On My Mind
Showing you my path so you may see yours more easily
I did not need help. I could do it myself. I never asked, and anyone who worked with me for any length of time quickly understood that they did not need to ask either. This was my modus operandi. This was how I unconsciously organized my life, and it was no more in my conscious awareness than the steps needed to ride a bike, or tie my shoes, chew gum while walking, it just happened in the background all day long, completely unknown to me for many, many years.
It was an ordinary evening, we had enjoyed a lovely supper, and were engaged in the after-dinner discussion of the day. There was nothing to foreshadow the bomb that was coming my way… ‘you know’ said Nancy, ‘you left Texas to come someplace new…. And to do something different than you were doing in Texas… but it looks to me like you have recreated that life on PEI….’ She was right, and it had not even taken two years. I had come with the dream of finally setting boundaries between my work and the rest of my life, and finding balance between the two. I had walked away from the busy academic career to restart my medical practice and ‘get it right’ this time. But here I was, once again doing what I had always done…. Filling my life so completely that there was no room for all of it and certainly no room for anything else, medicine had once again taken over.
What a gift it is to be seen, really seen, in a way that nourishes you deeply. It is a gift that everyone desires, but funny enough, we never seem to put it on the list for Christmas. It is something that we want so deeply that we may not even be aware of our longing until it is met, and then, in a rush of deep appreciation we feel what has been missing for so long that we forgot it had been lost.
