This is my dad doing a perfect toe stand.  He is 82 years old.  Saunas, juicing and sunbathing are part of his regular routine.  He eats a healthy vegetarian diet, practices fasting and wakes up at 4:30 am to do  his self-hypnosis.  If you are on the phone with him, he's probably jumping on the trampoline.  At any given time he has a post-it on his mirror with a list of goals.  At any given time he is reading 5 different inspirational books. He dreams big, writes it down and works on it everyday.  He always said his one natural talent was discipline.  If you met him today, you'd never guess that 20 years ago he had high blood pressure, was overweight and overworked constantly at a high stress job.  If you met him today, you would ever guess that he was once a malnourished 5 year old, starved almost to death, displaced during the Holocaust after his parents were captured and brought to Auschewitz.   Years later, after immigrating to the United States, not knowing the language or the culture, he found his way to becoming one of the top money managers in the world.  It is no small thing to survive such terrible circumstances.  It is an unbelievable feat to have thrived despite them.  Today according to his life insurance evaluation he is in the top half of the top 1% in his age group on every health marker. His favorite quote is, "I will prepare myself and the opportunity will come." -Abraham Lincoln.  I share his story to give hope to people who have suffered great setbacks both personally and with their health.  It is never too late to start.  Another favorite quote of his, "Never never never give up." -Winston Churchill
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     ​This beautiful queen is my grandma Manya.  I grew up with the heroic stories of her Auschwitz prison camp survival and her triumphant return to herself after losing truly everything a person could lose.  Even not knowing if her husband and children were still alive, she was a light and a protector to the women she survived camp with, sneaking food to them, singing to them and keeping hope alive. She was punished for this by having to hold a chair over her head for hours barefoot in the snow and beaten with a club until her front teeth were knocked out, but it didn't stop her.
     She weighed 80 lbs. when she was liberated. She lost her parents, 8 brothers and sisters,  her friends and her younger son (my dad) was starving almost to death in the orphanage that was hiding him from age 2 ½-5.  He did not recognize her when they reunited. 10 years later she became a US citizen, learned English (her 5th language) and built a wonderful life for the 2nd time.  Esther Perel, who was raised in a village of survivors noticed that surviving this level of trauma had 1 of 2 effects on people.  It either caused them to continue to survive, or it caused them to fully live.  This is how I remember her.  Laughing and singing into a glass of wine, closing her eyes and pausing to hear the sound of a flowing stream, knitting for hours to make thousands of blankets and socks for orphaned children. I always assumed it was to help heal her own heart from having her children briefly orphaned. 
     When she was 94 years old, I took her to the greenbelt.  She loved to take long walks and I wanted to show her a little waterfall I used to sit by. We were holding hands going down a steep hill when she lost grip of my hand and tumbled all the way down, landing motionless face down on the trail. By the time I got to her thinking for sure she was badly hurt or worse, she had flipped herself over, spit out the rocks and dirt in her mouth, stood up like nothing happened and said, "Well, I fell. Now I get up and we go for our walk."  Thank you Grandma, for your all of your powerful lessons. Every time I have ever thought of giving up, I think of you holding the chair over your head and I keep going.