How to Live a Well Lived Life with Dr Gladys McGarey
It's not often you get to seek the wisdom of a 102-year-old, but when it's a neurodivergent doctor and life coach, you know you're in for a profound conversation. She tells me her secrets to a fulfilled life of gratitude, acceptance and authenticity.
I was absolutely honoured to speak with the inspiring and fascinating Dr Gladys McGarey, who was 102 years old at the time of her new book’s publication. I read her wonderful book, A Well-Lived Life, and loved every page and the spiritual wisdom she shared—I had many epiphanies after each chapter.
After spotting the signs of a neurodivergent brain—she shares her dyslexia, learning, and education journey—I knew I had to reach out to her team and ask her to join the podcast!
During our conversation, Dr Gladys shared her story of being held back in her early years of education due to undiagnosed dyslexia and how, through her different learning styles and curiosity, she is now recognised as a pioneer of the allopathic and holistic medical movements and a founding diplomat of the American Board of Holistic Medicine.
Look at some of Kate's ADHD workshops and free resources here.
Kate Moryoussef is a women’s ADHD Lifestyle & Wellbeing coach and EFT practitioner who helps overwhelmed and unfulfilled newly diagnosed ADHD women find more calm, balance, hope, health, compassion, creativity, and clarity.
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Transcript
Hello, everyone.
Host:Welcome back to another ADHD women's well being Wisdom on your Sunday afternoon.
Host:Hopefully you're listening to this relaxing or gardening or walking or doing something you enjoy.
Host:And I'm sharing today an amazing guest.
Host:I was so profoundly honored to be able to interview at the time a 102-year-old doctor.
Host:Her name was Dr.
Host:Gladys McCary and she wrote an amazing book which I loved, called the well Lived Life.
Host:And I thought, I have to have this person on the podcast.
Host:And I saw that there was definite neurodivergence there.
Host:She talks about her dyslexia.
Host:She talks about her difficulty in school, her need for being outside in nature, for adopting things in a different way, seeing things differently.
Host:And she did.
Host:She pioneered holistic medicine.
Host:She was open minded when western medicine was shutting things down.
Host:And her wisdom is just incredible.
Host:And I wanted to share today a really fantastic episode so you can really tap into her wisdom and how she sees the world.
Host:And I think after over 100 years of being on this planet, this is wisdom that we can all take.
Host:So here is my conversation with Dr.
Host:Gladys McGarry.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:102 years.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:What does that mean?
Dr. Gladys McGarry:It just means to me that there has been one day after another after another after another all these years when I've been learning stuff and growing and understanding and beginning to really appreciate the fact that I'm alive and that it's that I'm the only one that can do what I'm doing.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:It's my job to do the job that I came here to do and to share that with others.
Host:And you tell the story that you were obviously held back in class and you felt, you know, stupid at the time that you, you were told that you couldn't move on and you had to stay in the same class and redo it again.
Host:And you were diagnosed with dyslexia.
Host:I mean, first of all, I didn't even know that at those, you know, those points for a girl to have that diagnosis.
Host:How old were you when you actually did figure out it was dyslexia?
Dr. Gladys McGarry:Oh, my.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:I may have been in medical school, I don't know, because the way it was was that I was just stupid.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:You know, the understanding was that I was a stupid girl in the class.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:And all the other kids, you know, they thought I was stupid too.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:And the teacher really did.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:So I had to repeat first grade twice because I couldn't read the letters, wouldn't stay any place, the numbers were jump all over the place, and I didn't understand what was going on.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:The blessed part of this whole thing is that that was my schooling.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:But I had a home where it was completely different.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:And the place where we lived, this was in the Himalayas, and the school was a thousand feet down from where we lived and a mile.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:So every day I went up and down that walk.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:But in the process of walking up to the place where we lived, I was able to somehow let the rest of this foolishness go, but climb up to where I was accepted.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:People understood me.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:My Aya, who is the, like, the nanny, total bundle of love.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:She couldn't read, she couldn't write.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:She had few teeth, this Indian woman.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:Amazingly, to me, she was the epitome of love.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:And she'd see me coming up the hill and she'd reach out her arm and she'd say.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:She'd yell down to me as I'm coming in, Idaho.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:Come here.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:And so I would go over and tuck in under her shawl and stay there until I could let all that stuff go and become who I really was, feeling who I was.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:So it was that juxtaposition of who are you and what are you?
Dr. Gladys McGarry:And this kind of thing.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:But that kind of scarring from being told you're that kind of stupid person is the kind of bruising to the psyche of people that is hidden and we don't really know.
Host:Like gaslighting, right?
Dr. Gladys McGarry:It's, it's.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:It's there.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:It colors your life from there on.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:And I didn't accept that or understand that that was real in my life until much later.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:So the actual diagnosing what I had came much, much later than what I really had.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:In fact, when we started the American Holistic Medical association, there were 10 of us sitting around the table who had been really reaching for what it was that we thought was the heart of medicine.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:And of the 10 of us, six of us were dyslexic.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:I've come up with what I call the five L's.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:I had to have some kind of structure in which to form, which I could, you know, extend the thinking that I was doing.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:And so I came up with these five Ls.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:The first is life.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:If we don't have life, we don't have anything.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:You know, it's like a seed in the pyramid.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:It's there for 5,000 years, and it doesn't do anything until water and sunlight and caring from some place else is accepted by that seed.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:The shell cracks and life starts.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:It's had all the energy of the universe stuck within that shell until love activates it.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:When love activates it, then it moves and grows and does what it can.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:So love and life are integral to each other.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:If we're going to live without love, we've got a real problem.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:But if we live with life, life is.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:Oh, it's a.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:Wow.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:The third, the second.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:So those two go together.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:Life and love are integral to each other.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:The third one is laughter.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:Laughter without love is.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:You know, it's mean, it's cruel, it's really not nice.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:But laughter with love is joy and happiness.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:And the fourth is drudgery.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:I mean, the fourth.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:L is labor.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:Labor without love is drudgery.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:It's too many diapers.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:I have to.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:I gotta go to work.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:This is too.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:You know, it's dragging this load.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:It's just too hard.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:But labor with love is bliss.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:It's why you do what you're doing.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:It's why I do it.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:It's why singers sing, why painters paint.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:It's that inner life that is there that needs to be expressed.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:It's reaching out.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:It is bliss.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:And the fifth one is listening.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:Listening without love is empty sound.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:You just don't get it, you know, it's just empty sound.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:But listening with love is understanding.
Host:But what is it for you?
Host:Do you believe that has been your life force?
Host:That has been that continual element to you that has kept you going for this long?
Dr. Gladys McGarry:Well, I think you mentioned it earlier.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:Gratitude.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:Because I am so grateful.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:I have no idea how come I've lived this long, but I'm grateful for it.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:When my daughter and I were doing a lecture together one time, after the lecture, people did this a lot.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:They came up and they were asking me what my secret was or something.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:And I was trying to come up with something cute or funny or something, and I couldn't come up with anything.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:But I got my daughter's elbow as she punched me.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:And she says, oh, mom, you do so.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:And you dwell in gratitude.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:And I said, yes, that's right.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:Because she was able to put it into words, which I had been kind of shuffling off.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:It's the matter of understanding that we, each one of us have a voice that needs to be heard.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:And if all the time I was deflecting my voice and saying, you know, well, Bill, it wasn't Dr.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:Bill and Dr.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:Gladys.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:It was Bill and Gladys.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:I was the end on.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:And I accepted that.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:Everybody accepted that.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:Nobody questioned it.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:But it was only after I found my own voice and began to claim what it was that I was saying that I began to really honor the fact that my voice was real.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:And of course, this is what my book is about.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:It's the reality of what I finally, after years of talking about it and working with it and claiming it and so on, finally being able to put it down so that I think it makes sense for other people too.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:And because that was the intention, the title isn't A well Lived Life, which is My Life.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:It's A well Lived life of the person who's reading it.
Host:Yeah.
Dr. Gladys McGarry:And how they're going to take this and use it.
Host:So I hope you enjoyed listening to this shorter episode of the ADHD Women's Wellbeing podcast.
Host:I've called it to the ADHD Women's well Being Wisdom because I believe there's so much wisdom in the guests that I have on and their insights.
Host:So sometimes we just need that little bit of a reminder.
Host:And I hope that has helped you today and look forward to seeing you back on the brand new episode on Thursday.
Host:Have a good rest of your week.
