UNKNOWN

Millions of Americans have epilepsy. At age 34, Holly Eckert joined them. From the day she discovered that, through many years, her life became a journey of personal growth and self-discovery. Why was this happening? What should she do? Who was she now that she seized? These were only a few of the questions she asked herself in the face of her new reality.

Holly's walk with chronic illness became one of awakening and healing. In it, she learned many lessons in life while confronting the flaws, failures, ignorance, and corruption permeating the American medical industry and sensing, first hand, the resiliency of the human mind and body. Daily tending to the chores of chronic illness, she scoffed at the paradox between the medical industry's responses and her own life's experiences. Over time, Holly realized that illness can play important, positive roles in a human life. Traveling her path where health and illness intertwine, it became clear to her that illness can give as much as it takes away. This convinced her that when allowed the time and space to be ill, a person can find true health again, a real life phenomenon rarely discussed by doctors and patients.

In Seized - Searching for Health In the United States, Holly tells the story of her journey with illness. That well-told, personal tale provides a lens through which a reader can explore the common experience of searching for health in the United States. Who would have imagined that it would be a dance artist who does so well exploring the many dimensions of illness and the failures of the United States' healthcare system, but that's precisely what happens here in Seized.

Holly Eckert grew up in a small town in the mountains of Idaho where she learned to dance from a former ballerina with the New York Ballet who also lived there. After high school, she took her scholarships and went to The Evergreen State College. There she combined dance and social sciences to create her own integrated studies program. Her education prepared her to go to Seattle and pursue her artistic mission of exploring substantivetopics inside the art of dance. Winning awards and praise for her artwork, Holly pursued her passion with passion and made choreography about things like the experience of fear and the injustices of the US prison system. She was healthy and strong into her mid-thirties, when one day, she suddenly began seizing uncontrollably. Epilepsy quickly overwhelmed her life. It sent Holly on a diverse, personal journey. On her travels, she discovered many new things about herself, and as she did, she learned more and more about the potentials for healing that exist inside the human body. She also learned a great deal about the tragic failures of the United States' medical system that often inhibits these possibilities from being realized. Knowing that she liked to write as well as dance, Holly decided to tell this story through words not movements. Her readers continually give her praise for her efforts.