Angela Kennecke: 0:07

Welcome back to Breathing Out Loud. Today we're revisiting one of my favorite conversations with a true pioneer in holistic medicine, Dr. Dr. Gladys McGarry, who recently died on September 28th at the remarkable age of 103. Dr. Gladys wisdom extended beyond medicine. She shared an enduring message that love is the most powerful medicine. She leaves behind a legacy centered on the five L's, love, life, labor, laughter, and listening, with love being the anchor that drives all the others. Her words and her spirit. Continue to inspire, reminding us that we each have the power to create a life filled with purpose and joy, no matter what happens to us along the way. Today, we honor her memory by reliving this meaningful episode filled with her insights into living well, even in the face of hardship. This podcast episode was recorded one year

Dr. Gladys McGarey: 1:09

ago. I may have lost my I said, but I haven't lost my insight. And so there are many things that I'm becoming aware of now, which I never even thought about before.

Angela Kennecke: 1:33

Our guest on this episode of Greeting Out Loud is proof that living well has no expiration date. Dr. Gladys McGarry says at 102 years old, she is living her best life yet. McGarry is not only still working as a consulting physician, She's also written a new book and she's had interview requests from CNBC to the Today Show to the Daily Mail.

Dr. Gladys McGarey: 1:59

Life's hard and you get stuck in places if you allow yourself, but you don't need to get stuck in those places.

Angela Kennecke: 2:08

In her more than a century of life, Gladys, who is known as the mother of holistic medicine and was family friends with Gandhi, has faced plenty of hardships. She's a cancer survivor, endured the death of a daughter and went through a divorce when she was almost 70 after her husband of 46 years and clinic partner left her for another woman.

Dr. Gladys McGarey: 2:32

I had a choice. I could either continue yelling at the universe and making myself miserable, or I could take what we had done together, the work we'd done, the kids we'd had, the wonderful, and live with that memory and go on with the work.

Angela Kennecke: 3:00

Welcome to this episode of Grieving Out Loud. Today, Gladys opens up about the key to finding joy and fulfillment, even in the toughest times. I'm Angela Kenecke. Thank you for being here. Our aim is that this episode leaves you not only inspired, but also filled with hope. Gladys, welcome to the program. It is just an honor and a privilege to have you here. And I think so too. I think it's awesome. Thank you. Thank you. That means a lot. I wanted just to start off a little bit by talking about your background. You get a lot of attention because you're 102 years old. You're going strong. You're cognitively fantastic. You just come out with a book. All of that is amazing. But I want to go back a little bit to when you started and became a doctor, or even your childhood. Can you tell me a little bit about how you grew up and why you became a doctor?

Dr. Gladys McGarey: 4:04

Well, it's 102 years, but I was born and raised in India. My parents were both doctors, both osteopaths, when osteopathy wasn't accepted. on the par with the allopathic. So they were pioneers in their own way, but they were also visionary. So I grew up with my parents taking their medical work to the village people in North India. I knew when I was two years old that I was a physician because my dolls got thick and they had to be treated.

Angela Kennecke: 4:44

During her childhood, Gladys watched her parents unique approach to healing. They didn't limit themselves to physical remedies, but also considered a person's mental and spiritual well being. Thanks to her parents work, Gladys had the chance to connect with people from all corners of the world, including the iconic Gandhi.

Dr. Gladys McGarey: 5:06

Well, that was an interesting time because our family was just coming back to the United States for a furlough. Every seven and a half years, they got a furlough and they got to come back to the States and see their families and so on. So, we were on the train going from Roorkee to Bombay, and as the train slowed down at the station, there was a huge mob outside, people. walking around and chanting something. So I had my face plastered on the window, watching what was going on outside. Ahead of the crowd was a man in a dhoti, white loincloth, and a staff, and the people were chanting, Gandhi ji, Gandhi ji, so I knew it was Gandhi. As the train drew up and slowed down, he was in my line of vision, and he was reaching down and he took a flower from. a little girl. And when he looked up, he looked into my eye. And when he did that, there was a connection made that I've never forgotten. I can't explain it to anybody. I can't tell you what he did, what I said, what he thought. None of that. It was an electrical charged experience that I can still remember. And 30 years after that experience, my parents worked with him.

Clip: 6:45

Fields are flooded, rivers overflow their banks. During

Angela Kennecke: 6:50

the partition of India in 1947, Britain left its empire in Southern Asia and divided it into two independent nations. India, with a Hindu majority population, and Pakistan, predominantly Muslim. This shift in the political landscape triggered one of the bloodiest upheavals in human history. About 15 million people moved or were forced to move, and between half a million to two million people were murdered. Gladys parents were right there in the midst of this chaos, working side by side with Gandhi himself. They were on a mission to help those who were injured and suffering, bringing hope and healing to people who desperately needed it.

Dr. Gladys McGarey: 8:00

And they were able to take their medical work into the camps where the people were so injured and so on. And then because Gandhi and my parents became friendly and spoke from the platform, you know, about things, not my mother, because women weren't expected to, but my dad and Gandhi. And Gandhi gave my mother a shawl, the Kashmiri shawl, and my dad a blanket, just as a gift to friends. So for me, the connection that started did not stop, because work was continuing all through that time. And then my parents picked it up, and Gandhi, you know, it was all part of the human story of India during its time. Painful, painful, grieving, timed.

Angela Kennecke: 8:54

As Gladys watched her parents tirelessly help others, she felt a deep calling to make her mark in the medical field, even if it meant defying stereotypes and working twice as hard. Her dream? To become a doctor, at a time when fewer than 5 percent of the physicians in the United States were women.

Dr. Gladys McGarey: 9:16

World War II started in December of 1941. For more UN videos visit www. un. org And I started medical school at Women's Medical College in Philadelphia in September. And Women's Medical College was the only women's college for medicine in the country. There were 50 of us who started and only 25 of us graduated because the faculty felt that we were going to be going out into the world. And we were going to have to be tougher and brighter and all that sort of thing than the men. It was a challenge. Right.

Angela Kennecke: 9:55

That's fascinating. And you have always had this unique take on medicine where you help assist the patient in their own healing. And does that, some of that come from your experience in India and from your parents? And how have you seen that play out?

Dr. Gladys McGarey: 10:10

It comes from my inner knowing. Actually, my oldest son is an orthopedic surgeon, retired. And when he had finished his training in orthopedics, he said to me, Mom, I have all this training, and I'm going into the world. I'm going to have people's lives in my hands. I don't know if I can handle that. And I said, well, Carl, if you think you're the one that does the healing, you have a right to be scared. I mean, if you have a broken body part that an orthopod can help patch it up, you better get a good orthopod to work with. And I said, so you do the best that you can, that you've known, you've been trained to do, and you know you can do. And then look to the physician within that patient to do the healing because that's your colleague. That's the person who can actually take what you've done and make it come to life. It just is so important that the patient take responsibility for their own healing. You know, I can tell a patient to do something and they can say, yeah, right, and go home and not do it. And that's all right, you know, because that's their choice. If they know what's going on in their own body. For 50 years I worked with this patient. She had one quarter of one kidney that was all she had to work with for 50 years as I was working with her. You can't live that. But she did. And I don't know how she did it. The other physicians who she worked with. None of us could figure out how she did it, but she did it. And it's that kind of awareness of what the very essence of our life force is. in the whole healing process that makes it so important.

Angela Kennecke: 12:10

In her more than a century of life, Gladys has had to play the role of patient as well. She's battled cancer and also lost her oldest daughter to the disease when she was 58.

Dr. Gladys McGarey: 12:23

Her life was so important to me. She was such a dynamic person. She still is. I call it going down memory lane, you know, because her presence activates me to this day. I know that Annie is still somewhere. She used to live in Glen Ellyn. I could call her and talk to her. Now I can have dreams. I can actually conjure up and work towards who and what she was and realize that that is alive. No one can take that dream from me. I can see her in my, what I call my memory lane, as a three year old trying to tie her shoelaces. And I went to try to help her and she wags her little ponytail and stomps her foot. And she says, I'd rather do it my own self. And I said, Oh, okay. And I back off. And after a while, when she couldn't quite get it, she puts her head back and wags her ponytail again. And she says, If you ever help me, help me now. Now, you know, those are real memories. I can laugh and enjoy what I had with her. I can spend my time grieving for what I didn't get as she grew into her 70s and so on. And that's very painful. I don't want to spend a lot of time doing that. I would much rather spend my time enjoying her energy and who and what she is to this day. In my mind, she's still alive. She passed through the doorway that we call death into another dimension, but she doesn't stop existing. My parents the same. They don't stop existing. That energy is still alive and nobody can take that away from us.

Angela Kennecke: 14:32

You're

Dr. Gladys McGarey: 14:32

right. We're

Angela Kennecke: 14:33

all made of energy and the energy has to go somewhere when we die, right? It has to live. Yeah. Do you think that your outlook or your way, you'd mentioned a choice in there. You have a choice. You have a choice to think about these happy memories of her, the things that you cherish in your heart. Yeah. Or you have a choice to dwell on what you've lost and what you don't have, her growing any older with you. And that mental outlook certainly has had to have helped you throughout your entire life, and I think live to be 102 and to be as on the ball as you are and still writing books.

Dr. Gladys McGarey: 15:07

What is something worth living for? I, through the years, have asked patients, Do you have a reason to live? What is your reason for living? What's your life purpose? Or some kind of a question that seems appropriate at the time. And a lot of people have never thought of that. You know, life's hard and you get stuck in places if you allow yourself. You don't need to get stuck in those places. Those are areas that are painful. To me, it's like if I cut my arm and have a scab there and spend the time picking at that scab and saying, This thing hurts. It will never heal, but if I look at it and say, Oh, hello, and do, treat it the way it needs to be treated sooner or later, I'm going to lift up my arm and look at it and say, Oh, hello, scar. I know who you are. You know, it's that kind of, of a reality that we hang on to. What it is that we really, at that moment, are experiencing. And there's the whole attitude of not allowing ourselves to get stuck with something that just doesn't matter. You know, somebody says something nasty and we take it in and say, Oh, that hurts me so bad. And we really can hang on to something like that. And sometimes they're mean things. Or we can just let it go. My sister and I found this out when we were in our 90s. We were talking to each other and we'd do this and we'd talk to each other and we'd do that and we'd do that. Finally, we both stopped at the same time and we said, why do we do that? We both do it. And then we looked at each other and we said, who did that? And we said, Oh, mama did that. And then we said, why did she do that? It was a specific movement. And we both said simultaneously. Oh, Which in Hindustani means, Oh, it doesn't matter. And we realized that we had spent 90 years plus taking what was important to us and at the moment making a choice as to whether that was important and taking it in or whether it just simply wasn't important and letting it go. Hold your hand up. Let it be in your palm of your hand. And then drop your hand and let them fall as like petals on the water. It's a Tai Chi movement I found out later, I didn't know that. But that's what it is, it's the actual accepting the pain that comes to us and that we all have time when we have pain. There is a time, express it, but there's a time to just plain let it go. It just ain't worth hanging on to. Laughter. Right,

Angela Kennecke: 18:11

and even sometimes we want to hold on to the pain of losing someone, right? We want to hold on to that because we feel like we're going to lose the person if we don't hold on to the pain.

Dr. Gladys McGarey: 18:19

Yes, and what part of that person do you want to hold on to while they were in pain and you were suffering with them? Or the joyous, amazing part of their life when they were either growing up or some aspect of their life that made your heart sing and made their hearts sing, you know, hang on to what you want to hang on to.

Angela Kennecke: 18:45

Well, you are so wise, but yet I hear you saying you're still learning things in your 90s. You're still realizing things that it's never too late to understand some of these principles and to come to terms with things that happen into your life to have that acceptance. Acceptance and to let it go. It's a

Dr. Gladys McGarey: 19:04

choice. It really is when you think about it.

Angela Kennecke: 19:10

Gladys has taken the lessons she's learned in life and put them into a book. The Well Lived Life features the 102 year old doctor's six secrets to health and happiness. at every age. We'll run through those six principles in this podcast. One of them is that all of life needs to move.

Dr. Gladys McGarey: 19:33

Energy is what love is and life is. They are energies. Like a seed in the pyramid that's been there for 5, 000 years. It hasn't done anything. It's got all the energy of the universe inside that shell, but it can't do anything until love, in the way of water and sunshine and so on, cracks the shell and activates it. So life and love, they need to be together, like a sperm and an ovum. And it's like really the whole process of a pregnancy. It's crazy. is a union, but when he take his first breath, he manifests on this earth. The real person becomes a person when he takes responsibility for himself and chooses to take his own breath. That inner life force is something that has to move by its own energy within its double energy, positive and negative. We're in a world that is a duality. And it has to have a positive and negative aspect of each energy force that's there. And so it's that availability to choose that we human beings have. And we can do it our environment. We can do it for each other.

Angela Kennecke: 21:02

Yes, we can do it for each other. And the third principle,

Dr. Gladys McGarey: 21:06

love, is medicine. It sure is. It sure is. The Bible starts out with God is love. It's the reality of this divine energy is love. And, you know, I was talking to a head of the hospital here in town, and he was saying to me, I don't know how we can incorporate chiropractors and naturopaths and allopaths and osteopaths and all of this in the hospital setting and so on. And I said, well, It's not the modality that does the healing. It's the love with which it's done that does the healing. And if that is used by any one of the different disciplines that has found life and love as their way of working with it, then that's what we have to do. But it's not that the chiropractor is wrong. If a chiropractor is working with love and doing the work that they are doing, activating the physician within the patients they're working with, they're doing the healing.

Angela Kennecke: 22:15

And then number fourth is, you are never truly alone. And I think that's where grief can be really difficult, because you feel so alone in your grief. Nobody can really get into your head or your heart. You can feel really alone, but you say you're never truly alone.

Dr. Gladys McGarey: 22:32

No, you're never truly alone. When my husband asked for a divorce after 46 years of having what I thought was an awesome life. I mean, I was having a great time. I was so damaged and so hurt, couldn't figure out what in the world had happened, my whole world, my work, everything seemed to have just crashed down, and I was driving to my home by myself into my house, which is now empty, by myself, no, I did have a dog, but otherwise the house was empty, and I was yelling, I was screaming, I was I was screaming at God. I was screaming at anything I could scream because nobody was hearing me and I needed to do that. I just absolutely needed to let the world know how broken I was. But in the midst of doing that, I suddenly pulled the car over to the side of the road, stopped, and listened to what I was doing and feeling it. And the words came down to me. This is a day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. And I thought, Oh, okay. I'll do it. And so I changed my license plate to be glad and the rest of the time I was driving around here in Phoenix, my license plate or my message was be glad my name is Gladys and that allowed me to realize that I had a choice. I could either continue yelling at the universe and making myself miserable. Or I could take what we had done together, the work we'd done, the kids we'd had, the wonderful, and live with that memory and go on with the work. So my daughter and I started our practice together. She'd just come on our staff when this whole thing happened. And the two of us started the Scottsdale Holistic Medical Group and went on with the work. So I then had patients that I had to take care of. And my energy was going for them, and not to what I had lost.

Angela Kennecke: 25:07

I think we've all been in that car, screaming at God, the universe, at different points in our lives. You know, whatever that might be. I have also been through a divorce, and I lost a child, so we have those things in common. And you're right, like there is a moment where you have a choice to make. Are you gonna continue with the anger and the self pity, or are you going to focus your energy elsewhere? And realize

Dr. Gladys McGarey: 25:33

what that person brought to you. And nobody can take that away from you. You know, I've decided that my husband and I, I don't regret a minute that we spent together doing the holistic work and the things that we did. And then I figured out he took a vacation, so that's his business. You know, I've got my business, and he's got his business, and actually, The divorce was a great thing. It set me free. It gave me the importance of my voice and the things that I could do and needed to do. What he chose to do, that's his business.

Angela Kennecke: 26:13

Yeah, I hear what you're saying. And you can't control another human being. You can't control your husband. You can't control your child. The fifth thing is everything, you know, is teaching you something. Everything you experience is your teacher. And, I think that's very true with loss. Very, very true.

Dr. Gladys McGarey: 26:29

Well, it's true with loss, and it's true with what conventional medicine has always focused on, disease and pain. And the focus has been to get rid of disease and pain. And I don't see it that way. I see it as disease and pain. It's nice when you can get rid of it, but there are people who have pain that you can't get rid of. Roosevelt had post polio syndrome the time he was president. I have these patients who have illnesses that they'll never get rid of. The illness is not what they're dealing with. They're dealing with what the illness is teaching them. about their own life and their own ability to cope with this illness. It becomes their teacher.

Angela Kennecke: 27:23

And then finally, spend your energy wildly. Tell me what that means. I

Dr. Gladys McGarey: 27:29

think what we're doing right now is that I could not have imagined when I wrote this that I would be talking to you in South Dakota, and this morning I was talking to somebody in South Africa, and to be able to. Share the thoughts and things that I have. It blows my mind. How in the world could I have lived long enough? What a joyous thought, what a joyous time to be alive. What a time to look at you and be able to say, We're friends, you know? I don't know what you do or what you're doing, right? But we can become friends by just sharing our thoughts. Looking at each other and you're smiling and I'm smiling and it's a good thing.

Angela Kennecke: 28:14

I think that positive outlook that you have and being able to work through the difficult emotions is a unique characteristic that not everybody has. And I think that also probably contributes to your longevity.

Dr. Gladys McGarey: 28:26

Oh, sure. Because if you do hang on to the pain and so on, it's too bad. It's too hard. If you don't, oh It's a wow. I mean, life is great, and it doesn't mean that I can do everything. No, I can't see, so I have audio books I can listen to, and I can still see big things so I can get around, but there are things I can't do that I did with ease before, but there are things that I can do. I may have lost my eyesight, but I haven't lost my insight. And so there are many things that I'm becoming aware of now, which I never even thought about before. So losing your eyesight

Angela Kennecke: 29:19

is your teacher. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So there's a point in your book. You're making it right now. Yeah. I think it's just fascinating, and I just think that we all have a lot we can learn from you. And this world, we like to focus on what's wrong with it, right? We like to focus on Politics today and other things like that, that what's wrong with it or what's wrong, what's missing in our own lives, but you can teach us a different way.

Dr. Gladys McGarey: 29:46

It's not wrong to identify what is wrong and to set your standards and set boundaries. There are times when you absolutely have a boundary. I was repeatedly brought up in front of the Maricopa County Medical Association for doing the things that I was doing. And this one time I was just in there with the committee and they reprimanded me and I reached into my purse and picked up my keychain, which was almost an instrument, and walked out into the hall. And this one other doctor comes out behind me and he comes up to me and he says, Now let me tell you something, honey. Whoa, he pushed a button in me and I took that key chain and I started pounding him on his chest and I said, you will not call me honey. I'm your peer age wise and professionally and you will not call me honey. She kind of bent out and started going back. My lawyer was leaning against the wall laughing. He was laughing so hard and I went to the office and told my daughter what I had done and she said, Oh mom, you didn't. He had pushed a button. I wasn't going to let it push again. Three years later, I was called in again for something that was being considered after it was over. I went back to the office and I told my daughter, I said, he was just as nice as pie, you know. Yeah, it doesn't mean you don't stick up for yourself. You honor and love yourself enough that you can stand up for who and what you are. That's a

Angela Kennecke: 31:33

great quote right there from you. I love that. And I understand you have a 10 year plan. You're 102 and you have a 10 year plan.

Dr. Gladys McGarey: 31:40

Well, you know, I think that the world need villages for living medicine. And I want to have. Village for Living Medicine where people, when they step onto the property, begin their healing. That the whole environment is geared toward really reclaiming our true humanity and becoming the people that we know within our being we really are. I don't know how long it's going to take. I said 10 years, so that's a good time. But it's starting there. People are doing this now. The communities are beginning to be drawn together. Little acts of kindness are what bring people

Angela Kennecke: 32:27

together. You sound like a true visionary. Do you have any fear of death at all?

Dr. Gladys McGarey: 32:33

No, I probably sometime. We'll go to sleep and I'll wake up and I'll be dead. I think it's passing through a door and I think that my essence is still going to be there. I'm going to be aware of what's happening. And I don't know what it's going to be like. I don't remember having died before, but I think that I have. I appreciate the fact. that energy continues to be as long as you let it be, as long as it's alive, as long as it moves. And then when it gets to the point where it can't move anymore, then it dies. It's okay, but it still is

Angela Kennecke: 33:17

real. Wow. On that note, I just want to say I really appreciate you joining me today and sharing all of your words of wisdom and everyone should get the book, The Well Lived Life. We'll have links on our show notes here to your website as well.

Dr. Gladys McGarey: 33:33

Thank you.

Angela Kennecke: 33:43

As we wrap up this special episode in memory of Dr. Gladys McGarry, let us remember her core lesson. Once you're able to receive love. Health and happiness will follow. Her legacy lives on through the Foundation for Living Medicine, which carries forward her vision for a village for living medicine, a place where healing happens holistically. Thank you for joining us on Grieving Out Loud. May we all carry forward Dr. Gladys's mantra, be glad. Spreading her love and wisdom far and wide. Until our next episode, wishing you faith, hope, and courage. This podcast is produced by Casey Wundenberg King and Kaylee Fitz.