126. Part 1: How Physician Moms Can Thrive Without Self-Sacrifice

Hey Doc—

This summer I'm re-releasing some of my favorite conversations from podcasts where I was the guest because the topics are just as relevant today as they were when we recorded them.

In this first part of my conversation on the Girl Doc Survival Guide podcast, we talk about why so many physician moms find themselves exhausted, questioning everything, and wondering why success doesn't feel the way they thought it would.

I share parts of my own journey, but this conversation is really about something much bigger: the culture of medicine, the expectations placed on mothers, and why so many of us have been taught that self-sacrifice is simply part of the job.

If you've ever felt like you're doing everything "right" but still wondering why it feels so hard, I think you'll see yourself in this conversation.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why physician moms are especially vulnerable to burnout and overwhelm
• How motherhood can completely change your relationship with medicine
• Why I left employed OB/GYN practice and what that decision taught me
• The mindset shifts that helped me stop accepting self-sacrifice as the cost of success
• Why building a life that fits you matters more than living up to everyone else's expectations

This is an honest conversation about what happens when you start questioning the rules you've been taught and begin creating a version of medicine and motherhood that actually works for you.

🎧 Listen now, and then join me for Part 2, where we get practical about the tools and strategies that help physician moms thrive without complete self-sacrifice.

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If you are going through a transition -- becoming a parent, leaving a job, figuring out how manage it all, schedule a strategy coaching session and get clarity and strategic next steps for the life and career you want.

Strategy Coaching Session with Dr. Toya

Transcript

   Hey, doc. Today I am sharing a conversation that I had when I was a guest on the Girl Doc Survival Guide podcast. It was really fun talking to another physician mom, and we talked about all sorts of things: motherhood, career transitions, redefining success, forgiving yourself and forgiving your mom. Oh my gosh, it was so good that we did it in two parts. So here is part one. I hope you enjoy

Welcome to Dr. Toya. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.

Thank you for spending the time. Can you first share a personal anecdote about yourself? Sure. Is that something funny or just something that I wanna share? Whatever you want. It can be funny or not. I don't think of myself as a funny person, but people often laugh at the things I say and I'm like, "That wasn't a joke.

That wasn't supposed to be funny." I like to talk about my journey because it can be so relatable to a lot of people, and it starts all the way back in residency, which was my first burnout, 'cause I've had three of them, and it has shaped who I am and what I'm doing now. Residency was the best and worst four years of my life.

I was very well-trained, but I was also very unhappy, and got to a point where I lived, like, two blocks from my hospital. I was crossing the street, and I was just like, "You know what? If a car hit me right now, I would be okay." I didn't wanna die, I didn't wanna be seriously hurt, but I just wanted to not have to go into that building.

The really sad part is at the time I thought that was funny. I thought it was just something that we said because we were all that unhappy. I was just broken down by the time I got to the end, but I knew I had to make it through. I knew I didn't have a choice, and it was going to get better. So I made a promise to myself that when I became an attending, I would never be this unhappy again because I would have money and freedom and I could do whatever I want.

I went and got my first attending job, and that was fine. I didn't have as much mentorship, so I went into my second job, which was corporate medicine, and it had great benefits. We got paid very well, but we were understaffed. The office manager was not great, so I was back in another burnout situation. But I was pushing through because I carried the benefits for my family.

I had a son at this point, and we wanted to have a second. So even though I was feeling it, I was just, "We, I have to stay. I have to stay," so pushing through. And then COVID happened and like many people, I was like, "You know what? Life is short. I'm gonna start a business." It was nothing to do with medicine at all.

It wasn't a plan to leave medicine. It was just something that I felt passionate about. It was a directory for Black-owned businesses and Black professionals who catered to the Black community. Because I didn't really know what I was doing, I joined a business coaching program to help me figure it out, and it was through that program learning about my value as a physician and what it means to people who are not doctors to be a physician.

Sometimes we forget because we're in our circles and it seems like it's not a big deal, but it really is. Just learning that we are truly the revenue generators. Nothing can run without us. The increase in that knowledge, or the reminder I should say, made me realize, "Wait a minute. I don't have to stay here.

I know I can work, I can bring in income. I will be okay because I have lots of transferable skills. I have an MD and I am excellent. So It accelerated the burnout or maybe the realization that, hey, you don't have to take this anymore. So I actually left with very little notice, with no plan, no job, and I said, "You know what?

I'll just do locums." And that was the best decision that I made for my medical career. After taking four months off, I started doing locums OB and did that for about two years. The third burnout actually came when I was very happy with my medical career, but when I had my second daughter. I was fully in control, making my own schedule.

I was doing speaking. I w- had a patient education, TikTok, that has, like, 8.1 million views at this point. I was doing everything that I wanted to do, honoring the hard work that I'd put into OBGYN and all this extra stuff that I had learned to love about myself again, and I was like, "Yeah, this is gonna be easy.

I don't have anybody telling me what to do." But it was terrible, and my postpartum burnout is what got me here, 'cause I just felt like everybody who was supporting me at that time was more focused on their own story, and they weren't seeing me and seeing how much physical pain I was in, 'cause I had a lot of issues during the pregnancy and afterwards, and how much emotional pain.

I was just very angry. I felt unsupported even though I had people around me. It got to a point where I told my husband, "I need a break. I'm gonna leave y'all for a little bit, and I'm just gonna take a trip. I just need a break." And he was just like, "Well, what is going on?" 'Cause things had been tense. We had been fighting and stuff, but I was still pushing through and pretending that things were fine on the surface.

I was even doing speaking engagements six weeks postpartum. So yes, there was tension, but I also was not taking care of myself, so everybody else was like, "Oh, she's fine," until that crash. And we ended up going on the trip together and taking a break together and repairing. I really had to take responsibility for where I was at that point and really start taking care of myself.

So I got a pelvic floor physical therapist. We had therapy. We had all of these things, and I really had to just refocus on what was important. As I was coming out of it, trying to treat myself for postpartum depression, trying to do all these things, I was like, there's such a unique thing about being a physician that I find myself here again.

It takes me back to residency when it's ingrained in you just to push through, to ignore your body, to ignore all of the signs, and just present like everything is fine. Coupled with everything that is expected of mothers is a recipe for disaster. So I said, "I want to help other physician moms not go through this," and that's how I started doing the coaching, and it has evolved into this beautiful thing that now Is I always say I went through it so you don't have to, because I went through a lot in a very short space of time.

So it's now my second calling to do this after being an OBGYN and loving that as well. That is my personal anecdote of how I got here and all of the times that I had to pivot to get back to myself. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing all that. I think that what you said in the beginning is true. It's completely relatable, and I think that it is definitely special that you are sharing all that.

I appreciate that you shared that you had three periods of burnout, and the last one was not actually related to your career per se, but because you had a second child on top of everything else. The third thing that I appreciate is that you love your career and you love your family. Yeah. Sometimes it's just the normal course of a high pressure job, which medicine is for us all.

There are still stressors. Even when everything's going well career-wise and/or everything's going well at home with one or two plus kids, it's a really challenging sort of setup that we have for sure. Yeah. It's a perfect storm for people who are so used to being on top of everything and excelling at everything.

Like, I don't deal well with not knowing stuff, and that's the definition of my intern year. I did not deal well, and I was unhappy then too. Motherhood is, I'm sure you know, this whole new world that nobody really prepares you for, right? No one prepared me for motherhood, not that I'm pointing the finger.

I'll ask you too, I wanted to say who or what were you angry at? But I'll just tell you, I was angry as a new mom, and even then it wasn't like I was trying to shift blame, but I was angry with my friends. Mm-hmm. And I was very angry with my mom because I was just like, "How could they not have told me at some point or warn me this might be harder than you think it will be?

Or just share this is hard for me, or there are points where this is really hard for me." But I had some fantasy in my head. I just really didn't grow up around young babies or kids. I had no idea. Without really knowing, my idea of babies and toddlers was from popular media, where someone has a baby on TV and the baby doesn't really appear all that much.

It doesn't show this you are on call 24 hours a day for the rest of your life. Right. Yeah, it's insane and I think you hit the nail on the head. You had a fantasy and I think a lot of us have fantasies, whether it comes from popular culture or our own mothers. I can tell you physician moms tell me, "My mother did it all.

She cooked for us, she worked, she came to every event. I don't know how she did it." But I'm telling you, the fantasy is a lie. I don't know your mom. Whoever you are listening who thinks that she had it all together, but something has to give, and that's always true. Either there's a dream, there's help that she didn't have that you didn't know about, or there was some kind of unhappiness that you didn't know about, and it's that fantasy that I really try to dispel, and that's, like, the main reason I have that podcast, to talk about the hard things that nobody else wants to talk about so people are not continually surprised by motherhood.

Yes, my mom worked outside of the home at certain points to- Yeah ... help make money for our family. Most of my childhood, she did not work, and yet she did not come to, I would say, 90% of our activities. And it was fine. I have an older sister. We didn't ask her to. We didn't expect her to. She didn't work outside the home, but she had a ton of work to do at home.

She was busy, like really busy. Yeah. So I think my sister and I just felt we didn't want to burden her. For example, we didn't have a washing machine. Mm-hmm. So she did all of the laundry by hand. Oh my God. Yes. Yeah. So she was very busy, and she didn't feel we had enough money to hire any sort of person to help her, so she cleaned all the floors herself.

And I remember when I did volleyball in ninth grade, she asked me if there were an extra pair of knee pads because it hurt her knees to be scrubbing the floor. So I asked my coach, "Is there an extra pair of knee pads that I could have for my mom?" And then he made this joke. He thought it was a joke. He felt very badly- Mm-hmm

after, but he was like, "Why? Is your mom scrubbing the floor on her knees?" And I was like, "Yes." Yes, yeah. And I could tell he felt terrible because he just- Right ... assumed I wouldn't have a mom who needed to be- Right ... on her knees scrubbing the floor. But yeah, my mom didn't have a job outside the home, but she did do it all without complaining in terms of- Right

sending our family in the direction that it needed to go. That was a great sacrifice that she made for y'all. I honor your mother for her sacrifice that she made for y'all. My mother had to do a lot of the housework, and she also had to work outside the home because of the money situation. It's always very interesting how we internalize those experiences and then decide how we want to live and exist as mothers.

How did that affect how you are now as a mother, or did it? I'm no longer angry at my mom, and I feel it was wrong for me to be angry at her. I, I was just angry in the sense that I wish she had just prepared me a little bit. Not that that was her- Yeah ... responsibility. I realized I'm angry- Primarily with myself still, but less so than I used to be.

I'm angry about the degree to which I've internalized a patriarchal model of a working woman. I just translated that to, "Oh, I have a career, and I do everything that my mom did and does." She definitely grew up with a patriarchal model of what a wife and mother should be, and so I inadvertently just took that in as that's the way it is, not even knowing that I was doing that.

The first thing I want to say is that I hope that you forgive yourself and your parents and that you're able to release some of that anger Because it's not your fault, and it's also not really theirs. Because in general, when you think about that generation, speaking about things, passing down that type of intimate knowledge, especially as a woman, it wasn't really a thing.

I often tell pe- just to give them a little bit of grace and yourself a little bit of grace. Beyond whatever they knew or didn't know or didn't feel comfortable talking to you about, there's still a lot of external messaging and socialization that tells us even if you're working, you still are a good mom if you do all of these things.

So it's not just them. It is everyone and everything everywhere you turn. So if you just be like, "You know what? I'm gonna change it for my kids, and I'm gonna set this new example," that's w- that's why I do what I do, to help people release that and then also rewrite the stories. Yeah. I completely agree.

I've gotten over blaming my parents- Okay, good ... but I still have a very hard time regulating my own expectations of what is a good mom and a good wife, 'cause it's very patriarchal, and it's really hard for me to push back against it in my own head without feeling like a failure. That is a very common feeling.

So common, in fact, that I have a talk that I give to hospital systems literally called Redefining Success in Physician Motherhood s- because what you're describing is so common. If the definition in your head is one thing steeped in the patriarchy, then I could give you all the tools that I want. I can tell you about how I do things.

It doesn't matter because your whole job, your whole being is about excellence. That's how you got where you are. So to fail in your mind by your definition is really unacceptable. So it starts with that redefinition for yourself and- The individual has to be ready. You have to be ready to say, "Okay, I'm letting this go, and this is what a good mom looks like to me."

I do a lot of values work with my clients because it starts there, like what is actually important to me? What are my values? What guides me? And it's really surprising what comes up sometimes, what people don't even realize about themselves. So it's really to just decide that, yeah, I'm gonna rewrite what it means.

Can we go back to when you said you were angry? Yes. What or who, or both, were you angry at or with? I was angry at my husband and my mom, the people that were immediately in my vicinity, for different but the same reasons. My mother's old school, probably a, a lot like yours, and she would make these comments.

I had a lot of pain, so I was hobbling around a couple days postpartum, and she's like, "Why are you walking like that?" I said, "Oh, I just had a baby." And she's, "Oh, when I had you, I was up the next day helping the midwife deliver another baby" I just remember being like, "Thank you for telling me that. I really appreciate, but that is not helpful."

It would be little things like that, but overall I know she meant well. It was just not what I needed to hear, especially when I was already in so much pain. And then my husband bore the brunt of everything, because there were issues from the first postpartum journey that had not been resolved. With the way that I spoke to him and not giving him any credit for what he was doing, I made him feel as though he was not a good father.

And his response to that, because he also didn't have the tools at that time, was to shut down and not really appreciate my opinion about his fatherhood at all. So, any feedback about anything, whether it was right or wrong, just came up against that wall, and that was the underlying issue. And then the major issue at the time was the division of labor, and just the acknowledgement, like, "Why don't y'all see how much pain I'm in?

Why don't you see that I'm sleep-deprived? Why, why is nobody seeing me?" It was just so many things balled up in one, and because he and I were clashing, and my mom was here, I then had the embarrassment of trying to hide that we were fighting. So, there was this whole other layer. It was a mess. Yeah. So you were living- Yeah

with your mom and your husband at the time? She came for the postpartum. But she lives in a different country, but she came- Yeah ... and that's part of why I thought it would be better, because the first baby was during COVID, and she couldn't come. So I was like, "Oh, this is gonna be so great," but it wasn't.

She was very helpful, but in that time, it was just a perfect storm. Too many things going on. Yeah. Is she back in Trinidad now? She is. Okay. And may I ask, it sounds like you and your husband resolved all of this? Oh, my gosh, yeah. It was a long road. When I told him I needed a break, we went on that trip. I brought my sister up from Trinidad to stay with my mom, to stay with the kids.

So I left my daughter at three months, because I was really done, and we started our healing journey from then. He actually looked up therapy questions for us, and we started there. We got a couples therapist, and that actually was terrible. We went to Cabo, and we got an online thing through the couples version of BetterHelp, and she spent, let's say it was an hour, she spent 45 minutes talking about herself.

And when we ended, it actually bonded us, because we were both like, "What just happened?" It was so terrible. So that actually sent us on the right path. But we have done a lot of work. We've had a relationship coach who we actually still coach with, and things are just better. Like, he really was able to see and hear me, and unfortunately it had to get to that point for that to happen.

But now we are a partnership. We are on, at the point where we're just uplifting communication at this point. Did you tell him to make the therapy questions or he did it himself? No, he did that on his own. Yes. I love that. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. I'm so glad to hear. I really think that marriage is hard.

It is. Even in the best relationship, marriage is hard, and it takes work. It takes, like, reevaluating and really connecting over and over again. Yeah. So- It does, and growth. I have two mentors. One is my current coaching mentor, and one is my business coaching mentor, and they both say in different versions that being an entrepreneur is the greatest vehicle for personal growth, and being married is the other greatest vehicle for personal growth.

It's true. The amount of growth that I have had working through my marriage and being intentional about increasing our ability to communicate well and to heal ourselves, and then growing several businesses at this point, has really made me be the coach that I can be because I've learned so many things.

And it's another thing. I went through it so you don't have to. I take all of those lessons to pour back into the Physician Mom community. I'm just so fascinated. I really admire your story, and I'm glad to know a little bit of it. I'm gonna stop here. This is the first time I've done this in a while.

Wasn't that a great conversation? Oh my gosh, and we are not even done yet.

In part two, it gets a little more practical, and I share the tools that I use with my coaching clients to help build a life that actually works for us physician moms, from creating a village to setting boundaries and letting go of the version of motherhood that was never designed for you in the first place.

So I will see you in part two