Today we’d like to introduce you to Heather Tusi.
Hi Heather, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
My story has never really followed a straight line and I think that’s exactly what has shaped who I am today.
I’ve spent much of my adult life serving others. I joined the military at a young age and have now served for more than 16 years, eventually becoming an officer in the Air National Guard. Along the way, I pursued a career in healthcare and became a Family Nurse Practitioner. Both worlds taught me leadership, resilience, discipline, and probably most importantly how much people need someone who genuinely cares about what happens to them.
But my professional accomplishments are only part of my story.
I’ve also experienced loss, motherhood, divorce, major life transitions, and seasons where I had to figure out who I was outside of all the titles I carried. Becoming a mom to my son, Coleson, changed my perspective tremendously. Losing my mom changed it again. Those experiences made me realize how easy it is to spend your entire life taking care of everyone else while slowly losing yourself in the process.
Eventually, I decided I wanted to build something different.
I founded Valor Health & Wellness because I wanted healthcare to feel more human. I wanted people to feel heard rather than rushed through an appointment, and I wanted to address the whole person not simply a diagnosis on a chart. My work has especially deepened my interest in mental health, resilience, lifestyle medicine, and helping people make small, sustainable changes that actually improve their lives.
At the same time, I began sharing more of my own life through Living Simply by Heather Leigh. What started as lifestyle content has evolved into something much bigger for me. I share motherhood, fitness, fashion, travel, faith, wellness, entrepreneurship, and the imperfect reality of figuring life out as you go. I don’t want to portray a perfectly curated life. I want people to see that you can go through incredibly difficult seasons and still create a life that is beautiful, meaningful, and fun.
Today, I’m a nurse practitioner, military officer, business owner, creator, and my favorite title mom. I’m also developing THRIVE, a wellness project centered around helping people build resilience through small, intentional changes in their mental, physical, and spiritual health.
I’m still building. I’m still learning. And I definitely don’t have everything figured out.
But I think that may be the most important part of my story: I stopped believing that I needed to have everything figured out before I could start creating the life I wanted.
Sometimes you build it while you’re living it.
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?
It definitely has not been a smooth roadand honestly, I don’t think I would be the person I am today if it had been.
I’ve experienced loss at different stages of my life, including losing my biological father when I was young and, more recently, losing my mom. I’ve gone through divorce, learned how to navigate co-parenting, experienced heartbreak, and had seasons where I was trying to be a mother, healthcare provider, military officer, business owner, and everything everyone needed me to be all while privately trying to hold myself together.
One of my biggest struggles has actually been learning that being strong and being okay are not the same thing.
I became very good at functioning through difficult things. I could show up, take care of people, solve problems, lead, work, parent, and keep moving. From the outside, that can look like resilience. But I’ve learned that real resilience isn’t just your ability to keep going. Sometimes it’s recognizing when something needs to change, allowing yourself to rest, asking for help, setting boundaries, or admitting that the way you’ve always survived is no longer the way you want to live.
Starting my own healthcare practice brought another completely different set of challenges. There is a huge difference between being a good healthcare provider and learning how to run a business. I’ve had to learn operations, finances, leadership, systems, marketing, and how to make decisions when there isn’t necessarily someone above me telling me what the right answer is. There have absolutely been moments when I questioned myself.
Balancing all of that with motherhood has probably taught me the most. My son has a way of reminding me very quickly what actually matters. Success means very little to me if I’m so consumed by achieving it that I miss his childhood.
I’ve also had to learn that I cannot pour endlessly into other people and expect there to be something left for myself. That has probably been one of the hardest lessons because caring for people is such a huge part of who I am.
The struggles have changed me, but I don’t look at that as a bad thing anymore. They’ve made me more compassionate as a provider, more intentional as a mother, more thoughtful as a leader, and much more protective of the life I’m building.
I used to think resilience meant getting through hard things without letting them affect you. Now I think resilience is allowing those experiences to affect you and then deciding what you’re going to build from them.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Valor Health & Wellness?
Valor Health & Wellness was created around a very simple idea: people deserve to feel heard, understood, and cared for not just treated.
As a Family Nurse Practitioner, I’ve worked in healthcare long enough to see how easy it is for medicine to become focused on diagnoses, medications, numbers, and short appointments. Those things are important, but there is always a person behind them. I wanted to create a practice where we could look at the whole picture mental health, physical health, lifestyle, nutrition, sleep, stress, movement, relationships, environment, and what is actually happening in someone’s life.
At Valor Health & Wellness, we provide comprehensive healthcare with a strong emphasis on mental health and wellness. What I believe sets us apart is the way we approach the person sitting in front of us. I don’t want someone to leave simply knowing what medication they’re taking or what diagnosis they have. I want them to understand their health, recognize what they have control over, and leave with tangible steps they can take to begin feeling better.
I’m especially passionate about mental health and resilience. Through my work, I’ve seen people during some of the hardest moments of their lives, and it has reinforced something I believe deeply: people are capable of changing their lives, but telling someone to “do better” isn’t enough. We have to give people tools they can realistically use when life is messy, motivation is gone, and getting through the day already feels difficult.
That philosophy has also inspired THRIVE, a project I’m developing that brings together mental health, physical wellness, nutrition, movement, faith, habit-building, and resilience in a practical and approachable way. I want wellness to feel less overwhelming. Sometimes changing your life starts with something incredibly small taking a walk, eating a nourishing meal, making your bed, keeping one promise to yourself, or simply deciding to try again tomorrow.
That same philosophy carries into Living Simply by Heather Leigh, my lifestyle and wellness platform. I share fitness, motherhood, fashion, travel, faith, health, entrepreneurship, and real life because I believe wellness is much bigger than what happens inside a medical office. I want to show people that taking care of yourself can coexist with enjoying your life. You can work toward becoming stronger and healthier and still travel, dress up, eat great food, drink a glass of wine, laugh, make memories, and actually live.
Brand-wise, that is probably what I am most proud of: everything I’m building ultimately points back to the same message.
Health isn’t about creating a perfect life. It’s about creating a life you actually want to be present for.
Whether someone encounters me as their healthcare provider, through Valor Health & Wellness, through THRIVE, or simply through something I share online, I want them to walk away feeling a little more hopeful, a little more capable, and reminded that meaningful change is usually built through small choices repeated over time.
At the end of the day, I don’t want to simply help people live longer. I want to help them build lives they genuinely want to live.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
My definition of success has changed tremendously over the years.
There was a time when I probably would have defined success by accomplishments the degrees, the career, the rank, the business, the income, or how much I could get done in a day. I’m proud of those things, but they aren’t how I measure my life anymore.
Today, success is having the freedom to build a life that aligns with what matters most to me.
It’s being present enough to experience my son’s childhood instead of realizing someday that I was too busy working through it. It’s building a business that genuinely helps people. It’s being able to serve others without completely sacrificing myself in the process. It’s having the courage to change direction when something no longer aligns with the person I’m becoming.
I also think success is much quieter than we sometimes make it.
Sometimes success is a huge professional accomplishment. Other times, it’s getting up and working out when you didn’t feel like it, keeping a promise you made to yourself, setting a boundary, taking the trip, being fully present at dinner, resting without feeling guilty, or getting through a really difficult season without giving up on the life ahead of you.
I want to accomplish big things. I’m ambitious, and I don’t think that part of me will ever disappear. But I no longer want success at the expense of actually living. Because the one thing I’ve learned is life is not guaranteed.
If I can raise my son knowing he was deeply loved and that his mom was truly there, help people live healthier and more meaningful lives, create something that continues helping others long after I’m gone, and still have enough space in my life to enjoy the people and experiences I love. That’s success to me.
I don’t want to build a life that only looks successful from the outside. I want to build one that feels successful while I’m actually living it.
Contact Info:
- Website: Valor Health & Wellness
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/livingsimplybyheatherleigh?igsi=Z2Fkam10dGIyZm5s&utm_source=qr
