Hello, my loves, and welcome back to the Love and Science podcast.
I have an amazing guest today. Her name is Dr. Dympna Weil, and she is a board-certified OBGYN with an incredible journey — including her own fertility journey.
Let me introduce her properly, because we always need to share our accolades — we’ve earned them.
With over 20 years in medicine, she knows firsthand the toll that burnout, stress, and professional pressures can take on a person’s well-being. As a master coach, physician, wellness advocate, speaker, and podcaster, she empowers physicians and others who identify as caregivers to move forward from burnout to brilliance and beyond — into lives of fulfillment, joy, and harmony.
Her podcast is the Prescribing Possibility Platform. I checked it out myself — it’s beautiful. It’s very medical, which I think, as female physicians, we need. That’s how our brains are wired.
Just like Love and Science, she blends science-backed strategies, journaling, coaching, and creative exploration to help people rediscover their purpose, break free from survival mode, and build careers and lives that truly align with their values.
So, Dr. Dympna, it is so wonderful to have you here. Thank you so much for sharing your time with us.
Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure.
Yeah. And I just learned — actually, my suspicion was confirmed this morning — that Dr. Dympna lives within driving distance of my house, about 35 minutes away. So I officially have a new friend, and we’re going to be friends IRL, as they say — coffee, walks, all the things that actual people do.
I’m so grateful she’s literally in my backyard, and now we have this new connection.
So, Dr. Dympna, tell me a little bit about your journey. You’re an OBGYN, you navigated all the things — career, training, all of it. What got you interested in coaching?
Personal stuff, right?
Originally, funny enough, the first time I heard about coaching was actually in college. We had a family friend who was a coach way back when, so I was aware of it. But the first time I personally experienced coaching was during a med-mal case.
I needed to shift how I was thinking because it was becoming too heavy. That’s when I formally started coaching for myself. I left it for a while, and then revisited it during the pandemic.
Wow. Those times are so stressful. And if you haven’t been involved in something like that, it’s insidious. It affects your mind, your physiology. It’s hard to sleep, hard to see patients. You question your ability as a doctor — even if you did nothing wrong.
It’s all-encompassing. I think it’s beautiful that you found coaching during that time and then came back to it, like so many of us who find it for personal reasons and then realize we can use our gifts as healers in that way.
Yeah, it helped me so much personally, and then I realized it could help others too. And that’s part of the beauty of coaching — wanting to share it once you’ve experienced it.
You mentioned you have a 15-year-old daughter, but it wasn’t easy. And I think the more we share our stories, the more shame dissolves. Shame can’t exist when we’re together.
If you’re willing, would you share your fertility journey?
Thank you for allowing me to share it. Every time I do, it gets a little further away — it’s therapeutic.
I did all the things. NYU undergrad and med school, residency, stayed on faculty, assistant clerkship director, teaching med students and residents, precepting — all of it.
My husband and I married during med school. I was ambivalent about kids at first, but that shifted after residency. I thought, “I’ll just stop the pill.” It didn’t happen.
At 32, I wanted a baby and couldn’t get pregnant. That’s where the shame started. I was seeing patients who were pregnant and didn’t want to be, and others going through fertility treatments.
I went through the workups, Clomid, IUIs — all of it. Eventually IVF.
I can’t thank you and your colleagues enough for the care you provide. IVF is an emotional roller coaster for both partners.
I was lucky — two embryos took the first round. I was pregnant with twins, but that changed at 11 weeks. Another roller coaster.
Then came the pregnancy — swine flu, preterm contractions, preeclampsia. The works.
I don’t know why that happens.
Get more stressed out, Erica.
We had grand rounds this morning on sleep and diet. These things aren’t taught, and the system doesn’t allow space for them.
The art of medicine has been replaced by the business of healthcare. We don’t care for each other the way we care for patients.
I think being an OBGYN while going through infertility is uniquely hard — daily triggers, nonstop.
What do you remember from that time?
Running around labor and delivery, room to room, wondering when it would be my turn. The heartache is hard to describe.
You push your feelings aside to care for others. I didn’t want anyone to know. I kept it secret. I had two people — a midwife and a colleague — who helped cover shifts so I could get labs.
It was go, go, go. No time to feel.
It’s almost sociopathic.
Yes.
We forget we’re human. We can’t feel strong emotions and care for patients at the same time — or so we’re taught.
I didn’t cry for six years. That’s not normal.
We learn to compartmentalize to survive, but we’re never taught how to turn feelings back on. It took years for that to click.
Once pregnant, it wasn’t joyful. It was a new set of fears. Hypervigilance. High alert. Waiting for the shoe to drop.
Coaching, tapping — tools that allow us to be in the moment — I wish I had them sooner.
I compare emotions to a beach ball — you push it underwater, but it will pop back up eventually.
Training is traumatic. Period.
During a med-mal case, I needed something to regulate myself. I found tapping. I didn’t think it would work — and it changed everything.
I learned it from Gabby Bernstein. I saw evidence it helped veterans with PTSD. It became my baseline.
Fertility treatments, training trauma, being both doctor and patient — it creates disembodiment.
I carried shame into pregnancy. I never enjoyed it. I was just grateful for a healthy baby.
I can’t unsee what I’ve seen — but are there small moments we can choose presence?
If someone had told me, “This makes sense that you feel this way,” it would’ve meant the world.
Being seen matters.
For someone in their second trimester after infertility — quiet, scared, not excited — what would you want them to know?
That they’re not alone. That their feelings are valid. That safety and connection change everything.
I wish I’d had a space where I felt safe to share.
Safe places matter.
