Dr. Sinclair “Clair” McCracken has dedicated her life to the pursuit of joy. As founder of a private functional medicine practice, Sinclair Health, and a children’s book author, McCracken has built her career on a passion for helping people of all ages find happiness in their own lives.
“My personal mission is to increase joy and wellness so it may spread throughout the world. I’ve done a lot of research in the past several years on joy,” McCracken says with a smile.
Having studied art history and French at the University of Lynchburg, before joining the Peace Corps and living with a family for two years in Ecuador as a fish farmer, McCracken has a history of finding ways to combine her passions for art and medicine. “I’ve wanted to be a doctor since I was pretty young. But when I got to college, there were a lot of classes I didn’t have to take because I had some really great teachers in high school. So I took art and art history classes, and I met my husband in painting class,” McCracken says.
Outside of her work, McCracken describes a personal life also built on joy. Her favorite pastime is kayaking, for which she tries to find as much time for as possible. “I kayak most weeks, with weather permitting,” McCracken says. “There are places you can go where the dolphins come out and play around.”
She also describes a love of reading, basketball, traveling and above all else, spending time with her family. In recent years, her family has also played a pivotal role in her achieving her dreams of becoming a children’s book author.
The first children’s book McCracken published was one on which she worked alongside her late father, Dr. H. Marshall Booker, who was an accomplished professor at Christopher Newport University. Recounting how Carter the Flying Fox came to be, McCracken shares, “When we were little, dad wrote stories about my sisters and me with funny little names, but this one he wrote about my brother’s three kids, Sidney, Carter and Lucy. Their personalities are somewhat like them in the book,” she says with a chuckle.
McCracken also describes her illustrations in the back of the book, which her father and mother, Porter Booker, had the three children paint before publishing. McCracken cherishes the experience with her father, describing how happy he was to have his own book-signing table at an art and wellness event they attended. “He had all his art out, and he was sitting there like the king. He was over the moon,” she says.
McCracken’s latest book, Once Upon a Womple, is also the result of a team effort from her family. “My daughter, in her senior year of 2022, made a sculpture that didn’t get high grades or very high praise. She was very sad and she knew it wasn’t her best work, and she was kind of bummed. And so my husband named the sculpture the Womple, and I said, ‘Well, let’s try to write a story about this Womple.’” And so the book was born, written and illustrated by McCracken, based on a project by her daughter Kendall and formatted by her husband Bob, who works as a graphic designer. The Womple has truly taken on a life of its own, with McCracken making handmade Womple dolls for her family and friends and working on having more stuffed Womples made for purchase.
On the other side of the country, McCracken’s son Andrew works in sustainability, and her daughter-in-law Ava is a school teacher. She talks about how her entire family has implemented the same foundational practices she discusses with her patients, prioritizing creativity, mindfulness and community.
When asked how she implements joy into patients’ healing journeys, she says, “One simple way is to help people realize when they smile, even if they don’t mean it, they will lower inflammation and increase all kinds of positive endorphins. Sometimes I’ll prescribe 20 minutes of belly laughter.”
With her flourishing practice, enriching passion projects and a devoted family, McCracken describes her life as one worthy of many smiles. She says her greatest accomplishment is a culmination of all these things.
“The real accomplishment would be to bring joy and beauty to the world as much as possible,” she says. With a new children’s book on the way, Fifi, the Fiery Dragon, and a collaboration illustrating a book with her friend Angie Claud, McCracken continues to pursue joy both in and outside of work.
TO THE POINT:
Dr. Clair McCracken, author
Address: 704 Thimble Shoals Blvd, Ste. 600, Newport News, VA, 23600
Phone: 757-595-5001
Business: Sinclair Health
Website: sinclair-health.net
