My story: a tale of burnout and reinvention
A battle with burnout.
By the time I was 33, I was invited to apply for a professorship position at UBC and had spent 15 years studying, working and living my life at maximum capacity. Like, I mean MAX: I worked 70 hour weeks routinely, and practically ran our lab of 12 students. I worked out HARD daily and rode my bike to work (a hilly 30km round trip). On top of volunteering, a busy social life, an art practice and all the other life obligations in the background, it was just too much….
I slowly hit a wall.
It wasn’t sudden; it was a long, slow slide, into the abyss…
And frankly, it took years of willfully over-riding my body’s cues before I completely burned out.
Shockingly, it wasn’t until my body literally started shutting down that I even clued in. Looking back on it, and knowing what I know now, I can’t believe I treated myself that way.
It got to the point that I stopped cycling (hypothalamic amenorrhea) and I had to take naps almost daily the time. My brain was mushy and I couldn’t concentrate. Sleep was even worse than usual (though I was accustomed to 5-6 hours/night with all the stress and scheduling). It pained me to focus on a computer screen or for long enough to actually get things done.
When I finally clued in, I turned to doctors, including an endocrinologist specializing in women’s hormones. They ran tests and asked a few basic questions, but in the end, the only suggestion was that I “slow down” and take the birth control pill to try to coax my cycle back.
I knew enough at the time to know that this was a band-aid solution (with a lot of downsides) that certainly wouldn’t fix the root cause issue(s).
At the time, it shocked me that none of the medical professionals I went to for help had any insight on I was going through…but it makes total sense in hindsight: burnout was only recognized by the World Health Organization as a real and medically important diagnosis in 2019(!), and much of Western medicine is still catching up.
Life 2.0: Ctl + Alt + Reboot
I realized I needed to completely overhaul my life to slow down and figure this thing out.
So I quit my life and started again.
I gave notice at work, gave up my beautiful loft in the heart of my favourite neighbourhood in Vancouver, sold all my stuff, said goodbye to friends and family. I moved to Kauai with nothing but a suitcase, a tent and the painting supplies that had been hiding in my cupboard for years while I immersed myself in Academia.
I reinvented myself completely:
Mary 2.0 was an artist and her life was completely the opposite of Mary 1.0. Her life was slow and spacious. She slept a lot. Between walks on the beach, she painted much of the day while learning to care for her body by obsessively listening to podcasts and seminars, soaking up intel on how to cultivate a healthy human body from every credible doctor, biohacker and expert she could find online. She leveraged her research skills to dive deep in order to figure out for to re-ignite her health, intensively studying every evidence-based lineage of evidence-based medicine she could.
And you know what?
What I learned actually SHOCKED me. For someone who knew SO much about how bodies work on a molecular, cellular and genetic level, I sure was clueless about how to operate one. It was incredibly eye opening. I felt simultaneously incredibly foolish and incredibly angry that humans - young and old - in general are given ZERO insight on how to operate, let alone optimize, our bodies to be vital and healthy! Why do we somehow think we need to learn history, math, physics, etc before we learn the basics of how to eat, sleep, move, breathe, live… And I realized that ‘traditional’ Western medicine is not designed to treat systemic, chronic illness or even support disease prevention.
When I finally discovered functional, integrative medicine and started to implement its principles, I started to really get better.
I took a comprehensive, scientific, lifestyle-based approach to overhauling my health and correcting the dizzyingly complex array of systems I’d slowly thrown out of whack over years of what I now realize is self-abuse in the form of overdoing.
My vitality returned as I regained my health….and I became healthier, stronger, and had more energy than ever!
Profound inspiration & a call to action!
The whole experience lit a burning passion inside me.
I was flabbergasted to learn that most diseases in the modern world (up to 80%!) are the result of living out of alignment with the ways our bodies have evolved.
I realised that my calling is to help others discover their own unique paths to their version of optimal health. The innate wellness inside of all of us can be realised when we align with our biology and as much as possible, the ways nature intended for us to eat, sleep, move, breathe, live…
I did well as an artist, and had the great fortune of exhibiting in a few galleries on Kauai, selling my work for more than I ever thought possible while enjoying an extraordinary life in a whole, healed, vital body. But my time in that life was short. I knew my calling was something else. All my years of training, study and experience in biomedical science and functional health were to be put into action: I was to dedicate my life to helping people understand their bodies and get healthy through functional medicine-informed, lifestyle-based approaches supported by science. I called in Life 3.0, moved back to BC, and started my consultancy.
Life 3.0: It all comes together
I’ve devoted the last 8 years to studying Functional Medicine-informed, evidence-based approaches that are supported by science: from genetics to ancestral health practices to Ayurveda, Chinese Medicine, mindfulness, breathwork, bodywork and more.
Realizing the power of the mind in the healing process, I’ve also trained in interpersonal relations, non-violent communication, self-realization, empowerment and life coaching, and am an experienced facilitator, speaker and mentor.
The approach I’ve developed over the years is informed by expert mentors, and endorsed by my acclaimed partners, who recognize that my outside-the-box, comprehensive approach fulfils unmet needs in the Medical community. (About my services.)
In my consultancy, I now work with people of all ages, from youth to senior citizens, around the world. I specialize in women’s health, weight management, burnout recovery, prevention, high-performance habits and longevity.
If you’re curious about how I might be able to help you become the most vital version of yourself, please get in touch or book a Discovery Call. I’d love to connect with you.
