Love, Loss, and Faith: How Grief, a Cancer Scare, and a Spiritual Journey Transformed My Life

So faith.

I was raised a Catholic.

Honestly, actually, as a child, I loved going to church, and I wanted to be a priest until I found out that women couldn't be priests.

So it's kinda like, well, that's not gonna work out for me.

I made my communion and all the things.

Later in life as an adult, I went through that process, or I was in the process of doing it and then didn't complete it in eighth grade, and then went back and did it in college, actually.

So I was very committed to my faith.

And then when I was 29, my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and passed away within four months.

And you know, that story, I haven't talked about it a lot, but there are a couple of interesting things about the story.

The first is I, of course, started searching for natural and alternative treatments for my mother because I am the doctor I am today because of having the parents that I had.

When I was a child, they...

You know, my mother knew about the microbiome.

We ate homemade yogurt when we were little 'cause she knew about the microbiome.

We had a garden.

She made homemade wholewheat bread.

All of our meals were made at home.

I remember, like, occasionally they'd go out on a date and we'd have, like, a frozen dinner.

My brother loved them.

I thought they were the most disgusting thing.

And so we ate real whole foods growing up.

And my father was a professor of Asian studies and international studies, so he went to China all the time, and he would bring back Chinese herbs.

So if we ever did get sick, which was really pretty rare, then we would take Chinese herbs when we were sick.

You know, here I grew up with these parents that had this open-minded way of thinking about health and knew about the microbiome back in the '70s.

My- They were joggers.

My mother taught yoga.