Text by Samuel Claiborne
Becoming Your Own Healer
Hello. My name is Samuel Claiborne, a poet, musician and healer. In 1992, a freak accident rendered me completely paralyzed from the shoulders down and in almost unimaginable and essentially un-treatable pain. I was 32 years old, the sole breadwinner for my two young children and my wife.
I am writing a book about the experience, entitled Walking Through Snow. This book will be the story of how I refused to accept the dire prognoses of the medical establishment, overcame their often negligent, sometimes cruel and infantilizing “care”, and with the help of many alternative healers and modalities, awakened my own inner healer and in doing so, far exceeded their expectations. My doctors told me I’d never climb stairs again and that I’d be in rehabilitation for at least six months. Instead I went home a mere five weeks later, under my own power, to a four story walk-up apartment.
Part memoir, part expose of our flawed medical system, part how-to primer, the book is inspirational and aspirational for all readers. For those facing significant health challenges, and their family, friends, caretakers, it is also directly motivational and concretely applicable.
Yes, I pulled off a ‘miracle’, with willpower, stubbornness, ingenuity, thinking way outside the box, and never taking anything at face value. But that was only the beginning of my struggles. Government bureaucracies, terrifying drug side-effects, a failed lawsuit against New York City, my struggle for nine years to re-learn how to play guitar, severe difficulties with depression and bitterness over the loss of my youth and many of my memories, and my years-later battle with brain damage and undiagnosed Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome all propelled me into a spiritual quest for greater autonomy, greater empathy for others, and greater self-love and self-acceptance…Read more here: https://www.patreon.com/WalkingThroughSnow
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CD Review: Samuel Claiborne…idiosyncratic musical / sound-craft and poetic vision
