Becoming All of You: Medicine, Motherhood, and Making Room for Every Part of Yourself
October 15, 2025
Somewhere along the way, we learned that being “put together” meant following the checklist.
Finish training. Build the practice. Start the family. Keep it all moving.
And for a while, that checklist feels safe — like proof that we’re doing life “right.”
Until one day, it doesn’t.
Because the truth is, the checklist doesn’t leave much room for you.
The you that dreams. The you that creates. The you that wants to slow down. The you that’s ready to grow in a different direction.
You Don’t Have to Earn Permission to Evolve
Many of us were raised to believe that changing paths meant failure — that once you’ve invested in a career, a relationship, or a version of yourself, you’re supposed to stay there.
But life doesn’t work like that.
You’re allowed to change your mind.
You’re allowed to evolve.
And you’re allowed to build a life that fits the person you’re becoming, not just the one you were trained to be.
There’s no prize for doing it all exactly the way you were told.
But there’s freedom in realizing you get to rewrite the rules.
Seasons Will Shift — Let Them
Every season asks something different from you.
Some demand productivity and presence. Others ask for pause, rest, and reevaluation.
The tension comes when we expect ourselves to operate the same way through all of them — to hustle in every season, to show up at full capacity even when we’re depleted.
But there’s wisdom in recognizing when a season has changed.
You might need more support.
You might need more creativity.
You might need less noise and more peace.
That isn’t failure — it’s alignment.
The Power of Listening (Especially to Yourself)
Physicians are trained to listen to everyone but themselves.
We push past fatigue. We disconnect from our bodies. We convince ourselves that rest is a reward instead of a requirement.
But the body always tells the truth.
The exhaustion. The irritability. The lack of focus.
They’re all signals — not inconveniences.
Listening to those signals is how we reclaim our power, one boundary at a time.
Start small:
Take a real break before you reach your breaking point.
Let rest count as productivity.
Ask for support before it becomes survival.
That’s how you start building a life that doesn’t just look good on paper — it feels good to live in.
You Get to Be All of It
You don’t have to trade one part of yourself for another.
You can be the physician who saves lives and the woman who writes, creates, and dreams beyond the hospital walls.
You can be ambitious and nurturing, structured and spontaneous, devoted and curious — all at once.
Because you’re not meant to fit into one box.
You’re meant to fill your life with everything that makes you whole.
So stop asking which version of you gets to exist.
They all do.
