I’d been seeing him for a few months for stomach pain, but the treatments didn’t help. Eventually he said “There’s something in you that isn’t ready to heal, and you need to figure out what that is.”

That shook me up. I realized that he repeatedly asked me about stress, and I always said “I’m fine.” The reality is that I was dealing with constant anxiety and unacknowledged trauma. But I didn’t share that with him, because . . . what did that have to do with my digestion? I didn’t yet understand how deeply linked mind and body are.

Eventually I got honest with myself. I started doing yoga and meditating. I began working through my issues. And the stomach pain went away.

It was the beginning of a giant shift in what I understood about health and being human.

A few years later, I tried acupuncture again when I was dealing with pregnancy-induced hypertension and postpartum anxiety. This time it worked. Not only did my symptoms improve, but during a treatment I felt a deep intuition about who our baby would be. (I was right.)

It took more time for everything to click, but eventually I realized that my experiences and my longstanding interest in women’s health were leading me down a new path.