Forty Years of Learning What Actually Heals
I'm Sharon. The last fifteen years, I've been unlearning everything I was taught about what a doctor is supposed to be. It's been the best work of my life.
The Story
When I was eleven years old, walking in the forest, I had a transformational experience. I experienced myself as connected with all of life. There was a sparkly light connecting me, the trees, the earth, and the sky. That experience of awe and connection has stayed with me my entire life.
That's why I chose the path I did. I studied comparative religions in high school and college. I got a degree in environmental biology and ecology. I went to medical school with a focus on training in a regional trauma center, learning the language of Western medicine so I could speak what I knew: that connection matters, that the material and the energetic are one.
For sixteen years, I was blessed to teach integrative healing in medical schools and residencies, creating bridges between Eastern and Western healing practices. I taught residents that energy and material, quantum and chemistry, spirit and structure all belong in the same conversation.
Then life asked me to step back. I spent a chapter raising my daughter and caring for my aging parents. Six years of applying everything I knew, Western medicine, shamanic practice, prayer, presence, to support them through their own journeys. I called it an assignment because that's what it was. A calling I had to honor.
And then I realized: the work that moved me most was never the medicine I could give people. It was the presence I could hold for them. That regulated, healthy presence. That's the medicine.
I'm called now to teach the teachers. To help practitioners and healers come back to center. To show leaders that prevention science and comprehensive, interdisciplinary brain health exist, and they don't live in mainstream medicine yet. I know how to orchestrate it.
Most importantly: I'm not guessing about what this costs a family. I lived it.
Credentials Plus Forty Years of Listening
Board certified in family medicine, 1990 to 2022, recertified 2026 to present. Sixteen years as faculty in two university integrative medicine programs. Medical director of a community health center that served people others had written off. Trauma center trained. ICUs, nursing homes, hospice, private practice, and now at NAVA Health, one of the fastest-growing functional medicine platforms in the country.
The Life Behind the Work
One of my favorite healthcare practices is walking barefoot on the earth. I volunteer in a local greenhouse so I can have the pleasure of dirt under my feet all year round. I continue to learn about comparative religions. I'm curious about individual and community relationships with the source of healing.
I have the honor of having been a mother to an amazing daughter who has a special superpower for caring for people and families living with a diagnosis of dementia.
Early influences on how I practice medicine: I worked as a waitress in high school to pay for my first year of college. The practice of offering people a menu of nourishing options continues to influence my medicine. I know with every fiber of my being that people may need to invest in the main course to get the most nourishing results. Frequently, people want to start with appetizers or dessert before committing to more changes. Both are valid. I respect people's capacity to choose where they want to start their healing journey.
I dance whenever I get the chance. On my birthday this July, I started the morning processing garlic from the greenhouse and ended my day taking a sunset walk in the foothills with a new friend.