ABOUT MICHAL RENÉE

Preventive Wellness Thought Leader • Speaker • Founder

I learned the hard way that functioning is not the same as being well.

My work in preventive wellness didn't begin with studying a theory about what women need.

I lived it.

Early in my career as a respiratory therapist, I experienced my first major mental health breakdown. I was diagnosed with anxiety, eventually moved to Atlanta, and kept going.

And professionally, I did more than keep going.

Over the years, I worked across MICU, CCU and CVICU, cared for critically ill patients through the COVID-19 pandemic, and continued growing into leadership as a Senior Charge Respiratory Therapist.

From the outside, my life looked like proof that I had recovered.

I was working. I was exercising. I went to therapy when I felt overwhelmed. I knew I had anxiety.

I thought I was taking care of myself.

But several years later, I burned out again.

This time, I had accumulated more grief, heartbreak, the emotional weight of losing patients during COVID, and years of functioning without ever really learning how to process what I was carrying.

Going to the gym wasn't enough.

Waiting until I felt overwhelmed to talk to someone wasn't enough.

Knowing I had anxiety wasn't the same as knowing what to do with what I felt.

And eventually, I found myself struggling with suicidal thoughts and back in a place I thought I had already escaped.

That second breakdown forced me to look at wellness completely differently.

I hadn't failed at wellness. My definition of wellness was incomplete.

I realized I had been paying attention to pieces of myself while neglecting others.

I exercised, but I didn't have enough tools to regulate and process my emotions.

I had a diagnosis, but I hadn't learned how my patterns, thoughts and coping behaviors affected my everyday life.

The pandemic had deeply disrupted my social health and connection.

For years, alcohol had sometimes been an easy way to numb emotions I didn't know how to sit with.

And spiritually, I had become disconnected from the part of myself that ultimately became central to my healing.

During that season, I gave my life back to Christ.

I stopped numbing what I felt and started learning how to actually move through it.

I began paying attention to my emotional, spiritual, social, physical, and mental health together instead of treating wellness like a collection of separate problems.

That changed everything about how I understood prevention.

Her Promise Circle started in the middle of that rebuilding.

What became Her Promise Circle first began as a faceless Instagram ministry created from what I was learning, living, and sharing with other women.

Then women started responding.

They were carrying anxiety.

Burnout.

Grief.

Faith struggles.

Relationship pain.

Health concerns.

Loneliness.

The pressure of being everything for everybody while quietly neglecting themselves.

The conversations kept growing, and so did Her Promise Circle.

That faceless Instagram page eventually became the Her Promise Circle Podcast, now ranked in the Top 3% of podcasts globally, reaching women across more than 130 countries.

Listening to those women, interviewing experts, and continuing my own work gave me something invaluable:

insight into what women were actually struggling with between the doctor's appointment, the therapy session, the workout, and real life.

Eventually, Her Promise Circle grew beyond content and ministry into Her Promise Circle Foundation, where those lessons became preventive-wellness programs, community support and organizational partnerships.

That's why my approach to prevention is holistic.

After more than a decade in critical care, I've seen what happens when physical health reaches an emergency.

After living through burnout twice, I've also seen what happens when the warning signs appear in areas we don't always consider “health.”

Sometimes the first sign isn't a diagnosis.

It is isolation.

Chronic stress.

Emotional numbing.

Loss of routines.

Disconnection from faith or community.

Poor sleep.

Overwhelm.

A coping behavior that slowly becomes a lifestyle.

Or simply becoming so accustomed to functioning under pressure that we stop recognizing that something is wrong.

That's why the preventive-wellness framework behind Her Promise Circle doesn't treat health as one-dimensional.

We look at the physical, mental, emotional, behavioral, social, and spiritual factors that influence how a person actually lives and whether healthy change can be sustained.

Because people don't experience their lives in categories.

Everything affects everything.

Today, I bring that perspective into bigger conversations.

I now speak and create conversations about preventive wellness, women's health, human behavior, faith, burnout, and the systems and environments that influence our ability to stay well.

My perspective comes from more than one side of the story.

I've been the respiratory therapist caring for people when prevention was no longer an option.

I've been the healthcare professional who looked completely functional while burning out herself.

I've been the woman who had access to therapy, exercise, and health information and still discovered that those things alone weren't enough.

And now I'm the founder building the kind of whole-person support I once needed.

Through speaking, media, the Her Promise Circle Podcast and the work of Her Promise Circle Foundation, I challenge people and organizations to look earlier, deeper and more holistically at what keeps people well.

What I believe

I believe functioning is not the same as being well.

I believe health is affected by far more than what happens inside a doctor's office.

I believe people can know exactly what they should do and still struggle to do it when their environment, emotions, habits, support systems or capacity are working against them.

I believe faith, community and connection can matter deeply to wellbeing.

And I believe we can get much better at recognizing what people need before the warning signs become emergencies.