I insisted that she give me a plastic bottle of water from the dining-room table, where she sat across from me. Once inside, she showed me her organic garden where she has planted Meyer lemon trees and sprouts of brussels sprouts and broccoli. Then she let me go around the side to see her garden, where she brought me around to the patio overlooking the view of Batiquitos Lagoon. She swept me back through the door and onto the patio, where we felt like we were in a conspiracy of mischief. She is my grandmother’s sensible older sister, but she is more ebullient and blond, thin, and 81 years old. If I were to be her escort, she would be mine, and she greeted me at the door of her small weekend house in a new subdivision in San Diego. It was late February when this happened.
She explored the globe, encountered royalty, and even enjoyed a meal at the White House. In 1954, she entered into marriage with the English businessman Andrew Hay. She had the opportunity to work in showrooms for renowned fashion designers such as Bill Blass, Oleg Cassini, and Pauline Trigère. As mentioned in the book “You Can Heal Your Life” published in 1984, she considered herself fortunate to have become a high-fashion model. This book brought her wealth and fame. When she moved to New York in 1950, she adopted a new name as she was not born as Louise or Hay. During her time in New York, she took on menial jobs. Ten years later, she dropped out of high school and became pregnant. On her 16th birthday, she made the difficult decision to give up her newborn daughter for adoption. At the age of approximately 5, Louise experienced a traumatic incident of rape by a neighbor. The household she grew up in was marked by both domestic and external violence, as her unfortunate mother married a brutal stepfather. Born in Los Angeles, she shared with me the story that would later become familiar to millions of devoted readers over the next hour and a half.
After studying Transcendental Meditation with Yogi Mahesh Maharishi at the University in Fairfield, Iowa, she soon moved beyond the realm of science and religion. She became a popular workshop leader, meant to cure illnesses through the spoken “affirmations” that she practiced. In the early 1970s, she became a leading practitioner of Religious Science, a body of teachings that taught the power of positive thinking to heal the body and change people’s material circumstances. Authors like Ernest Holmes, the founder of Religious Science, and Frances Shinn Scovel, who wrote metaphysical tracts in the 1920s, were avidly read by her. I dropped my jaw in disbelief when Hay told me, “You can change your life if you’re willing to change your thinking.” She heard someone say that transformative power lies in our thoughts, and she became an avid follower of this idea. The early-20th-century First Church of Religious Science, which was known for its transformative teachings, still exists today on 48th Street. Louise found her way there soon after her devastating divorce from Andrew Hay, her husband of 14 years.