A massive wind and rain storm have left a lot of lines down in Akron, so if you've been trying to reach us by phone or fax and haven't, that's why.  Cindy dragged her generator in to work from home, so we have intermittent phone service during business hours, but no pick-up or voice mail after hours.  Please don't give up on us!  Power should be back shortly, and we can still take your orders and questions online.  

 Sometimes when I get a book to review, my Inner Coward groans. This is because I want to support the author (or anybody’s hard work, for that matter,) but in my authentic old age, I refuse to become what is fondly known, in the book biz, as a “blurb slut” – that’s somebody who cranks out meaningless praise for book jackets - kind of the editorial equivalent of a Girl Who Can’t Say No.  There’s far too much of this going on and takes the meaning out of authentic praise for real excellence.

So when I’m not so crazy about a book, I’m in a bind, which I try to resolve by finding something good to say about it that’s true; or else, if it’s really under par, I try to say in the kindest way possible that I just can’t give a blurb

Well, a propos of nothing in particular, here I am, surrounded by the men in my life. These guys constitute my primary fan club, and it’s mutual. Not that I wouldn’t mind a granddaughter or two... but I take what I can get, and what I’ve got so far is these 4 male squeezers. I know this has nothing to do with guided imagery or mind-body healing. But we Gramma’s have unique perks and bragging rights, and I’m claiming mine. We had a lot of fun romping around on Martha’s Vineyard this summer, I have to say.

But the party’s over and it’s time to get back on the road. I’ll be in New Orleans Oct. 4-5, for a workshop on Reversing Panic Attacks, Acute Stress and PTSD: Powerful New Solutions to Formerly Intractable Problems. The courageous and plucky denizens of that dear, beleaguered city deserve all the help they can get, and with these latest emergency alerts, I’m sure a lot of panic and PTS has been re-activated yet again. This training, for professionals and lay people, should offer a lot of practical help and take-away tools. Please spread the word. For more information, call 800-395-8445, email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , or look for the new brochure here. The following week, I’ll be in Denver.

Hello again, good people.
Well, here it is, our blog format at last!  The participation in this Feelings-Don’t-Effect-Cancer-Outcomes discussion - as evidenced by comments, scoldings, applause, personal stories, thoughtful introspection and sheer traffic - has gone beyond anything we’ve ever seen in this forum before. This is great!  Add your comments directly, by all means.  And please  feel free to forward this page to anyone you think could use it - someone with cancer, their well-meaning family/friends or a health professional acting too much like the "positivity police".

We re-posted most of the comments we had permission to show you below. And for those of you who came in late, I reported on a study mentioned in the Harvard Health Letter that found that feelings had no effect on cancer outcomes. The initial response was a lot of very upset people. This second wave of emails, posted below, does a great job of amplifying what I was trying to say and provides more layers and sophistication to the discussion. Let us know what works and what doesn't and we'll keep tweaking this new feature. (After this week, you'll be able to respond to each individual comment... but this week, since we manually transferred them, you can't.)

Take a look at the reader responses and you’ll get the general idea.

Hello again.

Well, yikes, I certainly managed to infuriate a lot of people when I reported last week about the Harvard study showing that feelings don’t affect cancer outcomes. I guess I didn’t explain myself very well, so I’ll take this opportunity to try again.

[This is another time I find myself wishing our new blog were up and running, because it would be great to post all the reactions and have a community discussion about this very important and very confusing, confounding topic. The blog is coming, but in the meantime, I’ll do my best to show a fair sample of reactions (without the names because these were sent to me, not the world at large) to convey the nature of the conversation.] And, by the way, we figure that for every complaint we get about something, there are at least ten times more that were not expressed. So I guess I really hit a nerve here.