![\"\"](\"http:\/\/psychone.net\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/ben4.jpg\" "\\"ben4\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n“Hello, I’m Ben Breedlove. Do you believe in Angels or in God? I Do”<\/strong><\/p>\n Ben Breedlove, a teenager from Texas, \u00a0survived three heart attacks during his young life. He lived with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. This is a condition where the muscles of the heart thicken, making it hard for the blood to leave the heart.<\/p>\n This young man spent his last years making educational videos about his condition.<\/p>\n One week before Christmas, he made his last one.<\/p>\n Ben died on Christmas Day. He was only 18.<\/p>\n This last video was the most powerful, as he narrated – using hand-written flash cards – how he survived several near-death experiences. He mentioned seeing a large white room without walls during one of them and a bright light in another. In this last experience, he remembered seeing his favorite rapper, Kid Cudi, approach and comfort him.<\/p>\n After learning of Ben’s death, Kid Cudi posted a letter to him in his blog.<\/p>\n “I broke down, I am in tears because I hate how life is so unfair,” writes the rapper.<\/p>\n That is a very good question. I also asked myself how come so many people, with good health and a decent life, forget to acknowledge all the good things they have?<\/p>\n Despite all this, Ben left us with a gift.<\/p>\n He brought us a needed awareness to a rare but dangerous heart condition. And because of him, many of us know so much more about hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.<\/p>\n It is immensely touching to see someone like Ben \u00a0who instead of being resentful or angry, as many of us would be in a similar situation, \u00a0reached out to fellow teens and made powerful educational videos.<\/p>\n Instead of the “life sucks” that you hear from so many \u00a0young college kids, Ben offered us a few warm smiles and a message of hope to others who might be going through the same thing.<\/p>\n In addition, Ben’s last videos reminds us of several life lessons…<\/p>\n In sum, to answer Ben’s question, do I believe in angels? Ben, you ARE<\/strong> an angel.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [tube]http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=35O3E3T3GKQ[\/tube]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Hello, I’m Ben Breedlove. Do you believe in Angels or in God? I Do” Ben Breedlove, a teenager from Texas, \u00a0survived three heart attacks during his young life. He lived with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. This is a condition where the muscles of the heart thicken, making it hard for the blood to leave the heart. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":153,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[21,20,22,19],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/psychone.net\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/psychone.net\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/psychone.net\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/psychone.net\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/psychone.net\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147"}],"version-history":[{"count":28,"href":"http:\/\/psychone.net\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160,"href":"http:\/\/psychone.net\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147\/revisions\/160"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/psychone.net\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/psychone.net\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/psychone.net\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/psychone.net\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n