About Me

Hi, I am Yulia. I am here to share stories of my personal transformations that hopefully will help someone else. I am passionate about personal growth and I wanted to share my thoughts with the world on how to get closer to your best version of yourself a little bit at a time.
In my day to day life I am a full time physician and live in the Greater Toronto Area. I enjoy travel, gardening and good food. I will be sharing some of the finds or tips and tricks on that too as it is my outlet to the world on everything I think might serve someone else.(Please see my affiliate disclosure).

I was born in a developing (at the time) country in a family that often struggled to put food on a table. My parents died young and poor. I won’t go much into details of all the challenges I faced in my early life, but witnessing everything they went through I had to learn how to not repeat their story. How to take good care of myself not only financially, but also physically and emotionally, so that I get to live to enjoy the products of the hard work I knew I needed to put in (that was the only way I knew about – to work harder and harder to get anywhere). The only thing that was available to me when I was a kid and that was free was access to the library. So I studied hard, hungrily learning about biology and psychology, learning about all aspects of human life was fascinating for me. I went on to complete a degree in biochemistry. Then I got a chance to move to Canada and had to start all over again. I could not find a job in my field – my English was not great, my Ukrainian degree was not competitive on the job market, and I had no connections. I have had one dream since I was a kid – to be a doctor. I did not dare to apply to med school back home as my family told me we could not afford it, but now I was at square one. I saw an opportunity in a challenge and went all in for my dream. There were many people who thought I had no chance of getting in, who discouraged me saying it is competitive, I am “too old”, my “English needs to be better” etc etc – but I still gave it a shot. I can talk about the mindset of achieving your goals or making your dreams come true at a later time, but long story short – I got in. And from there on, my journey continued. There were many more challenges I faced in med school and residency, and then early practice – it seemed that “life will get better once I finish X degree/training/other accomplishment”, but it was only an illusion. Finally, I hit a breaking point where I had to keep working, because of the demands of my profession, the debt, the bills, the feeling like “this is what everyone else is doing so should I” … but there was nothing else in me to give. I was a miserable, exhausted, emotionally dysregulated mess (at least inside – the culture of medicine teaches us to appear put together even if we are at the end of our rope). I felt I was living in a fast lane speeding up every day and life was just passing by while I hustle.

At that point I had to critically reevaluate my values and my mental scripts of why I lived the way I lived, why I worked myself “to death” and submitted to the culture of ignoring my emotional and physical needs that is so prevalent in my profession (funny eh? We preach to patients to exercise, get enough sleep, meditate, eat healthy, walk in nature, nurture relationships but not many of us have the time to practice it in our lives). That culture of overwork I am sure is not unique to medicine.
Well, to be completely honest I did some of the things to preserve myself even before and in med school, like mindfulness practice (I believe loving kindness meditations got me through the clerkship with the constant feeling of being inadequate and some intimidating seniors or preceptors/staff). Anyway, I have a lot to share on that at some other time.
Finally, after many transformations that took me a couple of years and are still ongoing, I was able to find a way to live in peace with myself and maintain love for my profession. I did not want to resent my job – I always wanted to be helping people to live longer, healthier lives. But there are limitations to what I can do as a doctor, and there is so much more I can offer to this world, there is so much more to share beyond medicine that I learned on my journey.
There have been many things I was able to change because of my deep passion for self development and continuous learning in the fields of psychotherapy, health, medicine, meditation and yoga. I read a ton of books and attended a lot of courses (and continue to do so) to get to where I am now. Of course, there are many ways to get to a better place in your life, not just one. I believe there is a buffet of things that we all can pick and choose from. I wanted to share with you things that I find helpful personally, not as a doctor (please note I am writing this not as a physician, but as a fellow human). If you are someone, who ever struggled with managing the life’s hamster wheel because of multiple commitments or job responsibilities, highly demanding profession or a caregiver role, constantly running out of time and energy to attend to what matters (and sometimes because you are running around so fast you don’t even always get to slow down and think what is it that matters anyway?) – you belong here. If you are someone who ever suffers from self doubt, or feeling inadequate, feeling like you need to prove your worth to the world – I am with you. Listen, I often work 76 hours a week and I really struggled to get my life together for a long time. I learned to let go of some things, and to get crystal clear on my values and what’s important, and prioritize implementing things that will soothe my nervous system and allow it to recover so I can be my best self and show up to the world as a better version of myself. To be clear, I am not encouraging anyone to work that hard or that many hours! The things I learned are not meant to make me work more – however, sometimes we live in circumstances where we are either running a crazy consuming business, or, as many full time working moms do – have two jobs: one at work and one at home that amount for way more hours then I work.
Nothing is still in this ever changing world, and new challenges will keep arising every day – therefore, it will always be a work in progress for me. You are welcome to follow along and rise up from a place of internal mess to a place where you find your true self, your inner Goddess that we all have. To be continued…