We Have a Green Light
About this Newsletter, Where to Start, Recs & Resources, The Feel Good Lab and a Stress-Buster Course.
Welcome to The Feel Good Life! A newsletter about health, prevention, empathy, and hope. I’m Dr. Mariana M.D. and I’m here to teach you how to not go to the doctor. Get started by checking my easy, medically-guided course on managing stress and daily habits, right here.
Ok, here we go!
‘It’s time.’
That’s the phrase written on an image I had created seven years ago. One which Facebook reminded me of just this past week as I sat down to plan the soft launch of this newsletter, The Feel Good Life.
It’s been around eight years in the making, brewing slowly, one experiment after the next, with some rests in between to recover, reassess and build new plans.
And now here we are! It seems to me that the rise of Substack (here’s an explainer) has been a godsend to independent writers like me. Let’s face it: creating work is not easy. It takes us to our deepest place, to find our core message that will speak through us. And this is rarely a quick process. It can take days, months, even years of deep emotional dives, a lot of consistency, a ton of hard work, and a willingness to show up up for our craft until the magic happens.
With all this said, I’m calmly and happily (if cautiously) choosing to take this big step and draw from my creative well in a new way. This time, it feels different. Is it maturity? Wisdom? Fear? Probably a bit of all three. But what’s certain about this one time is that everything feels. Just. Right.
And that’s when you just know - it’s time.
‘So Mariana, What’s This Newsletter About?’
Mainly about health. But not in a complex, over-technical way.
It will be about all things health, physical and emotional; about life and all its elaborate and beautiful range of feelings. It will be about prevention and the ways in which you can understand your entire self better. And also about empathy and hope - two of the most impactful values for patients, yet also somehow the most disregarded by medical practices at times.
After working in Palliative Care with geriatric and chronic pain patients for most of my career, I quickly learned how dealing with emotions are an undervalued or even a discriminated against side of medicine. A side of the job that we are poorly trained for or taught about, both as patients or as healthcare staff. Talking about feelings makes many people uncomfortable. There is so much taboo around speaking about your feelings and this has to change. I want to believe that now, more than ever, we’re ready to cut through this toxic trait as a society, and to allow feelings to become part of our daily lives as early as possible.
It might seem idealised but it’s already happening. There are incredible people already having these conversations and showing up for this amazing, much needed work, such as:
- of Are You Okay?
- of The Forgotten Side of Medicine
- of 2% With Michael Easter
- of Coffee Times
- of Inner Workings
- of Inside Medicine
- of Men’s Psychology
- of Call to Action
I’m here ready to join them and do my part - by giving in the way of my writing - this newsletter.
Who Is This For?
Over the last 16 years working as a physician, I’ve frequently experienced burnout firsthand - either in myself or my colleagues. I’ve seen the damage it can do and I’ve seen the toll it can take, not just on healthcare professionals but on everyone they treat.
For that reason, I want this newsletter to be fully inclusive. It will be for anyone wanting to improve their personal health and feel more hopeful about their wellbeing - but also, I want to help all my incredibly hardworking, utterly exhausted healthcare colleagues out there in the world who won’t receive the support they deserve from overworked, under-funded systems that are close to collapse.
This is for anyone who's looking for awareness and empathy in health, for a safe space to learn from, to be heard and feel seen, for a place where medical doesn't mean boring, troubling or puzzling.
This is for anyone who's tired of the healthcare system - whether patients or professionals - unsure where to turn to for health guidance and support, and ready to embrace a self-care journey, while surrounded by the right community.
How Will It Work?
I will be writing pieces regularly, which will go out somewhere between weekly and biweekly while I get the hang of this terrific newslettering-on-Substack thing.
There will be free and paid subscriptions.
All main content will be free. I truly believe in good health as a universal right and I want to abide by it.
Paid subscribers however will get a lil’ extra content, which will include courses, expert interviews, monthly Q&A, and community activities along the way.
Both free and paid tiers will be helping me build this ambitious vision that has been brewing inside me since 2015. So ambitious that I intend to take it to the Obamas one day. (No, really. I mean it. 😏😬)
Where To Start?
Here are some useful guides to get you started. As I said, I want health, medicine (and life!) to be easy for you:
More of these easy health guides will be coming soon.
I’ll also recommend some great people, useful articles and wise advice I find here and elsewhere on the web. These are links that have helped me understand certain health and related life topics in much deeper ways. I’ll keep growing and updating this Resources section as I go.
And if you’re wondering ‘wait, who is this Mariana again?’, you can read the About section or check my Linkedin profile to learn more. :)
Finally, two important things:
1. A Course to Help You Tackle Stress
I’ve made the first course for you! (The first of many I have planned). And it’s about stress.
Why? Because chronic, grinding stress has been normalised as a state of being we all have to endure and suffer from - and is often seen as a requirement for success in the modern world.
However, stress is about as far from trivial as it’s possible to get.
It’s a health-wrecker.
And it’s a bomb detonated in the middle of your future.
So this course is all about disarming it, carefully and steadily, step by step.
There are 8 lessons in this course - all of them filled with easy, detailed and actionable learning. I will be delivering them weekly so that you can go through them in your own time - and after they’re all published, I’ll be announcing some exciting next steps for this whole topic.
You can access the course now! The first lesson is right here.
2. Community: The Feel Good Lab
The Feel Good Lab is a space where we can all connect as a community around problems we will tackle together.
With that in mind, this will be a space where I’m not just the teacher because we will all be students and all have something to learn.
In this lab we will experiment together, talk, share, create, explore ideas and more. It’s a space where I want us all to learn from each other. It can be about life in general or specifics health topics that we can decide to explore together.
This is really important. In The Feel Good Lab, you can take the mic and bring up something valuable for everyone to discuss together, to create more awareness and empathy where it’s needed.
I’m still in building mode here, so bear with me. The answers are coming soon. :)
I Have Big Plans For This Newsletter
In short: I’ll be building this newsletter into my full time job. After 16 years working as a GP (general practitioner, aka. Doctor), I’m ready to offer something bigger than I ever have before.
Going forward in this Feel Good space, you can expect to see:
Courses
Q&A Sessions
Interviews
1:1 Consultations* (This is so anyone who wants it can have access to more private and personalised health guidance.)
All this will help me help you, and I can’t wait to be there for you.
But also, your support will help me build a greater project to go further:
The Feel Good Foundation
A Costa Rican-based nonprofit aiming to create burnout prevention programs for healthcare workers around the world.
When burnout happens, it’s really difficult to offer empathy. So, by taking care of our healthcare workers, we will ensure a better quality attention to patients.
Call me crazy, but I would love to be the doctor teaching you how not to go to the doctor. The more health issues can be prevented, the better. Doctors shouldn’t just treat when you’re ill; they should also help you to stay healthy. And because the healthcare systems are struggling big time, we are only being able to provide a somehow rushed attention, and trust me, it pains us.
That’s why I want to do something about it.
I’ve had my own share of mental health issues as a doctor, and because burnout changed the direction of my career, I want to step up and do my part for every student, intern, resident and colleague who might be hurting silently from the claws of burnout at any point of their professional lives. Not only doctors but every healthcare staff going through the same.
Help me build this larger vision.
By joining as a subscriber, you’ll be contributing to develop this larger cause for the benefit of all.
I aim to keep this newsletter free. In case you want to help me further by choosing a paid subscription, you’d be allowing me to keep this newsletter free for everyone to learn from. Health is our universal right and everyone deserves access to it one way or another.
Thank you so much!
And That’s A Wrap!
I’m thrilled to have you reading this and I hope that you’ll follow along. I want this newsletter not only to be useful but also inspiring, making you want to make the changes that I know will improve your life in so many ways.
So, with much joy and a green light, let’s go!
See you next time,
Dr. Mariana
Image credits: Pixabay
Congratulations on launching "The Feel Good Life" newsletter! Your journey and vision are inspiring, and I'm sure many readers will benefit from the valuable content you plan to share. Your commitment to building a community in "The Feel Good Lab" is a fantastic idea. It's an opportunity for everyone to learn and grow together, fostering awareness and empathy. I look forward to following your journey and seeing how "The Feel Good Life" unfolds. Best of luck with your endeavours, and may your newsletter bring joy to your readers.
I didn’t know that your background was in palliative care—such important work!
So glad you’re bringing your perspective on health to Substack, and making these conversations more accessible.