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This book is available to readers on Amazon and to booksellers through Ingram. It is also an e-publication.
Synopsis
From Mountains to Medicine: Scaling The Heights in Search of My Calling is the story of Erica Elliott’s magical, mind-bending, and heart-opening journey of self-discovery in search of her life’s purpose.
A courageous woman with insatiable curiosity, Elliott shares her compelling story with disarming honesty. Right from the beginning, she draws the reader into her narrative as she threads her way through the turbulent early years of her life, overcoming many daunting challenges along the way. Her guiding star is her search for meaning and purpose, which leads her to some spellbinding adventures, including the perilous climb of Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the western hemisphere, along with other climbs of daunting peaks, one of which was subsequently named after her.
Ultimately, Elliott’s wise heart leads her home to discover what was there all along—her destiny to be a healer. This inspirational book and recounting of her story is imbued with love, humor, and evokes the sheer specialness of being human.
About the Author
Erica Elliott was born into a large family with a Swiss mother and an American father. Throughout her childhood, Erica moved with her family from one part of the world to another due to her father’s work. Her grade schooling began in England and ended in Germany where she graduated from high school. She pursued her interest in the arts in Florence, Italy, before returning to the States to attend college.
The seeds for becoming a medical doctor were first sown when she spent a summer in Switzerland learning from her uncle, an eccentric and brilliant medical doctor. It took many years before those seeds sprouted.
Erica came to medicine later than most medical students, after pursuing other careers and interests, including teaching grade school and herding sheep on the Navajo Reservation, mountain climbing in the Andes while serving in the Peace Corps in South America, teaching Outward Bound students wilderness survival in the Rocky Mountains, and studying various spiritual practices.
After graduating from University of Colorado Medical School and completing her residency in family practice in Denver, Erica worked in a number of settings including a clinic for indigent care, a local emergency room, a women’s clinic, and a multispecialty clinic.
In 1993, Dr. Elliott opened her own private practice in her co-housing community, called The Commons, which she helped found in the early 1990s. In 2015, she gave a TEDx talk about living in co-housing: Co-housing—Community at its Best.
Dr. Elliott is board certified in both family practice and environmental medicine. She has been nicknamed the “Medical Detective" due to her skills at finding the underlying causes of puzzling medical problems that have not responded to conventional medical care. Her skills have attracted patients to her clinic from all parts of the country and abroad.
Over the years, Erica has written articles, given radio talks, interviews, webinars, and weeklong workshops at both Esalen and Omega Institutes. She is the co-author of Prescriptions for a Healthy House, a useful resource guide for transforming one’s home into a sanctuary in order to maintain good health. She is also the author of Medicine and Miracles in the High Desert: My Life among the Navajo People.
On her blog site, www.musingsmemoirandmedicine.com she writes articles about topics in medicine that give the readers a different perspective on healing various conditions. She also writes excerpts from her memoirs, along with healthy recipes, and descriptions of her various trips abroad..
ENDORSEMENTS
Dr. Erica, my highly intelligent family doctor, a woman with an insatiable curiosity about life, shares her compelling story with disarming honesty. Right from the beginning of her story, she draws the reader into her narrative as she threads her way through the turbulent early years of her life, overcoming many challenges along the way. Her guiding star is her search for meaning and purpose, which leads her to some spellbinding adventures, including perilous climbs of daunting peaks, one of which was subsequently named after her. You will find this book uplifting, inspiring, and full of wisdom.
—Alice K. Ladas, EdD, author of the New York Times bestseller The G Spot and Other Discoveries About Human Sexuality
Erica Elliott is a natural-born storyteller. Her deeply affecting memoir is about family and the essential journey of self-discovery she went on to find her soul’s purpose. This book takes you on a wild, world odyssey through the Swiss Alps, the Peace Corps in Ecuador, and mountain climbing in Argentina. Elliott’s writing is honest and intoxicating; she writes about diverse Indigenous people, culture, and communities around the world in an intimate, visceral way. Ultimately, Elliott’s wise heart leads her home to discover what was there all along—her destiny to be a healer.
—Debra Rosenman, author/editor of the multi-award-winning book, The Chimpanzee Chronicles: Stories of Heartbreak and Hope from Behind the Bars
From Mountains to Medicine is a truly fascinating, and engaging journey—actually many journeys of Erica Elliott’s life. I found myself laughing out loud, holding my breath, opening my eyes wide in shock, at times exclaiming “holy sh*t!”—and I imagine you will too. It is much more than a memoir. It is so engrossing I forgot I was reading a book, and I look forward to the day when it is made into a movie. Erica’s writing is clear and straightforward, taking you step by step through pivotal moments in her life, as if you were traveling right along with her. Definitely a must-read!
—Alan Questel, author of Practice Intentional Acts of Kindness
From Mountains to Medicine is the story of Dr. Erica Elliott’s magical journey off the beaten path. The utter exuberance she has for life is contagious. An intrepid explorer of cultures, people, mountains, and medicine, Erica’s dedication to making people’s lives better is the golden thread that holds her world together. A physician of expansive vision and skill, “La Cabra Montés” (the mountain goat), as she was named after scaling the highest peak in the Western Hemisphere, ultimately became “The Health Detective.” The story of that unlikely transformation ignites the imagination and opens the heart. This is a book you’ll want to share with all the people you love.
—Joan Borysenko, Ph.D., speaker and New York Times best-selling author of Minding the Body, Mending the Mind
In this mind-bending and heart-opening memoir, Erica Elliott takes us on the intimate journey of finding her ultimate purpose in life. Each of us is offered clues in our lives, at first as quiet as a tiny mountain spring, which, if we listen and follow, can become a river plunging toward the sea. The miracle of the rites of passage that Erica offers here is her listening and following, her opening awareness and courage along the way, and her remarkable ability to bring us along. In our taking this journey with her, we, too, can become more attentive and devoted to saying “Yes!” to the opportunities that life affords us.
—Heidi Sparkes Guber, co-author of A Whole Greater than Its Parts: Exploring the Role of Emergence in Complex Social Change
Few coming-of-age tales carry a reader so deeply into the heart and soul of the one who lived it. Dr. Erica Merriam Elliott takes us through her acutely intimate and profoundly explicit struggles to find her own unique purpose and meanings in life, work, and vocation. Vocation being a Godly calling, Erica takes us on her profound journeys through the venues of higher education, mentorships, community engagement and, surprisingly, mountaineering in the Andes. The reader will find breathtaking moments of sheer terror and the power of her unfathomable tenacity and courage in the midst of astonishing beauty and in the face of bone-crushing poverty. Erica encounters profound human and social injustices intertwined with human dignity at its most noble. FromMountains to Medicine, the second in her memoir trilogy, is a story of resilience, giving us remarkable insight into what makes us supremely human and what drives us to finding our distinctive path in life. This is no mere ‘must read,’ but a proclamation of hope in a world which too often annihilates and quenches the dreams of the young and inexperienced. Erica shines a bright light on the multiple possibilities of what it means to be whole, to be human, and to be hopeful. Your time and energy in following her saga will bring you to tears and shouts of delight.
—The Reverend Canon Ted Karpf, Episcopal priest and author ofActs of Forgiveness: Faith Journeys of a Gay Priest, and principal editor of the World Health Organization’s Restoring Hope: Decent Care in the Midst of HIV/AIDS
In a voice that always cuts to the heart of things, Erica Elliott describes her adventures in mountaineering and the Peace Corps in the Andes in colorful, imagistic word paintings. She also looks back on her life in a large itinerant army family, and how she overcame its difficult emotional legacy. All this prepares her for a life healing other. Her inspiring story and heartfelt voice have their own curative properties.
—Sally Abbott author of Miami in Virgo
A person’s purpose in life seems to live in that sweet spot where your deepest joy intersects with your unique skill set and also with the world’s endless need. It is a treat and an education to follow the young, courageous, and tenacious Erica Elliott through her extraordinary journey as she puts together all three. Full of insight as well as cultural and mountaineering adventure, From Mountains to Medicine is a great read.
—Chris Hoffman author of The Hoop and the Tree: A Compass for Finding a Deeper Relationship with All Life
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