Living Life Fully

Ha! I can hear you now, “there she goes again with that living life fully garbagio! What the heck does she really mean by this anyway?”

Several years ago I was sick. I was very sick. I went from my general practitioner to my gynecologist, then to an endocrinologist and a urologist. Oh, let’s not forget the gastroenterologist, the hematologist, a dermatologist… and yup, of course the therapist. And guess what? NO ONE offered me any tangible reason for the symptoms I was experiencing. Yet each doctor did prescribe the magical pill they thought could help me get better, even though they did not know what was wrong with me. Hmmm? Whuhhh?

But bouncing from doctor to doctor to doctor was NOT the biggest problem. No. The biggest problem was who I was becoming as my body was breaking down.

While my body was breaking down, my confidence dropped. Dropped? No. Vanished. Kaput! Gone. I was losing my sense of self as my body broke down. I developed acute anxiety, but no one could tell me why. I had all sorts of digestive/elimination problems, but no one could tell me why. My face broke out with a cystic acne, and no one could explain why. My brain would not work. I could not remember anything. I could not focus. I could not concentrate. No. Matter. How. Hard. I. Tried. And no one could tell me why.

I went to a local Univesity and took ONE class. Yes. Just one. I created study partners. I worked with 2 study groups. I even met with the professor several times to try to figure out a way that I could remember what I was working every waking hour of the day on to remember, to no avail. But my brain would simply not work. I felt stupid, and this is a word I do not use. But this IS the word that I internalized, this is the word that took over me. Stupid. And ugly. And afriad. Then.

This was my life. I looked sick. I felt sick. I WAS sick. I had no confidence. My brain would not work. And I lived in a fearful, anxiety-filled state. Living life fully? Um. Not so much.

But lightening struck and “the” decided moment that changed the course of my life came one afternoon as I waited for my Zanax prescription to be filled. As I waited, the pharmacist told me the doctor wanted to talk to me personally. You see, I had expressed great concern to the pharmacist about taking the recommended dosage. That I was so petite, I explained, I would fall on my face if I took that much medication. I didn’t even want to take it, but the symptoms were real. She agreed and called the office.

The doctor said, “I thought you said you trusted me?” “I do, but that much medication,” I explained, “is too strong for me. I felt dizzy when I took it, like I couldn’t even drive.”  He said “look, do you know what will happen if you don’t take the medication as I prescribed it? Panic Attacks. And do you know what happens after that? Suicide.”

Done. In that moment, as sick as I was, I knew something was very, very wrong. In that moment I made a conscious decision to find someone, anyone to help me. But I knew NO one to recommend someone to me. I knew no one to go to. I knew NO one who subscribed to natural approaches to well-being. I forged a path where no path existed, but my Grace was that I intuitively knew that something was terribly wrong and that I had to do something.

So I sought out every natural doctor, practitioner, healer, teacher and mentor I could find to help me pin down the reasons for my health problems. The gift of it all? I shifted the whole course of my life in the process.

I graduated Cum Laude with Honors on a full-scholarship from the first women’s college in this country, Mount Holyoke College. I graduated Magna Cum Laude with Honors on half a scholarship from Boston College. I attended Cornell University and the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I studied intensively with Anthony Robbins, Robbins International and Landmark Education. I attended marketing maven Marie Forleo’s B-School and completed my first yoga teacher training with Live Love Teach. I spent one month in Italy and France and another month in Ireland, and… I walked on fire! 

What do these accolades and experiences really represent? For me, they all represent only one thing that really matters to me, and that is, IF we fuel our body as it was designed to function, everything, absolutley everything is possible.

This IS what I mean when I say “it’s NOT about food, it is about living life fully,” because now I am literally actualizing dreams I never even imagined existed.