Unlimited Thinking at Work

“Know your strengths and use them in service of yourself and others,” says Lee Ann Laraway in her new book, Bringing Heaven to Earth, A Journey into Grace and Gratitude. She writes by the light of experience she has lived. In a wheelchair from age four, she has not allowed her disabilities to limit her thinking. She built a career that she loved by focusing on her abilities and doing what she could. A native and resident of San Jose, Laraway worked for the Oak Grove School District as a bilingual speech/language therapist for 20 years. She drove herself from school to school in an adapted van, worked with students, chaired committees, and trained student teachers.
Recently, I had the opportunity to meet her.
Seated in a power wheelchair with her service dog at her side, she talked about her journey manifesting her career and the subtle inner work that has eased her path to retirement. She said that she lived with an undiagnosed and untreated case of polio for thirty years and her physical needs have been tended to by others from an early age. She explained that despite their best efforts her family did not obtain a diagnosis for the polio.
“I was blessed with the right family for what I needed to learn in this lifetime,” she said. Her grandmother helped her turn around limiting beliefs, directing her thoughts and actions in a positive direction, toward what was possible and doable, she said.
When it came to choosing a career, Laraway said she was inspired by a mysterious stranger she met only once when she was a child. The woman approached Laraway at school and said that she was a speech therapist. She looked at Laraway, saw her abilities and said, “You can also be a speech therapist.” Undeterred by her physical limitations, Laraway applied to college, and attained her Masters degree in Speech Pathology from San Jose State University.
Laraway said that her mother was a teacher and her aunt was a nurse and the role of language/speech therapist allowed her to combine teaching and healing. She found her career rewarding. Her work with children gave her energy, “high octane fuel.”
However, after twenty years, she found herself facing new physical limits, difficulty swallowing and breathing. One day, sad and angry at leaving the emergency room without receiving treatment, a sudden calm, clear intuition arose within her. “You must do life from the inside out.” Over time, she began to trust her intuition more, gradually building faith in her body’s wisdom. In recent years, she has found that a strengthened soul presence has arisen to sustain her in manifesting a more meaningful, healthier, Grace filled life. She ends her book, “My body is weak but it is carried by my own Divine Presence of Grace, now so much stronger.”
See her website http://www.leeannlaraway.com for more information.