BY WENDI REARDON PRICE
Clarkston News Staff Writer
Lisa Steele George has hopes when people read her new book, “Break Free From Heart Attack Fear.”
George, a 1980 Clarkston High School graduate, hopes for those who have suffered a heart event or heart attack and those who have heart conditions, learn to master and manage their health so they can break free from any fear.
“We need to face our fears, understand what’s going on, need to be able to work through and learn how to manage them with confidence, manage them with control. Break free from any fears that keep you from living your life,” she said. “I hope people who have suffered from a heart event or heart attack can fully understand, recover and heal so they can live an abundant life.”

Her second hope is for people to educate themselves on heart health.
“Education and prevention, especially during the pandemic,” George added. “COVID does attack our vascular system and people don’t necessarily understand the difference between cardiac and vascular, but they are connected.”
George knows and understands. She had her heart attack at the beginning of 2020.
She was completing both her certification programs with Whole Life Healing Wellness Life Coaching, a non-profit organization in Rochester Hills.
Then, life hit.
She had her heart attack. The COVID-pandemic had just started. Then, she resigned from a corporate job after 30 years.
“It just all came together at the beginning of 2020,” she said.
She started writing a journal when she was in the hospital and continued writing in it as she developed her coaching practice, My Heart is Free.
She changed her approach she was writing in her journal to making it into a book.
“I realized I wanted to focus my niche on heart event victims,” George said. “There’s three facts related to heart attacks. One in three women in the world dies of heart attack. More women die of attacks than all other cancers combined.
“Another statistic that is really important right now is heart attacks and cardiac arrests are up 300 percent not only due to COVID and COVID causing from vascular perspective but also from stress from COVID and the pandemic,” she added. “People aren’t going to the hospital when they need to or taking their symptoms seriously. There is an array of reasons it’s up 300 percent. One in three people die – why don’t we know about this? Why isn’t it being talked about? It’s needs to be talked about and understood. Heart disease is a disease.”
She explained it was those factors which drove her to focus her niche in wellness life coaching needed to be on helping people through their recovery, healing and prevention.

“The book serves all of those purposes – the purpose of educating people to educate themselves or to learn about things for loved ones who have heart conditions. Prevention for themselves or recovering and healing from a heart event,” George said.
“People are so focused on COVID and ignoring anything else going on with body. Let’s take a common symptom of possible heart attack like difficulty breathing. Most people might think they are coming down with COVID. It’s very important to understand the symptoms – a list of them are in the book and what to do and the time to do it.”
Each chapter starts with a quote.
Her daughter and son were contributing authors on the book. Courtney Steele George, who is a Registered Dietitian with a masters in nutrition and public health, wrote the nutrition appendix in the back for a heart healthy. Dalton Robert George, Ph.D. Applied Ethics & Policy of Biotechnology, wrote the science pieces.
“It’s been a very fun project,” she said.
“Break Free from Heart Attack Fear” is available on Amazon and published through Difference Press.
For more information, visit www.myheartisfree.com or www.facebook.com/hearthealingprocess.