Everyone Told Me to Niche Down. My Newsletter Hit 17K When I Stopped Listening.

The truth is, if you have heard it, you have likely only heard half of it because most people use it as an insult.

When I was 15 years old, I was on my school swim team. I made it to sectionals a couple of times and had this insane potential to be REALLY, REALLY good, or so my coach told me. But I was also REALLY good at cheerleading, dance, and running. I was good at a lot of things… my whole life. I never wanted to just choose one thing, because I genuinely enjoyed doing all of the things. Because of this, I would be running from swim practice to dance and from dance to cheerleading, and I never thought there was anything wrong with that.

Everyone around me, in high school at the time, had settled into their ONE sport, and I just never settled into mine. I thought it made me unique, but more than anything, there was just no way for me to pick between multiple things that I loved. So I didn’t. One day, I was leaving early when my coach yelled out to me, “You're a jack of all trades and a master of none”.

….. So yeah, you can probably gather from that that he was an asshole. He was, but he also just wanted me to be something I was not. I was insulted, but just kept it moving as I normally did when he made a rude comment, but the words played in the back of my head through college and even medical school. What’s interesting is that it wasn’t until my second year in medical school that someone actually told me the FULL quote. “Jack of all trades, master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one”…. it literally broke my mind wide open.

I realized that I spent all this time beating myself down and judging myself for not being able to fully commit to ONE thing, when in reality, the fact that I have never been able to commit to ONE singular thing is what makes me such an asset and unique person in this world.

I thought I’d tell this story in my third "Get to Know Me”, because I want to walk you through what I actually write about inside of A Black Woman’s Apothecary, but I honestly could not do that without revealing to you why I will never ever in my life subscribe to the false idea that you can only be good at one thing.

It is why while I was in medical school, I was teaching yoga, and while I was learning Western medicine, I was also learning Traditional and ancestral medicines. It is why I love science and research, and also will read someone’s medical astrology chart to figure out what is making someone sick. It is why I love natural skincare and a full-beat face and makeup that won’t break me out. I love fashion and sustainability, and I am crunchy and chic. I’m a conundrum, and this Apothecary is an extension of me.

It is meant to exist inside of the in-between space, and if I only talked about one niche, ie, the body and health, then I would not only be doing a disservice to you all as my readers, you deserve to benefit from EVERYTHING I carry wisdom about, but also to myself. It takes more energy to fit inside a box than I am actually willing to give.

So, because of that, each time you receive this newsletter, you will get a little something about EVERYTHING I actually care about….

As a medical doctor and biochemist, I think the reason is clear why this will be a part of this newsletter. But I don’t just talk about the generic topics you may see most doctors or wellness influencers talk about on social media. I am all about getting to the ROOT of our issues. Not wellness for wellness sake, but the real science behind why this works and why this doesn’t.

The ancestral practices that supported our bodies for ages, and the truth behind why most of us are sick to begin with. This is unfiltered advice from a crunchy doctor that genuinely just wants to leave the world a healthier place than I found it. I connect things no other doctors will, and my purpose in this lifetime is to make it palatable for you and to empower you to understand your body in the way your doctor likely dismissed.

I know, I know, what doctor that is crunchy cares about beauty? Well, the doctor, who is also a biochemist and has been reading and dissecting products and chemicals since she can remember. My interest likely stems from my struggle with acne at a very young age and my constant battle with what people were telling me to do with my skin.

I just needed to learn it for myself, and because I have dedicated so much time and effort to learning this stuff, I share the truth… the ins and outs of the clean beauty industry here. Ie, what skincare products actually work and why, what makeup products are worth the hype and the price, and what is actually in all of that from a biochemical perspective. Because I’m crunchy, you’ll get a bit of my natural skincare dos and don’ts as well, which my mom has been teaching me since I could walk.

I left medicine at the age of 29 with no blueprint for how I was going to begin living the life of my dreams, just an understanding that the life I was living was making me sick from the inside out. I had the courage to walk a path that no one else in my lineage was able to walk, and in doing so, I have paved out my dream life, step by step.

It is not easy, and honestly, it is very messy, but my hope here is to give you the inspiration, insight, and understanding that I needed when I was living a life that was, for all intensive purposes, killing me. Whether it is a relationship, a job, a place, or a situation that is keeping you from living a life of your dreams, your health reflects your life. I learned it the hard way, but I genuinely believe I went through that to show you all what is actually possible for you.

It is thought-provoking personal essays written from the messy, honest middle of someone who left a linear path, rebuilt from the ground up, and is still in it. Not from the other side with all the answers. From inside the process, with the courage to tell the truth about what it actually looks like.

This may seem left field coming from a doctor and biochemist, but is it really??? We are 50-60% water, and if the moon controls tidal patterns, I feel like it is only scientifically obvious that the planet’s gravitational fields impact our health and quality of life.

Medical astrologers are hard to find on a good day, but my medical background actually helps me to see past some of the difficult aspects of medical astrology and to actually channel meaningful messages that will change how you interact with mainstream health and wellness content. The reality is, you have a blueprint for how your body was made and the things your body struggles with, and it is all visible and apparent inside of your birth chart.

I read birth charts like I read lab results, with a physiologic understand and the experience of someone who used their birth chart to heal and understand their own body.

The truth is, A Black Woman’s Apothecary is all about empowerment at the end of the day. The tools and resources to make choices and decisions for yourself that will change your life at its core. This isn’t surface-level information that is written for the sake of writing something; this is everything that has changed my life from the inside out, written by someone with the degree and experience to back it up.

I believe I became a doctor to go on this journey with you all - to give you the truth and the realness at the bottom of each of these different topics, and help support you in choosing life and health differently. I pour my heart into everything I write, because at the end of the day, I was always meant to be a writer. I was always meant to become a biochemist and doctor, and then to return to my one true love and bridge the gaps between them.

So, anyway, I am done being told to niche down. I am done trying to make myself smaller to make other people comfortable. I will be writing about all the things in these realms that light me up, and in doing so, you’ll likely learn something that will change your life.

In all of these areas, I have gifts that I was always really afraid of embracing, but embracing more of myself is what led my to Substack and grew A Black Woman’s Apothecary beyond what I ever imagined, it is what got me scouted for my dream job (shhh I’ll share more later 😲), and it is what has made my life one step closer to the life I always dreamed of living.

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