Awakening Beauty

Anger. Sadness. Exhaustion.

Those are the emotions I feel as my mind settles. The lovely book Awakening Beauty prods me to listen to my internal rhythms. I cringe but glance inward.




Ten years ago this fall I graduated from college and started medical school. As an earnest young woman, I knew education would give me options. My naivety told me that four year later with a medical degree and three years of marriage under my belt I should have the space to settle down. At 26 years old, I turned to my husband and gave him the space to pursue his training.

At med school graduation, I remember one male female couple that both hoped to study OB-GYN (delivery babies and perform woman surgery). The man matched and the woman did not. She had decided to wait. As we all lifted our champange glasses, I noticed that she did not sip hers. I thought she must be pregnant and felt sadness for her. Not that she would have a baby but the thought she despite her degree would never be able to follow her dream.

My mind flashes to organic chemistry lab. I sit with my red headed partner at our hood, bunsen burners gurgling greenish sludge. The lab partners next to us were a couple. They could have been siblings. Dirty brown hair with kind nondescript faces. I heard the woman say, "You go ahead and apply to medical school. I'll wait." Wait for what I thought. Three kids and a mortgage? She was by far the better student.




I've always liked to think that I am different from these woman. I went to medical school. I matched for a program. But I'm beginning to think the difference between the three of us is narrowing. Or has always been narrow.

Granted with my board certification in Pediatrics, I am able to work and earn a comfortable salary. I pay for everything. I make medical decision- admit patients, start antibiotics, counsel parents. I have to work.

But like these women I too did not follow my dream. My dream of of triple board in pediatrics, psychiatry and child psychiatry. There was no program for
Luke in those cities. And yet the program he started fizzled out in one and a half years. He quit, leaving a poorly run program and a wife in her second year of an abusive pediatric residency. I finished but barely.




Now I sit in primary care three years after completing my training with Luke starting his fourth year in a new program. He has two more years until his degree, three more until he can be licensed. I am done with my job. I regret not getting triple boarded. I feel cheated and angry. I am bored. I wait for Luke to finish.

I know I chose the training program I did. I wanted to be settled. I thought it was Luke's turn. I wish someone would have told me, "No, Joy, it is still your turn. Pursue your dream." It hurts to think that I too felt society's pressure to give my partner more space than is good for me. It hurts to think that I may be sexist against myself.

And so I take an egg-milk-lemon bath. I cry. I write. I give space for myself when society does not. I grieve the psychiatrist I will never be. I gently hold myself.

It helps.




I am grateful that I do have the training I do. I remember I do have a voice. I think of my gentle man who is my husband. I think of our struggle to balance life and work and training. I see the kind mothers who ask after my son and their gratitude for my care of their children. I look outside from my sage armchair and can almost feel the warm breeze on my tear dried face.

I choose space for myself. I awaken my beauty. I breathe.