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GRAVITAS MAGAZINE GravitasMag.com | 53 all over the place. I chose the name Sovereign, which means royalty and the logo depicts a feminine body. You did some modeling during school that helped you gain perspective on plastic surgery. What did you learn? I knew that if I could get into the minds of people who wanted to be beautiful, it would help me understand a little bit better. ey look at different angles, they look at different levels of perfection; different types of beauty. It definitely helped being a plus sized model. You have to be able to see the beauty of different sizes, not just the classic stick figure. I'm always going to be plus-sized. I think that my contemporaries don't quite understand that not everyone has to be a size two. You just need to be healthy. I don't want to be a size 22 but a size 14 or 16 isn't the worst if you're healthy and you're proportional. You see lots of women who feel bad at size two versus someone who feels great at size 12. It really is about how healthy you are, and your attitude, and just feeling better. You fought against conformity in a field known for its rigorous standards and rules. How did you rebel against that? I would hide out in a couple of the creative classes every so often, and still went dancing twice a week at the dance clubs. ere weren't a whole lot of medical school students there. is was back when you were a club kid or you're a Goth kid before the stereotypical names, and I worked very hard for those titles. I wasn't going to give those up just for med school. I actually had to give them up for residency. at was a little bit of an eye-opener. You could not stay up all night dancing and be ready for residency. I tried! I really thought the first week I was going to do that. You landed at a very successful practice in the Midwest. but you describe the experience as a defining point in your life. Why? I was in Indiana for about nine years and got tired of the Midwest and the abuse of a dominating boss who owned the practice. When I started there, it looked like a nice place. I was busy immediately and very popular. I didn't know that I should have read a little bit more about being an employed plastic surgeon. I had restrictive covenants and I couldn't really control what I made, and basically I was working like a dog for nothing. Every time I would come up for partnership, I was distracted by getting married or trying to have kids. He got away with everything he shouldn't have gotten away with because I wanted to do all these other things. But a visit to your friend in Sarasota changed your perspective. What happened? My friend, Dr. Kristen Paulus, said we don't have anyone like you down here. I was like, really? is is Florida with a million plastic surgeons, but not many females that do reconstruction. I was about half-way through my pregnancy with my second child; I found out it was going to be a girl, and I'm like, that's it, I can't be a doormat anymore. I'm going to raise two daughters. I can't show them that I'm a doormat. If I'm going to start over, they're both babies, they're not going to know that I struggled. You start again from nothing. What were those first couple of months like for you and your family starting over? You start here from nothing. You hire your mom to be your office manager who won't take any money from you, and you just work hard with a very small office. You do all the jobs you can yourself. I'm my own nurse. I do my own scheduling. My mom had to learn how to be an office manager. In the first six months I had my five-month Continued on page 55 Favorites Favorite Artist: Georgia O' Keefe Favorite Books: Madame X and Jane Eyre Favorite Vacations: Anywhere in the Florida Keys or Santa Fe

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