Meet Mary Khadivi

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Mary Khadivi a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Mary, thank you for joining us today and sharing your experiences and acquired wisdom with us. Burnout is a huge topic these days and so we’d love to kick things off by discussing your thoughts on overcoming or avoiding burnout

There’s one addiction that’s not spoken about enough: stress addiction. I didn’t realize how deeply entrenched I was, frenetically chasing productivity, until my body said “no more”. It wasn’t until 2021 that I found out I had Lyme disease and accompanying infections but digging back in my timeline, I can pinpoint symptoms as early as grade school. In high school and furthermore in college as a pre-vet major, I dismissed my developing symptoms with the fact that everyone around me was tired, probably not nailing their nutrition and overworked. Post college, my symptoms continued to escalate until 2020 when my health essentially collapsed. I spent over a month in a blackout curtain-ed room with a consuming migraine that wouldn’t break. My stomach was both starving and so nauseated it felt impossible to eat. I would drag myself to the bathroom and lay on the floor for hours in misery. The ER and urgent care doctors sent me off with “labs that looked good!” And “I don’t have any other ideas for you.”. I’ve never felt more powerless and despairing in my life.

Obviously, I didn’t knowingly do something to contract Lyme disease but looking back, I DO see ways that I fostered an environment for disease to thrive. Internally, I suffocated my feelings in order to people please, ran from conflict, filled my schedule WAY too full, failed to have boundaries and constantly pushed my body – overriding its aggravating warning lights. Physically I stayed up late scrolling since I had insomnia anyways, constantly dieted, skimped on sleep to fulfill extra work hours or classes, had caffeine and no food for the first 1/2-2/3 of most days and didn’t pay attention to ingredients of personal products.

In 2020, I was laid off like many others, which was simultaneously devastating and precisely what I needed to spend time intensely investigating a root cause and giving my full focus to healing. Prior to this point, I had hired 3 primary care physicians, 3 physical therapists, 6 chiropractors, 3 dentists, 1 pulmonologist, 1 pain specialist, 1 gastroenterologist, 1 neurologist, 2 radiologists, 2 physician assistants, dozens of nurses, 2 dietitians, 1 optometrist and countless ER and Urgent care doctors. The threat of accumulating debt was imminent with the countless blood lab panels, urine tests, stool tests, trigger point injections, MRIs, sleep studies I’d undergone – all to continually hear in response: “your labs look good!”.

Since 2020, I’ve worked with various functional medicine practitioners who have been the first to find true root causes to my mysterious, chronic symptoms and through many lifestyle changes I’ve experienced TREMENDOUS healing. As I learned about a preventative, holistic approach I’d realized how many of my eating, lighting environment, personal product usage and exercise habits were actually contributing to more stress on my body. It’s not just the physical, exterior changes that need addressing – but your interior life, too. Knee deep in therapy and a specialized chiropractic approach called Korren Specific Technique, I discovered countless coping patterns I’d developed that ignored my body’s gut reactions both in favor of keeping the peace and because I’d grown to distrust it.

I’m not the only one either – there’s a legitimate pipeline of being the oldest daughter or the person with the “nice/empathetic” personality straight to an autoimmune diagnosis. Dr. Gabor Maté describes this phenomenon from his clinical experience in his book “When The Body Says No”:

“Time after time, it was the “nice” people, the ones who compulsively put other’s expectations and needs ahead of their own and who repressed their so called negative emotions, who showed up with chronic illness in my family practice, or who came under my care at the hospital palliative ward I directed.”

Now, I imperfectly approach healing and avoiding burnout six ways:
1. Pinpointing and noticing the habits I do when I start getting stressed (A few I’ve learned I tend towards: making exorbitant to-do lists, increased ruminating thoughts at night, listening to music/podcasts at all hours of the day with no silence)
2. Protecting physical needs: an early bedtime, slow morning, ample protein intake, workout
3. Prioritizing morning light (skies before screens) and grounding
4. Not making decisions during times of day that I feel worst
5. After I spend time processing/journaling, ensuring I tell a close friend about how I’m feeling so I’m not ruminating in it alone
6. Writing down facts (I’m not responsible for other people’s decisions or emotions, relationships are a two way street) and principles I want to live out in this new version of a non stress addicted life (I want to be in relationships where we honor each others time, have boundaries, can deliver honest feelings with tact etc)

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I’ve had such an interesting last few years with building a brand on social media! In 2020 I was knee deep in switching my personal and household products to clean and safe ones at the instruction of my practitioner, so I ended up building a Young Living business online. As I learned about personal branding, I niched down to what I called “Chronic Pain Ownership” because all I saw in chronic pain Facebook groups and instagram comment sections were despair spirals, tragedy forecasting and depressing, sardonic language about only a grim future ahead. We focused on what was in our control, creativity when we felt stuck and finding a way to hold both reality and hope for change. “Stuck is optional” was our motto!

Fast forward to 2023 when I realized how many incredible, competent practitioners had tech capacity and protocols to help people heal from their chronic symptoms but the practitioner’s social media did NOT display that. Pairing the social media training I invested in to learn skills like copywriting, engagement, email marketing and niching down with my extensive experience as a chronic pain client, I began coaching holistic healthcare practitioners. We refined their strategy by elevating pieces like the way they wrote Instagram captions, how they made offers to work with them in Instagram stories, what verbiage was in their bio and how they led discovery calls through workshops, mini challenges, eBooks and 1:1 coaching calls.

While that work has been immensely purposeful and life-giving (especially given my healing journey), I realized I need to step back a bit from constant health information that fills my feed. Simultaneously, I decided to take a brief break from Lyme + coinfection treatment and solely focus on upping my protein and optimizing my sleep by prioritizing specific light markers throughout the day. Remember, I have had insomnia for YEARS, the last time I remember sleeping through the night was around 2006. It has gotten better with my protocols but I’m not quite (yet) sleeping through the night. Within a few weeks of prioritizing getting sunrise and UVA rise into my bare eyes for 5-10 minutes most mornings, my sleep improved immensely!! I was finally getting drowsy at night rather than staring at the ceiling, disgruntled, wired but VERY tired. My frequent stomachaches started to diminish, chronic acne began disappearing and my energy which was historically in LOW supply, began to climb. All to the point where I began walking 8-10K steps a day and lifting 3-4 times a week (a wild change from being nearly bedridden!).

Because of these tremendous changes from small, FREE tweaks, I began digging into the science behind light and our circadian rhythms – shocked that it wasn’t more heavily emphasized by my previous practitioners. I began imperfectly incorporating more circadian principles to try to mimic what the outdoor lighting was while I was inside: dimming lights after sunset, changing my room lamp to a red bulb, wearing blue light blockers and eating seasonally (all as I could – nothing perfectly!). I’ve always intuitively enjoyed and craved the sun, but the more I learn the science behind it and it’s TREMENDOUS healing power, the more I’m hungry to work cubicle free and equip everyone I can with this life-changing information!! I had been cold emailing circadian aligned and holistic brands about remote work for nearly a year and am now in the interview process with one. Stay tuned!

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

1. A quote I heard from my business coach and have on a letter board in my room: “Stuck is optional”. There is ALWAYS something you can do. We absolutely need to honor our reality while also not nurturing a victim mindset. This applies to business building but also healing. One of the most impactful things my first functional practitioner empowered me with was that I was hiring my doctors which also meant I could fire them. If they’re not doing a satisfactory job, part ways with them and find someone else who can get you answers (no matter how nice they are).

2. The word “and”. Especially in crisis we can get stuck in all or nothing thinking that sweeps over nuances and escalates our pain. Two things can be true at the same time. You have chronic migraines AND there might be more options out there to heal that you haven’t discovered yet. Showing up on Instagram feels really uncomfortable right now AND that could change as you have more practice.

3. I’m by no means a conventional medicine hater – it can be lifesaving and there’s a need for it to exist. Also, conventional practitioners are not trained with a toolkit equipped to prevent and heal chronic disease the way that functional/holistic practitioners are. When I was spending all my time and money hiring conventional specialists and getting nowhere, I was getting more and more convinced that I was just made wrong and my body would never heal. In reality, my body was fighting SO hard for me while my root causes were festering. It was SO complex, expensive, debilitating and frustrating – but it’s warning lights (acne, eczema, fatigue, headaches, insomnia, etc) are actually a sign of our body’s intelligence. We just need the correctly equipped person to help interpret them.

Before we go, maybe you can tell us a bit about your parents and what you feel was the most impactful thing they did for you?

I’m torn between two things: our education and the way they care for our friends! Both of my parents sacrificed a LOT for our education: homeschooling Kindergarten through 8th grade and then enrollment at a solid Catholic high school. They’ve worked undesirable jobs, shared cars and faced criticism (homeschooling was not popular then like it is now post COVID). My mom was (and still is with her tutor students) really intentional about leaning into our interests with school. For example, I always have been an animal fanatic with plans to become a vet so my mom catered my history lessons around the history of Lipizzaner horses and we wrapped that module by attending one of their shows! My dad has a very caring heart – especially for his fellow foreigners. He has consistently led by example with small, thoughtful gestures: taking food to share with coworkers, seeking out the quietest person in the room who may feel left out and checking in after a loved one experiences a painful anniversary like a parent’s death. Both of them are wildly generous with their time, resources and offer warmth from their hospitable hearts.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themarykhadivi/
• Other: Email – khadivimary@gmail.com
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Image Credits

The very first photo of me with the cat in my hood – photo credits to Brooke Boyington.

The pictures of me in the pink shirt, me in the grass with my back to the camera and me on the walking trail – credits to Cathy Starke.

The photo of me holding both cats – credit to Hossein Orangkhadivi.

The photo of me with the lamb – credit to Hayley Barkoviak.