Jacksonville University

Am I from here? I will always tell people that I am not from Jacksonville, but I feel of Jacksonville.

I fell in love with Jacksonville University and Jacksonville as a city when I was a freshman in high school.

My best friend's older sister went to JU for like a wink, and then went back up north to go to school, but it stayed in my heart.

And then, you know, a couple years later, I applied and got an incredible scholarship and was able to go to JU and create my own journey and way.

And I may have some things on the reverse that work really f- well for me but may not be for you.

So I think knowing yourself and your leadership style and being able to try on different experiences was really powerful with these mentors.

Uh, Fran Kinney, Dr. Frances Bartley Kinney, was the first female president of Jacksonville University, and she was a dynamo I mean, she just, she had movie stars buy in with JU.

She was helping to just love on people in a way that was intentional.

She's a nutritionist, too, who did that.

She's currently the president, eh, the interim president of Jacksonville University in Florida.

Um, and I had met her maybe 20 years ago when she was working for Anheuser.

And then I saw her again when she was consulting for Walmart about their n- nutrition efforts.

I had talked to Lisa Sutherland about doing this book, and then we lost touch.

Maybe I should just tell her that I'm doing this." So I tracked her down.

I was able to track her down to Jacksonville University and wrote her n- that this is what I'm gonna do.

And she wrote back and said, "I'm doing this with you." And we were off and running.

When do we stop treating the consequences and start addressing the cause? That question sent her on a path that took her from bedside nursing to a doctoral internship at True North Health Center, one of the country's leading centers for medically supervised plant-based care, where she trained alongside some of the most respective names in lifestyle medicine.

she went on to work in inpatient pediatric psychiatry spent years growing as a clinician and educator and ultimately founded her own integrative mental health practice during the pandemic dr elizabeth weinings is a board-certified psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner a diplomat of the american college of lifestyle medicine an assistant professor of nursing at Jacksonville University, and, as if that's not enough, the founder of Winings Wellness, a practice of seven nurse practitioners delivering preventive, lifestyle-integrated mental health care to children, adolescents, and adults in Florida.

In this conversation, we go deep on the bi-directional relationship between what you eat and how you feel mentally.

We talk about the neuroscience of emotions, why your neurotransmitters are literally built from the amino acids in your food, what preventative mental health care actually looks like in practice, the grief and identity dimensions of cancer survivorship that most of us in medicine skip over, and why reducing stigma around mental health requires meeting people inside the communities and cultures they already trust.

And I tracked her down.

She's now the president of Jacksonville University in Florida.

And she said, I'm doing this book with you.

And that's what we did.

It ended up not working out because I was going to go a different route, and that other route ended up not working.

So my older brother, he had reached out to his old – defensive coordinator he had played at Jacksonville Jacksonville yeah JU Jacksonville University and uh he asked sending my transcripts he's like listen these are my brother's transcripts like does he have any eligibility to play college football and they came back and told him that I had one semester of eligibility left I was 26 at the time I had one semester one semester of eligibility left to only play d2 I couldn't play d1 or fcs or anything like that Um, and luckily he was, uh, he was a head coach at Tuscaloosa university.

So they flew me out there and they gave me a workout and, uh, ended up going there for just a semester.

Um, got enrolled there, played for one semester, had a pretty good year.

Only played a few games.

Uh, didn't really make it in and now he's heading to Jacksonville.

Yeah.

And anytime a kid with size isn't able to break through in the rotation and they're not a freshman, uh, it probably is an indication that they're at the wrong level.

Yeah.

It tells a story.

He's gone back down a level to Jacksonville, probably the right move.

Uh, I do like the name though.

I am a resident of Florida, and that's where my story starts in Jacksonville, Florida.

I was 19 years old playing baseball at Jacksonville University.

It was my freshman year, and I went in with really high expectations.

I was a pretty good pitcher on track to kind of play the game for a long time.

Yeah.

Now, you went to Jacksonville University where my parents actually met and graduated, and, uh, that's a great, great, uh, university.

Go Dolphins, right?

Yep, go D- Dolphins is right.