The Story of R+R
If you’ve witnessed R+R Co-Founders, Taylor Dukes, FNP, BSN-BC and Dabney Poorter, RN, CN, engage in conversation with one another, you already know. They’re full of energy. They’re dreamers. Ideas come a dime a dozen and no one can fully keep up with one of their new thought lines… except for the other. After watching them “go” for ten minutes with a maximum of four sips of air each, R+R’s overseeing physician, Dr. Levy, remarked with wide eyes and an amused grin, “Wow. This is the most tangential conversation I’ve ever witnessed.” To which Dabney and Taylor’s lilting laughter echoed through the room.
Their passion for what they do excites them so much, it radiates from every flicker of their eyes and every beam of their kind smiles. But don’t be fooled. Oh no. These Renaissance women know their stuff, they mean business, and they fight fiercely for what they believe to be the best possible care for their patients and clients.
And they each wear the battle scars to prove why they do it.
Because of these scars, the full story of R+R simply cannot be told without first honoring the stories of individual struggles and triumphs of both Dabney and Taylor. It also cannot be told without humble gratitude for the belief God Almighty works all things together for the good of those called according to His purpose.
DABNEY’S STORY
Dabney’s family is tight. They’re the family you want to be. You don’t envy them though, because they don’t make you feel excluded, rather you feel inspired by them and pray your own little unit might emulate them one day. So it comes as no surprise, when Dabney’s younger brother by nearly 10 years was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes when she was 14, she saw the amazing care given to him by the nurses and was so inspired, this selfless young girl knew that day she wanted to become a nurse.
Fast forward several years and a nursing degree later, Dabney completed a collegiate basketball career in Santa Barbara, CA where she met husband Kelly, a fellow basketball stud, and they started a family of their own in Fort Worth. In October 2010 when their oldest of two girls was 5 months old, Dabney began to notice her typically athletic frame was bordering on frail. Her muscle mass was deteriorating, and while she was concerned, she chalked it up to being postpartum, nursing her first baby and all the unknowns to already accompany the season.
The day after Christmas, Dabney was working a 12-hour shift she’d grown accustomed to after three years as an RN, so the incessant thirst she could not quench and the accompanying bathroom breaks began to sound some alarms in her head. As she arrived at home, she walked inside with blurry vision.
Something was not right.
Shortly thereafter, Dabney was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. After meeting with an endocrinologist and several specialists, she was taught how to “manage her disease” and if you know Dabney even a little bit - this was not good enough. This diagnosis propelled her to become a Certified Nutritionist and to open her Nutrition Consulting practice in 2011. Inspired to learn as much as she could about her auto-immune disease and the lifestyle changes to accompany it, Dabney began exploring “root-cause therapy” and the beauty of fully understanding why a symptom occurs rather than how to mask it.
By 2015, Dabney’s Nutrition Consulting business had made her a household name, and she continued to sharpen her focus on adjusting her lifestyle to support her autoimmune disease. About this time, Dabney and Kelly’s good friend Dan Green sent her a video from Dr. Ben Edwards of Veritas Medical in Lubbock, Texas discussing Integrative Health and Functional Medicine. The wheels started to turn for Dabney. She began to wonder whether she should pursue her Nurse Practitioner degree to create this wellness approach of root cause therapy and whole patient care in Fort Worth and/or whether she needed to find a partner to help her make it happen…
TAYLOR’S STORY
Big heart. Big smile. Big dreams. That’s Taylor. Raised in Austin, Texas by a family who focused on fresh foods and being active, Taylor thrived in athletics and in life. In 2008, Taylor set off for TCU in Fort Worth to pursue a degree in nursing. Fresh out of college, the self-proclaimed adrenaline junkie began to pave the path toward her dream of becoming a helicopter flight nurse with a job in a Level 1 Trauma ICU.
While working the demanding hours of the Trauma ICU, Taylor’s big heart took her on a mission trip to Ecuador, and while the trip did wonders for her relationship with the Lord, it wreaked havoc on her health.
Taylor came home sick. Really sick.
This previously healthy girl in her early 20’s took on a myriad of symptoms to include devastatingly low energy, joint pain, hair falling out, horrible skin, hormonal imbalance and incessant stomach issues. Two years of seeking help from multiple specialists, countless medications and even going so far as enduring various procedures to find a path to healing yielded no improvement.
At 23 years old, Taylor could barely get out of bed each morning. She was napping after work in her car because she was too tired to walk inside. Taylor’s mom came to stay with her just to help her complete normal day-to-day tasks. Upon arrival, her mom realized just how much her baby girl had been toughing it out. She was really sick, and the current path of conventional treatment flat-out was not not cutting it.
Through research and by God’s hand, Taylor’s mom guided her to a Functional Medicine provider, but not without some kicking and screaming from Taylor. In Taylor’s mind, this was woo-woo medicine with no science to back it, and she went in with incredibly low expectations.
Boy were those reversed.
Finally someone saw Taylor as the whole patient rather than compartmentalizing her care with different specialists. They listened to her and created individualized protocols to set her on the true path to healing. Through the Functional Medicine approach and by adjusting her diet and lifestyle to include foods and an environment to nourish her body rather than fight with it, the root causes of her medical problems finally came to light. Functional Medicine testing revealed she contracted a parasite and a virus in Ecuador two years prior. The length of time these lingered in her body untreated combined with the high-stress demands of the Trauma ICU and an unfortunately timed bout with mono left her incredibly sick.
As she began to heal these root causes through the recommended protocols, she felt strongly God had put her through this suffering to enable her to empathize with potential future patients. Taylor’s experience with Functional Medicine not only radically improved her health, it radically changed the trajectory of her career and the rest of her life!
Motivated by her new outlook and an admitted nerd for knowledge, Taylor pursued a Certification from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and began working for some of the most respected experts in the Functional Medicine field to soak up as much as she possibly could. This seven year tenure included three years with well-known Functional Medicine practitioner Dr. Amy Meyrs. While working in Functional Medicine, she knew she wanted to pursue her Nurse Practitioner degree to someday open a Functional Medicine practice of her own, and she set off to do just that in 2016...
THE STORY OF R+R
Taylor and Dabney met in 2011 when Taylor, then a TCU student, participated in workout classes taught by Dabney’s younger sister, Makenzie, at a track across the street from Dabney’s house. Dabney was a new mom, and she conveniently got her sitters from this sweet group of TCU girls exercising with her sister. Through babysitting for Dabney’s eldest and by each of them attending the various community events hosted by Makenzie, Taylor and Dabney got to know each other. Coincidentally, 2011 was the year of Dabney’s Type 1 diagnosis, and their bond over pursuing nursing careers and Dabney’s personal health journey laid a strong foundation for their relationship despite the age gap.
After Taylor graduated, they went their separate ways retaining a mutual respect for each other. During this time, they each endured their separate wellness journeys detailed above, and in 2016, they ran into each other at the newly opened Whole Foods in Fort Worth for the first time since 2011.
In the aisles of the health food mecca amidst organic strawberries and sustainably-caught seafood, Taylor and Dabney caught up on all the life that had happened to each of them over the past five years. When Taylor exclaimed she would soon be pursuing her Nurse Practitioner degree with an emphasis on Functional Medicine, Dabney’s eyes grew wide with excitement.
Father God, is this it?! They each buzzed with excitement of their complimentary dreams of opening a place where the sick could heal and the healthy could optimize. As they left the grocery beaming, they each promised to continue the conversation.
Thanks to the details of Taylor’s prayer journal, she recalls the two meeting roughly six months later on January 2, 2017 at Press Cafe to discuss the potential wellness center with Dabney’s parents. Through several more meetings and prayers, plans began to unfold. They knew they wanted to offer as many healing and optimizing modalities under one roof as they possibly could, and the inclusion of IV therapy, Vitamin Shots, Detox Foot Soaks and Infrared Saunas topped the “must have” list in addition to their respective Nutrition and Functional Medicine practices. They began praying over next steps including which healing practitioners to include under the wellness roof, and they set their sights on opening the center in January 2018, just a few months before Taylor would complete her Nurse Practitioner degree.
But God had other plans.
In May of 2017, Taylor went on a first date with a cute Air Force pilot named Ryan Dukes recently home from Afghanistan. That must have been some lunch date, because a short four months later, the two were engaged to be married and the date was set for December 30, 2017.
With the excitement of the whirlwind romance, reality began to set in as Taylor understood exactly what it would mean to marry an Air Force pilot. Marrying Ryan meant being stationed in Abilene, Texas with a minimum six year commitment to the Air Force which likely meant moving out of state or even overseas for some of those years. Taylor’s stomach dropped as she realized the dream of opening R+R would likely be put on hold. With the mixed emotions of deep love for her fiance and the deep sadness at seeing their dream hit pause, Taylor vividly remembers her prayer group praying over her the morning before she broke the news to Dabney. True to form, Dabney handled the pivot with an abundance of grace, and they both agreed to just trust where God was going to take them.
And boy did He get to work.
Earlier in 2017, Ryan endured severe hip pain which led to a corrective surgery in April of 2018. Unfortunately, he did not recover as expected leading to his inability to run, fly or deploy, and Ryan was medically and honorably discharged from the military in 2019. With this poignant news, the fog covering the dream of R+R slowly began to lift, and the Dukes made plans to move back to Fort Worth… but not until after yet another sweet surprise made his debut. Taylor and Ryan welcomed baby boy Ryder to the family in September 2019!
With R+R’s gear shift back to go, it was time to name the center and start hashing out plans. The branding and web design genius of Gracie Chambers led them to settle on soothing blues and greens to accompany the official name of Restore + Revive. The girls loved the idea of calling it R+R for short... and for literal meaning!
As Taylor navigated the first weeks as a new mom and prepared to move cities, Dabney hit the ground running with plans to transform her dad’s office into their wellness center. Through the efficient and excellent work of Rick Yuill’s construction team, the unwavering support and grace of Tammy and Steve Fitzgerald, the design prowess of Maven Interiors, the incredible artwork provided by Bee Street Gallery, Joey Lancaster and Lynn Samis, and the iron-working talent of Ryan Young’s signage creations, the dream of Restore + Revive began to tangibly come to life in the thick of the 2019 holiday season.
In November 2019, the marketing team rounded out beautifully (albeit shoulder to shoulder amid cardboard boxes and construction dust) with the addition of Melissa Raulston and Mary Clay Gupton. Shortly thereafter, R+R Manager Sarah Henkle joined the crew from a glowing recommendation of one of R+R’s most valued members.
Taking day trips with a newborn to Fort Worth as the details of their move finalized, Taylor popped in on the action to support Dabney as they began meeting with potential team members to round out the body, mind and spirit healing approach the women envisioned. By God’s hand, the talents of numerous, incredible Wellness Practitioners and the sweetest and smartest RNs in DFW to administer IVs, shots, and foot soaks all fell into place as the new year approached.
Pharmaceutical grade supplements and toxin-free, high-performing personal care products were secured to provide for clients in the R+R shopping experience. The nutrients, antioxidants, minerals and vitamins to be used in shots and IVs were procured from some of the most reputable compounding pharmacies in the country.
Almost everyday in December yielded a new brown box and a vital piece to the puzzle.
With the goal of opening doors in January 2020 to capture the “clean slate” of the new year, Rick Yuill’s team led by Jay Miller worked their magic, and Restore + Revive Wellness Center opened to the amazing Fort Worth Community on January, 14th, 2020. Just a short eight days past the projected opening date of January 6th and roughly two years beyond Dabney and Taylor’s originally projected opening date of January 2018, their dream had finally become a reality!
While waiting on the Lord’s timing is never easy, it is always worth it. Without the pauses and pivots, R+R would not be what it became through struggle, healing, planning, waiting, hustling and CoVid-ing! R+R now stands stronger than ever with the most amazing team of support and talent to further its potential daily. Thank you to everyone involved in making Restore + Revive what it is today and what it can be tomorrow.
Finally, we will say it again and and again and again, THANK YOU, dear clients, for all of your steadfast support. We love you all!
Photo by Hannah Haston