There is a paradox in my life that I do not think I have ever articulated. I went into independent education because I could not believe how complicated it was to help a child learn in the public system when I was interviewing in 1989. I wanted to teach children directly without jumping through the hoops of imposed protocols. I refused to teach to a test where knowledge is reduced to multiple-choice option, and success is measured by filling in a correct bubble. I wanted to be part of developing creative and critical thinkers capable of solving real-world problems. I wanted to make an authentic connection with one child at a time. But…I wanted to help all children, not just the ones who could afford a private education or the ones who could easily comply in the classroom. Therein lies the paradox that never fully sat right in my spirit for 35 years.
Without realizing it, I find myself drawn to walk with people who made similar choices – like Dr. Jeff Hoepfner.
Liz: I went into independent education as I came out of college because I didn’t like the red tape I found when I was interviewing for public schools back in 1989. And so I’ve been fascinated throughout my educational career with people who see their industry or their field as one patient at a time, and that was what I knew about you from the very first time I visited you.
Dr. Jeff: Yeah, that’s the art part in medicine. I was actually shocked today because one of my patients earlier this morning told me how there’s these little fatty tumors called lipomas that are often down here to your low back, right by your belt. They’re really obvious to me, but then when I send patients to their family docs, so they can get an ultrasound of it to get an idea of the size or get an MRI, the docs don’t touch anybody. They’re 100 % dependent upon special studies.
Liz: Scans, blood work, other tests, ultrasounds…
Dr. Jeff: Yeah, There’s very little clinical decisions made anymore with functional stuff and palpation.
Jeff Hoepfner is a chiropractor. His is literally the practice of hands-on medicine. It always amazes me when he knows exactly where my pain point is. It amazes him that I’m in awe of it. After a high school sports injury of his own, he was drawn to the chiropractic practice that saved him. His work focuses on the musculoskeletal system and the nervous system. I like to think of it this way – it is the infrastructure to my life. If the scaffolding isn’t right, how can I expect to build on all the other systems in a healthy way? I’ve been treated by other chiropractors, but Dr. Jeff’s practice seems different to me. I think it comes from his authenticity and his genuine approach to serving others. I loved the story of his early practice at the art of touch.
Liz: You said to me, I feel things differently with my hands than most people.
Dr. Jeff: In school I was advised to get a phone book, pull out some hair, and start with one page. Work way down into the phone book to where you can still feel the hair. We would do little challenges amongst us in our group of friends, who could go the deepest to hone that sense of feeling? And it’s just…
Magic. He certainly doesn’t finish the thought that way, but I will. As the patient, it can feel like magic. Maybe that’s because there is something magical that happens when we embrace our authentic selves and the curious and distinct gifts that lie within us. That moment when we stop apologizing for our passions, our quirks and the things that make us uniquely us—it’s like breathing fresh air after being underwater. When we let our freak flag fly, we discover a joy that cannot be replicated. I used to lovingly say that I worked in the land of misfit toys.
When you step away from conformity, you courageously enter a space of beautiful uncertainty. Without the rigid guardrails of social or (medical in this case) expectations, you’re free to explore the full spectrum of your capabilities. Dr. Jeff did this by taking the risk to become a private pay practitioner exclusively.
Dr. Jeff: Oh, man. That was my favorite year in practice… the year that I got out of doing third party payer systems. It was just all the restrictions left. I actually spent longer with my patients, I spent more time. My decisions were mine and my patients. They weren’t like, well, let’s see what your insurance says we can do, like what their flow chart, which box is next. And it’s really, really nice.
My fee schedule is very, very low. I’m very old school with the way I do it, because I’ve been self-employed for so long and I have paid for my own health insurance for years. I know what that feels like with high deductibles and copays and things like that. I guess I’m probably too empathetic to the point where I would probably tell you that I’m a bad businessman. I leave a lot of money on the table. I give services away for free like crazy. That’s one of the reasons why I always have to work for myself, because I don’t mind asking for earned capital, but I’m also empathetic to when you’ve got someone in with a hot disk and they’re at 15 visits and you know Christmas is a month away. It feels really good to be that.
Liz: Well, that is what medicine was when I was a child and my parents practiced. I can’t remember the details, but I remember getting a chicken once from a family that couldn’t pay their medical bills.
Dr. Jeff: I’ve received canned food. I’ve received fish from their freezer. In all honesty, those are probably my favorite payments, favorite stories, because they’re equally proud of the fish they caught and the mustard that they made from their Hungarian wax peppers. And I loved that stuff growing up in rural Iowa the way I did. I guess I’m an old soul that way. I don’t know. And I have a good wife who is on the same page with me with this.
Liz: When you put profit or policy in front of people, it doesn’t take long to fall apart.
Dr. Jeff: It really doesn’t. And it shows its backside every time, eventually.
Exhausted by the assembly-line approach to patient care that insurance companies demanded, Dr. Jeff made the calculated decision to ultimately stop accepting insurance altogether. The depth of care he can now provide has attracted patients willing to pay out-of-pocket for someone who truly listens. When some cannot pay at a given time, he prioritized the person over the profit.
It was a risk he found to be more than worthwhile.
Dr. Jeff: I was really happy to get rid of any of the HMOs just because of the amount of paperwork and then asking for just even six visits, twelve visits. And they’ll say, well, you can have two. And you’re like, well, what are you supposed to get done with two visits?
Now, he could take the time with his patients. The art and science of chiropractic medicine also has a therapeutic element in Dr. Jeff’s office. People share with him. They tell him about financial concerns, family crises, personal joys. Maybe there is something about trusting him to manipulate your spine that affords a level of trust to understand your worries and carry your heart.
It hasn’t been long enough for me to forget, but I do. I am not sure if I met Dr. Jeff because I was a patient or if I met Dr. Jeff because he was a dad. Both endeared him and his family to me. He has two older children and a younger daughter whom I met when she was just four years old. She could light up a room, but she didn’t easily conform to social norms or the seemingly random benchmarks we sometimes blindly accept and expect in child development.
Dr. Jeff: She wouldn’t sleep. She didn’t sleep or meaningfully talk until she was four. And that was a really bad time.
Liz: Didn’t sleep?
Dr. Jeff: She would sleep for maybe two hours and then wake up. One of us would sleep up there in the other room because there’s three bedrooms up there and would get up with her, soothe her, comfort her, do whatever needed, and then try to get her back to sleep.
Liz: So it was years of sleepless nights. What was the moment that pushed you to ask, we’ve got to see what’s up?
Dr. Jeff: Oh, wow. It was that and the lack of conversation. She would say words, but she would say water, and not because she wanted it, whatever. It’s just because that word popped into her head, not because it was related to something she was seeing or doing.
Liz: Or necessarily wanted.
Dr. Jeff: Correct. So that’s what they… Meaningful language. The language didn’t have meaning. It was just random words that she knew. So we did a lot of sign language in the beginning just because that was the stuff that was meaningful. It was easier. My wife raised the question to our pediatrician, and he was more akin to thinking that it was just her being stubborn. So we had probably another six months, and then we went up to Pittsburgh to Children’s Hospital. And within 20 minutes of Julie being in the office, he’s like, your child has a spectrum issue. You know how it is when you get confirmation and stuff like that. It’s just a kick in the stomach.
Nothing prepares you for that moment. Even if you suspected something was different about your child’s development, hearing an official diagnosis feels like having the air knocked out of your lungs. In the days and weeks that follow, I have sat with parents as they go through stages of grief – disbelief, anger, sorrow, bargaining, and others. I think it is comparable to grief because there is a shift in the life imagined for their child. The truth is, receiving an autism diagnosis for your child changes everything – including you.
Dr. Jeff: It’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever been through. And I’m speaking from the dad’s perspective. I can’t imagine what it was like being a mom in that situation. Tough, very, very tough. Services are not great in Ohio as a whole, let alone in the Ohio Valley, as far as what we needed, because we looked around for stuff. Autism is such a vast spectrum. Not all of the hallmark therapies would be a good fit for our kid. You know what I mean? So we ended up traveling to the Boston area. Kelly did. Not me. Kelly did. And she did some training up there at the Sunrise Program, and that was a life changer. That brought her from moderate autism to more of a mild autism, more functional, much, much more functional.
Liz: And that’s the way that program works. They train a parent?
Dr. Jeff: And you do home-based therapy there. You create a room specifically for the therapy, and you get volunteers to come in that you also train so that you can have someone working with your child. And we were very blessed that way. We had a church that was really helpful and some good friends who came in and helped a lot. And we just had huge jumps during that time.
And the other thing was up in Wexford, it’s called Brain Balance. In that time period, she actually learned to advocate for herself, to understand what that was and start to do it.
I guess I’m lucky I had a really good wife who was in education and was just super passionate.
In my years in education I have seen parents, like Kelly, become an autism treatment expert overnight. Special diets, sensory integration therapy, speech therapy, ABA, etc – you name it, they research it. Their calendars fill with appointments, and their credit cards max out with specialists and promised success. As if sheer willpower could change the diagnosis, they do all they can. Each child is unique. It is a spectrum afterall. There is no perfect intervention combination. As a Head of School, I felt helpless at times. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be a parent.
Liz: I think what you and Kelly did with Julie is really great advice that you could give your former self. Pick the thing that’s important. “We want Julie to have friends.”
Dr. Jeff: It’s funny that I’m glad that you’re describing that because Julie just turned 14 and we went out bowling. They had the lights down and they had all these flashing lights on, which Julie doesn’t really struggle with. And they had music playing. It was pretty loud, but it was like dance music. And she doesn’t really get too upset about that. And we, I mean, she brings that out in us. Because it’s always been there, my wife and I both like to dance and be goofy. We did that Saturday night and it was a ball. I always say, “Did you let your freak flag fly?”
… she always feels best when she can do that, when she doesn’t feel the imposed filters that we as society put on.
Liz: I feel best when I can let my freak flag fly. I mean, that’s just… I think who Julie is is more authentic than… any of us.
When you step away from social expectations, something remarkable happens. You realize how wonderful it feels to be authentically YOU. It reveals how much of our anxiety stems from trying to fit predetermined molds… or have our children fit into them. The energy previously spent on maintaining appearances, fitting in, fixing things, chasing profit becomes available for genuine creativity and connection.
The most profound benefit is discovering that your peculiar perspective, your unusual combination of interests, your distinctive voice—these don’t need to be suppressed but rather to be celebrated in an impromptu dance party at the bowling alley.
Dr. Jeff: I guess one of the hard things for our walk in autism was there’s not a lot of genuine cheerleaders. There’s not a lot of consistency. Because therapists come and go and things like that. I don’t know. Yeah, that’s a toughie. There are teachers, even during my time at Country Day, Julie could tell you who her best teachers were. And it’s not based on what she learned. It’s the ones who really tried to understand her and empathize with her. And she could also tell you the ones who didn’t. And so that’s a good lesson for us. I think as I’m saying this, it makes me think that maybe that’s what I gained watching that in the autism world, that’s what I gained in my practice life by going cash. Do you know what I mean? I could be that more connected, more empathetic chiro, as opposed to … well let me give you an example, I can see about 35, 40 a day max, and I am exhausted based on how I practice. And I have friends who see 70 to 100 a day, and they’re still up for going out for a sandwich after work.
You know what I mean? It’s got to be a stark contrast in how we’re talking with patients, how we just interact and all that stuff.
Liz: But a patient has the choice to pick a different Chiro. Julie didn’t have that choice with any teacher …ever.
Dr. Jeff: Oh, man. Yeah, that’s the truth. I mean, there is open enrollment, but it’s roulette when it comes to… Because regressions are real, man, when it comes to autism, and that’s tough.
When we embrace our differences, our quirks, we create safe spaces for others to embrace us and to do the same in embracing their own. We silently give permission for authenticity to ripple outward, creating communities where genuine connection can flourish. So go ahead—geek out, laugh too loudly, dance off-beat, sing in the musical, drop the third party payer. The world needs you to be your authentic self more than it needs another complicit carbon copy. The rapturous joy you’ll discover in being unapologetically you is worth every moment of vulnerability it takes to get there.
Liz: Everybody should be forced to go back and just be somebody else on stage and let their freak flag fly. Well, that might very well have to be the title of this.
Dr. Jeff: Let your freak flag fly.
And when you do… you’ll dance …and if you are lucky… you’ll look at your remarkable child and your blessed life and you wouldn’t change a thing.
Liz Hofreuter
Founder GEN-Ed
Not your typical researcher or consultant, Liz connects lived experience to transformative leadership. To uncomplicate leadership and education, every story matters and she is just getting started.
