Gael Meyer
“Raw Vegan Realtor”
By Kathleen Downey
Gael Meyer
Gael Meyer has crisscrossed the country following the “boys in the band” (or rather, she accompanied her musician boyfriend of that time in her young adult life), lived in a teepee with her dog in Barrington, NH, in a post-Hippie lifestyle that she fully embraced, bartended at a cowboy saloon in Laramie, Wyoming, ventured for two months through the Wyoming wilderness atop a horse named Rocky with a pack horse named Medicine who carried her supplies, lived in a Kibbutz in Israel for three months (“during the Carter administration,” Meyer shares as a timeline), trained dolphins at a Florida aquarium, raised finches, and trained dogs. She also became a joyful mother and, later, a successful Port realtor.
The young sixty-year-old strongly believes in the power of self-reinvention—at any age. “I’ve learned a lot in just the last few years,” Meyer states emphatically. She shares the most important piece of advice she has received, and taken to heart: “Own your own happiness.” The declaration has become her personal mantra.
“Now I want to help other people become as happy as I am,” Meyer says. “I want others to know that they can reclaim their health and happiness.”
Meyer is an ebullient person who radiates good health. But the robust health that she had previously taken for granted took a detour 15 years ago after she suffered a serious physical injury. “I had been enrolled in a self-defense class,” Meyer gives the setting for her impending and fateful accident. “During one class, I had to flip a 250-pound man over my shoulder.” Meyer, a naturally petite woman, succeeded. She recalls, “I screamed, and everyone cheered.” However, she wasn’t screaming with joy because of the herculean feat she had just performed. She was screaming in pain. The sturdy gentleman whom she had just flipped landed on her left leg, fracturing Meyer’s tibia. “I found out that life can change in a second,” she states.
A ten-day hospitalization was followed by months of physical therapy. “Then I spent two years on crutches,” Meyer recalls of her challenging setback. Her debilitated condition left her unable to tuck her son, who was 4 years old at the time, into bed at night. “And that made me very sad,” Meyer says.
She also ended up financially and emotionally depleted . . . and depressed. “The self-defense studio had no insurance coverage, and neither did I,” Meyer says. Her accident cost her thousands of dollars—her life’s savings. But her son (now 27 and an actor in New York City) was her biggest concern. “I had been a single mother since my son was three months old,” Meyer shares. “I was forced to go on welfare for a short time in order to obtain insurance for him and to buy food. This was not a happy time in my life.”
“But I’m a fighter,” Meyer declares. “I keep coming back from adversity.”
Meyer earned her realtor estate license and climbed the highest rungs on Newburyport’s real estate ladder. “I threw myself into my work so I could give my son a good life,” the accomplished realtor says. But her weight had also climbed . . . significantly. “I gained 80 pounds in 15 years,” Meyer candidly shares. She had replaced her dedication to physical fitness, hampered by her accident, with junk food. “I felt horrible; I was experiencing all sorts of aches and pains related to my weight and unhealthy eating habits.”
She had been able to give her son the good life she wanted for him, earning enough money to send him to a private school. But Meyer had neglected her own health. “I was obese,” Meyer states plainly. This unforgiving realization came to her as she viewed photographs of herself from a horseback riding weekend in Vermont, 5-1/2 years ago. “In one photo, I am standing beside my horse. I was huge!” The incredulity in her voice is replaced with compassion—but not for herself, not yet. “I felt so horrible for the horse” having to support her weight, she says.
Around the time of Meyer’s epiphany, a good friend suggested that she visit Revitalive® Health and Wellness Center, which had just opened in Newburyport. Meyer recalls walking through the center’s doors and having her life change again . . . in a very good and healthy way.
Meyer reclaimed her health and happiness.
Under the guidance of Revitalive’s certified health practitioners (Kristen Overlock and Anna Forkan), Meyer became a convert and advocate for colonic cleansing and a raw food vegan diet. She lost her excess weight and saw her energy—and zest for life—return. “When I first went to Revitalive, I couldn’t walk half a block,” Meyer remembers. Today she walks, practices Pilates, does yoga, and enjoys preparing and eating meals that nourish her body and soul.
The lifestyle change that inspired Meyer’s transformation prompted her to write and publish The Nuts and Sprouts of Healthy Living: Simple Steps to Eating Healthy and Losing Weight for Good.
“I wrote the book to help people realize that they can change unhealthy habits, just as I did,” says Meyer, who also has a web site and a blog to assist others in getting healthy. “It would give me such great joy to help make this difference in people’s lives.”
Meyer hopes to branch out into the talk show circuit; she’s already been the guest speaker on web-based radio nutrition programming.
Her next book is The Raw Vegan Realtor . . . Eating Healthy on an Insane Schedule. And she has hatched an idea for a children’s book about a seagull named Lenny.
“I have a huge imagination,” Meyer states.
Lenny, she shares, was an orphaned baby seagull whom Meyer befriended. The hungry and wayward gull showed up at Meyer’s Goose Cove home (which she built 4 years ago) in Gloucester. “At first, I fed him bread, but then I started going to the fishery to buy him food. I showed Lenny how to crack open mussels,” Meyer says, smiling. Lenny grew healthy and stayed for eight months, before flying off to reclaim his happy seagull life.
Kathleen Downey is the Features Editor for Newburyport Today. If you are a townie or a citizen who would like to be profiled (or to suggest someone to profile), please email: Kathleen@Newburyport-Today.com.
