Draw a scientist.
Back when I used to teach science, I had my students draw what their idea of a scientist was. 99% of them drew a white man in a lab coat. Then we’d unpack what it all meant as best we could within the constraints of a high school classroom.
I think about that when I tell people I’m a doctor.
Go ahead, close your eyes and picture a doctor. You’re probably picturing someone in a white coat with a stethoscope around their neck.
You’re probably not imagining someone like me.
Believe me, I tried to be typical. But I found myself miserable trying to live up to this picture of a ‘doctor’ in my own head. I was bogged down with prescription medication management and making sure I got the paperwork all right and referrals and all the billion things that were adding up that made me so unhappy. And people weren’t healing.
The healing doesn’t come from the prescriptions. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to prescription medication. When you need it, in many cases, there really isn’t a substitute. My own great-grandfather died in his thirties from an infection that would have been prevented nowadays. If you need it, take it.
But we need to understand what prescription medication really is: palliation. Palliation is the relief of symptoms without a cure. It can be a bridge to healing, but not healing itself. That’s a little complicated so I’ll give you an example:
Last month I hurt my back. I was in excruciating pain. (I’m still recovering). We did the whole conventional medicine route–cart me off to the ER, get seen by an emergency doc, take some prescriptions afterward. The prescriptions alleviated pain just enough for me to start the process of healing. But the healing isn’t because of the prescriptions–quite literally their mechanisms of actions are to simply trick my brain to think I have less pain. The healing is coming from the rest, from herbs and supplements I’m taking which work on a cellular level to support the inflammatory response and cellular health. It’s not from the little white pills.
The thing is this: because conventional medicine is rooted in patriarchy, misogyny, erasure of traditional cultures, I’m GOING to be sensitive to that. I am an empath and I’m aware of the deeper roots and connections and the fact that to this day, medical research knows so very little about uteruses, non-white people, and those who don’t identify as cis (especially non-cis-males).
So I stopped working that way.
It was one of the hardest decisions of my life. I’d spent countless hours in formal clinical training, anatomy labs, learning immunology and microbiology and all the -ologies. I literally bled for this pursuit in IV classes (and also passed out a few times). I’d spent oodles of money on school and medical equipment and yes, the stethoscope around my own neck. But I wasn’t happy.
Over time and trial and error I figured out what does make me happy.
What makes me happy is writing and cultivating my creative life and the creative lives of other folx in a safe, gentle, gender-positive setting. What makes me happy is supporting the health of marginalized individuals who have been largely dismissed by the heuristic nature of conventional medicine–algorithms and decision trees–without seeing actual human beings. What makes me happy is supporting health with botanicals and micronutrients and hydrotherapy and other non- “conventional” routes because these things can ACTUALLY work to heal, to address the cause, and not just temporarily relieve symptoms. And above all, using story and narrative as a healing tool.
What makes me happy is helping you cultivate a deeper sense of self, an ability to trust yourself and trust your own power. Because at the end of the day, that’s what it’s about. It’s not about doing what people think you should do. (I have a whole bag of medical equipment to prove that I tried to do it THEIR way). It’s about what YOU want, deeply.
For me, it’s not about the stethoscope. It’s about the spirit. It was about finding my own taproot–the thing that keeps me going, the thing that I want to do every. Single. Day.
It’s about helping others sort through all the muck society and experience and trauma mires us in to find that jewel that is our true spirit.
And now I look forward to my work. I laugh heartily every day. And the last time my stethoscope was used, it was by the exterminator who was listening for carpenter ants inside a wall (there weren’t any thankfully).
So, follow your heart. You too can have a closet full of crap that’s not relevant to your life anymore. (We’ll approach the clearing of that another time–it’s all a big process).
