Patience, Compassion, and Respect to the Journey

[pathwaytohealing]

July 7, 2021

I never felt that much pressure to turn my house into a home. It was always just me living here and it felt like those comforts just weren’t necessary. My idea of a home well lived in was a pot of fresh coffee on the counter and even that felt like an indulgence. 

But since I have started sharing my space with her, even for a minority of our time, it feels warmer already, and I want to make it more comfortable still. I wake up early for the pot of coffee and to have breakfast on the table for her. We eat next to a vase of fresh flowers and a collection of candles and we eat off of matching plates that were a gift from my grandmother. She doesn’t know, but the week we started dating was the week I finally replaced the cardboard box that had been standing in at my bedside for a year with a real nightstand. And it’s only since her that I remember to clean out the fridge and hang up my coat and put away my laundry. 

Maybe I should see it as a character flaw that I am doing things to make her comfortable that I wasn’t willing to do for me. But I would rather see it as character development. The warmth and the caring that I feel for her is extending to my space and circling around back to me. And I feel settled and at peace in a way I never have. 

[pathwaytohealing]

May 30, 2021

I am happier, more settled, more comfortable and content now than I have been in months. Years maybe. Maybe longer than that. And I want to be anxious because on some level this happiness is coming from another person. But really, it’s coming from another person’s willingness to allow me to be myself. The best version of myself. Her support has made me more me than I have been in a long time. 

And suddenly I’m waking up and making changes in my life, and not because she wants me to but because I want to and maybe I just needed her support to get me there. I’m cleaning out my closet, getting rid of anything that I’ve looked at in the last few years and thought “I don’t even know why I bought that.” And I’m replacing it with things that I feel good about. 

I’m talking about my feelings and journaling about my feelings and just overall examining my feelings in a way I usually hate. But now it feels good? The words just roll off my tongue. Well, maybe not that easily, but they’re out there in the world and it feels so freeing. 

And for the first time in my life, I know I’m ready to just be who I am and fully embody that and it’s her that is the jumping off point for me wanting to be loud and out there and open but it’s what I’ve always wanted, I just needed the right person to give me that final push. 

I just feel...good. And I know we need to love ourselves before someone else can love us and I know we have to be our own biggest supporters and I know you can’t rely on someone - especially someone you’re in a new relationship with - to be the source of your love for yourself, and she’s not. I am. I just know she’ll be standing beside me and I’m okay with allowing that to be part of what makes me feel good. 

[pathwaytohealing]

March 9, 2021

The temptation to start this post by chastising myself for how infrequently I get around to posting is far too strong....

There have been a lot of days lately where the good things outweigh the bad. Where feelings of competence and confidence are more abundant than self doubt and self consciousness. Somewhere along the way that little pit of dread in my stomach every time someone asked me to do something started to feel a little lighter. 

The last 8 months have been the hardest months of my life. Full stop. 

Addendum: This post has been sitting in my drafts for the last 3 months. I came back to write a new post and the cognitive dissonance between what I was thinking about writing and this post absolutely blew my mind. So I’m posting this, unfinished, as it is, so I can look back and remember. Stay tuned for the next! 

[pathwaytohealing]

October 15, 2020

My love language is gift giving and I think somewhere along the way I’ve learned that when I’m feeling bad it’s easier to make others feel good and to try to feel that with them than it is to make myself feel good. Which results in the mildly emotionally fulfilling and often more than mildly expensive habit of hopping online and sending random gifts to the people I love. 

This week it was favors for my sisters wedding and the beginning of a needlepoint project for a friend. But recently it’s also been graduation gifts for all of my friends and coffees for my team and picking up the tab at dinner etc etc etc 

I’m working on learning to be kind to myself in the same way I already cherish being kind to others. 

[pathwaytohealing]

June 23, 2020

I have a very long a complicated love hate relationship with my body. And part of that stems from the days where I am so depressed or anxious or emotionally out of control that the only thing that feels good is the simple act of eating something, usually carbs, that tastes good. 

I think back to high school, when I was so lost and so alone and so insecure, and I can remember sitting in the cafeteria and filling my tray with pasta or grilled cheese or both. Always finishing with ice cream because it was the one thing that made me feel good in that place. 

As I got older, it became take out food. Is there anything better than some form of noodles in a plastic container, delivered hot right to your door without any effort on your part? 

Somedays I would definitely say no. But these days, I’m learning not to be triggered by the grocery store and all the myriad of things there that I tell myself I “can’t” eat. I’m learning to love the kitchen again, to hum happily as I push the foods that I love around in a pan, to do a little shimmy dance as I move back and forth from the fridge. I even don’t hate doing dishes (don’t love it, but who does). 

I don’t know where this is coming from. Maybe, for once, cooking is giving me a sense of control rather than a sense of dread and exhaustion and feeling like I can’t possibly do one more thing for myself. But I like this feeling. Eating feels good right now, and I don’t usually get to say that. 

[pathwaytohealing]

May 19, 2020

For the first time in 21 years my life is not dedicated full time to education. It’s a weird feeling. I don’t know that I can exactly appreciate this fully, I think it will take some time, but knowing that I’m not going to be spending my days in lectures and working on assignments and shoving ungodly amounts of impractical knowledge into my head is.....freeing? 

Somewhere along the way I lost the love of reading I used to have as a kid. Years ago I could read for hours. I finished multiple books a week. Lately, reading for pleasure has felt too cognitively strenuous, and I’ve put it aside for things like TV and movies. Today, I think I’d like to pick up a book again. 

When learning is your full time job, it’s hard to find the motivation to make it your hobby, too. In the last few weeks I’ve learned about the cold war and blood clots and the Spanish Flu just because I wanted to. Today, I think I’d like to audit a history course or two. 

Things will be busy enough soon. And then I’m not sure how I’m going to feel. But today my time and my mind are my own. Now that I’ve finally reached a point where no one is telling me I have to learn something new, I can decide for myself. And I think I’d like to. 

[pathwaytohealing]

March 22, 2020

This year was really hard. And I kept telling myself that eventually something good would happen, things would settle, and I would get back my ability to feel good. 

It’s really hard to recognize that sometimes that just doesn’t happen. It hurts to know that more often than not achievements happen because we made them happen, not because the universe thought we suddenly deserved a break. And how can we make things happen when we can barely make ourselves get out of bed. 

Recently I achieved something that was...definitely below fiftieth percentile of things I wanted to achieve. And I can tell myself over and over how much of a win it is just to be alive, just to have pulled myself up long enough to meet any of my goals. But it’s going to be a long road to really internalizing and understanding that. 

Today, my biggest achievement should be that I got here. Anything else is an extra blessing. And I don’t have to feel like that for it to be true. 

[pathwaytohealing]

October 29, 2019

I know this sounds crazy to a lot of people, but I love traveling alone.

Sitting by myself at the hotel or airport bar and having a glass of wine.

Not having to worry about anyone being packed and at the airport on time.

Spreading out in a huge king sized bed.

But more than that. I feel like when you’re in a new city, where no one knows you and you don’t know them, there’s no chance of anyone calling you and asking you to come over or do them a favor... there’s this sense of calm and quiet that I don’t feel like I ever can quite achieve at home in my apartment.

Like I could probably write the most killer journal entry on the hotel stationary, with the free pen they leave you next to the bed.

[sonnettscoredtheequalizer]

Did my biannual viewing of the movie Pride today and let me just say it’s still one of the best movies I’ve ever seen and everyone should watch it if you haven’t already it is truly amazing and such a great story and it makes you feel very warm and fuzzy inside

[pathwaytohealing]

July 7, 2019

I’ve spent one week in family planning clinic. Seen maybe 20 patients. And I could not be more sure that this is what I want to spend the rest of my life doing. 

I’m not sure I can put into words how fulfilled I feel doing this kind of work. I can’t imagine a better and more direct way of demonstrating my anger with this current administration than by spending my days showing compassion and caring for the women they are trying to put down. There will be marches and lobbying and yelling and angry blog posts and journal entries, but sometimes we fight back in the quiet moments too, you know? 

[pathwaytohealing]

June 21, 2019

Over the past month one of the things I’ve rediscovered is how much I truly love cooking. I’ve been ordering obscene amounts of meal kits, trying to recreate those recipes on my own, googling new ideas for recipes, and making some of my old favorites (ie Grandma’s “lasagna” recipe that is so far from lasagna I’m terrified Italians are one day going to find out about it and put a hit out on me). 

Cooking should be one of the easiest things to make time for when we get busy, right? First off, you still have to eat. Plus, cooking in its simplest form can be five minutes of prep time then pulling something delicious out of the oven a little while later. This is so not the case for me. When I’m working long days the last thing I want to do is set foot in the kitchen (figuratively that is, I live in a smallish apartment where you have to walk through the kitchen on the way to the bathroom, but I digress). 

So here I am, cooking my little heart out for the last three weeks and absolutely LOVING IT. It gives me such a sense of accomplishment and joy and control, plus the added bonus of saving money and knowing exactly what it is I’m putting into my body. 

This graphic, by Mari Andrew please check her out on instagram, pretty much sums up exactly how being in the kitchen has made me feel lately: 

ESPECIALLY the dance party breaks. Can’t cook without a good soundtrack. 

That being said, I have to go back to real life in a week (sad) which means transforming my cooking time from an hour in the middle of the day, to some sort of meal prep system, because otherwise the Au Bon Pain in the lobby of every hospital is just wayyyyyyy too tempting. 

Does anyone fancy themselves a meal prep expert? Send me your recipes! 

[pathwaytohealing]

June 18, 2019

I’m in a city where I no absolutely no one for one night to take Step 2 CS tomorrow, staying in a hotel by myself and if anyone thought that I wouldn’t do full hair and make up so that I look my best to have a dance party alone in my hotel room then they thought WRONG. I’m going full party for one. 

It’s literally impossible to feel stressed out during a dance party. 

Next I’m going to hit up the hors d’oeuvres in the business lounge and see how mad all the middle aged dudes in suits are that I was invited to their ~exclusive~ lounge. 

It’s the little things, y’all. It really is. 

[pathwaytohealing]

June 11, 2019

When I interned at a hospital in undergrad, one of the pillars of our organization was “Celebrating Your Victories.” What it meant was taking the time to recognize when someone had success - whether it was a small every day success or something bigger. At the end of the year, I was nominated by my peers for being the intern that most embodied that pillar (weird brag, I know). But I was just thinking about it, because lately I’ve been finding myself having such a hard time celebrating my own victories. 

Today, I had to draft four bullet points to tell programs what makes me a unique and desirable applicant - what sets me apart from other applicants. And it was like torture. I had such an insane sense of imposter syndrome, sitting here staring at a blank word document, trying to think of just one good thing that I had done. 

I could list 50 achievements for each of my best friends. I could have written their bullet points in a hot minute. Why is it that we find it so much simpler to acknowledge how badass and successful other people are, than to pat ourselves on the back? 

So that’s my first goal of this year, and my first goal of this blog: to celebrate my victories. 

[thegoodvybe]

[pathwaytohealing]

June 8, 2019

In one year I am going to be a doctor. It’s so crazy to put it down in writing, but there it is. I’ve reached the point in my training where it no longer feels like a goal, it’s inevitable. In the fourth year of medical school there is still more to learn, sure, but more than anything it’s a year of preparation. Of preparing yourself to step into the role you’ve been training so long for. 

It’s a huge responsibility, to take on the role of healing others. So this year, I am making a commitment to working on myself. My physical health, my emotional health, the whole package. 

I keep a written journal, one that I would never want to show to anyone. But I also like the idea of accountability. I like knowing that someone out there might be following along, paying attention to my progress or to my shortcomings, rooting for me or just sticking around to see what I can do. 

But what, you may be asking, will I even post about? New recipes I’m trying, books I’ve read, small successes at the gym, inspirational quotes, photos that make me feel warm inside, just to name a few. And stories, feelings, details of exactly how I traverse the next 365 days. 

I hope you’ll follow along.