On a Mission to Revive Veterinary Medicine
The veterinary profession has long been weighed down by emotional strain, compassion fatigue, burnout, and the overwhelming pressure to remain strong for both animals and their owners. Behind every diagnosis and emergency call is a caregiver who rarely gets time to care for themselves. For years, this reality went unspoken. But not anymore.
Dr. Marie Holowaychuk, a veterinarian, speaker, author, and mental health advocate, has emerged as a powerful voice for change. Her journey began in the heart of clinical practice, where she witnessed not only the challenges faced by animals in need of care, but also the toll on the professionals dedicating their lives to caring for them. She realized that even the most skilled and compassionate veterinarians were silently battling burnout.
Founding Reviving Veterinary Medicine, Marie set out to challenge the status quo. Her mission? To normalize conversations around mental health in veterinary circles and offer tangible solutions through education, advocacy, and support. Through workshops, speaking engagements, and her book A Compassionate Calling: What It Really Means To Be a Veterinarian, she creates space for healing, not just for patients, but for the people treating them.
Marie combines medical expertise with vulnerability, reminding professionals that it’s okay to be human beneath the scrubs. She equips them with tools to prioritize wellbeing while delivering high-quality care. Her work is changing how the industry sees mental health, not as a private struggle, but as a vital part of professional resilience.
In a world where saving lives can cost one’s own wellbeing, Marie is leading a quiet revolution, one where empathy extends inward, and where healing begins not just in the exam room, but within the healer too.
While her focus has been on veterinary medicine, Marie’s insights into sustainable caregiving and mental wellbeing transcend the field. The tools she shares are relevant to anyone in a helping profession – nurses, doctors, therapists, and beyond. Her upcoming book expands on these themes, offering a compassionate roadmap for all caregivers navigating the demands of giving while striving to stay whole themselves.
Marie is a veterinarian, board-certified in small animal emergency and critical care. With both parents in the veterinary field, her connection to the profession began early, shaped by a deep-rooted respect and understanding of its demands.
As her career progressed through rigorous specialty training and roles in academia, she faced the harsh realities of burnout and mental health struggles, challenges that are all too common in the veterinary world. These personal experiences became a turning point.
Rather than stepping away, Marie chose to turn her pain into purpose. Her journey toward healing inspired a new mission: to help caregivers, especially those in veterinary medicine, prioritize their wellbeing and create careers that are not only successful, but also sustainable.
Today, she fulfills this mission through coaching, consulting, speaking engagements, and wellness-centered programs that extend beyond veterinary settings. Through her work, Marie is reshaping how care professionals view success, not just through outcomes, but by the health and happiness of those delivering care.
Marie’s relentless pursuit of perfection and productivity eventually pushed her to the edge. Caught in the cycle of workaholism and burnout, she had little time to reflect, until life forced her to. One day, while rushing between appointments, she was struck by a car making an illegal left turn. That accident, both physically jarring and emotionally awakening, became the pivotal moment that changed everything.
During her recovery, Marie chose to give herself something she hadn’t allowed in years – time and space to reconnect with herself. She enrolled in yoga teacher training, not for a new career path, but as a personal act of self-care. What began as a healing journey soon became a profound source of self-awareness and stillness. For the first time in years, she felt grounded.
That experience marked the beginning of Marie’s transformation, not just personally but professionally. Yoga introduced her to a level of presence and clarity that reshaped how she viewed mental health, wellbeing, and the veterinary profession itself. From that moment forward, her path led toward advocacy, helping others recognize the signs of burnout and encouraging a more compassionate approach to work and life.
Growing up as the child of two devoted veterinarians, Marie witnessed firsthand the silent sacrifices made in the name of animal care. Her parents were unwavering in their commitment to their work, yet, despite the long hours and emotional toll, they rarely spoke about the personal cost. Mental health was never a topic of conversation, even though its impact subtly wove through the fabric of their family life.
This quiet endurance left a lasting impression on Marie. It taught her the importance of resilience, but also the consequences of neglecting one’s wellbeing. As she pursued her own path in veterinary medicine, she began to recognize the patterns repeating across the profession: burnout, compassion fatigue, and emotional exhaustion often endured in silence.
Today, Marie sees a powerful and promising shift. Conversations around mental health are becoming more open, and the profession is slowly shedding the stigma once attached to vulnerability. Through her work as a speaker and advocate, she channels both the strength and silence of her parents’ generation, hoping to create a healthier, more compassionate future for the next.
After completing her residency and achieving board certification, Dr. Marie accepted a position as an Assistant Professor at the Ontario Veterinary College. The role combined her passions, clinical work, research, and teaching, and, at the time, felt like the perfect fit. However, the academic environment also amplified her perfectionist tendencies. The relentless pressure to perform left her with a constant sense of inadequacy, despite her accomplishments.
Eventually, the weight of these expectations took a toll on her mental health, leading to burnout. Looking back, Marie reflects that with better understanding of boundaries and emotional wellbeing, she might have sustained her academic career. Today, she uses those hard-earned lessons to help others. By advocating for mental health and wellness, she empowers caregiving professionals to recognize warning signs, set boundaries, and prioritize their own wellbeing, so they don’t have to reach the same breaking point she once did.
Earlier in her veterinary career, Marie found herself working in environments where gossip, bullying, and poor communication were normalized. Lacking the boundaries and confidence to speak up, she remained silent, even when these toxic conditions resulted in medical errors, such as preventable medication overdoses that directly affected patient care.
These moments left a deep imprint on her. Marie realized that true caregiving begins with self-care, and that healthy boundaries are not just a personal necessity but a professional responsibility. Her experiences became the foundation of her mission to promote non-toxic work environments, where psychological safety is prioritized, and where the wellbeing of caregiving teams is seen as essential to patient outcomes.
Marie has observed that veterinary professionals, by nature, are deeply compassionate caregivers who often prioritize others’ needs over their own. This self-sacrificing tendency manifests in common patterns, such as people-pleasing, martyrdom (“I’m the only one who can help”), and a persistent belief that change is beyond their control. These behaviors, while rooted in empathy, frequently lead to burnout and emotional exhaustion.
Adding to the challenge is the entrenched stigma surrounding mental health within the veterinary community, which makes it harder for professionals to seek support or express vulnerability.
Drawing from these insights, Marie has tailored her coaching and programs to address the core issues head-on. Her work centers around helping individuals establish healthy boundaries, improve communication, and shift limiting mindsets. By doing so, she empowers veterinary professionals to reclaim their sense of agency and prioritize their own wellbeing, without compromising their commitment to care.
Marie integrates her background as a yoga and meditation teacher with her evidence-based approach to supporting caregiving teams by meeting them where they naturally lean– toward science. Understanding that healthcare professionals are largely driven by data and clinical evidence, she presents mindfulness tools through the lens of neuroscience and psychology.
She shares research highlighting how mindful breathing and meditation positively impact cortisol levels, inflammatory markers, and even brain function, as seen in functional MRI scans. By framing these practices in scientific terms, Marie helps demystify them, making them both credible and approachable for her audience.
This dual approach, grounded in evidence and enriched by experience, reinforces her core belief: healing can be both data-backed and deeply human.
Marie addresses a widespread and damaging misconception within the veterinary profession: the belief that burnout and mental health challenges are simply part of the job. She explains that this mindset reflects a deeper cultural conditioning, one that teaches professionals to accept emotional and psychological distress as an unavoidable reality.
According to her, while feelings of overwhelm, anxiety, and emotional exhaustion may be common, they should never be considered normal. This normalization fosters a culture of silence and endurance, making it harder for individuals to recognize when they need support.
Through her work, Marie aims to disrupt this belief. She encourages veterinary professionals to view mental health struggles not as a weakness, but as a signal that something needs to change. She strongly advocates seeking help, emphasizing that prioritizing mental wellbeing is not only acceptable, it is essential.
Dr. Marie’s online programs have earned widespread acclaim, and for good reason. Their effectiveness lies in a unique blend of lived experience and evidence-based science.
Participants often connect deeply with her openness; having personally faced burnout and mental health challenges, Marie’s honesty creates a strong emotional resonance. She also emphasizes practical strategies like habit formation and mindset shifts, ensuring that the lessons learned continue to serve professionals well beyond the conclusion of the program.
As a writer and content creator, Marie masterfully balances scientific integrity with emotional depth. Her communication strategy begins with storytelling, often sharing her personal challenges, which builds relatability and trust. This narrative foundation is then supported by research and statistics, helping her audience feel both seen and informed.
Her ability to combine authenticity with data invites deeper reflection and encourages meaningful dialogue around topics that are often overlooked or stigmatized. This unique approach is at the heart of her book, A Compassionate Calling: What It Really Means To Be a Veterinarian, which offers a behind-the-scenes look at the veterinary profession by weaving together personal stories and hard-hitting statistics.
Marie’s global speaking engagements have shown her that the struggles of veterinary professionals are more alike than different, regardless of geography. This insight informs her content for the Reviving Vet Med podcast and her online platforms.
By incorporating international research and inviting diverse voices into conversations, she ensures that her content remains inclusive, relevant, and impactful. Her approach is informed by ongoing trends, direct feedback, and the real-world challenges faced by veterinarians across continents.
Though she has received numerous honors for her communication and wellness advocacy, Marie defines success in more personal terms.
A single message from a veterinary professional expressing how her work has inspired change in their self-care approach holds more weight than public recognition. These private affirmations, often arriving months or years after an event, serve as quiet but powerful reminders of the difference her work makes in individual lives.
Marie is especially committed to addressing the systemic gaps in diversity, equity, and inclusion within veterinary medicine, a profession still among the least racially diverse.
Through her involvement in multiple wellness and DEI committees, she champions initiatives that link mental health with inclusivity, working to reduce stigma and drive policy-level changes. Whether through educational programming or institutional reform, she aims to create sustainable, far-reaching impact. Her belief in the possibility of lasting transformation is what fuels her continued dedication to the field.
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