Luiza Khey

Louise was born in Los Angeles into a troubled family; her stepfather was abusive. She was only five years old when she was raped by a neighbor. At 15, while pregnant, she dropped out of high school without graduating, and on her 16th birthday she gave up her newborn daughter. Later she moved to Chicago, where she worked mostly as a domestic servant, and in 1950 she moved to New York, where she changed her name and began a modeling career. Success came quickly. She worked with Bill Blass, Oleg Cassini, and Pauline Trigère. In 1954, Louise married the English businessman Andrew Hay, but 14 years later Andrew left her for another woman. The future writer found the First Church of Religious Science on 48th Street, where she was introduced to the power of thought. There she studied metaphysical works by authors such as Florence Scovel Shinn, who argued that positive thinking can change a person’s material circumstances, and by the founder of the church, Ernest Holmes, who claimed that thoughts can heal the body. In the early 1970s, Hay became a practitioner. In this role, she helped people heal illnesses through affirmations. She became popular as a leader of such seminars. She then studied Transcendental Meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at his university in Fairfield, Iowa. In 1977–1978, Hay discovered that she had cancer and found the cause in her revulsion toward her childhood, in resentment over the abuse and rape she had suffered. She rejected medicine and began a new way of life, practicing forgiveness, healing, proper nutrition, relaxation, and cleansing. In this way, she healed herself of cancer. Louise says that there is not a single doctor who can confirm this, but that it is the absolute truth. In 1976, Hay wrote a small booklet, Heal Your Body. It contained a list of various diseases and their possible metaphysical causes. This booklet was significantly expanded and developed in her book You Can Heal Your Life, published in 1984. As of February 2008, the book was still on The New York Times bestseller list. Around the same time, Louise organized support groups for people with HIV and AIDS, which she called “Hay Rides” (possible translation: Hay Survives or Hay Overcomes). The groups initially met as a few people in the room where Hay lived, but gradually