PAOLA DOOLY
Back from the Brink When a car struck Paola Dooly at 30 mph, it left her with a traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress disorder. Confined to a dark room and facing deep depression, she made choice. She found a way to heal through an intense physical and spiritual journey that took her to unfamiliar territory and helped her recover.
T
by Tony Roberts
Thursday, Feb. 5, 2015, started out as a typical day for Paola Dooly. Temperatures hovered in the mid-40s and light rain fell as she pulled her bike over at Southwest 18th and Salmon. Just after noon, the two-dozen cyclists taking part in the Portland Lawyers Group Ride approached, and Dooly eased into the front row with her friend, attorney Bart Brush. The twice-weekly ride, a 25-year tradition, is short on women and novices. But that didn’t stop Dooly, a newcomer to road riding. She wanted to get fit, and the Lawyers Ride promised a spirited pace. After a few months, she was already a regular. The group rode in two rows northbound on 18th Avenue as it approached the intersection with Northwest Everett. Dooly, in the front, saw the traffic counter reach nine seconds, and turned her head to see if the entire group would make it through the intersection. She woke up four hours later in the trauma center. ••• For Dooly, the day was supposed to end on a high note. She had an afternoon meeting at Wieden+Kennedy to sign a contract to supply her proprietary green juice blend to the ad agency. Her company, Green Temple, was a lifetime in the making. She grew up in Canada to parents with an idyllic relationship, and a mother who eschewed refined sugar, cooked with brewer’s yeast and shopped at co-ops.
28 | The Wınged M |
APRIL 2017
“This was in the early ’70s ” Dooly says. “She wasn’t a hippie, but she was extremely curious about things. So I grew up in this type of world.” After school, Dooly moved to Portland and became employee No. 5 at Tazo Tea, where she learned how to build a business. She carved out a niche helping emerging brands earn national distribution. Along the way, she developed a serious juicing habit. She watched her mom and sister juice for years, but didn’t dedicate herself to the craft until she watched Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, the 2011 documentary about an obese, overmedicated man who drops over 100 pounds and overcomes a litany of medical conditions by drinking green juice. It helped make Dooly a believer, and initially, she just made batches for herself. “I wanted to create the densest nutrition I could put in my body, because I believe we are built to heal,” she explains. “Our body is like a machine. If we’re not taking care of our machine, it’s going to be harder for the body to heal itself.” When faced with a weekly furlough day at work, she used the extra time to start selling her juice to friends and acquaintances. Then she took a few jars to a party hosted by a good friend who worked for Weiden+Kennedy. She met an executive bogged down by the pressure of her high-stress job. Dooly, ever the optimist, gave her a jar of juice and told her she would check back in with her in an hour to see if she felt better. Continued on page 30