I Became a Midwife to Help Women. Instead, I Lost Myself.
Part 2 of the Wise Body Manifesto
At my first birth as a doula, I saw the potential for birth as a rite of passage. But I also saw the many ways that women have to fight against the system for a birth that’s both safe and free. So I became a nurse midwife and women’s health nurse practitioner, thinking I could change things from inside the system. I kept trying to figure out a way to make it work, and eventually realized it was an impossible goal.
Whether I was working in a Federally Qualified Health Center or a high-end private practice, I could not deliver the kind of care I wanted to. No matter what I tried, I always had to hide an important part of myself to fit into a medical system that didn’t have space for all of me.
When I gave thoughtful, detail-oriented care, I ended up exhausted and resentful. In an effort to preserve my energy, I tried to be less empathetic. My thinking went like this: “People need healthcare and this is the system we have. Better to be here as some limited version of myself than to not be here at all.” I tried to become less relational with patients, to feel less, and deliver care as dryly as possible.
As I write this, I realize it’s almost like I was trying to be burned out. I wanted to stop caring about people. That didn’t work at all. I’m not sure that’s something you can do on purpose.
I tried moving to new workplaces, to companies that claimed to be “reinventing healthcare.” It was always the same story. At first, there would be something special about it, like longer visits. Inevitably, as financial pressures mounted, the qualities that made the company better would get whittled away. The sixty-minute visit would get cut down to thirty minutes, and then fifteen. The extra time for education would get cut. If a company survived to fulfill its goal, it was only a matter of time before it got sold to a big corporation and became a hollowed-out version of its former self.
No matter what I tried, I ended up sacrificing my own health and happiness for work that wasn’t even fulfilling. Most days I’d come home from work and lie face down on the floor, waiting to feel like a person again. Weekends were never long enough. I used up all my free time to recover and then I’d have to go back to work. I loved my patients but I hated my job.
I know what it feels like to really show up for a patient—to be the one who actually listens, thinks creatively, and goes the extra mile to truly make a difference for someone. I also know what it feels like to utterly miss the mark.
I remember one patient in particular. It was a few years ago when I was working at a busy gynecology practice. She came to me for pelvic pain. She was maybe the tenth patient that day out of twenty. I rushed into the room with a million things on my mind. She told me her story. I suggested a few tests and an ultrasound, and was on my way out the door when she started crying. “So how would I know if it’s time to go to the ER?” she asked me.
I had totally missed how much pain she was in. And I had done exactly what I’d vowed never to do, because I hated it when doctors did it to me as a patient. I had broken down her unique situation into pieces, fed them into an algorithm in my mind, and given her a regurgitated plan. The plan matched a medical decision-making model I was trained to use, but it didn’t address what she was going through. She had come to me in pain, seeking help. Instead of helping I’d added insult to injury by dismissing her experience.
Everyone messes up sometimes, but what became intolerable to me was the fact that the system does nothing to support the human side of healthcare. When I was able to bring humanity and creativity to the care I gave, it was in spite of the system—not because of it.
After years of watching myself become what I didn’t want to be—rushed, burned out, unable to provide the care I knew women deserved—I realized that the problem isn’t me. The problem is a system that doesn’t have space for all of me.
In Part 3, I’ll share how I journeyed through time and halfway around the world to find myself again.
Let’s Connect
I went into healthcare naively thinking I could do it better than the doctors I’d had as a patient. I now know that the system is just as dehumanizing for the doctors and nurse practitioners as it is for the patients. I created Wise Body Women’s Health to bring humanity back to healthcare. I created it for you, and honestly I also created it for me. We’re in this together. If this resonates, book a call to discuss how I can support you.
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