Don t Ever Quit: A Journal of Coping with Crisis & Nurturing Spirit

When Mike Keenan entered his 40s, he thought that his life was on cruise control. Married with two children, two cars and a house with a mortgage that was almost paid off, he enjoyed teaching and four successive terms of public office, which led to organizing the 1984 Niagara Regional Rally for soon-to-be-elected Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.However, when both parents died, their mortality provoked a mid-life crisis that forced him to re-examine his life and confront his past. As an adolescent, for five formative years, he survived Regent Park, Toronto’s dangerous, inner city ghetto. He attended the University of Western Ontario, where he suffered from depression. Nevertheless, he played on the varsity football team and was voted to the Canadian Inter-collegiate All-Star Team. He was drafted and tried out with the Calgary Stampeders.To help deal with mid-life anxiety, he took up jogging. He reached a six-mile-a-day routine that flooded his brain with delightful endorphins. He composed poetry as he ran. However, a herniated disc in his vertebrae brought this therapeutic practice to a sudden end.Mike and his spouse traveled to Athens, Greece where another crisis dramatically changed his life. He awoke one morning unable to move his legs with numbness throughout his body, including both hands and arms. He had to re-learn how to walk. And later, like many aging men, he was afflicted with prostate cancer, yet another battle.Don’t Ever Quit, A Journal of Coping with Crisis & Nurturing Spirit is the story of how he dealt with each crisis and learned to cultivate spirit in the process. This book will help readers cope with crisis. It’s particularly well-suited to those admitted to a hospital.