In my late teens, while I was struggling with an eating disorder, my menstrual cycle suddenly stopped. The eating disorder fell away as I deeply studied Christian Science, but my cycle did not resume. 

Later, after two years of marriage, I began to think that I might never be able to have children. Treatment through prayer from different Christian Science practitioners at different times helped me develop a broader, more spiritual concept of family. 

The yearning for a deeper sense of completeness led me to apply for Christian Science class instruction, a two-week course on healing as Jesus did—through prayer. One afternoon while doing my class homework, I came across this statement in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy: “Mentally insist that harmony is the fact, and that sickness is a temporal dream. Realize the presence of health and the fact of harmonious being, until the body corresponds with the normal conditions of health and harmony” (p. 412).