BLUE HILL
Therapist and healer Lydia Salant died at home in Blue Hill on Aug. 3, at age 73. Although she had limited mobility in recent years due to a muscular disease, she was still actively writing and also collaborating with her husband of 40 years, the psychoanalyst Dr. Nathan Schwartz-Salant.
Born Lydia Polushkin on Nov. 15, 1945, in Germany, she came to America in 1949 with her parents and sister, as refugees. She grew up in Queens, N.Y., then attended the City University of New York and Columbia University, and earned a master’s degree from Harvard University in Russian language and literature. She also taught Russian language and literature at the college level at Queens and Hunter colleges in New York City for 11 years, before redirecting her energies toward individual counseling and psychic readings. Her fascination with the interplay between mind and body led her to further postgraduate study, including a four-year program in acupuncture at the Pacific College of Oriental Medicine in New York, which she completed in 2000.
She and her husband lived in New York City; East Hampton, N.Y.; Princeton, N.J., and Rosemont, N.J., while raising their two sons, Joseph and James Salant, and moved to Blue Hill in 2013. Their home included an office for each of them, and also a studio, where they presented lectures and hosted friends from out of town.
She is survived by her husband, her son Joe, her sister and three grandchildren.
The family suggests that friends and former patients who wish to honor her memory make a gift to Doctors Without Borders.