A Path Through Suffering to Waking Up

Medical training and athletics taught me to push through pain, even to ignore it.  And so I learned to numb myself, to not fully feel the pain of my toddler sobbing as I left him at daycare while I went on to my job as a medical resident. I practiced rising when my beeper went off after two hours of sleep instead of the seven my body needed.  This worked for eighteen years until it all fell apart: my job, my house, my mentor, my health, my child’s mental health.