediately after moving to New York State, the thread of my life began to completely unravel. The new practice was in much worse condition than I could have imagined; I had been lied to, deceived, taken advantage of—however you want to phrase it. The commonsense, hard-work approach I took to fixing all the problems simply didn’t work. I couldn’t seem to find the right help, whether it was my own staff or attorneys, accountants, vendors, consultants, realtors, you name it. I even ended up with subpar medical care for myself and my own family.

Before I knew it, the kids were graduating from high school and I had lost everything—yes, everything! I literally bled money—I lost my home, my practice, the furniture, my health insurance, the retirement money I worked so hard to save, my physical health and, eventually, my mental stability. I ended up at the age of fifty-eight in a county mental hospital with severe depression, unable to even pay for my stay. My family didn’t want to have anything to do with me. Old so-called friends, who were really just acquaintances, were incapable of helping me out, and in fact were incapable of even comprehending the depth of my loss and despair. I wanted to be dead, but I didn’t want to kill myself. I just couldn’t see leaving my children with that horrible legacy. I spent a week in the hospital on the locked ward, where I was more or less left to fend for myself. I begged God to take my life, and quickly!

Fortunately, I was able to find a second hospital where the therapists were more interactive. When I was a patient, the focus for depressed patients revolved around de-emphasizing the negative and shifting the focus to the positive. One day, while sitting in the patient lounge, I found a book entitled The Language of Letting Go, by Melody Beattie. For some reason it called to me, and I started reading the daily meditations. At the same time, I made up my mind to put the therapists’ battle cry of the positive into action by simply making a list of the positive words I read in the book. I wrote them down as I encountered them, whether nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. Because I considered myself thorough, I decided to write the negative words down too. Before long I discovered several things. Firstly, I found that the very act of simply writing down the positive words made me feel better, it made my mood improve. In addition, after accumulating a few hundred words in total, I observed that there were twice as many positive words as negative in the book. No wonder I felt better!

I told my counselors about this remarkable pattern and my belief that working with the words themselves was having a therapeutic effect on me. They encouraged me to continue. After my discharge I searched for a tool to use to easily give myself an infusion, so to speak, of positive words. Being a lifelong avid reader, what I really wanted was a book. I couldn’t find one that appealed to me, or that was capable of deeply affecting my emotional state. And so the idea was born that I could create a book to help myself (and others), a true book of positive words. I wanted it to contain words, of course, as well as the definition