We caught up with Denise Cordero and Julie Freeman, founders of Intrinsic Wholeness and have shared our conversation below:
Denise and Julie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
Our mission is to be pivotal in transforming medicine from a reductionistic treatment of disease model to a whole person care approach that honors the mind, body and spirit for optimal living. We have had extensive experiences in the medical arena, both as clinicians and patients – a system that is broken and no longer serves the intended persons. The doctors are no longer in control, but rather the insurance, pharmaceutical and big food industries.
We have personally experienced sitting across from a clinician who is dismissive, burnt out and unwilling to look outside the box (because the bottom line controls the practice). We hear this daily with our desperate clients who have been to multiple clinicians and landed at our doorstep feeling unheard and unseen. It is sad to see that even though we are living longer, we don’t necessarily have a better quality of life. Trillions of dollars are poured into a system where our population is more sick than ever. Compassion has been removed from health care in many instances.
Denise and Julie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Julie – I began as a registered dietitian back in the early 80s. Underwhelmed with the focus being on disease management and not whole person health. I took a road less traveled – Master’s in psych/counseling, certifications in mind-body medicine, yoga, reiki, genomics and functional medicine. For me, seeing the whole person through the lens of mind, body and spirit connectedness drew me towards what we now call integrative and functional medicine.
In my journey, I met Denise – we worked at an integrative clinic together, sharing our deepest desire to create something more, something that touches the core of each person we work with – their physical health challenges, their emotional wounds and spiritual longing. We have brought our unique skills together to offer Intrinsic Wholeness, our online health and wellness platform.
Denise- I started my career in healthcare practice management over 25 years ago. My experiences spanned from clinical roles as a Certified Medical Assistant to handling operational and financial responsibilities and managing multi-million dollar budgets. I worked both in small family practices and corporate environments. Eventually, I got into healthcare practice consulting supporting employed physicians who were starting up their solo practices. However, it was my own personal health challenges and passion for wellness that led me to embark on a new path. For over 14 years, I’ve dedicated myself to mastering various healing practices. I became a Reiki Master in both Western and Japanese styles and apprenticed with esteemed teachers and curanderos (healers) in Andean shamanic healing. Additionally, I pursued training as a Certified Life & Spiritual Coach. Since then, I’ve weaved coaching and energy medicine to help women through the deeper dive of healing and embracing their true authentic selves.
Julie and I intersected along our respective journeys in an integrative medical practice where she served as an Integrative Nutritionist. As we built a friendship, we saw commonalities in our visions for women’s health care and also a synergy of our unique gifts. In 2023 we decided to join forces and co-found Intrinsic Wholeness.
We are so proud that we’ve co-created a virtual practice that allows us to reach more people. We’ve blended our experiences and skill sets that are over 50 years combined to provide a whole-person care model that is personalized to each individual. We use a combination of functional lab testing, an in-depth history from pre-birth to present including adverse childhood experiences, family history, and environmental exposures, coupled with a mindset assessment that also touches upon the deep inner desires that one has for creating an authentic and joy-filled life. More importantly, we are proud of the sacred container we create for our clients that allows them to be seen and heard, many for the first time in their lives.
What we provide is a whole person-centered wellness program for our clients that takes them from a journey of illness and dis-ease to that of health, vibrancy and purpose. We help support all women through some of life’s most difficult transitions i.e. chronic illness, career change, divorce, retirement, and hormonal imbalance.
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
We met while working together at an integrative clinic. Denise was the Practice Manager and I was the Functional Medicine and Integrative Nutrition provider. We immediately clicked, became friends and shared our passion for bridging the best of conventional medicine with whole-person care and optimized well-being.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
Julie – For me, this is palpable! Coming from my own dysfunctional background and being an only child, I learned early on that mistakes were not allowed, nor was my opinion. My role was to fix people, situations, and make everything run smoothly. This was especially true with my parents who were unhappy with themselves and in their marriage. They were both beautiful people and yet with wounds carried into their marriage from their own unresolved traumas and challenges.
I carried this responsibility, or shall we say, over-responsibility into my work – it was my job to fix people, allowing them to remain passive. And guess what, we are learning that it does not work this way – in healthcare, in education, in our spiritual lives. There must be commitment, collaboration, cooperation and co-creation. I am always learning, evolving and listening to my authentic self more as I let go of the critical inner parent, whether that “parent” is my biological parents or societal expectations and limits set upon us. This is what we bring to our clients because many have similar backgrounds to us!
Denise- I wish I could choose one but my life has become a long class of unlearning and also of remembering. I am unlearning the many walls I have built up to keep myself safe from the world after suffering countless traumas in early childhood and throughout my early adulthood too. Through my healing journey, I became aware that my hypervigilance, perfectionism, people pleasing and being a constant overachiever were the ways I learned to become because I did not feel safe. I felt unworthy and never felt like I was ever good enough. Simultaneously as I’ve unlearned all these defense mechanisms that no longer serve me, I’ve had to remember who I truly am and embrace my authenticity and a new courage to be me in a way that I hadn’t for many years. It is this experience and this deep work and empathy that I bring into my coaching with clients. While I may have unique experiences, the story of unworthiness and not feeling like enough is a collective story of many women.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.intrinsicwholeness.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/intrinsicwholeness/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/intrinsicwholeness
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/intrinsic-wholeness/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@IntrinsicWholeness
