Lightning at the Gate Author:Jeanne Achterberg Jeanne Achterberg has spent more than twenty-five years researching, teaching, and writing about the use of imagery and guided visualization to treat cancer and other serious diseases. In 1999, she was told she had ocular melanoma, a rare and often deadly form of cancer of the eye. Lightning at the Gate is the remarkable story of her... more » illness and healing--a deeply personal memoir that is at turns haunting, humorous, mordant, and exhilarating. Her narrative demonstrates how a combination of critical thought, creativity, inner vision, and friendship can lead to profound healing.
In Lightning at the Gate Achterberg writes, "The only way one stays alive after a serious diagnosis of cancer is to find one's vision." Choosing to view her cancer as a metaphor, Achterberg draws on dreamwork, shamanism, healing imagery, prayer, rituals, songs, immune-stimulation therapy, and the loving care of friends to cure her illness. Lightning at the Gate ends in affirming Achterberg's core belief that we are healed not by medicine but by the bonds we create with each other: care, love, trust, hope, belief, and all the other invisible facets that have lost favor in modern health care. « less