wife – traumamom4

March 17, 2024

‘Not Very Lady-Like’

“Dr. Hartwell…”, he said. “Your behavior yesterday was not very ‘lady-like'”. I heard those words nearly 15 years ago as a chief resident, from a senior (male) surgeon, the patriarch of the program, who had pulled me aside after an educational conference, specifically to reprimand me for comments I made the day prior, in defense of a junior resident who had been asked to perform duties outside of her scope of training. I admit that my frustration about the situation...

September 3, 2022

The Part Before “Fine”

When someone asks, “How was your day?”, you probably briefly look back and choose one or two words that summarize your strongest feelings about it. “It was exciting!” or “It was exhausting” or more often, “It was fine”. While this is what we have come to expect in our everyday short-form communication with one another, what we end up doing is burying dozens of other emotions that deserve a mention, too. This got me thinking about examining just one day...

April 27, 2022

Equal, but Not Invited

I’ve been listening to a podcast about the fall of Mars Hill, an evangelical megachurch, and its volatile lead pastor, Mark Driscoll. As I was listening, I noticed I started to feel quite uneasy. Anxious. My heart rate ticked up. My breathing was a little faster. I felt a lump in my throat. A tenseness in my shoulders. I noticed the same feeling when I happened to see a pastor from the church we have just left at my son’s...

September 13, 2019

I know you are busy…

“I know you are incredibly busy, so I hesitated to even send this to you…” I read those words and lowered my eyes. Sad. My student who I have been working with for years now, concerned she would be cluttering my inbox. She simply wanted some feedback on a very short document. “I know you are super busy, so just call when you have a chance.” My own mother taking deference to my hectic schedule. “How’s your morning going? Let...

May 8, 2019

Leave Your Net

An email came to my inbox a few months ago advertising an internal position having nothing to do with surgery. I deleted it. Then through a meandering path of conversations, in person and on Twitter, with friends and colleagues both at home and away, I had a change of heart. Something compelled me to desperately dig through my deleted emails until I found this one. I felt a little nauseous dragging it back to my active inbox. I let it...

February 7, 2019

Embers

Fatigue, burnout, distress. Well-being, self-care, resilience. Tools. Prevention. Resources. Mindfulness. Yoga. Balance. This. Is. Exhausting. I’ve heard talk after talk at national meetings on burnout over the past few weeks. And months. And, well…years. And we are still talking about it. And we are still burned out. We are doing this wrong… I’m preparing my own talk on burn out. And I’m struggling to say anything new. But I promised myself I wouldn’t just say what’s been said before because...

September 1, 2018

Death

This post is about death. I am just warning you, in case you don’t want to read any more…if death bothers/scares you. I mean, the title is Death, but I am just saying it again…so you can bail if you want to. (Pause…) Ok, so you are still with me. We are gonna have to talk about this. Death. The finality of it. The horror, the fear, the sadness. And…the wisdom, hope and beauty of death. This week, we said...

August 7, 2018

Easier

We recently received a mass email from our Department Chairman that included some updates and general information. Towards the end of the message, he explained that we should expect a meeting invitation for our annual, individual one-on-one meeting with him. He stated the four questions that he will ask, offering them in advance to allow each of us time to contemplate an answer. The last question was, “What are you working on and how can I help you?” I am...

June 14, 2018

Feeling Small

We recently returned from a celebratory 20th anniversary trip to Italy and France. While in Rome, we visited the Colosseum, the Forum and the Pantheon. We walked around piazzas and buildings that are hundreds and thousands of years old; we stepped down into wine cellars that were hand carved in 200BC and we climbed up cathedral towers to see sweeping views of the Tuscan hills. “I feel small,” I said to my husband. Here I am, just one little dot...

April 23, 2018

Perfect…

It’s college visit time. Shiny brochures, dozens of postcards, accolades in headlines…Best School, Best Value…Top 10…Number 1. One of these beautiful schools will be The Perfect One for Jack. The best education for the money in the best location. Surely it will become clear…although, after a few visits, we are more overwhelmed than we anticipated. The gorgeous campus has the highest price tag, but the highest ranked school is so big we are afraid he’d feel lost…finding the perfect one is going to...