Sherry McLaughlin, MSPT, OCS, CSCS

A Little Faith Will See You Through

By Carrie Gibson

It’s not often that you stumble upon someone who truly moves you with their life story, but a peek into the journey that Sherry McLaughlin has traveled just might cause an emotional stir. She’s a true testament to the power of faith, hope and perseverance.

McLaughlin is 40 years old, a business owner, a professional speaker, an author and the single parent of a 14- year old autistic child. She graduated with her Master’s of Science degree in Physical Therapy in 1990 from Andrews University in Berrien Springs, and married the love of her life, Doug McLaughlin, a mere two weeks later.

In 1998, Sherry founded the Michigan Institute for Human Performance (MIHP) as a seminar/consulting business after she realized there was no reason for most people to be suffering from musculoskeletal pain. She then went on to launch the Missing Link seminar for physical therapists and her professional seminar series was on its way. MIHP now offers six professional seminars as well as community-based and corporate programming because she and her associates are adamant that if you respect the body’s amazing design, it is possible to live a pain-free life.

Last year, Sherry suffered a life-altering loss when her husband, Doug, committed suicide. “He lost his battle against severe clinical depression,” which, Sherry said, hurled her into a period of “grief and sorrow, but also one of healing and hope and understanding. Depression is a disease, not just someone having a bad day. I learned this in a very real sense and I think it is a message that can bring healing to many survivors of suicide.”

It seems Sherry has made it her life’s mission to refuse to allow pain to take control, not only for her patients who are suffering from physical ailments, but also for herself, as she dealt with the emotional pain of losing a loved one.

Sherry’s biggest success in the past year was publishing her latest book, Lessons from the Loveseat. “It’s a story,” she said, “that will always be near and dear to my heart, as it is the story of my marriage to Doug. I started writing it before Doug passed away and I wrote the final chapter when I was hiking in Colorado to bury his ashes.”

The book is a testament to what a great love can do for two people…even after one goes away. I have heard from many readers who have been moved to love to a deeper level and those stories humble me beyond belief. I can’t think of a better tribute to one of the best men I’ve ever known, and the best man that I have ever loved.”

As for the rest of her family, Sherry’s gang might, at first, seem a bit unconventional; however, they are her biggest source of happiness. “Jon, my No. 1 son is actually my late husband’s half brother,” Sherry explained. “We took legal guardianship of him when he was 14 years old. He is now 30, married and living in Texas working in the financial industry.”

Joshua is 14-years old and is my only biological child. He is autistic and just started high school this year. Though he is not very verbal, he is a wonderfully loving, pure child who has taught me so much about what life is really about. He has a sense of peace about him that draws people to him. There are a lot of people who tell ‘Joshua stories’ because when you meet him, you are changed somehow.”

Christina was the next to come to our family, with her little girl Evelynn. They were 21- and 2-years old respectively. Christina is actually my 2nd cousin. They moved in about two weeks after Jon moved out. I literally painted the room from blue to green, threw two mattresses down on the floor and they moved in. Christina was trying to pull her life together after struggling with drugs. It wasn’t easy, but she has successfully turned her life around. She is now engaged to be married, a homeowner and has a great job as a purchasing assistant for an international company. Her daughter, Evelynn is now 7-years old and thriving.”

Sherry’s incredible journey has helped her to share a unique perspective, relating a life of faith to traveling on a river. “God has a plan for each of us,” Sherry said, “but he also gave us free will. It is our job to jump into the river…even though it twists and turns and we can’t see around the next bend. It is human nature to jump out when things get rough or don’t go as planned and I think that is one of life’s biggest potential tragedies because if you jump out too soon, you just might miss out on the better ending. The river knows where it is going…”

When things haven’t worked out like I had hoped…and believe me, I’ve had my fair share of that, having a special needs child, owning and operating a business, having to shut one clinic down after spending a fortune on getting it open and then suddenly being widowed…I force myself to stay in the river…have some faith…and so far I haven’t been disappointed.”

When asked to share the keys to her success, Sherry said, “I think it is doing the best work that I can, keeping a balance in my life, praying every day and leaving the worry to a God who can handle it much better than I. Oh, and nurture the relationships. We can run around being so darn productive…but when the smoke clears, what really matters is the relationships you nurtured along the way…with family, co-workers, friends and business associates. My mentor once said, ‘Turn towards them…not away…that’s how the love moves between.’”

September 2007: Unstoppable Force
Sometimes, rehab can be therapeutic for the therapist.

9/1/2007

By Jonathan Bassett
ADVANCE

They were a motley crew, the McLaughlins of southeast Michigan. First, there was Doug and Sherry, happily married for 15 years, and their 13-year-old son Joshua, who was autistic and had almost no verbal communication.

There was also Jon, Doug’s much younger half-brother, taken in by the family as a struggling teenager. Rounding out the clan was Christina Cortez, Sherry’s cousin and mother of young Evelynn, both taken in by the McLaughlins when Christina developed a drug habit and needed help raising her daughter.

Still, they were a happy and successful–if unconventional–tribe. Doug ran a woodworking and interior design company, and his work could be seen in the finer homes of Oakland County. And Sherry McLaughlin, MSPT, OCS, CSCS, operated the Michigan Institute of Human Performance, a successful two-clinic practice in Warren, Mich. “I was handling life,” she says.

But Sherry’s world would change forever in February 2005, when Doug called her at the clinic in tears, saying he was having a breakdown. When she got home, she found that he had attempted suicide.

Doug shared a secret with his wife–he had suffered from unrelenting depression for years. “I had no idea that this rock-climbing, mountain-biking, talented woodworker would wake up in the morning in a darkness so heavy he couldn’t move,” she says.

Doctors put Doug on medication, which lifted the darkness and eased the suicidal thoughts, but it made Doug feel like he was “walking around with cotton in his head,” says Sherry. In February 2006, Doug quit the medication. That July, he took his own life.

“The last time we talked, he said ‘I’m so tired I can’t do the business anymore,’ ” remembers Sherry. “I said ‘I love you.’ That last phone call was such a gift.”

Rather than close the clinic she founded, work became Sherry’s outlet. After a 3-month hiatus, she returned, more committed than ever to her mission of improving the health of her community. “Staying at home and isolating myself after Doug’s death would have devastated me,” she says.

In addition to seeing up to 140 patients a week, the staff at MIHP holds workshops for clinicians, provides sport-specific athletic programs, and offers corporate fitness and injury prevention programs to large employers such as General Motors. McLaughlin is passionate about sharing research information with her colleagues, and has formed a nonprofit organization dedicated to that goal.

Every Wednesday she shuts the doors of MIHP to hold meetings with her think tank–movement specialists from diverse backgrounds that collect and disseminate the latest findings on biomechanics and functional training.

What ignites McLaughlin’s passion is the problem solving that comes with deconstructing the biomechanical puzzle and pinpointing faulty movements that give rise to pain. Her approach, which she named triPLAYnar technology, has underpinnings in athletic principles, but it carries over to all patient populations. The method recognizes that human movement emerges from the hips, the body functions on three planes, and pain isn’t an inevitable effect of aging or injury.

In the meantime, Sherry is also working on the third book in a series that chronicles her life. “It doesn’t need to sell a million copies,” says Sherry, who hopes to lift some of the stigma surrounding autism and depression. “If it helps just one person, it’s a success.”

To comment on this story, visit the “From the Editor” section at www.advanceweb.com/rehab

A love remembered
Birmingham woman chronicles a marriage

August 19, 2007

BY KIM NORTH SHINE
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Freep.com

Within five days of the suicide last summer of her husband, Sherry McLaughlin was hiking a Colorado mountain to scatter his ashes at the same scenic spot where they had joyfully celebrated 10 years of marriage six years earlier.

Within weeks, McLaughlin, mother of an autistic child, businesswoman, photographer, author and devoted journal-keeper was writing about her rewarding and challenging marriage to Doug.

“I have to pour out my thoughts on paper before I can sleep,” she says.

Her thoughts and stories, wrapped in a strong belief in God and prayer, would go into her latest book, “Lessons from the Loveseat,” which is intended to remind readers that the quality of their relationships is directly connected to the quality of their lives.

McLaughlin is a longtime Birmingham resident and a physical therapist who founded the Michigan Institute for Human Performance in Warren. McLaughlin’s three books have all been published through her own company, ML Publishing in Warren.

In the “Loveseat” book, published in June, a year after her husband’s death, she writes about loving a man whose nearly lifelong depression was a secret to her until his life was about to be over. The book also is intended to dispel some of the shame associated with mental illness.

The couple married in June 1990 — Sherry says she wanted to marry Doug after their second date.

In a letter to her husband in the book’s last chapter — “Rewriting the Tragedy” — McLaughlin tells him about her visit to Flattop Mountain in Estes Park, Colo., where on their anniversary he had asked her to spread his ashes when he died.

“You would have loved it up there. The deafening silence. The view from the top of the world. “I wanted so badly to be holding you then,” she wrote in the letter. “I know you were in so much pain and I know in the depths of my heart you fought demons of depression valiantly until you could no longer fight.

“I am not angry with you. I just really, really miss you …”

An extraordinary life

In her books, McLaughlin tells of other extraordinary parts of the couple’s life.

“It’s hard to believe I’ve started a business, raised a special-needs child, helped raise three other children and been widowed all before 40. It’s incredible,” McLaughlin said.

“It was an amazing story. It was an incredible love story right up to the end.”

Her first book, “Lessons from the Couch,” documents her experience with a life coach following a life-changing event that goes unnamed in the book but, as she reveals in her follow-up, was her husband’s first suicide attempt in February 2005.

In her next book, “Lessons from the Journey,” she tells of her struggles through business difficulties while raising an atypical family made up of Joshua, their 14-year-old autistic son who has almost no verbal communication, and Jon, Doug’s much younger and struggling half-brother. Jon moved in with the couple in 1992 at age 14 when Sherry was about four months pregnant with Joshua and two years into their marriage.

“I was 25 and raising an infant and a teenager,” she says, not at all complaining. “We went from a family of two to four like that.”

Jon was raised by the McLaughlins. He graduated from college and married in 2005. Just as Jon was moving out in 2002, “another family crisis arose,” McLaughlin said.

They took in Sherry McLaughlin’s cousin, Christina Cortez, who was living in California, using drugs and struggling to mother her 2-year-old daughter, Evelynn Shubin-Cortez. “Our family was now six,” McLaughlin said.

“Doug got through to her,” and Christina is now engaged and is “an amazing woman.” Evelynn, now 6, “is our pride and joy.”

“We were a funny-looking family,” McLaughlin said of her patchwork clan of different skin tones and disparate ages.

The family became a familiar sight on Wednesday nights in downtown Birmingham, where they would walk in single file, as requested by Josh, and have dinner and make other stops as part of the family night started by Doug 11 years ago.

Doug McLaughlin was a self-employed woodworker and interior designer whose work may be found in many fine homes in Oakland County. He also left his talented handiwork, some of it done with his son, behind in his own family’s home.

Family night has gone on without Doug, and McLaughlin has somehow found time and energy to pay close attention to her own family, her professional family and her patients, while carving out a successful career.

“She is just one of those amazing, inspiring people,” said Carolyn Krieger-Cohen, a physical-therapy patient who has come to respect McLaughlin’s spiritual advice as much as her physical healing and is helping promote her books “because I have such respect for her.”

“I believe people can learn a lot from the way Sherry lives her life . . . and her deliberate choice to see the glass half-full. Actually, completely full. . . . At first glance this looks like a sad story. But it truly is not . . . because of the woman Sherry is.”

McLaughlin calls her books “anti self-help.”

“I’m not going to tell you how to live your life,” she said. “I’m telling you my life story.” If lessons come from it, then great, she said.

“There have been people who read the book and said, ‘Wow, you really put yourself out there,’ ” she said.

“I just wanted to tell the story of our lives. It doesn’t need to sell a million copies. If it helps just one person, it’s a success.”

The lessons in her books revolve not only around marriage and family but also around relationships in general, personal ones and business ones.

From grief to work

Business is a big part of who Sherry McLaughlin is.

Within three months of her husband’s death, she was back at work at the Michigan Institute for Human Performance, which she founded in 1998. MIHP has offices in Warren and Farmington Hills.

In addition to providing physical therapy, MIHP also offers athletes performance-enhancement training and is home to a think tank, where physical-therapy professionals get together to brainstorm, study research and look for nontraditional treatment methods.

She also is a speaker and a consultant and an instructor in kinesiology and orthopedic techniques at Macomb Community College. In addition, her practice is a sponsor of Speed Stacker clubs at local schools. The skill of stacking cups speedily is good for nerve health, she said.

McLaughlin and her six coworkers see 115 to 140 patients per week, and she is working to push the field of physical therapy in new directions.

Her goal is to start a nonprofit organization that helps physical-therapy professionals share research into alternative therapies and be a repository of information.

Doug’s decline

It was at work one day in February 2005 that McLaughlin received a phone call that would lead to the discovery of her husband’s long-kept secret about his depression.

He called, crying, saying he was having a breakdown. When she got home, she found him. He had attempted suicide.

At the hospital, she met a woman who later became her life coach and the impetus for “Lessons from the Couch.”

“I realized how wonderful it was to sit on a couch,” she said. “If you would have told me I needed to talk to somebody, I would have laughed. I was handling life.”

But she wasn’t. “I had no idea that this rock-climbing, mountain-biking, talented woodworker would wake up in the morning in a darkness that was so heavy he couldn’t move.”

He would finally tell her that, for years, possibly since his mother had died of cancer when he was 8 years old, he had suffered from depression.

After the suicide attempt, he started taking medication. The darkness lifted, the nightmares ended and the suicidal thoughts subsided.

But, he told his wife, it “was like walking around with cotton in my head.”

“For an intelligent, higher-level thinker, that was hard,” she said.

He quit the medication in February 2006. In July, he killed himself. She found him when she came rushing home from work after a phone call.

“The last time we talked, he said ‘I’m so tired I can’t do the business anymore.’ ” She said they would talk about that later. “I said ‘I love you,’ ” she recalled. “That last phone call was such a gift.

“The point I hope comes across in the book is a lot of people battle depression and there’s a shame about it. “If he had had cancer, he’d be a hero. Depression is an illness.”

His father’s son

What she didn’t realize until after he was gone was how similar the quiet worlds of depression and autism are.

But in autism, which some would consider a curse, there also is a blessing.

“Josh doesn’t understand death,” she said. “He thinks of his dad like, ‘Jonny went away to college and he’s coming back.’ ”

She plans to tell Joshua’s story in an upcoming book called “Lessons from the Silence.”

Joshua will begin his freshman year at Seaholm High School in Birmingham this fall.

“My goal for Josh is that he will be employable, and they say he is,” McLaughlin says.

“I wish Doug could be here to see it. I will miss Doug. Josh will never have to feel that.”

Contact KIM NORTH SHINE at 313-223-4557 or kshine@freepress.com

Lessons from the Loveseat was featured on Jim Harper in the Morning on Magic 105.1!

” This is a great book to read if you really feel a need to appreciate life and especially your relationships with people you love. Sherry has already gone through a lifetime of love and loss and she’s still a young woman…but wise beyond her years.

This book would make a great gift for someone who’s starting out in a new marriage, or for any one who thinks of themself as a romantic at heart, but somewhere down the line “life” got in the way of all of that. ”

- Jim Harper, Jim Harper in the Morning, Detroit Magic 105.1

Purchase your copy of Lessons from the Loveseat at ML Publishing’s Web site!