My Personal Story
My story starts at the beginning - you know, the “I was born” kind of beginning.
I was born with dark skin. And in my culture, if you have dark skin, you are considered less than someone with fair skin. I learned this at a young age, and over the years this morphed into me believing I was not enough.
I will never be enough.
To make up for this, I tried to achieve perfection in every other way I could. I didn’t just push myself in pursuit of perfection - I shoved myself, sometimes so hard I would fall.
Fast forward to a Friday evening rush hour in New York City. There I was on the subway platform edge, trying to dodge the push and shove of the crowd. As the train leaving the station sped past me, a thought rushed through my mind.
What would happen if I pushed myself over the edge?
All my life I have been hard on myself - but this was different. This was much more than that. I never had a thought like this before. I knew I needed to slow down, and care for myself.
That’s when the pandemic came along. The world hit pause, and so did I. Social distancing gave me the space to be with myself. I turned to practices that helped me not only accept but embrace who I am.
I am enough.
As a Preventive and Lifestyle Medicine doctor, I have a holistic view on health and wellness. It’s more than diet and exercise: being healthy means being whole. It’s about embracing everything you think and feel and do. I am healthier now than I have ever been. I am whole, because I am enough.
My Professional Story
“How are you?”
This is the question that matters most to me when I care for others.
It started with my first patient, my mother. She never got to see me become a doctor. She passed away from cancer around the time I took my entrance exam for medical school. I can still picture her hospice room: me buried in MCAT books in the guest bed, my mother lying in a coma in the other.
I learned many life lessons while caring for her, but the most important insight I gained is that being healthy means being whole. Health and wellbeing are intrinsically holistic. They encompass all aspects of life - the biological, the psychological, the social, the spiritual, and more.
My practice is an exploration into what makes us all whole. I hope that it encourages you to take pause, look inward, and consider what makes you whole.
Shelly Bhowmik, MD MPH is the founder of Platform Wellness, a practice dedicated to helping people heal from burnout. Her practice is based on the belief that mindset is medicine, a belief she came to realize through her own journey that began at the edge of a subway platform.
Dr. Bhowmik is a double board-certified physician specializing in Preventive Medicine and Lifestyle Medicine. She earned her medical degree from the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences, and completed her residency at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her previous roles include being a design thinking strategist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and serving as medical director of digital health for an executive health firm in New York City. As the founder Platform Wellness her mission is to help people, especially women of color, excel personally and professionally without having to sacrifice their health and wellbeing.