By Richard Gull

Fifty years ago the human potential movement started at Esalen. That same year, 1962, The Port Huron Statement of Students for a Democratic Society appeared, a political manifesto challenging a new generation to live authentic lives in a participatory democracy. I attended both 50th anniversary celebrations in October 2012. I had taken a class on memoir writing at Esalen two years earlier, in 2010, six months after my wife, Sara, died of cancer.