Pivoting into Your Purpose to Bloom: Meet Kamilah Williams

In this new series, we're highlighting stories and personal anecdotes from our members here in the MPOWERED community. First up, we're excited to introduce Kamilah Williams! 

Kamilah joined the community with the goal of learning how to incorporate her passion in holistic health and wellness into her practice. As part of this learning, support, and accountability group, she’s also working on developing the skills and strategy needed to branch out on her own and start an online wellness business with programs for single moms!

We chatted with Kamilah about how she discovered her passion and works to align it with her purpose in order to do the work she's called to do.

When did you know that this path was really important to you?

It was about three years ago when I started to notice that I wasn't in control of my body. It seemed to be kind of doing its own thing. Last year as things were slowing down,  I noticed that I started to gain weight and I was even pretty athletic. I did a couple of different weight loss programs and went on to eventually develop pre-diabetes. I went through the diabetes prevention program and did a little better with that. 

I'm in a physician mom's group too and they were talking about The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung. I read that and it changed everything. 

It explained how chronic disease is tied into insulin resistance and I realized that I had a lot of the stuff he was talking about. Even though I hadn't developed diabetes, my blood pressure was high during the early part of my pregnancy and I just wanted to eliminate all those risks. Both of my parents have high blood pressure. So it was 2017 that I changed the whole way that I ate and treated my body. And since then I've lost over 30 pounds, kept it off most of the time, even during the pandemic, oddly. 

Are you an early bird or night owl? When do you get up? What's the first thing you do when you wake up?

I'm an early bird for sure. Typically 5:00 am, 5:30 am. I usually read my Bible first thing in the morning. I try to do that before I get up. If not that I'll start with a workout, I'll get up and work out and then I start my day from there. 

Would you say that that’s your morning routine or ritual or are there other things in it?

I try to include some, some self care items in there. I like to read. I often tell my patients to include something you enjoy as early in the day as possible because it makes you feel like you've done something, even if it's something small, so I try to do that.

What do you do between 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM?

I'm usually at work during that time. I have changed my schedule because of COVID so that I can pick up my son from school. So pretty much I dedicate that time from like 8:30 am to 2:00 pm to patient care, taking care of stuff so that I can leave work at work. When I come home, that's my personal time. And especially now that I'm trying to do all this other stuff, it's so important to have that separate time for me. 

And what about from 1:00 PM to 6:00 PM, are there specific things that you usually fill that time with?

It's funny, my son is learning to read, well, he knows how to read. He's in first grade and they're doing like the reading challenges and stuff so we read his book and he has to read for 15 to 20 minutes. I have him read to me and he's been doing it in the car because he's realized that he can have more time to himself if he reads on the way. So then usually we'll eat and we eat kind of early. And then, we just kind of hang out after that. We’ll play a game or do something. 

And then usually from about 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm, I usually try to dedicate that time to the podcast or reading. I've been trying to do something like that for at least an hour or two in the evening.

What's your pre-bed ritual?

Usually we try to wind down. I talk to my mom pretty much every day, so that's usually some part of that evening after 7:00pm. And then, we start to wind down around 8:00pm.  I really believe in trying to create space for your sleep. So we try to turn the TV off, turn down lights and everything to get ready to go to bed. And then probably around 8:30pm or 9pm, we go to bed, but sometimes I'll do some yoga moves before bed. If I don't, my son reminds me that I didn't do them. I have also learned to clean up and do some laundry before bed though so that I don't feel like I have to do it in the morning. I do that sometimes too.

How do you define a successful day?

A successful day is when I have felt like not that I’ve necessarily completed everything at work, but that I felt complete. I might be in the middle of a note, I might have labs that need to be looked over, but if I can leave knowing I did the best I could during the day, then I can come home, spend time with [my son], talk to family or friends, make some healthy food and work on my personal brand, and that’s a successful day to me. What I've learned is it doesn't have to be perfect.

Name: Kamilah Williams

Location: Columbus, Ohio

Occupation: Family Physician

What made you hone in specifically on single moms?

I kind of discovered that just the day-to-day medicine thing has changed quite a bit and that we weren't really addressing the wellness issues with patients so that tends to be what they need the most. We're there to put out fires, in a way and I'm sure some people are healed by what we do because they would probably not be here with some of the medications and things... but I found that wellness was a big issue.

As a single mom myself, I wanted to find a niche that I thought could use the most help to start out with. And I came up with single moms. I'm in a single moms, small group at my church that's pretty robust. And I just noticed different things that people could really benefit from so I wanted that to be my first area of focus.

How do you define success for yourself as someone who's moving into a new venture that's going to be on your own?

Success for me would be helping just one person. They say that your purpose, it should be not for any monetary gain or any personal gain, but just wanting to help someone.  Now I will take that extra 5 or 10 minutes to talk to somebody about nutrition. Sometimes whether they want to hear it or not, just to find where they are and help them take a step forward from wherever I'm meeting them at. 

It was really important to me to see those changes and especially in the middle of COVID. It really hit me hard how this has affected the black community and seeing how some of the single moms I'm affiliated with had dealt with it or had people that dealt with it. They just were either scared to death of the effects of it or from having known people that really got severely ill from it and did not know how to take care of it. So success to me is changing that mindset, teaching people how to care for their body so they don't have to resort to excessive measures to heal themselves.

And what's been your greatest challenge on your path?

Probably in the last 7-8 months, I started to realize that I had to get out of my own way in that I had to really start thinking about my career differently and not just thinking of being an employee. I’ve really tried to change that mindset so that's been the biggest thing, getting out of my way and just stepping into everything I've been doing.

What's been your greatest reward in your choices?

My greatest reward is having my son tell me he's proud of me for working on my podcast. He was actually the one that pushed it. I am an introvert, so this whole speaking and releasing videos and stuff… I don't know who this person is! So he'll come and say, “Mommy, I'm so proud of you for working on your podcast and you're working really hard!” That's really rewarding for him to see me doing that. You always think it's going to be the doctor thing, but this has been the most rewarding. I mean, he still doesn't believe I'm a real doctor, so that's a whole other conversation, but he's more impressed with the podcast.

What do you want to learn from a community of your peers?

A lot of things. How they got to where they are, what challenges they faced...sometimes it really helps to hear! I find myself searching for and, not in a bad way, but just hearing other people that have the same experiences and are dealing with the same things. There's not that many of us as there is. To see so many people doing something with their purpose, outside of medicine or adjacent to medicine. That’s what I'm really looking for, camaraderie and that push and motivation from seeing everybody else having challenges and also pushing through them. 

I also think the support is great and the thing that I like about your group is that it is accessible. I just really love the way that you've made it a semi-private format where there's other women that I can talk to and meet and get to know. I've been meeting so many people! It’s a nice space to have especially as black female physician where we are jumping in and helping each other out. It’s been really helpful and I love the idea that there are classes and things that I can do to keep me developing.

What are the ways that people can learn more about you?

My podcast is out! I'm about probably 15 episodes in. I've just started invite some guests for interviews. I'm trying to go onto YouTube and do more videos so I'm working on a series called Pivot & Bloom Lit, which is a health literacy type of thing talking about different health conditions and how they're treated, geared towards patients and the general public. So people can find me there! 

Listen to the Pivot & Bloom Podcast, housed on and hosted by BuzzSprout.

Find the Pivot & Bloom Podcast on Instagram and Facebook

Follow Dr. Kamilah Marie on Instagram and Twitter

Thank you, Kamilah , for sharing your story! 

If you're interested in sharing your own story with our community here, join our support and success community HERE and then simply reach out to one of our Hosts via private message. We love hearing more about your experiences and what you're learning!