My Two Year Leap-
This is a long one. It’s my story and it feels pretty vulnerable to share, but it’s in honor of my big leap anniversary.
As many of you know or may remember, I was once upon a time a clinical pharmacist.
I graduated with my doctor of pharmacy in 2008 with total love for the profession. I did a residency training specializing in pain management, with interest and additional training in substance use disorder (addiction). Subsequently, I worked as a clinical pain management specialist for a few years in a hospital seeing patients.
It was grueling work but I adored it.
After that, I went on to work for over a decade at a corporate job. Early on, I traveled a lot, did a ton of presentations to clinicians in different forums (including big conferences), and developed clinical and sales education resources. My job kept evolving, and eventually I oversaw a committee on customer-facing materials, developed a ton of training for sales people, and even got certified in a sales methodology. I maintained clinical content on customer facing reports and wrote and published some white papers, along with being involved with and publishing a few research papers in medical journals.
Also very hard work that I loved until …
I didn’t.
In 2020, when COVID hit, I realized I was completely burned out. The world stopped and it made me face how TIRED I was. I also felt like I wasn’t showing up authentic anymore to my work. I didn’t really believe in it anymore-- between the hospital work and corporate work, I saw a pretty complete picture of how broken the healthcare system is, and how angry we should all be at insurance companies and all those (many, many entities) profiting off healthcare while squeezing the patients. This again could be a detailed list and its own (long) soapbox.
In 2021, I began experiencing brain fog, crushing fatigue, and constant gas and bloating. I was also starting to have trouble sleeping. I went to my doctor, who is an amazing holistic DO, and she told me I was likely in perimenopause. I was 42 and shocked. This is when I discovered that perimenopause could start as early as mid-30s. WHY hadn’t I heard about this? I tried some treatments out with my DO, but nothing that was super helpful.
That summer, a friend texted out of nowhere to tell me about a six month group Ayurveda program she’d done with a yoga teacher we knew. I looked at the website and intuitively knew I needed to do her program.
It changed my life. I started to regain energy. I reclaimed sleep. I learned how to cook for myself, and make food that was deeply nourishing to me. That spring, I’d started working on losing weight after taking stock and realizing I’d gained close to 30 pounds over ten years of corporate life, and it was too much for my small frame. Looking back at pictures of myself, I can also see inflammation in my body.
Ayurveda taught me to honor and follow my hunger, and for the first time, actually KNOW when I was full from eating. This and the feeling of satisfaction from the whole foods led me to easily keep weight off once I lost it, long term. My body settled into its natural weight for my body type.
Over time, I also figured out how to stop having gas and bloating. At first, I did it with what I was eating, but it truly took the HOW. I sat down and breathed before eating. I stopped eating in front of the TV. I cooked with ambient music instead of rushing around and diverting my attention to a podcast.
Beyond healing myself physically, I fell in love with how Ayurveda connects us back to nature– helps us remember we ARE nature, we aren’t separate. We vibe with our surroundings and the cycles of the sun, moon, and seasons. We have to digest everything we take in through our senses.
My favorite nature is the beach. Me + my shadow taking a selfie on Kauai this week.
Ayurveda also reconnected me to the plant medicine woman inside. I love herbs and plants so much– and that is the deeper pharmacist in me. I truly believe food is our #1 medicine, and herbs the deep supports that are adjacent (many herbs are food themselves, like the amazing ginger).
My passion for helping people with their health was reignited. It reminded me of how excited I was when I started pharmacy school. Ayurveda showed me how disease could be prevented with simple alignment with nature, and helped me understand how dis-ease begins in the mind and within the body well before any allopathic Western diagnosis. It explains why so many women have complaints that are often dismissed, especially in middle age– as though constant heartburn, diarrhea, painful periods or even feeling tired all the time could be “normal.”
To be honest, Ayurveda sometimes seems SO common sense once you hear it, it’s almost like a “duh”--- one of my teachers says that Ayurveda is simply a remembering of what we already know deep inside.
In January 2022, I started a yearlong Ayurveda school to become a certified Ayurveda wellness coach. A few months in, I knew I was doing the second year to advance to Ayurveda Health Counselor.
Sometime during that first year, I had the gnawing feeling that Ayurveda was what I was meant to be doing– teaching it to others and working 1:1 with people to help them. I understood I was supposed to run my own business, but had no clue where to start. I got a business coach, but honestly, I was scared shitless. With guidance from my business coach, I started an LLC and had no idea what, exactly, I was doing.
Then, on November 1, 2022, I got laid off from my corporate job.
God was throwing me out of my comfort zone. I realized, perhaps even before I was let go, that I could never go back.
And here we are, two years later, to the day. Leap-versary.
Honu & the Rainbow. Poipu Beach, Kauai. Photo by Ron Michael Photography.
When I sat down to write this, I thought the story I would tell would be of these last two years, of moving through layers of burnout, grief, shedding my old identity, discovering how to rest and surrender, and a steep learning curve on becoming my own accountant, tech nerd, marketer, administrator, and creator of an excellent experience for clients.
Someone recently said to me that being an entrepreneur and running your own business is a big old deep dive into shadow work.
That resonates.
So — thank you for hanging with me if you made it this far. For whatever reason, and perhaps this is a part of my unraveling and becoming, I had to tell the story of who I was leading up to two years ago, with a tiny pinhole glimpse into who I’m becoming.
It feels like only just in the last few weeks I've found my way into the faith and patience I’ve been praying for these past two years.
I have so much gratitude for you and your energy in my corner of the world.