Louise Hay

Louise Lynn Hay was an American motivational author and the founder of Hay House. In addition, she authored several New Thought self-help books, including the 1984 book You Can Heal Your Life. Born Helen Vera Lunney in Los Angeles to parents Henry John Lunney and Veronica Chwala, Hay recounted her life story in an interview with Mark Oppenheimer of The New York Times in May 2008.

In it, Hay stated that she was born in Los Angeles to a poor mother who remarried Louise's violent stepfather, Ernest Carl Wanzenreid), who physically abused her and her mother. When she was about 5, she was raped by a neighbor. At 15, she dropped out of University High School in Los Angeles without a diploma, became pregnant, and, on her 16th birthday, gave up her newborn baby girl for adoption.

She then moved to Chicago, where she worked in low-paying jobs. In 1950, she moved on again to New York. At this point, she changed her first name and began a career as a fashion model. She achieved success working for Bill Blass, Oleg Cassini, and Pauline Trigère. In 1954, she married the English businessman Andrew Hay; after 14 years of marriage, she felt devastated when he left her for another woman, Sharman Douglas. Hay said that about this time, she founded the First Church of Religious Science on 48th Street, which taught her the transformative power of thought. Grass revealed that she studied the New Thought works of authors such as Florence Scovel Shinn, who believed that positive thinking could change people's circumstances. In addition, the Religious Science founder Ernest Holmes taught that positive thinking could heal the body.

By Hay's account, in the early 1970s, she became a Religious Science practitioner. In this role, she led people in spoken affirmations, which she believed would cure their illnesses, and became famous as a workshop leader. She also recalled studying Transcendental Meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at the Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa.

n 1984, Hay established the Hay House publishing firm. In 1988 Reid Tracy joined the company as an accountant and eventually became its CEO. The business flourished and attracted various writers. As of 2015, Hay House is the primary publisher of books and audiobooks by over 130 authors, including Deepak Chopra and many books by Wayne Dyer. Hay House also publishes " Abraham's teachings, " channeled through Esther Hicks.

In addition to running her publishing company, Hay ran a charitable organization called the Hay Foundation, which she founded in 1985. Its mission is to build futures and support organizations that enhance the quality of life for people, animals, and our environment.

In 2008, a movie about Louise Hay's life was released titled You Can Heal Your Life. Hay's own words on the film's official Web site: "This movie is the story of my life, my teachings, and how I've applied the principles of my teachings to my own life." The movie also features notable speakers and authors in personal development, including Gregg Braden, Wayne Dyer, Gay Hendricks, Esther and Jerry Hicks, and Doreen Virtue; Emmy Award-winning director Michael A. Goorjian directed it. The same year, Louise Hay won a Minerva Award at The Women's Conference.

In September 2011, Hay and Cheryl Richardson released their book You Can Create An Exceptional Life. Hay's two best-known books, Heal Your Body: The Mental Causes for Physical Illness and the Metaphysical Way to Overcome Them and You Can Heal Your Life, directly associate physical problems such as cancer with specific negative emotional patterns and assert that healing the emotional components will also heal the physical conditions. For example, Hay wrote in You Can Heal Your Life that thoughts—not just sexual behavior—could help cause AIDS: