How I Got Here

In my mid-twenties, I was working in academia, accepted to a fully funded PhD program, and engaged to be married. All of it was working. None of it was mine. I was either battling chronic stomach issues or chronic anxiety. Every time I sought an answer, it ended with a prescription.

I knew the life I was building had stopped feeling like mine. I deferred the PhD. I ended my engagement. I took a different path.

I met the love of my life. I moved across the country. I built a life that looks nothing like the one I was supposed to have.

But even big, drastic moves didn't change what I was running from. It caught up with me when I was diagnosed with an incurable condition, a similar diagnosis my father received at my age. I was told I'd be on medications for the rest of my life.

I had just watched him get the same advice and die from it.

I started looking for answers the medical system didn't have. I rebuilt my diet. I rebuilt my body. The symptoms quieted. The medication stayed.

A few years later, I tried to come off it. Nobody had ever told me it was supposed to be short-term. Coming off it almost killed me. Every panic attack I'd been numbing for a decade returned at once, in a body that no longer remembered how to regulate itself. I healed one thing without touching the other. I built a body that could function without ever asking why it had been screaming in the first place.

When I stopped planning and started listening, everything shifted.

I started over (again). I built a career. Built a company. Moved into executive leadership. The professional life was working. My health was better. My family was growing. But my relationships were suffering, and that's when I realized everything moves together. I'd been treating wellness like a side project. It was the infrastructure everything else was built on.

My priorities shifted. I left full-time executive leadership. I got clear on my values. I found work that fit the life I was already living. I've dedicated my life to implementing the practices that help me operate at my highest potential and teaching others to do the same. Daily commitment over motivation. That's the whole practice.

Every time something has tried to define me, I've forged my own path.

It's not recklessness. It's discernment. You can only discern when you've done the work to know what's actually yours.

I haven't arrived. I'm still in the work, and I think we always are. The thing nobody told me, and the thing I want anyone reading this to know, is that you don't fix yourself through a single intervention. Not a medication. Not a diet. Not a teacher. Not a relationship.

Nobody is coming to save you. You decide. Then you intentionally keep deciding.