I was accepted into the MPH program at University of Washington in 2017.
In March that year, though, I had a life-changing encounter with a medicine man. I asked him what he thought I should know about public health.
In response, he realigned my energy—like a spiritual chiropractor—so severely that my words made no sense to anyone for the next two years. Western Medicine called it clinical psychosis.
I became mute for a full year, and homeless for three.
No one could help me out of the pit of confusion and despair I’d tumbled into. But the way forward was clear, if incomprehensible.
I got a CDL and started driving a semi truck in 2019.
I learned more in that truck than any university program could’ve taught me. I listened to audiobooks and podcasts. I rolled the windows down and heard the wind whispering in the trees. I grew to appreciate silence.
I learned to be still.
I learned gratitude, and how to stop trying to control what I cannot change. I learned to discern, and better influence, what I can.
If I’d gone to grad school in 2017, I would’ve kept suppressing my happiness and basic emotional needs. I was already burnt out from social work and mostly-unpaid DEI consulting in public health before I even started.
“Just 2 more years,” I told myself, already fantasizing about the “finish line” before I began.
I would’ve pushed through the pain because “this work is important.”
I would’ve graduated in 2019—just in time to get hit with the Covid pandemic at my new job. No rest or healing would’ve awaited me.
Today, I’d be unemployed, like virtually everyone in my former field, whose departments were just eliminated by the U.S. government.
I’d also be $60,000 deeper in debt for a degree I now can’t use—despite its necessity to our collective survival.
Thousands of hours I spent in that truck, feeling out of place, wondering why my life took this turn, what I’d done wrong, how to make it right. I lived in the truck full time—even on “days off.”
That realignment in March 2017 made me incapable of betraying myself anymore, and it spared me that harsher fate. Trucking allowed me to pay my bills, even while others panicked and struggled through 2020. It gave me insight, too.
It grew me into a more effective leader in real public health—not just the kind universities co-sign.
Whatever you’re going through, I won’t patronize you with “everything happens for a reason.”
But I will remind you:
You didn’t come this far to only come this far.
There is healing on the other side of whatever pit you’re in—if you choose to:
🌱 sit with yourself
🌱 listen to your heart
🌱 name your values and write them down
🌱 choose your integrity over fear
Water the seeds of thought in your mind like everything depends on their fruits.
And if you need guidance from someone who’s made it back from the pit of despair and learned to thrive, 🌐 www.realbelonging.org is where you can book time with me.
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