Today we’d like to introduce you to LoAn Pham.
Hi LoAn, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My story began when I was just 10 years old. My family was very poor, and my mother was a single mother raising four young children. She worked hard to support us, which meant she often wasn’t home. In the midst of that experience, I found God. I remember asking, *“Why do I exist in this world? What is my purpose for living?”*
What came to me was a quiet voice—a whisper—that I was meant to take care of the sick and elderly. That moment gave me a sense of purpose. I decided to pursue nursing because I wanted to serve others and be like Florence Nightingale.
Over the past 25 years in healthcare, I have had the privilege of caring for countless people and hearing their stories. Again and again, I noticed a common thread: so many people struggled with fear, self-worth, self-acceptance, and, ultimately, self-love. I saw it in my patients, my family, my friends, and in people I encountered throughout my life. Their stories stayed with me.
Beginning in 2019, I felt increasingly guided to bring all of these experiences together and create what became the **Powered by Self-Love Oregon LLC**. It didn’t happen all at once. Little pieces, people, experiences, and resources seemed to present themselves along the way, eventually coming together to create a larger vision with one singular intention:
**To educate, empower, inspire, and impact people to learn to love themselves from the inside out.**
I believe my Higher Inner Self has continued to guide me toward the people and resources necessary to create a safe space for healing—one where people can develop greater compassion, self-acceptance, gratitude, and connection with themselves.
Although I certainly am not the first person to talk about self-love, mental wellness, or holistic healing, I wanted to create an approach that brings these concepts together with evidence-informed healthcare and natural, plant-based wellness practices. As a healthcare provider, it is extremely important to me that the products, tools, and resources I recommend are thoughtfully evaluated and supported by clinical research and evidence before I introduce them into my practice or recommend them to the people I care for.
My philosophy is centered on **wholehearted being through wholehearted living**.
We are living longer, and I believe we have an opportunity to become more intentional about how we care for ourselves—not only physically, but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. We live in an environment where we encounter countless chemicals and stressors through our air, water, soil, food, and daily lives. While we cannot control everything around us, we can make conscious choices that support our overall well-being and help us become more proactive about our health.
The Powered by Self-Love concept ultimately grew from what I witnessed throughout my healthcare career. I saw people who were incredibly compassionate toward everyone else but struggled to extend that same compassion to themselves. I saw people who felt unworthy, disconnected, afraid, or unsure of their purpose. I wanted to help change that narrative.
Over the course of my career, my patients have also changed me. They have inspired me to continue learning, growing, and becoming a better provider. Their experiences have reminded me that healthcare is not simply about treating symptoms—it is about seeing the whole person and helping people reconnect with their own strength, purpose, and capacity to heal.
Today, my mission remains simple: **to educate, empower, inspire, and impact people so they can create healthier, happier, and more fulfilling lives.**
My vision is bigger than any one person. I want the work I do to create a ripple effect. When one person learns to love and care for themselves differently, that transformation can influence their family, relationships, community, and future generations.
In many ways, the journey that began with a 10-year-old girl asking God, *“Why am I here?”* has led me to the answer I continue to live today: **I am here to serve, to heal, to empower, and to help people discover that they are worthy of loving themselves from the inside out.**
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
**Oh, absolutely not.**
Life has not been a smooth road, and the journey to where I am today has been filled with sacrifice, uncertainty, mistakes, fear, and countless moments when I questioned whether I should keep going.
But I want to make an important distinction.
**The clinical work was never the part I struggled with. The business was.**
The clinical side is actually the part that comes naturally to me.
I was thoroughly trained for it. I spent years in education, graduate school, postgraduate education, and working in different clinical environments. I had years of experience working with people from different backgrounds, with different diagnoses, personalities, histories, and needs.
Most importantly, I learned how to listen.
I don’t believe being a healthcare provider means simply telling a patient, *“This is what you need to do.”*
People are not textbooks.
Every patient has a different history, different experiences, different values, different fears, different strengths, and different goals.
My job is to listen to them, really hear them, understand what they need, and work with them—not simply impose my way on them.
Sometimes that means coordinating care with other providers. Sometimes it means slowing down and listening more. Sometimes it means helping a patient understand their options so they can participate in decisions about their own care.
**It isn’t about me being right. It is about helping the patient get the care that is right for them.**
That part of the work—the human connection, listening, understanding, problem-solving, coordinating care, and helping people heal—is something I feel deeply comfortable doing.
The struggle was everything surrounding the clinical work.
**The business.**
The administrative side.
The operations.
The finances.
The technology.
The systems.
The employees.
The insurance issues.
The billing.
The compliance.
The paperwork.
The contracts.
The marketing.
The taxes and bookkeeping.
The endless decisions that have absolutely nothing to do with sitting in front of a patient and providing care.
**That was the struggle.**
I didn’t have mentors or a roadmap.
My mother did the best she could. She always encouraged me to study, pursue higher education, work hard, and believe that the world would open up for me. I took those words seriously.
But I had to figure out much of the journey on my own.
I worked part-time and full-time jobs while putting myself through college, graduate school, and postgraduate education. When I was 16, I started reading books about successful people because I wanted to understand how people became successful. I wanted to know what they knew. I wanted to understand how people built something from nothing.
I didn’t have money, connections, or a safety net.
I didn’t have a line of credit or financial resources to fall back on.
**What I had was determination.**
I was a dreamer.
I had goals for myself.
I believed there was something more for my life, even when I had no idea what that “something” looked like.
Before I opened my medical practice, I opened several other businesses.
And they failed.
I was afraid, and eventually, that fear caused me to stop.
But something was different when I started my medical practice.
For the first time, I felt like I was doing something that was truly aligned with who I was and what I was meant to do.
I was still afraid.
I still had doubts.
And I still had no idea how to run a medical business.
But this time, I was determined not to let fear stop me.
When I eventually opened my own medical practice, I had virtually no business knowledge. I remember asking colleagues for help, but many were understandably hesitant to share what they knew.
There were companies that offered to teach me how to build and operate a medical business, but some wanted $50,000 or more.
I simply couldn’t afford that.
**So, I taught myself.**
I learned through books, research, mistakes, conversations, experience, and simply figuring things out one step at a time.
And I made plenty of mistakes along the way—mistakes that cost me significant amounts of time, energy, and money to fix.
There were times when I felt exhausted, overwhelmed, and completely alone.
I worked 60–70 hours a week, sometimes from 8 a.m. until 3 a.m., seven days a week.
I gave up much of my social life because I was determined to make it work.
And much of that time wasn’t spent doing what I love.
It was spent trying to figure out how to run a business.
That is something people don’t always understand about entrepreneurship.
They see someone who owns their own practice and think, *“You must have so much freedom.”*
**Well… that didn’t exactly go according to plan!**
I initially became self-employed because I was tired of corporate environments, administrative micromanagement, and policies that sometimes made it difficult to provide care the way I believed it should be provided.
I wanted more flexibility.
I wanted more control over my time.
I imagined I would have more freedom and be able to take more vacations.
Instead, I found myself working nights, weekends, and holidays.
Even when I did take a vacation, I was often on the phone helping patients through crises or dealing with some business issue that couldn’t wait.
I learned very quickly that entrepreneurship is often glamorized.
What people don’t always see is the sacrifice, responsibility, uncertainty, pressure, and emotional weight that come with building something from the ground up.
And there were many times when I wondered whether I had made a huge mistake.
Every year, I would eventually reach a point where I was so exhausted that I would go into the woods, spend time in nature, pray, and ask my Higher Power for guidance:
*“Am I supposed to quit, or am I supposed to keep going?”*
And somehow, I would always come home with the same answer:
**Keep going.**
It’s funny because, as a teenager, I told myself I would never become self-employed.
I had watched my mother work day and night trying to make a living, and I remember thinking, *“I don’t want that life.”*
Yet somehow, I ended up following a very similar path.
But despite everything, I wouldn’t trade the journey.
Because the reward has been so much greater than the administrative headaches, the long hours, the sacrifices, the financial risks, and the social life I gave up along the way.
**The reward has been the people.**
The patients.
The stories.
The transformations.
I’ve watched patients who once struggled with self-harm reach a place where they no longer feel the need to hurt themselves.
I’ve watched people who lived with nightmares finally sleep peacefully.
I’ve worked with patients who came to me taking **five, six, seven, sometimes even 10 different psychiatric medications** to manage anxiety, depression, and other symptoms, yet they were still struggling with significant anxiety and depression.
For some of these patients, medication alone had not addressed the deeper wounds underneath their symptoms.
Through intensive psychotherapy, inner-child work, trauma-focused work, and helping patients understand the experiences and patterns that had shaped them, we were able to work toward something deeper than simply managing symptoms.
Over time, and **when clinically appropriate with careful monitoring and coordination of care**, some patients were able to discontinue psychiatric medications, while others were able to significantly reduce the number of medications they needed—sometimes down to **zero to three psychiatric medications**.
That doesn’t mean medication is bad or that everyone should stop medication.
Medication can be incredibly important and life-changing for many people.
What it means to me is that I don’t believe every patient’s treatment should be reduced to simply adding another medication when they continue to struggle.
Sometimes we have to ask:
**What happened to you?**
What are you carrying?
What did you learn about yourself as a child?
What survival patterns are still operating in your life today?
What wounds have never been given the opportunity to heal?
And sometimes, when we address those deeper issues, we begin to see changes that go beyond symptom management.
I’ve watched patients who once lived with debilitating panic attacks, severe anxiety, and depression begin to experience peace.
I’ve watched people find jobs.
Go back to school.
Become financially independent.
Move out of their parents’ homes.
Learn how to stand on their own.
I’ve watched people begin to love life again.
And I’ve watched people begin to love themselves.
I’ve had the privilege of watching people release burdens they had carried for years—burdens that were never theirs to carry in the first place.
I’ve seen marriages that seemed broken begin to heal.
I’ve seen relationships repaired.
And I’ve also seen people finally find the courage to leave relationships that were toxic and unhealthy, even when letting go was incredibly difficult.
There have been so many stories.
So many people.
So many moments when I have watched someone go from merely surviving to finally beginning to live.
**Those are the moments that make everything else worth it.**
The administrative work can be exhausting.
The business side can be overwhelming.
The financial decisions, paperwork, systems, staffing, compliance, technology, and endless operational responsibilities can sometimes make me question why I ever decided to become a business owner.
But then I sit with a patient who tells me:
*“I finally feel like myself again.”*
Or someone tells me:
*“I don’t have panic attacks anymore.”*
Or:
*“I finally understand why I have been struggling all these years.”*
Or I see someone who once couldn’t imagine having a future begin building one.
**And that’s when I remember why I keep going.**
The clinical work is where my heart is.
Helping people understand themselves, heal their trauma, reconnect with themselves, and create a life they actually want to live—that is the work that continues to give my journey meaning.
I don’t want to simply help people survive their symptoms.
**I want to help them understand the story underneath the symptoms and, when possible, help them heal the wounds that have been driving those patterns for years.**
I want to help speed up the healing—not by rushing it, but by helping people understand the patterns, wounds, beliefs, and burdens that have kept them stuck for years.
That is why I continue doing this work.
That is why I kept going when the business became difficult.
And that is why, despite all the administrative struggles, sacrifices, and long hours, I know I am exactly where I am supposed to be.
It has not been easy.
**It has been a struggle—but it has also been one of the greatest teachers of my life.**
Every mistake taught me something.
Every obstacle forced me to grow.
Every difficult season gave me knowledge, resilience, wisdom, and experience that I could not have learned any other way.
And honestly, it has gotten a little easier every year.
I’ve learned to trust myself more.
I’ve learned how to ask better questions.
I’ve learned how to make better decisions.
I’ve learned how to delegate.
I’ve learned that I don’t have to know everything on day one.
Most importantly, I’ve learned that sometimes the path becomes clear only after you take the next step.
And I discovered something much deeper along the way:
**God has a greater plan for me than I ever had for myself.**
Everything I have is because of God.
Every opportunity.
Every lesson.
Every door that opened.
Every door that closed.
Every person who crossed my path.
Every difficult season that forced me to grow.
God has been my guiding light.
**He is my everything.**
There have been moments when I thought I knew exactly where my life was going, only to discover that God had something completely different planned.
Looking back, I can see that some of the things I once considered failures were actually redirections.
Some closed doors protected me.
Some disappointments prepared me.
Some struggles built the strength I would later need to help someone else through theirs.
I’ve even wanted to write a book about this journey.
I actually started one and worked with an editor, but eventually I realized I needed more experience as a business owner before I was ready to put everything into words and share it with the world.
I think I’m ready now.
The funny part is that I’m still so busy that finding the time to actually write the book is the challenge!
But I believe everything happens in its own timing.
**God has a different plan for me today, and I trust that one day the book will come together.**
When I look back, I realize that the little girl who had no roadmap, no mentors, and very few resources somehow kept finding her way.
There were so many detours.
So many wrong turns.
So many moments when I questioned myself.
So many times when I wanted to stop.
But I never completely stopped moving forward.
And maybe that’s the greatest lesson I’ve learned:
**You don’t need to have the entire road mapped out.**
You don’t need to know exactly how everything is going to work.
You don’t need to have all the money, connections, answers, or resources before you begin.
Sometimes you just need enough faith to take the next step.
And then another.
And another.
**You need enough courage to keep going when the road gets hard.**
Because sometimes the path doesn’t reveal itself until you have the courage to walk it.
And sometimes, what you thought was simply your struggle becomes the very experience that prepares you to help someone else through theirs.
So, has it been a smooth road?
**Oh, absolutely not.**
But would I do it all again?
**Absolutely.**
Because somewhere along the way, I realized that this journey was never just about building a business.
It was about becoming the person I was meant to become.
It was about turning pain into purpose.
Turning mistakes into wisdom.
Turning fear into courage.
Turning survival into a life of meaning.
And using everything I have learned—not just from textbooks and education, but from years of experience, listening to people, walking alongside them, coordinating their care, learning from them, and being trusted with their stories—to help other people find their way back to themselves.
**That is a journey worth continuing.**
**And I’m not finished yet.**
We’ve been impressed with Powered By Self Love Oregon LLC, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
I am a Doctor of Nursing Practice and a dual-certified nurse practitioner, specializing as both a Family Nurse Practitioner and a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner. My current practice focuses primarily on mental and behavioral health, where I provide psychiatric medication management and psychotherapy, with a particular focus on trauma, childhood trauma, and inner-child work.
My journey into entrepreneurship began during the COVID-19 pandemic, when telehealth was rapidly expanding. I officially opened my practice in 2022. I began in Oregon and eventually expanded into Washington so I could build a patient base large enough to sustain a full-time practice. I also established my practice in California.
But the business itself isn’t really where my story begins.
**The brand came to me through my patients.**
I kept seeing the same pattern over and over again. Many of my patients struggled to love themselves, care for themselves, or even give themselves permission to put themselves first. They felt guilty for resting. They felt selfish for taking care of their own needs. They were constantly giving to everyone else while neglecting themselves.
I began teaching my patients that self-care isn’t selfish and that they are allowed to make themselves a priority. That’s where the foundation of my **Powered by Self-Love** philosophy came from.
As I continued working with patients, I noticed another profound pattern: so many were carrying the effects of childhood trauma, including physical, verbal, and sexual abuse. I began to understand that medication can be an important tool in supporting mental health, but medication alone isn’t always enough. I wanted to help my patients move beyond simply managing symptoms and toward creating meaningful, fulfilling lives.
Every time a patient comes to see me, I genuinely want them to get better. I have often prayed before and after caring for my patients, asking God to guide me in helping them, to help them respond well to their medications, and to experience as few side effects as possible. My goal has never simply been to reduce symptoms.
**I want my patients to be able to live the life they want—and the life they deserve.**
That desire led me to explore additional approaches to mental and behavioral wellness, including psychedelic education. I completed psychedelic-focused training alongside approximately 360 professionals, including psychiatrists, physicians, therapists, counselors, nurse practitioners, and other healthcare professionals. It was an incredible experience because I realized I was surrounded by people who were also asking important questions about how we can support people beyond simply managing symptoms and create opportunities for deeper insight and personal transformation.
Through that journey, I met my soul sister Christine and the co-founders of the Divine Earth Church and began collaborating with Dr. Renee Gandi and Stef Cedarbrook. Together, we have worked on retreat experiences designed to support preparation, intentional experiences, reflection, integration, and personal insight. My intention is to help people recognize what may no longer be serving them and create space to move forward.
More recently, I founded the **Self Love Empowerment Healing Center**, a nonprofit organization created because I saw another major barrier: **many people simply cannot afford mental healthcare or wellness experiences that could support their personal growth.**
Some of the people who need support the most are struggling financially, unemployed, or living with very limited resources. I didn’t want finances to automatically determine who gets access to support.
One of the programs I envision is a **“work in exchange for retreats”** model, where individuals can contribute their time and skills and earn their participation in a retreat. I believe there is something powerful about working toward an experience rather than simply receiving it. It can create ownership, responsibility, and a deeper appreciation for the opportunity.
At the heart of everything I do is a simple belief:
**No one can do the inner work for you.**
I can provide tools. I can provide education. I can create a safe and supportive environment. I can walk alongside someone. But ultimately, each person has to decide when they are ready to face their fears and do the work.
That’s one of the most profound things I’ve witnessed in my practice. I can give people tools, resources, education, and opportunities, but not everyone is ready to use them. Sometimes people aren’t ready to look beneath the surface or face what they have been carrying.
But when someone *is* ready, something changes.
I’ve had people come back to me after doing the work and essentially say, *“I’m ready. Help me peel back the next layer.”* They begin discovering things about themselves, releasing old patterns, developing greater compassion for themselves, and creating a deeper sense of peace and self-acceptance.
That’s what sets my work apart.
**I don’t want to simply help people survive their lives. I want to help them discover how to live them.**
My brand is ultimately about **self-love, empowerment, personal responsibility, and wholehearted living.** I want people to understand that self-love isn’t just bubble baths, vacations, or positive affirmations. Sometimes self-love means having the courage to look at the parts of yourself you’ve avoided, acknowledge your pain, understand your patterns, establish boundaries, ask for help, and decide that you are worthy of something different.
What I am most proud of is that this brand wasn’t created from a marketing strategy.
**It grew organically from listening to my patients.**
Powered by Self-Love represents the philosophy behind my work. The Self Love Empowerment Healing Center represents my desire to make that philosophy and support more accessible to people who might otherwise never have the opportunity to receive it.
Ultimately, my mission is to **educate, empower, inspire, and impact** people by giving them the tools, knowledge, compassion, and safe spaces they need to begin doing their own work.
And I know I cannot do this work alone.
**God has been my guiding light and my everything.** I believe He has placed the right people in my path at the right time and continues to guide me toward the resources, relationships, and opportunities needed to serve others.
I also believe deeply in the power of community. I am incredibly grateful for the village of amazing family, friends, colleagues, and professionals I have found along this journey, including the people I have connected with through Divine Earth Church. Their support, knowledge, and willingness to collaborate have reminded me that meaningful work is rarely accomplished alone.
There is a saying that it takes a village to raise a child. I believe it also takes a village to support a person through transformation.
**I may be the person walking beside my patients, but God is the one I believe is guiding the path—and I am grateful for every person He has placed in my village along the way.**
I can’t do the work for someone.
**But I can help create the space, provide the tools, and help them find the courage to begin.**
The Divine Earth Church and I will be hosting an upcoming RECLAIM YOU retreat on October 23-26,2026 and November 13-16,2026.
Networking and finding a mentor can have such a positive impact on one’s life and career. Any advice?
Honestly, I have had a very difficult time finding mentors. I think one of the realities today is that **everyone is busy trying to survive, build their own businesses, support their families, and manage their own lives.** I say that with humility because I understand it—I am busy too.
When I was building my career and business, I didn’t have someone consistently sitting beside me saying, “Here’s what you should do next.” I had to find my own way, and I made plenty of mistakes along the way.
So I became my own student.
I read books about successful people. I studied their stories, their failures, their decisions, and the lessons they learned. I took courses, attended retreats, joined programs, and intentionally put myself in rooms with people who shared similar values, passions, and goals.
**Networking, for me, has never been about collecting business cards. It’s about finding your people.**
When you find yourself surrounded by people who are curious, growth-oriented, compassionate, and passionate about what they do, opportunities for meaningful relationships naturally develop. Some of the most important people I’ve met came from simply being willing to invest in myself, show up, learn, and connect.
I also believe strongly in investing in mentorship.
There are many successful entrepreneurs, professionals, coaches, and mentors who have spent decades—and often significant amounts of their own money—learning what they know. If someone has already walked the road you’re trying to navigate, there can be tremendous value in learning from their experience instead of making every mistake yourself.
**Don’t be afraid to invest in yourself.**
Sometimes people are hesitant to pay for coaching, education, or mentorship because they see it as an expense. I see it differently. The right mentor can potentially save you years of frustration, expensive mistakes, and unnecessary detours.
I know this because **I took the long road.**
I learned many things the hard way. I spent money fixing mistakes I could have avoided. I spent countless hours trying to figure things out on my own. There were times when I wished I had simply been able to sit down with someone who had already done what I was trying to do and ask, “What would you do if you were me?”
That’s why, when I invest in a course, a program, a retreat, or mentorship, I don’t just look at the price. I ask myself, **“What is this going to teach me, and how much time, money, and pain could this potentially save me?”**
You are not simply paying for someone’s time. You’re often paying for the years of experience behind that hour.
And when I mentor someone, I take that responsibility very seriously. I currently prefer to mentor **one student at a time** because I want to be intentional about the relationship. If someone is placed on my path, I want to share what I know openly and consciously and do everything I can to help that person succeed.
Mentorship is not something I take lightly. Someone is trusting you with their dreams, their time, and their future.
My advice is simple: **find people who are where you want to go, learn from them, and be willing to invest in yourself.**
Don’t expect everything to be free. Don’t be afraid to pay for wisdom.
If you find the right mentor, coach, teacher, or program, the investment may shorten your learning curve dramatically. You can avoid mistakes that could otherwise cost you years—and potentially far more money than the cost of the mentorship itself.
But mentorship is also a two-way street. Don’t just ask, *“What can this person do for me?”* Ask, **“What can I bring to this relationship?”**
Show up prepared. Do the work. Listen. Apply what you learn. Be respectful of their time. And when someone opens a door for you, walk through it.
I believe the fastest way to grow isn’t necessarily to work harder by yourself.
**Sometimes it’s to find someone who has already walked the road—and be humble enough to learn from their footsteps.**
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.poweredbyself-love.com
- Youtube: https://youtu.be/2h05T8eIXf4
- Other: https://selflove-empowerment.com
