Peeks The Right Stuff As a result of overcoming dark experiences that Rene has endured, she has discovered the power that lies in discipline, focus, and exercise to transform a life.

Rene Norton, with Dr. Kenneth A. Norton, D.D.S.

Based upon my personal experiences, I’ve come to believe that success in life isn’t always the result of having good things happen. Many times success comes from effective responses to adversity, negative events, and sometimes to nightmarish situations. My own happy life has been shaped by my responses to a truly awful marriage, a tragic fire, an incapacitating injury, and to the predilection of my body to become over-weight without constant battling on my part.

Burned Up!

My husband, Dr. Kenneth Norton, and I had a thriving dentist practice in Sonoma. The business had grown by word-of-mouth because of my husband’s well-deserved reputation as the area’s nicest, most considerate, and gentlest dentist.

We redecorated our dentist office and invested a lot into the establishment, both emotionally and physically. It was a sunny, happy place where we could help people to a better smile and eliminate the pain — often agony — that our patients sometimes had to suffer.

One night in 2001 a fire completely gutted our office. When we walked into the area I fell to my knees in shock. The place was gutted! Added to the nightmare of the event, my dad had died in a fire when I was seven and I recognized that smell.

We moved into temporary quarters and were able to keep the business alive in large part because our patients followed us the six miles from the old office. It was a difficult period, but people were amazingly supportive! We got phone calls from at least 20 local dentists, each one offering to share office space and resources.

After three months of struggle we finally threw up our arms. Running a dental practice is difficult at the best of times, and the effort of keeping our business alive in these transitional circumstances was beginning to take its toll. We had to do something else.

We had been checking local real estate listings but not one appropriate space was available in the whole area. We decided to sell our patient list to a local dentist who had worked next door to us. He and his wife had a small practice with no staff. He would do the dental and hygiene work; she managed the office and did the bookkeeping.

I’ve always believed that loyalty should flow in both directions between employer and employee, so before we sold them our practice we told the dentist, “There’s a catch. You must be willing to offer our staff the same positions at the same hourly rate, or more. Or else it’s no deal.”

We didn’t even know if our staff wanted to work for them. But two of them accepted a comparable position in the new office. Six years later they both still work for them.

We loved the Monterey Peninsula, and so in October 2001 we bought a house in downtown Carmel, and waited for an office to open up. We found our place by coincidence because a dentist had once told me in a casual conversation, “If I could retire tomorrow, I would.” We contacted her and the deal went though in less than a month, and we have a nice office in a beautiful location right next door to the Whispering Pines Park.

We provide a spa-like environment with waterfall, aroma therapy, neck pillows, fresh coffee, and tea. Our place is as stress free as a dental office could be.

Recovering from the fire had been an awful ordeal but we finally were able to create a garland of joy out of the ashes of our tragedy. We couldn’t be happier than we are now!

At War with My Weight

When I was young I weighed more than other girls my age. I hated looking fat so I began running. I especially enjoyed the solitary experience that running provided. Before my twelfth birthday I was running six miles every day. I also took a weightlifting class and began working out regularly. My body began changing, as a result. Muscle began to replace flab; I achieved my ideal body measurements.

I eventually got married and had a couple of babies. I realized after giving birth to my two daughters that even though I was occasionally running I was no longer keeping my weight under control.

The quality of my marriage declined more than my physical shape. I was in a hellish relationship with an unfaithful man who was emotionally and physically abusive.

After my daughters got older, I began a program of running and working out again. Exercise became an endorphin-fueled passion for me. While exercising I could go into an inner place where everything was sunny and peaceful. The deep happiness I experienced during those moments created a palliative to the pain of my marriage. Worries about home and work fell away.

My idol, Cory Everson, was six-time Miss USA Champion. I used to buy muscle and fitness magazines and study pictures of her. She was the way I wanted to be.

Even though my husband used to jeer at me and call me “fat ass,” he would get mad when I joined Gold’s gym in Reno. And when I started getting in shape he became insanely jealous and would rag on me because of my friends.

I finally showed him the door and turned up my exercising to full steam ahead, moving up to six days a week and working with a trainer. The exercise really helped me cope with what I was going through.

I met my husband Ken in the gym. He was going through a divorce himself. “Maybe we should get together for a drink and share horror stories about our spouses,” he said. At least that’s his story. I didn’t remember the event because I wasn’t ready for the dating scene.

We finally started dating three months later when, by a coincidence, I ended up as a patient of one of his partners in his office, and the rest is history.

At one point I worked with a personal trainer who actually made me look too skinny. I wanted to be lean and strong, not gaunt and malnourished.

Another personal trainer sought me out. “I understand you’re looking for a personal trainer.”

“I don’t know if I could afford you,” I told him.

“Perhaps I could help you a couple times a week and then you could train alone the other days.”

And then he added something I was glad to hear. “I want you to know that I’ve done a lot of competitions,” he said, “and have never lost one. I don’t use steroids.”

That was welcome news because I was averse to any kind of drugs. I wanted to get fit through exercise and natural protein.

“In nine months or less you can be on stage doing competitions,” he told me.

The trainer taught me a lot. He would get on my case. He hung a picture of Cory Everson right where I could see it. “Are you a body builder or a birdie-builder?” he would ask. He knew all the buttons to press!

I began training 2-3 hours every day, six days every week taking only Sundays off. I would do 90 minutes of cardio, and the rest with weights, running, Stairmaster — anything that would give me the workout I needed.

On days when I couldn’t get to the gym I would run at least six miles up the railroad tracks heading towards Truckee. If the weather was bad I would be jogging in my snow boots. If I had eaten a bacon cheeseburger or had drunk a bloody Mary the day before I would jog another mile as a way of doing penance.

During those times I was in my zone. Even though the tracks ran through the wilderness, I was never afraid of bears, mountain lions, or weirdoes.

I began to compete. Before a competition I would go for 12 weeks on a diet that was restricted to 6- to 8-ounces of boiled or broiled chicken, plus veggies — such as yams — that are high in fiber and complex carbohydrates. I would also force myself to drink two gallons of distilled water every day. Every day I walked into work carrying my two gallons of water and walk out with the empty containers at the end of the day.

Water cleanses toxins out of your system. It is really good for skin tone, and nicely conditioned skin shows up muscles to their best effect.

For four years I continued bodybuilding and entered three competitions, doing well in all three. In the last one I placed third. One of the gym owners told me afterwards that three of the five judges placed me first, but the winner was a friend of the head judge.

I didn’t care. I had done good and I felt wonderful! My body was a lean muscular machine.

Into the Valley

Everything changed in 1996 when I broke my foot while walking on a treadmill. The bone popped so loudly that Ken who was across the room turned to look. I had to go through three casts, which caused my ligament to shrink so that running became impossible; simply walking became painful. I’ve had eight injections of cortisone to help the ligament loosen up. The foot began to atrophy, and my bodybuilding activities were put on the back burner while I spent an entire decade trying to recover.

I’ve had a lifelong aversion to being overweight and during that decade of not exercising my childhood weight problem returned. I remember one day in Macy’s when none of the clothes fit right. I walked by Macy’s Woman, which is a store for larger sizes, looked in the window and thought, “I’m going to have to start shopping here.” I really fell apart.

When we moved to Monterey I began taking long walks on the beach and found something that the specialists had apparently missed — walking in the sand is therapeutic for an injury like mine. My foot began improving and my long walks eventually brought down my dress size from 12/14 to a 6/8.

Last December I joined a gym again — Energia in Monterey’s Del Monte Shopping Center — and began meeting with a personal trainer. I’m determined to look like I did during my last competition in 1994. By September I’m going to be competing again.

Life is full of tough times and serious challenges. Nothing good comes from trying to avoid these things. It lies within our power, however, to forge dark elements into tools that are powerful enough to reshape life as we want to live it.

Strength of mind rather than good fortune is what makes the difference between succeeding or failing — whether in recovering from abuse, a tragic fire, a debilitating injury, or from the body’s efforts to destroy health and happiness.

All that is required is sufficient strength of mind and will to pay the price that is required. Unwavering determination and steady focus are the right stuff.