Dr Laura Lowery's Blog

I was thinking today that it might be helpful for my readers if I talk a bit more about who I am and what led me to this moment of writing this blog. You know, to give context to my blog topics that I share.

I was born and raised in southern California, outside of Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley. And from my earliest memories, even as young as 4 years old, I have been an achievement-driven perfectionist with OCD tendencies. Why I turned out this way is a story to tell in the future. For now, all you need to know is that I thought that I would only be worthy of being loved by my parents if I excelled at whatever task I set my mind to. And excel I did, throughout my life. I won’t recount the many accolades. 

But I also struggled. I battled severe social anxiety and generalized anxiety my entire life. After all, can someone even BE intensely achievement-driven without either having anxiety or some other mental health disorder? Probably not. 

I went to college at UC San Diego, and by that point, it had dawned on me that being a high school valedictorian had not brought me true joy and contentment in my life, only stress, and thus, I decided to not focus my energies in college on excelling at academics yet again. As I realized that what I was lacking in my life was personal connections with other human beings (I had almost no friends before college), I decided to get involved in residence life organizations on-campus where the focus would be supporting my peers and fostering warm supportive living communities. Of course, I still had that drive to excel, and so I just turned my intense OCD tendencies towards residence life leadership activities. While those experiences were rewarding in many ways, my intensity scared people off, and I still had challenges truly connecting with my peers.

But where I found a place of joy was with mentoring and teaching. Either when I was a Resident Advisor with my residents, or a conference leader with my student delegates, or a Teaching Assistant with my students, I thrived in these hierarchical relationships where I could support other human beings. And so that is when I decided to start on my path to becoming a professor. After all, while academics were second to residence life in my priorities, I still did enjoy the classes in my Biology major, and I had a knack for it.

So I set my sights on becoming a Biology professor. In 2001, I moved across the country, to the Boston area, to attend a PhD grad program at MIT. And that is when my mental health really took a dive for the worst. It was triggered when I found out that my father’s mother had schizophrenia and killed his sister, and then I found out that my father wasn’t actually my biological father. And that was all on top of trying to be successful at MIT and start a new life in Boston. My anxiety became so severe at times that I could not even walk into a room full of people without hyperventilating. My psychiatrist put me on various medications in order to function. But I was fortunate that I met a man who is probably one of the least emotional people that I have known, in my grad school class, and he became my rock that helped to stabilize me during those turbulent times. I ended up marrying him, two years into grad school.

After a few more years, while still in grad school, in 2006, we had our first child, Elliot. And Elliot had severe acid reflux as an infant and could not lie down for 9 months. He cried almost all the time. So, I did too. It was one of the most horrific times in my life. But I got through it. And I graduated with my PhD in 2008.

Because of my social anxiety, along with my imposter syndrome that I was not good enough, I focused all of my energies on my research to try to prove myself. I neglected social interactions yet again. I had not realized until the end of grad school that taking time to have lunch and coffee breaks with other scientists was important, critical even, for career success. But I finally did learn, by the end.

I did my postdoctoral research at Harvard from 2008 until 2013. I had my second child in 2009. By the time of my postdoc, I was savvy about what I needed to do to excel at this whole academia thing. Networking was number one on my list, and so I figured out how to fake being social. By the time I got my first faculty position, in 2014, I was well on my way to being successful enough in my field, while doing what I could to manage my family commitments at home.

My first faculty position was at Boston College. This was my dream job, and I put my whole heart into this work. I ended up putting too much of myself into it, though. It became almost my whole identity. And I worked almost non-stop at this job. But I loved it. I wanted to be the BEST professor that I could be, at research, at teaching, and at service. Most of all, I wanted to support my students. All of them. And I discovered that sharing the stories that I had accumulated of how I got to that point in my life, the lessons that I had either learned or was trying to learn, was helpful to my students. And so, again, I was excelling, but the pressure that I put on myself was unsustainable. It was taking a toll on my health and wellbeing in a number of ways. My husband and kids were feeling neglected. But I did not know how to stop, how to relax, even after I got tenure in 2018.

But then, in 2019, a 36 year old employee of mine who joined my lab earlier that year filed a complaint against me of sexual harassment. I happen to believe that the complaint resulted from a very unfortunate misunderstanding, and I tried to explain the situation and take corrective actions so that nothing like this could ever happen again. However, despite the fact that the investigations found no evidence of sexual harassment on my part, the allegation somehow took on a life of its own in the hands of a misogynistic administration as well as the #MeToo movement, and false disgusting rumors about me spread like wildfire. I was devastated.

In the end, I realized that it was in my best interest, both personally and professionally, to leave Boston College. Given my research success, Boston University School of Medicine was thrilled to take me, and I joined the Department of Medicine in January 2020. It’s been a fantastic move for me. I am so much better supported here at Boston University.

But while I have been so fortunate, professionally, my personal life remains a challenge these days. In early 2020, my marriage finally fell apart. The toll of me putting almost my whole self into my job for years, along with some basic personality conflicts between my partner and me, had left us emotionally-disconnected. We divorced by the end of 2020. And while I know that the divorce was truly for the best – it is clear to me that we are simply not the right partners for each other, anymore – I am still struggling with not having this rock of emotional stability in my life. Really struggling. Especially as my youngest child (now 12) is battling serious mental health issues including severe depression, anxiety, and an eating disorder. It’s been a challenge for me to know how to support him, but I’m doing my best. It’s still a struggle every day.

And more than that, the whole BC debacle and basically being forced to resign from what I thought had been my dream job, amidst horrific false rumors that continue to make their way to my ears, left me lost and drowning for a good long while. My whole identity came crashing down and broke into pieces, and I’m still in the process of putting it back together. 

But while I’m still trying to figure out who I am, I definitely know what I am. If I had to describe my qualities in a series of words, this is me – enthusiastic, loving, grateful, intense, obsessive, emotional, insecure, vulnerable, anxious, trusting, and unconventional. Oh, and female. I am quite unapologetically female, and that definitely played an enormous role in how my life has risen and fallen over the years.     

But I’m grateful. Because this experience led me to finally reevaluate my life and how I was living it, and it has forced me to face some deep underlying truths of who I am and how I came to be. And to ask myself, is this who I want to be, going forward? And how can I become a healthier version of myself?  

I’m not drowning anymore. I feel like I’m treading water most of the time, and sometimes, a little tentative swimming. And so this blog is a part of that process of learning how to swim again. And I am confident that in the end I’ll be able to swim much more powerfully than I ever had before. It will just take some time.