Nicole Natal (11:08)
Now I'm a shopping writer at People magazine. So I can, I guess, tell the story of how I'm in this situation now. So when I was in New York City, this was. I forget the, the exact date, but I was around my mid-20s and I was working for Prevention magazine at the time. And you know, like I said earlier, I didn't have any experience really with writing. I didn't study journalism. So I kind of had to like focus, fight and claw my way into the magazine world in New York City, which everybody else in the whole world is also trying to do that. So with no experience, I kind of had to figure out a way to make it work. And the formula of, you know, working hard to get what you want kind of proved to be true for me. Like, I did work really hard and I fought my way. And then I got this job that was like my dream job at the time when I was in my younger 20s, like 23ish, and I was interviewing celebrities at the time. I was going to Fashion Week, you know, in the evening, evening and all of these events. And really I was like living what my dream was for myself at that moment, you know, and then my days were extremely long because of that. I was up at 6:00am, I'd run, you know, six miles or I do a workout class, come home, drink a coffee on an empty stomach, go into work, work for about 10 hours with, you know, plus an event in the evening, come home, go to bed, 10pm and then just wake up and do it again. So eventually I started to develop ovarian cysts. So my, these little cysts that can formulate on our ovaries. You know, science will tell you that we're not exactly sure what the cause of these is, you know, from a physical standpoint, but you know, out of the blue we can say. Even though looking back, I know I can understand why they formed. Probably my lifestyle and environment had a little bit to do with it. Um, but yeah, they started to burst every about three to four months, three to five months sometimes. And that was a cycle that lasted about three and a half years for me. And I, I tried every single means to find healing. Like at first I was kind of like, whoa, like, what is this? I don't understand it. I don't know anything about like my reproductive system at all, you know, and then even more so, it was beginning to impact my work. So not only physically, I was in a lot of pain and. And I was in and out of the er, but also mentally, it was. So it put me in a deep state of distress and fear, and I developed a lot of health anxiety because I was always waiting for the next time that one of my ovaries, one of these cysts would burst. And then you go into the hospital, and then they check your ovary, and they let you know if your ovary had survived or not and if it was still healthy. So there was just a lot. And then on top of it, you know, bouncing between different doctors, like, getting diagnosed with PCOS during one of these scans over the years, and then getting handed a pamphlet about pcos and also just not understanding anything about it, the trauma, you know, in that decision. So, anyway, long story short, I tried a bunch of different health modalities to find healing. You know, yoga, acupuncture, of course, energy work. Like, I tried functional medicine, and all of them were so healing and so important. But nothing stopped my cystic because I was continuing to live the same lifestyle in New York City. And I'll never forget the moment I was laying on the floor in my apartment in New York City on the phone with that same Reiki master and a therapist from high school, and she was like, so, Nicole, do you think that maybe New York City being a magazine editor isn't the right path for you? And I just sobbed because my whole identity shattered. I'm like, what do you mean? I just built this up from the foundation. I worked so hard. Like, I'm doing it. You know, everybody wants this job, and I did it, you know, but something in me knew that she was right. And it was really. It's. It crushed my soul. Like, the whole foundation crumbled. And that's what I, deep down, I think, was scared to confront. It was all those moments of hiding in the meditation temple and pushing away those abilities, not talking about it because, you know, the whole football team finds out in college, and then you're getting made fun of, and it was the whole thing. But in that moment, I was like, oh, I'm not accepting this identity of myself, you know? So I knew that I had to make a drastic change. And it took me a little bit, but Covid sort of happened, and I. I moved to Florida for a while, and then we got told, okay, don't come back to New York City. It's Covid, you know, So I. A couple Months before that, went to Hawaii. Like, before COVID had a vacation. I looked around and saw a completely different lifestyle where people were outside. They were with family, friends in community, connected to nature. It was the middle of the day, and people are on the beach. And this was very different than New York City, where people are in these cubicles and working so hard, and you can not barely smile at anybody. And just a lot of anger and stress and just way different energy. It was a lot softer. It was slower. So I started getting the call to think about moving to Hawaii. And Even so, in 2019, June, before that, I had surgery, you know, to remove a large ovarian cyst. It didn't burst. It was just sitting on my ovary and putting it at risk for torsion or something more dangerous. And after that surgery, I couldn't work out the same way that my, like, college athlete self was used to. And that was the whole point. So for a whole year, I wasn't able to really, like, run or move my body. And that's how I found yoga, because my body wanted a way to move, but I couldn't find exactly how to do that without my actual belly, like, distending. It would actually get swollen. And it was because my body needed me to slow all the way down. So at that point when Covid was happening, we got told, you know, this was January 2021, told to go home, and I was living in Florida, and I decided to book a yoga teacher training in Hawaii to become a yoga instructor. And I was so afraid to tell my editor in chief at Prevention magazine at the time. I'll never forget that meeting I had with her over Zoom. I was like, I'm gonna do it. And we got on the meeting, and I said, hey, I have a flight booked to Hawaii in three weeks. I said, I'm gonna have to step down. My body is too sick. I was unable to find healing anymore. And I said, I really need to do this. Like, I just need to heal. And I was crying. And, you know, she looked at me, and she was like, you have to do what's best for you. And putting yourself first in a world like this, that's really hard to do, and that's really brave. And she ended up actually dedicating the 2022 January editor's letter in Prevention magazine to that decision to move to Hawaii.