Purpose. No matter the Love It Alum, it's almost always the first of our values that
comes to mind when I meet one of our graduates. It's impossible to miss how
connected they are to why they do what they do. Regardless of the life path
they've chosen, Love It Alum and I live fully into our community's vision of
leading lives guided by deep and clear collective purpose. This is Living Love It
Stories from the Riverbank. I'm Jessica Sant, Chief Engagement Officer at the Love
It School. On this week's episode you'll meet Drew Stockton. Drew is a graduate of
Love It's Class of 2010. An entrepreneur, a cancer survivor, and a meditation and
yoga coach too. Drew's story is one worth hearing. His journey is an important
reminder for any parent that our kids' stories are never fully formed and the
moments that change us the most are the ones that are often the hardest to face.
Growth, resilience, faith, and most importantly a life led with clear intention.
I'm glad you're tuning in this week to learn more about Drew. My name is Drew Stockton.
I attended Love It for 14 years and I graduated at 2010. You are a Love It
Lifer. That's right. Love It Lifers and now they claim 13 years instead. So I
think the way that we typically start these episodes and I think particularly
in your case it'd be helpful for our listeners who are mostly prospective
parents and current parents to just hear a little bit about your Love It
experience. If you were sort of to distill it down to an elevator pitch for
how you think about your Love It journey, how would you talk about your experience
here at Love It? Wow, the elevator pitch. Okay, well honestly it was a really
great experience for me. I think glory days. Honestly looking back to that time period
of life and you know I was someone who was very involved in sports. Sports was a
big part, a big part of me and my life there but I was also working hard in the
classroom. I feel like I just got an amazing amazingly well-rounded experience
there and I look back with very fond memories and honestly now that I'm 31 I
have more perspective. I think I appreciate it more now than definitely
than I did at the time and I think in the last few years as I've really started
to change my life and my way of being I come to appreciate it more and more. So
it's had a huge impact on my life journey and my experience for 14 years
was an incredibly positive one for so many different reasons. What is one of
those reasons? When you think about like the highlights for you, what stands out?
Yeah it's community and I know that's something you guys talk about a lot but
it's just you see it everywhere. Not just in sports but you see it in all the
different departments and you really feel it there and I think that because it
was smaller and yeah I went to private school my whole life so I don't really
have too much to compare that to but I think the smaller feel was awesome. You
know everybody in your class, you know everybody's name, you know something
about them no matter how close you are with them or not. So I just feel like
that it just really allows for this deeper sort of connection and experience
and not even just in your class but the ones above you and below you too. It's
very community driven which yeah looking back on I don't know what it
would have been like for me to have been at a big public school of hundreds
of kids in the class. I'm very pleased for the way that I got to experience that.
Yeah and since you've been here you know it's it's a fact that love it is
grown and I think we still try very very hard not to say that we're certainly
not you know we've gone from probably what you had 130 or 40 kids in your
graduating class. We have her in the 160s and 170s but we still try really
hard to think about this place as a small place and hold on to the aspects
of our community that I think love it has always done really really well in
terms of fostering connection and relationships but it's harder to do when
you have more people on a campus and so we also have you know the opportunity to
reimagine some things and think about how we might do it differently but also
still center relationships and connection and and community. What about from
love it where did you go to college what did life look like in those first few
years after you left the riverbank? So I went to the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill and actually I was originally rejected and I pealed it
and I ended up getting on the waitlist to get off of the waitlist so that was a
fun process. I love this story this is great. I was just that I was working with
love it was helping me on that. Yeah who was your college counselor? High tower.
Okay James high tower yeah. Well I actually had Billy Peebles was a Chapel Hill
guy so he also was involved as well so it was love it was involved with that
process and they helped encourage me not to give up on it and it ended up
working out and I am incredibly thankful for that. I had an awesome experience at
Chapel Hill and that the combination of those two education programs was was
really solid. And what did you do after college?
So after college I graduated with an economics degree a major and a minor in
Spanish and I went into commercial real estate banking so I was working as an
analyst for commercial real estate originators at a regions bank which is
local to Atlanta and so I returned to Atlanta I was working at the bank and was
was doing well you know I was making good money for a kid right out of college
and that the work was interesting you're working on big multi-million dollar deals
and every deal is different and there's the sales production side of things it
was really entertaining work it was mentally stimulating I'd say. You and I
connected you reached out in the interest of full disclosure to me because you
have a really incredible story to share and one that we felt like was worth
sharing on the podcast. What you are doing now and the whole purpose of this
episode is to talk with our alums who have created these different business
opportunities. It sounds like a big part of it for you is the journey you had in
your mid 20s and being diagnosed with cancer and I think you know when I
actually have a quote here that I want to read that you wrote on your blog you
said instead of solely focusing on a change to my external environment with
job and city change I felt prepared to simultaneously deep dive into my
internal environment I knew that this deep exploration would require my full
attention and I now had the best excuse to take time off and when I read that
like I thought that that was so profound that it took you being diagnosed
with cancer to say I now have permission to step away and I'm just curious if you
and now I think it's led ultimately to some pretty significant life changes
for you and even how you know like philosophically how you think about
your own life at least from what you've shared on your blog but I'm curious to
know like for you talk about that diagnosis what it meant to you in the
moment and sort of how it has shaped your your lens now as a 31 year old.
First of all I think it's awesome that you read the blog and that makes me
really happy and yeah honestly it was it was a shock it was a total curve ball
and caught me completely off guard I was not expecting that at all being 25
years old this is supposedly your prime and you know before that I was there
was something missing for me though I think it's important for me to look at
that time before cancer came in and I was working and you know the first year
and a half of that work was mentally stimulating and I was enjoying it and
making good money but I did kind of hit a plateau where I was like is this it
you know like I started questioning things and I was thinking like how can I
change things up but that's what I was thinking about changing cities changing
sides of the real estate industry and then this big a bit comes in and it
throws me off guard and and it was it was challenging because the word cancer
comes it's such a loaded word you know I had no idea anything about blood cancers
and then it was lymphoma that I was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma stage 2
and the most challenging part for me was those first few weeks of getting this
information and trying to manage the information and put the plan into place
because once I actually started and had the plan set up and did the first treatment and realized
it not the end of the world things honestly they went pretty smoothly after that it was just that
first craziness of all the doctors appointments and figuring out what this
was at front of us and how we're going to go about it that part was very difficult but the actual
treatment process which ended up being eat total treatments over four months that I you know
was 25 relatively healthy although myself now would not consider that version healthy but
I handled it well and but for me my way of handling it was trying to keep things as normal as possible
you know I enjoyed going into the office at Regent's Bank and and hanging out with my co-workers and
having purpose there of working on deals and and joking around and they weren't treating me
differently because a lot of people do treat you differently when you're
go undergoing process but I felt normal there and that was really meaningful for me during that
time period and that's another place where I feel for a lot of gratitude is towards the bank and
the way that they situation and people there but that was my strategy was as I look back on it was
I want things to be normal I don't want to change things up so much then this is comfortable for
me to to keep things normal and I wasn't super thrilled about being thrown into the spotlight either
and I like that I got showered with encouragement and well wishes which is amazing and I really
felt the strength of my community and the love of community and so many of my Atlanta people and
friends I felt so much encouragement there but at the same time there was there was this what
I've come to learn is imposter syndrome you know where so many people are telling me like you
you're so strong like you're amazing and you know for me in my internal experience it's like
I'm just doing what any of you all would do you know I was being told that I have cancer and now I'm
going to all the appointments and I'm doing the treatments that they're telling me to do and I
know that everybody that is sending me this message would be doing the exact same thing so that was
interesting to reflect on was kind of this this imposter syndrome that came up during that process
you know recognizing the amazing and good intentions of all the people that were reaching out but yeah
and I was able to see that that was a theme you know for my younger years college years and and
those banking years as well yeah and so healthier than ever significantly more healthy than I was
before cancer came into moly yes five years cancer free awesome it's great what do you say to that
statement that you wrote and I think about it a lot for our kids here and especially kids in the
upper school who feel an immense amount of pressure which means that they feel like they can't say
note it anything that they have to say yes they have to commit they have to be all in on every
activity that they're part of the types of classes they take you know you said I'm going to read it
again I knew that that this deep exploration would require my full attention and I now had the best
excuse to take time off like why did we have to wait for you why do we have to wait for something
that seemingly in the moment can feel like a massive crisis to say I need to prioritize myself
yeah yeah unfortunately that's what happened had to happen for me and and what I'm I am trying to
do now is to to use that you know my my main message that I'm trying to share these days is
is don't wait don't wait for the health crisis to start prioritizing yourself your health and your
well-being as a way of trying to use my story to to inspire and encourage people to start
thinking about that and making these sort of positive changes that they deserve for themselves
and the people in their lives but but yeah it's a it's a tough question but it's ultimately I
agree that there is a lot of pressure that's coming from from at the outside you know there that is
such a competitive community they are love it which is you know one of the amazing benefits of it but
yeah that often can come with a lot of pressure and it was something that I was feeling very much
in those days as well interesting yeah so let's talk about Moss Health first of all it's it obviously
Moss is more in Spanish but it also is an acronym in this case so talk about you know you went from
being a commercial real estate banker to now owning your own business talk about what Moss Health
is for our listeners wow okay yep so you're right Moss does mean more by the way I started
to experience in seventh grade I love it and that's where my love for the language started was as
a 13 year old in seventh grade in Spanish I was a confused student but that was one subject that I
always I was confused but I could I understood Spanish well I was in regards to what I enjoyed
okay fair enough that's the initial one that I connected with and like I was pretty good at it
and languages so came somewhat easily for me so that was one thing I wanted to point out was that
I remember Juanes as an artist the Spanish artist one of my teachers in the middle
playing it music and there's still songs that I still have stuck in my head from those middle
school days that's great I mean yes it's using music in the kids I did what I'm glad that that
got brought up because I didn't want to mention that but but yeah so Moss Health more health as you
know MAS my name is Michael Andrew Stockton so and I did not come up with come up with that
myself one of my buddies who was also a lovely graduate was the one who proposed that idea
so I had some some help there but yeah basically it was it was post-cancer it was as you brought up
in that quote it was about it was traveling but it was traveling in different geographies and
countries and places but it was really traveling on the inside to get to know myself better to get
to know what who I am and how I can feel better in my own body my own experience happier more
peaceful these things these were questions that I had when I started traveling are they real are
they possible to achieve and so I I've left traveling very curious and that curiosity led me to to
different practices different ways of thinking and different philosophies but ultimately it led me to
to a meditation practice and meditation seat and meditation just being with myself and my breath
and getting comfortable with myself it that led me to a big insight and realization of the importance
of my body and how I started to really believe that my body was was intelligent and that the body
holds on to a story really really smart and basically that kind of led me to yoga so meditation and
yoga are very very aligned and correlated and I got a yoga teacher certification and I started
teaching brands of daily mini of my Atlanta community the Chapel Hill community they were taking
online classes with me I was feeling a lot of purpose and sharing something that meant a lot to me
now this whole connection to the body creating a healthier relationship with the mind so I was
like starting to tap into this purpose like a different level of purpose that I hadn't really
felt in life before because I had taken the time for these travels to get to know myself and what
what worked and felt good for me and then got enough confidence to get to a point through a
few certifications and more training and education to be able to share some of these things with others
and so yoga and meditation was a big start of that whole kind of wellness and health and peace
and happiness that whole route and and then I really dug deep into nutrition that was another
area that I became very focused on and really important to me in my life and with that I just
I had the realization that a coaching this coaching profession is relatively new although it's more
established in the US than it is in Europe and it just felt like the perfect way to start
bringing in some of these things that I was already doing into one offering one place that I can
share all these different things and yeah so that's really kind of how that went and I did a you
know nine month online course to get the coaching certification and then as I was finishing that up
I knew that I was ready to to launch this business and to really start stepping into into this new
role of life it was really a click I'd say last year 2022 22 is a big number for me my birthday is
August 22nd and I just knew that I was ready now whereas it took you know solid four years of
travel and self-education to get to that point where I felt confident enough myself to to take that
next step and last year was a really big year for never again so you just named how you got to
where you are I think personally and philosophically what have you learned about yourself just in the
logistics of running your own shop because I mean what you're talking about like what you are sort
of offering and what how I think about like running a business those two things if you're not careful
could be at odds with one another if you're not conscious of it you know yeah so I'm just curious
to know if you've had any sort of aha moments in you know rolling out this new venture yeah and
I think that I am very aware of these things and sounds like it yeah I think that I have I have
friends that are entrepreneurs and I've seen people with passion projects that are in this
growth mindset you know starting hitting the ground sprinting and it's all about growth right
from the beginning and it's amazing how you can see what you know start there's good intentions
and they really believe in it oh it's coming from this good place but they're stressed and they're
working incredibly hard and they're the balance in their life is often lost and so I felt I entered
this this process very aware of that and so I have been very much focusing on balance in my own life
that's a huge thing that I'm coaching people on is how they can have balance in their lives I think
it makes sense for me to to be living it myself as well so and coaching this particular work is
long and it's slow intimate and there's no rush so I think that that is a huge mindset that I have
really embraced living here in Spain is slowing things down you know they say here in Spain
poco a poco and that has been yeah little by little step by step that phrase has just hit me
really deep from the moment I got here people were telling me that and it makes so much sense
for me and everything in life and especially this business is there's no rush here it's like I'm
working with my first clients and we are I'm giving them the best possible experience I can and
trusting in in my good intentions and in myself and that this thing is gonna I know it's gonna it's
gonna work out there's no rush to grow it as big as possible right away yeah so I think that that
mindset of taking off the pressure off myself to have this huge growth mentality but to just
enjoy every step of the process is this and in life I love this what a powerful message
just being present just being where you are how can love it support you
how can this community support you honestly that was another thing that I was hoping that
he brought up was that love it already is supporting me first of all and I just I noticed in myself
and actually going back to the cancer this was something you know there was a couple things that
I was hoping that I was able to touch on and one of them was my knee jerk reaction to the cancer
diagnosis was reaching out to love it I reached out to coach must champ who was like a huge
huge mentor of mine I had so much respect for that man it like I respected when some coaches more
than other but for him I was just so much respect I reached out to him and I reached out to Jamie
Palmer and was people that for some reason I was drawn to love it when I got this news like as
some place of meaning and purpose for me and I wanted to like get back you know what was going
through my head was like I wanted to volunteer on one of the sports team that's what I didn't
end up happening but that was my initial thought me jerk reaction was reaching out to love it I
wouldn't got a coffee with Reverend Allen during that time we had a deep conversation about things
that I hadn't spent much time thinking about I don't know I wouldn't you know consider myself
overly religious especially during those those times those times but I had a really deep
powerful conversation with him going into a scary time of my life so I just
I wanted to mention that but that was my knee jerk reaction was going to to this place
you know so I think that that was that's pretty cool and and also as I launched this business the
same thing like I reached back out to these people and I really reconnected with love it and that's
why I was so excited by this opportunity to to share that with you all and whoever is listening out
there that you know love it had a big impact on me for those 14 years but it's continuing to support
me in this in this life that I have chosen in this new way of living the business as well and
I'm very appreciative but some of those some of those conversations when I was back in Atlanta
this past year when I launched the business was you know meeting meeting with old folks from love
it and talking and I just have felt the support and and just these sort of things are are helping
me getting me a space a platform to to share my story this is supporting me right here
awesome it's a story absolutely worth sharing for so many reasons okay because you have now
listened to a few episodes of the podcast there is one question we ask of everyone
and that is what does living love it mean to you yeah I did think about this so living love it to me
means living your dreams it means not being afraid to dream day and taking action to make those dreams
in reality and to expand on that just a little bit it's living a purpose-filled life whatever that
means for you and not settling for anything less true thank you so much for reaching out for your
willingness to share your story for what you are doing for other folks in your sphere of influence
I think it's incredible the world needs it sounds like more Drew Stockton so thank you so much for
being on living love it today thank you all it really is a huge pleasure and honor thank you again
thanks to Drew Stockton for being on living love it today you can find living love it on apple
podcast spotify or your favorite podcast app connects with the love at school on Facebook Twitter
and Instagram all things love at school may be found on our school website loveit.org I'm Jessica
Sant and until next time I hope you've enjoyed this story from the riverbank
.