Here’s another reason why I set out on my journey to find The Last Best Cure. When you are dealing with a chronic condition, as are one out of two American adults, it can’t help but impact family life. When we are distracted by pain or fatigue or worry it’s hard to let joy in. And our capacity for joy affects how we experience our most important relationships. As a mother and wife, our interior sense of well-being often sets the stage for the tone of our family life.

A few years ago I did a series of features for MORE magazine on coping with chronic health challenges. One of the articles was titled, How a Marriage Survives When One Partner Gets Sick. I interviewed two remarkable women, psychotherapist Barbara Kivowitz, MSW, and award-winning science writer Roanne Weisman. On January 15th Kivowitz and Weisman are coming out with an important new book called In Sickness As in Health: Helping Couples Cope With the Complexities of Illness. They’ve talked to many couples and brilliantly unveil how the emotional, medical, financial and logistical concerns that come with coping with a chronic illness can impact a relationship — much like an unwanted third party moving in. Their stories of couples who found transformation and growth while traversing the maze of illness are eye-opening, profoundly moving and inspiring. This book is a much needed life-raft for couples who find themselves suddenly afloat in new and uncertain waters.

One thing I have learned in my own life as a mother and a wife, is that it’s so important for me to find a day-to-day family rhythm and routine that doesn’t revolve around how I feel physically.

But I have also found that in order to achieve that goal, I have to be able to claim a state of mind that doesn’t revolve around how my body feels. And in order to do that… I have had to learn how to achieve and maintain a sense of well-being in my own brain. And that is Countdown Reason # 40 — as we lead up to the February 21st pubdate for The Last Best Cure — why I began my quest to get back my brain, my body and my life. I wanted to have a life with my husband and with my children that didn’t revolve around the unwelcome “third party who had moved in with us.”

I wanted my mind to be here, now, with my beautiful kids who will all too soon be gone, my husband, my work, my friends, the sunlight playing on the leaves outside. Even when I didn’t feel well, I wanted to feel I was right here, right now, ready and available for the joys of Family Prime Time. And here’s the amazing thing: the deeper I got into the newest brain-body neuroscience, the more I learned that finding an interior state of well-being and joy, even in the face of chronic physical limitations and aggravations, is a key ingredient to activating the innate healing response hidden within our brains.

By searching out a way to feel a sense of joy and well-being even while co-exisiting with long-standing illness, I began to uncover a new healing path for not only my family, but for my brain, my body, my cells.