Welcome to ‘Wellness Matters’
December 01, 2025
Michelle Pearce
In a new blog series, Michelle Pearce, PhD, explores health and wellness issues and shares evidence-based tools that can help strengthen your well-being.
Welcome to the first edition of “Wellness Matters,” a blog series designed to explore key health and wellness issues and share evidence-based tools to help you strengthen your well-being.
If we’ve met before, you may know parts of my personal health story. I’ll briefly revisit it here because it explains why I chose the title “Wellness Matters” and why I’m so passionate about leading the Integrative Health and Wellness certificate program at the University of Maryland School of Graduate Studies.
More than 20 years ago, during my clinical psychology internship, I suddenly became inexplicably ill — so exhausted I could barely function. Ironically, I was working at one of the top medical centers in the country, yet conventional medicine had no answers. After countless tests and appointments, I realized I was on my own to uncover why I no longer had the energy to live my life.
By grace, I discovered a different approach — then called complementary or alternative medicine, now known as integrative health. It wasn’t a quick or easy journey, but with time, I found the answers I needed and reclaimed my life and studies. That experience transformed me. Today, I dedicate my work to ensuring that others don’t have to suffer the way I did.
Through that long recovery, supported by skilled integrative practitioners, I learned a profound truth: My health and wellness mattered. At the time, I had made everything else matter — completing graduate school, publishing, helping my clients, building my career, and finding a life partner. My own physical health, mental well-being, and joy were afterthoughts. Outwardly, I looked high-functioning and successful, but inwardly, I was running on fumes. My body simply couldn’t keep up with years of demands without replenishment.
Integrative health taught me to pause, breathe, and prioritize myself — not just my ambitions. It taught me to find balance, nourish my spirit as well as my body, invest in relationships, and reconnect with joy. In short, it taught me how to be well. And those lessons continue to guide me decades later, especially in a world that often prizes achievement over balance.
I learned the hard way that wellness matters. Maybe you have, too. Or, maybe you see patients or clients who are still learning that truth. In these uncertain times, with constant stressors and unsettling news, our nervous systems are under more strain than ever before. More than ever, we must protect and prioritize our health. Without it, nothing else in life functions well.
Over the coming months, this blog will share practical integrative tools to help you manage stress, uncertainty, and anxiety. Subscribe to the “Wellness Matters” newsletter to receive new posts directly in your inbox.
On April 21, 2026, I’ll expand on these ideas in a webinar introducing a broader integrative framework for navigating stress and offering even more tools you can apply. For more information, visit the event page for “An Integrative Approach to Stress Management: Practical Tools for Building Stress and Well-Being.”
Your wellness matters. I’m so glad you’re here.
About the Author
Michelle Pearce, PhD, is professor and director of the Integrative Health and Wellness certificate program at the University of Maryland School of Graduate Studies.
Dr. Pearce is a clinical psychologist who researches the relationship between religion/spirituality, coping, and health, as well as the integration of spirituality into the practice of psychotherapy. Her areas of clinical expertise include cognitive behavioral therapy, mind-body stress reduction methods, existential issues, and behavioral medicine to address the intersection of mental and physical illness. Read her full biography.