Chapter 2: Passion Project Evolution

Apr 19

I want to elaborate on the fact that the way that being literally blessed and surprised with a life partner, and the creation of a child inside of me stimulated me to change my career choice was not a tragedy. I believe in religious freedom, completely, and I believe in some form of higher power that Helps things be how they should be sometimes. I mean to remain incredibly generic here because this is not the point of the story. The point of the story is that the seed to start my own business was planted all the way back in my days of imagining I’d open my own business as a psychologist based in our therapy.

I started Weiland nursing school with a vision to create a nurse Health Coaching business. The things that I really love doing are empowering and educating people to believe that if they become proactive about their whole person wellness, if they learn to manipulate their internal dialogue and gain control over what they put into their mind and into their mouth and what they do with their body that very often and mostly always they can dictate their reality. The thoughts that go through our mind, literally create and fabricate the experience that we have in this life. If you think about it, we are perceiving the world around us through a series of energy and light and. everything we experience is a compilation of what #DATA is coming into us.

What we perceived to be reality is literally filtered through our mind. So I have this deep, rooted belief that we can control our reality too many degrees. I understand that life happens and that many people are dealt really effed up hands in life, and that even if I was raised without much money and have my own traumas, I never hurt for anything, I have a loving, supportive family, I am inside of a white female body, so I totally understand that I do have a considerable degree of privilege in my life. But in the same breath, I would like to share with you that because of the things I saw throughout my childhood by the age of five I already had a really negative outlook. I felt genuinely that this world was a bad and scary place and I would take myself to this world where I could remember being free and floating and it was more like a feeling. I remember over the age of 5 to 7 that I began to not be able to catch or hold onto that feeling anymore. Maybe that place of floating was completely created in my mind. Maybe it was an in utero memory? Maybe it was something that I cannot explain in our 2 D world. Maybe it was because the dissonance I saw and felt within my parents relationship? But I know that I am correct on the age range because my brother’s accident happened when I was six. I have done a lot of introspective and self development and healing over the years and one of the things I have had a difficult time understanding is, how did I feel those negative things before the accident, right? It would make sense for me to start thinking the world was a bad place after the accident. And there was a whole entire different set of challenges inside of my mind regarding the guilt I felt from not being able to prevent that accident, and from not being the one who was the victim of that accident… But clearly, I can tell you that my. that my thoughts leaned toward pessimism before the accident.

Throughout middle school in high school I struggled with severe depression and anxiety, but I have always been a really tall, large, I’ve been told statue, ask human being with the spirit of a nurturing mother… and I have always been able to help people synthesize their thoughts and extract the positivity out of them. From a young age, I was the comforter for many of the people around me, and though I did share my suffering transparently, for the most part, I distracted myself by helping others. This is always been a self soothing mechanism. The problem energetically to a certain degree.

Helping and listening to others, helping them synthesize their negative thoughts and extract the positive shining light out of them has always been a self soothing mechanism to me. I feel like everyone in this life deserves to feel loved, lovable, comfortable, and deserves to have relief of the dissonance that so many experience constantly and often.

The problem with that is that it left me piled up, clogged up with in the overwhelming energy. It weighed on me like a chaotic, knotted up mess of black tar that weighed me down and prevented me from healing and developing emotional intelligence. But a series of things happen to me after high school that helped me evolve. I met and spent time with a group of people. From the Dominican Republic and the Czech Republic, who were working on a work release at wild adventures in Valdosta, Georgia. There was an entire building of an apartment complex provided to them to live in and it was a big beautiful party. No one was immersed in their culture, but most importantly, I was an immerse in their mindset. These beautiful people would come here for three months out of the year and make enough money, at $10 an hour have you, to help support their family for the entire year. And they told me the stories of experiencing life in a Third World country, particularly the Dominican people, and taught me what it was like to live with a positive mindset. They taught me what it was like to have control over the thoughts that go through your head. Before that moment, I did not believe that was true and no one ever was able to crack my shell of intensity to convince me that we can manipulate our internal dialogue.

But, one day I was angry with my brother on the phone and one of the people there who had a very tragic life told me that he had felt the emotion of anger twice in his life. Literally that he could identify the two times in his life that he felt the emotion we know as “anger.”

This cascaded the development of my belief and interpersonal communication over the next 20 years. By the end of the summer and most certainly within one to two years, I was an entirely different person. I was not in the black tar sludge of unexplainable and unreasonable depression. I had control, much more frequently, of my internal dialogue. As was explained in chapter 1, I found art, I went to art school. I went to school to learn psychology, I grew and involved and found passion. Not that I did not struggle, because experiencing mental illness is a roller coaster that is different for every person, and experiencing life in general is a roller coaster that’s different for every person, but something markedly changed inside of me that summer about the degree of which I believe that we have control over our lives. Prior to that I had been as bad off as suicidal.

I know that I’m an artist in art is a thing that helps me synthesize life, and when I am getting in the groove of creating, it is a very healthy thing for me, but art school really made me feel gross towards developing myself as an artist with a specific goal to sell my art. I applied to and did not get into the BFA program literally right before I got pregnant. The bachelors of fine art program if you don’t know. It was devastating at the moment. It felt like I was not good enough. But this is another one of many things that I believe do happen for a reason. Not that I believe everything does, but I really try to believe that everything does.

Also getting out of the restaurant industry where much time was spent waitressing from the age of 15 to 19 … that was a complete set up for me to be a pity party self victim. Waitresses, much like nurses are massively overwhelmed with multitasking and treated like they never deliver enough. Regardless, my point here is that I started working in the hospital and fell in love with the ecosystem inside of the hospital despite the fact that I already saw the injustice in the healthcare system, including the way that nurses and medical staff are spread to thin…. But also the way that medicine is conducted with such a minimal emphasis on lifestyle.

I started to see that they would trickle in information about lifestyle at the very end of the Patient visit, like afore thought , and I had many providers explained to me that they were taught in school that even though lifestyle is the keystone to preventative care and most certainly to health and healing for almost everyone, almost always… that you can assume and expect that the patient will not follow through with those things so you have to do the safer thing which is prescribed the medication, the intervention…

It made me start to believe that there is a certain level of brainwashing that exists within mainstream medical education. I started learning about who created the curriculum that is required to be delivered to medical providers. I started seeing great areas and very concerning connections between families and corporations and organizations who have their pockets deeply lined with money from pharmaceutical companies, agriculture, food, and beverage, etc. this post is not about this, but this really planted the thought within me that started to brew and boil and create dissonance for me again in a whole new way. This time, not about the way that I exist in the world, but about healthcare.

The other big major mainstay that began to boil my frustration. Is the insurance company set up. I saw patients who needed procedures done delayed because of Insurance. I saw patients who were literally unsafe to go home and needed inpatient rehab be sent home time and time and time and time again because they could not afford physical inpatient rehab rehabilitation. I saw a system full of actually loving and empathetic providers, not be able to do or provide what is best for their patient often. I worked inside of the hospital for almost 20 years in one capacity or another, and I watched firsthand Young Brand, Newww fresh Dr. graduating start working independently, sour and spoil, and become bitter and irritated towards the system themselves.

Furthermore, I’ve watched friends and family downward spiral into drug addiction, food, addiction, depression. I have seen many friends and family die from overdose, accidental, overdose, or suicide. What this really really triggered within me, was the desire to connect with people, educating empower them to become proactive about their whole personal wellness. I really wanted to convince people that they had control over their internal dialogue, that they had control over their existence. And that the most powerful thing that they could ever possibly do is manipulate what they put into their mind and into their mouth and what they do with their bodies.

I have seen young people get diagnosed with heart failure swell up and die. I have seen young people get diagnosed with heart failure, and change their life drastically and get better. I’ve seen people be told that they will be paralyzed, give up and being a wheelchair for the rest of their lives. I’ve also seen people be told that they would be paralyzed that refused to believe it, and fought against it and began walking again. I mean many many multiple people.

I have seen people be put on hospice, Get off of hospice and get better. I’ve seen numerous people announce the day that they were going to die when I walked in for my shift early in the morning. We have to believe that there is something bigger than us in someway, even if you just identify it as universal energy… we are energy, we are spirits inside of these bodies, and we are all experiencing the same struggle, no matter who you are what you look like what you believe in what you’ve done what you haven’t done…

So yeah, as a frustrated, art and psychology student that just found themselves pregnant. I decided to go to nursing school. That seat has been planted inside of me, and I came to believe that it would be spiritually OK to do it because of the depth of psychology of interpersonal communication, which is a major part of nursing and healthcare in general. I loved the science and I loved finding out how things work and what happens when they go wrong and how to help that get better. And in that since I really love medicine. There are many times when you really actually need medical interventions, and they can save your life. But generally, when you need medical interventions, it’s because your body is already sick and has already been sick for a long time. Not always, but generally speaking this is what I’ve seen over the past 20 years.

So I started working as a nurse in 2012 and I was never quite able to find a place that I was happy. I love people, I love the intensity, I love working under pressure, I love feeling like I have a positive impact on people. But it was really hard not to self victimized as a nurse, especially in the hospital on the floor. It was a situation that really made me feel like a martyr, and I carried things so heavily, I had a hard time managing tasks because I had a hard time walking away from people who were suffering, which is almost literally everyone inside of the hospital as a patient and staff member….

So I started planting the seed of the dream to develop my business one day. To not go off on multiple different branches or veins of side stories to get to the end of this story I will focus in here. I started developing my brand, my vision, my desire, my passion for what I would do with my life in this world. With the knowledge and the skills and gifts that I have been given, and that I have purposefully developed… but I did not feel that I was qualified. I may have been to some degree. I got a life coach level, but that was not enough for me. I wanted to know more.

A lot of people ask me when are you gonna go back to med school or don’t you wish you were a doctor, but I made a conscious decision not to go to med school. I like the perspective of nursing. I like that it is heavily filtered through the spiritual and emotional experience of humanity. So I continued down the path of becoming a provider. I told you in the last chapter I got my bachelors, I got my masters, I got my after masters, I went to a 10 month functional medicine, counselor program, and every single one of these things opened my eyes. 98% of the books and media and information that I have consumed over the past 13 years since graduating as a nurse.
Have been about natural medicine, self healing, alternative treatment, modalities, integrative medicine, etc.

I tried to build this course creation business, stimulated by my intermittent fasting for weight, loss and weight maintenance symposium presentation that was my masters project for my masters in the science of nursing… I developed it from 35 typed pages to 150 something typed pages. I geared it towards transformative weight loss for nurses, but I never published it. I never published the course and I dropped in the middle and I let it go. I created worksheets for that course, I created weekly goals and presentations. One of the things that held me back was I didn’t want it to be just geared towards nurses because I felt like it could really help a lot of people, like generally anyone who needed to do inner healing and development in order to heal. Their inner child and or their processed food, addiction, and their behaviors around eating and food and weight and their body and their thoughts towards themselves and their internal dialogue…

This is what my transformative weight loss program is built on. But at that time, it was not the right time, I was not done with school yet, and I had not developed myself as a provider. As a prescriber. As a diagnostician.

Fast forward to 2025. I have two years under my belt as an advanced registered nurse practitioner. I have done primary care of the entire time, I spent two months in South Dakota working on an Indian health services contract, I helped a chiropractor at a very well known and successful alternative medicine clinic attempt to build a medical arm, we helped a lot of people inside of the programs that we ran there. I made connections, I saw people feel better, which gave me confidence that what I do is really impactful, and I grew and developed personally, emotionally, spiritually, and professionally.

So here we are, Proactive Wellness clinic. Proactive Wellness alternative medicine clinic. I am learning the business side of it, I am learning the marketing side of it, but most importantly. I am dedicated to carving a place out in the medical world for me to practice healing and caregiving the way that I really want to. The way that I believe works. The way that I see works. Rooted in love and connection. Rooted in helping people heal. Rooted in helping people become proactive about their whole person Wellness.

I know that what I offer is not for everyone, and I am working really hard not to water down and simplify the services that I offer. I feel like just scrapping for visits in order to get to a place where this business is at least paying for itself is going to water down the service that I offer. I really want every service that I offer to be rooted in my core values. Things I have talked about here.

The things that I have used to heal and develop myself. 2025 for me is the year to practice what I preach. Over the past 2 to 3 years I decided I would never “diet” again. I came to realize how impactful psychologically Dieting and restricting yourself around food and basically experiencing life and joy with others as food is so deeply in grade in our society, how negatively impactful it can be psychologically.

I actually believe this is the root of why people yo-yo diet. You pour the fire of metabolic dysfunction on it, and you add it to this powerful demon of a bullshit situation, and no wonder really strong really powerful really smart really dedicated people have a hard time with gaining weight back after they have lost it.

The metabolic fire is an entire chapter and book in and of itself, and a lot of my transformative weight loss program does educate investigate and go into that. But the point I am trying to get across here is that I have come to a place where I am not controlled by food. I have lost a significant amount of weight initially by really spending a dedicated amount of energy towards healing my relationship with food and my relationship with myself

I continue to make low progress, but the metabolic fire was still against me. The metabolic chaos was still not on my side. Even using fasting, which is a powerful tool that I think can unravel it in and of itself, five years of intermittent and extended fasting did not get me there alone. So introducing. GLP-1 medication’s have been a game changer for me. It is not the only thing, I have not followed the prescriptive recommendations, I have kept doses lower and gone slower, but I do not kid you when it’s true what they say that it turns off the food noise.

I had already made drastic progress and these medication’s really just where the fire on the flame. I have not stopped them yet so it is yet to know what will happen, but I have manipulated what I am eating, I have added consistent exercise, though I have always exercised over the years has been very difficult to be consistent overtime. And I feel like I’ve come up with a combination of plan of action that is going to keep me there forever. I feel like I will never give up this time

In the past, when I have lost weight, I have always felt like it was a façade, and I was waiting for the shoot to drop and even if in my mind I would say I will never go back to that place, I had a fear that I was broken and that I would never be healed and that I had to live such a restrictive and bullshit, unfair life around food and over exercising and That I still wasn’t as fit or healthy as other people around me that I was damned and doomed, and it was my genetics and that it was my behavior, and I had no control over my behavior and that I was broken…

So yeah, I really healed that mindset over the last number of years and I feel like that is the root that has to happen in conjunction with metabolic healing. Also, we really need a deep dive investigate on hormones, thyroid function, nutrient deficiencies…. Many comprehensive weight loss programs do not do that. Or they do it really lightly and they don’t know the functional ranges of optimal level levels that actually make people feel better. They only depend on the numbers on the page and they are not ever taught that symptomology should really guide treatment.

We gotta understand that research was done, mostly on middle-aged white men and most definitely not on a lot of women, and that we all have these different genetic make ups and that our DNA is complex and amazing and wild and I personally feel like everyone tolerates different diets optimally and that’s why not one diet is the answer. I also feel like there cannot be one optimal range that is set for every different race, sex, gender, type of metabolism, it’s so multi complicated and multifaceted. It’s so layered and different for every single different little human being.

So to wrap it all up, as I said, here we are. Proactive Wellness. I have created this business because my actual passion and purpose in this world is to help people become proactive about their whole person Wellness. I’ve created this business because I know that there are other providers out there that would like to work for someone who has a business like this. I have a vision to employ other providers to provide them with the knowledge and the platform to connect people with the care that they actually need.

2025 is my practice what you preach year. I’ve been preaching to myself that I have to open my own business for at least 13 years if not, since the age of 12 when I started envisioning opening my own psych practice, focused in art therapy.

I have manifested and envisioned this business. I have felt what it would feel like to be that person successful in this goal. I have felt what it would feel like to connect people with health and healing into build deep interpersonal relationships for long-term connections with a provider who actually listens, cares, is accessible… and comes up with personal, individualized treatment plans, using precision medicine and functional medicine with an integrative approach, sprinkled with mainstream medicine when needed.

All of these things are tools in our toolboxes and I will not give up. I am here for the long run and I cannot wait to build my Patient population. I cannot wait to build the Proactive Wellness inner circle. I cannot wait to meet you, connect with you and help you become proactive about your whole personal wellness.