Finding the prescription for self-love

Dr Caroline Taylor-Walker can pinpoint the moment she resolved to make people’s lives better through a career in medicine.

She was in the car with her mother who was visibly upset after yet another frustrating medical appointment where she had left with no answers.

Caroline’s sister, Lauren, had sustained a brain injury at birth and was eventually diagnosed as having cerebral palsy.

It was the beginning of many health issues including epilepsy, migraines, ataxia and a severe neurological disorder which saw her hospitalised for four years.

As she watched her mother struggle with the healthcare system, a young Caroline grew to resent the lack of support given to her mum – a woman she looked up to as clever, resourceful and stoic.

“We went through the medical system with my mum just feeling so alone,” she recalls.

“She’d have problems with Lauren and go to see someone and get nothing.

“That was just awful because she would be crying all the way home, crying all night and just not knowing where to turn to next and then she would be struggling all day at home.

“I never wanted anyone to feel like that.”

Now an accomplished GP based in Torquay, Caroline owns Heroes Home Doctor – the first and only accredited home visiting GP surgery in Australia – and Ministry of Skin which she opened in 2014.

But it is the story behind how she arrived at this point that the mum of two young boys has shared in the recently published book titled Raw: Real Stories from Nine Resilient Women.

Collated by Business In Heels International, Caroline says she agreed to write a chapter for the book because its focus on resilience in women resonated with her.

“I feel every woman has a massive journey which involves feeling overwhelmed, horrible times and good times, and they feel quite alone with it and there is not much support among women,” she says.

“I thought it would be quite nice to get my story out there so that it might make other women feel less alone with their stuff.”

Caroline’s honest account documents her childhood in the UK, her role as a carer, her ambition to become a surgeon, the struggles that ensued as a woman in the male-dominated world of surgery and her decision to become a GP.

It also touches on her long battle with bulimia.

“I’m quite open in saying that bulimia has been an issue for me,” she says.

“I’ve struggled with it for 20 years and it’s had a massive impact on my life in regards to friendships, relationships, finances – even where I’ve got to in my career.

“For me, it was a coping mechanism – it wasn’t a body image problem.

“When I was overwhelmed or not coping my escapism was to sit in the car with bags full of food and literally just eat and eat and eat.

“When I was eating all my worries went away – it felt like everything was fine and all the stresses weren’t there.”

Caroline believes the bulimia was caused by a couple of things including her sister’s serious illness and feeling isolated when she left home to study medicine.

She can see now that it also got in the way of her dream to become a plastic surgeon.

“I wanted to be a surgeon but I feel one of the reasons I stopped progressing with that was because the bulimia was so overwhelming, I couldn’t do both,” she says.

But, as she writes in the book, it has been just one of the resilience building challenges that have led her to a career she loves which fulfils her passions in the fields of skin cancer, aesthetics and general practice.

It is what has made her the doctor she is today – one that would do her younger self proud.

“Through my businesses I want to help people to be happy – not necessarily just happy, I want them to love themselves,” she says.

“Self-love is so important and I’ve learned that when I don’t love myself, I don’t attract anything good.

“We need to keep reassessing our dreams and see a change not as a failure but just as your life journey.”

Raw: Real Stories from Nine Resilient Women is available for purchase online for $24.95 from ministryofskin.com.au/shop.