Our Story

We have been caring for the health of women for a combined 30 plus years.  Having grown up in a family surrounded by strong women, we found ourselves drawn to women’s health without hesitation.  Our women’s health training took us from the deep South to the South Pacific, giving us the opportunity to work with women across the continent and from varied backgrounds.  Through our training in Obstetrics & Gynecology and into our practice, we have found deep satisfaction in the connections we have built with women while helping them through pregnancy, childbirth and beyond.  Working with women through some of their most intense and life-changing moments, we have created an intimacy and a bond with our patients that is unique to women’s health and not often found in other areas of medicine. 

Returning to the South and settling in Savannah, we cultivated a practice, a sisterhood of caring, that feels more like a family as we care for mothers, sisters and daughters.  Taking care of women and their families year after year is an honor and a privilege.  It is also revealing of the shortcomings of our medical system.  Many women, year after year, share the same health concerns and frustrations with little relief.  As physicians, we spend time hearing their stories and offering recommendations only to find ourselves frustrated with a system that is not designed to guide our patients to true wellness.

Through the course of our careers, we recognized the importance of caring for the mind, body and soul, and developed a passion for teaching women about wellness.  While we sincerely value our OB/GYN training, we recognize that true preventive medicine and the art of cultivating and maintaining wellness is largely lacking both in allopathic training and in traditional medical practice.  We consistently find it difficult and frustrating to help women achieve true wellness in a system that is not designed for this purpose.

At the same time, we realized that we had not been fully attending to our own health.  Juggling demanding careers and families of our own, Super Mom Syndrome (as we call it) had left us burned out and depleted, less than truly well.  We found ourselves at a crossroads, both personally and professionally.  

After a decade or so into our careers, this crossroads led us to Functional Medicine.  We understood instantly that it was not only the solution to this problem, but that it was the medicine of tomorrow.  Through our own journeys with Functional Medicine, we have been able to identify and address underlying issues on the biochemical level that were the cause of symptoms that we assumed were just a “normal” part of motherhood and aging, symptoms that we just assumed we simply had to live with.  Functional Medicine has shown us that feeling truly well and vital is possible at any age and with most any health issue.  We are learning on a deeper level, just how amazing the human body is and the innate power it has to function and heal.   

We founded Mana Wellness Medicine to help reconnect women to the innate power and wisdom that they already possess.  The fulfillment of helping other women realize, through Functional Medicine principles and practice, that they have within them the ability to heal and achieve optimal wellness is truly comparable to sharing with them the life-changing experience of pregnancy and childbirth.