My Life Chose Me

As the one year anniversary of quitting pediatrics comes into sight next week, I have found myself feeling content to know that I made it through a full year without a mental breakdown. This time last year, I was a pile of mush on an emotional roller coaster. I have found myself wanting to make a list of all of my accomplishments, goals met or exceeded, lives saved…as if I were creating a new dossier ( I had to look that one up!) about myself, just in case I might need to defend my “unproductive” year. In reality, the list was kind of short but I did attain one goal. A goal that wasn’t even on my original list. I started getting to know myself.

We can spend the majority of our adult lives taking care of everyone but ourselves. As women, it seems to be in our genetic makeup. We give and give and hope that some is left over for ourselves at the end of the day, week, month, year, decade. So, I wanted to share excerpts from a book given to me by one of my dear friends last year when I retired. It is eloquent and simplistic and beautiful. Written by M.H. Clark. It’s called Today, Tomorrow and Everyday. ( The following is all from the book. None of my words, but at times it felt as if the author had been recording my thoughts.)

One day, she stepped back and took a look at her life. A long close look, as though it were a city she loved and she was flying high above it, so high that she could see the whole thing. And she realized something: She liked what she saw. She liked where she had been. She liked where she was going. She hadn’t always been this way. She hadn’t always been as strong and resilient and brave and joyful. Like any garden or work of art, it had taken her a long time to make things the way they were. Sometimes, she grew as much in one year as others do in five.

“Things really changed, when I started to be more generous to myself. I began to try to live like a tree. I stopped fearing the leaves falling away…That is all part of my living.” She could hold sadness and hope, disappointment and joy, frustration and potential and heartache all together. She discovered that she didn’t break. She found she was bigger and more wonderful than she had imagined.

“Once,” she said, ” I stepped outside of myself for a moment. I saw myself as a stranger on the street. I saw what others loved in me- the substance and the spark that are mine alone. My priorities changed. I started making time for things that truly mattered.”

Some days she wakes and the sun is shining through her windows. Other days, there may be only one wonderful moment… She continued to believe the world was very large and full of surprises. She embraced a combination of heard work and magical thinking. She asked for the things she wanted. She invited them into her world.

She cultivated something she called, everyday courage. She listened to her heart…As a little glowing ember that wanted. Like the needle of a compass, to lead her to the place she wanted to be. She looked back and saw, that the rough times had polished her.

She created the best possible version of herself. The version that included all of her.

“This,” she said, ” is a picture of me when I was still so young I had no idea of all the things that would be coming my way. I have such tenderness for that woman. I want to sit down with her and tell her that things are going to be more complex than she will ever be able to imagine. And more beautiful, too. And that she is going to turn out okay.”

She gave generously, and she gave with joy. But she always saved some of her for herself. She decided she was not yet done with her transformation.

” I look back at the huge high points, the small satisfied moments, the days that were filled with love, and see that they were everywhere running through the fabric of my life like threads of gold.

“It’s true,” she said. “There may never be a perfect time, so I choose right now.” And right now chose her- completely, joyfully- in return.