Dr. Monica Dabney of Lotus Wellness and Lotus Woman Life Coaching

Dr. Monica Dabney describes herself as a doer.

Spend a little time with her story, and the word starts to feel almost modest.

Monica has built businesses, raised a family, changed careers, gone back to school, written books, and kept finding new ways to work with people.

I think “doer” may be underselling it a little ;)

Monica was born in Cuba and came to the United States with her parents in 1971 on one of the last Freedom Flights. 

Her family lived in New Jersey before eventually settling in Miami, where she would spend most of her life.

Ask Monica about the turning points that brought her to the work she does today, though, and she resists picking one.

“For me, life is ever-changing, and there is a path that is only ours,” she says. “All experiences and turning points lead us to it.”

Her own path has certainly taken its share of turns.

The interesting part is how often Monica has been willing to follow them.

A Different Kind of Medicine

Before Monica practiced acupuncture, she owned medical centers in Miami.

They were successful. Her business included physical therapy and six medical specialties, and Monica says she made a good living from them.

She also spent years watching patients receive prescriptions while continuing to struggle with their health.

Then her son was diagnosed with ADHD in second grade.

The treatment available to him at the time included Ritalin, and Monica was concerned about its side effects. A neurologist and a nurse who worked for her suggested acupuncture. Monica says the experience with her son was positive enough to send her in an entirely new direction.

She went back to school.

Four years later, in 1999, she earned her degree and began a new career in acupuncture and Oriental medicine.

It was a substantial pivot for someone who already owned successful medical businesses. Monica had encountered another approach to health that she wanted to understand well enough to make it her work. She opened the first Integrative Health and Wellness Center in Miami, where patients could pick their preferred medicine.

That willingness to keep learning would become one of the more permanent features of a career built around change.

The Question Got Bigger

Over the years, Monica’s view of health continued to expand.

Her acupuncture practice brought her into the physical side of care. Experience kept pointing her toward everything happening beyond the body.

By 2013, she had become a Certified Professional Life Coach. Additional training in trauma followed, along with work in family reunification programs and as a life and skills coach for the Children’s Court in Miami. Eventually, Systemic Family Constellations, workshops, and retreats became part of her work as well.

The collection makes more sense when you understand what Monica is looking for.

She is interested in people.

How we change. What we carry. The patterns that shape us. The ways physical and emotional well-being affect one another.

“Human nature makes me curious,” she says.

So she keeps studying it.

Today, Monica’s work spans Lotus Wellness, Inc. and Lotus Woman Life Coaching LLC, where she offers acupuncture and East Asian medicine, homeopathic consultations, wellness and life coaching, and Family Constellations. She is a Board Certified Doctor of Oriental Medicine (NCCAOM), licensed in North Carolina and Florida, and a Certified Professional Life Coach.

It’s a broad body of work, but Monica has had decades to build it.

Piece by piece seems to be her way.

The People Who Keep Her Learning

Much of Monica’s acupuncture practice today is spent working with veterans.

As a VA Community Care Network provider, she treats veterans who come to her with pain, PTSD, anxiety, insomnia, etc. She describes watching the people she works with improve is one of the things that keeps her inspired. She also works extensively with women through coaching, workshops, retreats, and her Lotus Woman work.

There is a common thread between those groups that has little to do with demographics.

Monica likes being present when someone begins to see more possibility for their own life.

She talks about watching people leave her studio or workshops “better than they came in.” Her coaching work is rooted in helping people regain a sense of agency in their lives, while her acupuncture practice gives her another way to support the people who come through her door.

That role seems to extend beyond work.

When asked how a friend might describe her, Monica guessed they would mention her strength and her tendency to get things done.

Then she added something quieter.

She is someone people confide in when things aren’t going well.

She listens.

She also loves to host and gather people, which feels entirely consistent with a woman whose career has gradually accumulated more and more ways of bringing them into a room.

Becoming a Lotus Woman

Somewhere within all of this work, Monica’s attention also turned toward her own story.

She is the mother of three grown sons, now living in Florida and Maryland, and has been happily married to her husband for more than two decades. She credits motherhood with shaping many of the choices she has made.

Her growth as a woman mattered, too.

One lesson in particular took time.

“That I matter,” Monica says of what her work has taught her.

She learned that taking care of herself allowed her to show up differently for the people she cared for, and that owning her own abilities mattered just as much as encouraging other people to claim theirs.

That idea eventually found its way onto the page.

Monica recently wrote Lotus Woman: Reclaiming Your Powers, which incorporates pieces of her own story into a book about women reclaiming agency in their lives. She followed it with Lotus Woman: 52 Weeks to Bloom, a weekly workbook for reflection and personal growth.

The lotus is a fitting symbol for someone who seems quite comfortable becoming.

Monica has already lived through immigration, motherhood, entrepreneurship, career reinvention, and another move hundreds of miles from the place she had called home for decades. Along the way, she kept adding to what she knew and finding new ways to use it.

At 66, she is still adding things.

There are workshops to lead, retreats to plan, books to write, and people to gather.

The Only Constant

Monica has a wonderfully simple way of describing something her life has demonstrated repeatedly.

“The only constant is change.”

For Monica, change has become part of the route.

She has followed questions into new careers and life experience into new ways of serving people. Motherhood altered her decisions. Her patients expanded her understanding of health. Coaching drew her further into the workings of the mind. Her own growth became material she could offer other women.

Now North Carolina is part of the story, too.

What comes next will probably involve more learning and teaching. Monica has made that much fairly predictable.

As for the rest?

She’ll get there.

She’s a doer.

Find Dr. Monica Dabney

Monica works with clients through Lotus Wellness, Inc. and Lotus Woman Life Coaching LLC, offering acupuncture and East Asian medicine, homeopathic consultations, wellness and life coaching, and Systemic Family Constellations. She also leads workshops and women’s retreats, with coaching available online.

You can find her at LotusWellnessCare.com and LotusWomanLifeCoaching.com, or follow @DrMonicaDabney on Instagram.

Her upcoming events include a Vision Board 2027 workshop on January 2, a local full-day women’s retreat on February 27, 2027, and a women’s retreat in Naples, Florida, in May 2027. Stay tuned to her socials for more details on those events.