Life & Work with Kaylene Logan

Today, we’d like to introduce you to Kaylene Logan.

Hi Kaylene, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
Early in life, I decided I was going to be a doctor and practice pediatrics because I loved kids so much. In college, I first learned of child sex trafficking, and that influenced me to pursue Obstetrics & Gynecology (OB/GYN) instead. I graduated from UC Irvine School of Medicine (Irvine, CA) and completed my residency at Virginia-Tech Carilion School of Medicine (Roanoke, VA), where I met my husband.

We landed in Nashville, TN, where he joined a local neurosurgery practice, and I started to scale back my practice to spend more time with our children. In this season, I completed an MPH in Maternal & Child Health Policy and Leadership, began growing in my awareness and education around sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation, and volunteered with End Slavery TN. After COVID-19 hit and our third son was born, a lot started changing.

I transitioned into volunteer positions at Faith Family Medical Center and Siloam Health and began processing a lot of the trauma in my own life. In 2022, I started graduate studies to prepare myself for policy work and legislative advocacy around the issues of commercial sexual exploitation. I was invited to join the board of EndSlavery TN (now AncoraTN), the single point of contact in Middle Tennessee for all human trafficking referrals. My husband and I were introduced to Cereset’s BrainEcho technology, a brain-based modality that supports neuroplasticity and emotional and mental wellness.

It had a profound impact that led to us taking over the Nashville office to reopen it in February 2023 as a franchise. Cereset is a brain wellness technology that works by echoing back to the brain a reflection of its own brainwave activity in the form of sound. The brain recognizes its own reflection, is able to “see” places it may be “stuck,” and is able to relax and rebalance areas that are hyperactivated or inflexible, such as might happen if one is in a chronic fight-or-flight or freeze response.

Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The one thing in life that is predictable is its unpredictability. Being human and being in a relationship with other humans are two of the most difficult things we will ever do. I have sought excellence and perfection in everything I do, but perfection is a myth that keeps us on the hamster wheel of performance.

My parents worked hard to provide everything we needed, and I was a successful student for years, able to obtain scholarships to support my educational aspirations. Challenges to my dream of becoming a doctor presented themselves in unexpected places, such as a traumatizing sexual assault and my proneness to faint at the sight of pain. I ended up in a surgical field I loved, only to find the challenges of work-life balance and motherhood to tip me out of full-time practice just when I started.

Our marriage faced challenges that demanded everything my internal resources had to give. Balancing personal healing and family demands with work and graduate school stretched me to what I thought was my capacity. And then I added Cereset. Starting a new business is rife with challenges, from staffing to management to marketing. As I juggle these diverse responsibilities, my own soul has called out for attunement and care.

So, I must practice what I preach and give attention to my whole person to bring my whole, healing self to the community at large and contribute to the piece that I was created to give.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar with what you do, what can you tell them about what you do?
My heart is to see our communities, churches, and world better educated, healed, and equipped to grapple with the root causes of commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking. Commercial sexual exploitation is systematized violence that exploits the abuse and trauma history of its victims to use them for personal satisfaction and financial gain.

Unhealed trauma is both a risk factor and a consequence of exploitation, and unfortunately, it also permeates the stories, demands, and preferences of consumers of pornography and commercial sex. As I have learned in my professional training and through my own story, healing is never one-dimensional. It implicates one’s body, one’s mind, will, and emotions (soul), and one’s spirit. If healing is not holistic, it’s not realistic. What affects a part also affects the whole.

I believe in the intersection of medical care with emotional and spiritual healing and brain-based wellness. It’s the most realistic approach for every individual in our local and global community across the age spectrum, across the trauma spectrum, and the world, and it motivates what I do today, as a physician, abolitionist, advocate, and owner of a brain wellness center.

Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
Taking risks in life is the only way to move forward. What each must decide for himself or herself is the size and frequency of risks. However, there are costs to both moving forward and staying still; neither is 100% secure. There is no guarantee that a chosen profession, a relationship, or a business venture will work out. Your health and safety are not guaranteed, though you can choose variable risk factors that may enhance your life at variable costs.

I have always been convinced that I wanted to be a doctor, and that seemed like a very safe, reliable risk to take. I did not expect to find myself in part-time volunteer practice 11 years after graduation from residency and considering new future career paths. What I’m realizing, however, is that God used the best thing a child would understand to call me into pathways that would lead me toward women’s health and advocacy for survivors of sex trafficking. I thought my own faith and fervor would be enough to make a marriage last. I didn’t expect to experience pain and grief in my closest relationship.

What I am learning is that it takes two powerful individuals both choosing connection — one of whom I don’t control — to both restore and sustain a healthy marriage. I re-opened Nashville Cereset, thinking it was strong enough to take off and fly on its own. I did not expect the new business to need so much tending, nurturing, promoting, and development, much like raising a young one to eat, walk, and run on his own. I thought my life skills (aka coping mechanisms) of performance and perfectionism had helped me to be successful.

Until I realized they were no longer working for me and that I would have to risk transparency and vulnerability to reach for help, learn to trust, and begin to heal. Risk is always involved, and risk is always necessary. Without it, we will stay stuck at the last risk we were willing to take.

One can choose measured risks and take smaller or larger steps forward in seasons that call for more or less caution, but it is only by facing and accepting the risk that we step out, gain momentum, and move forward in life, love, business, or healing. The most beautiful things in life are often birthed through pain and risk and are totally worth fighting for.

Pricing:

• $99 special on an Intro to Cereset

Contact Info:

• Website: nashville.cereset.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ceresetnashville/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CeresetNashville
• Other: https://testimonials.cereset.com/

Image Credits
Beth Gwinn