i finally know why i blister around the competitive, rigid, one-right-way, “i an working on my fourteenth project” medical students. coated in so many layers of others expectations they can’t remember who they are, what they love, what they want in this world. their dreams and desires warped by the hands of others pointing, saying: yes, approved, you can; or no, not enough, you can’t. slowly they shed parts of themselves here, take on a new piece there. by year four, i don’t recognize the final product. i wonder if they do.
i finally know why i shine around family physicians. open arms and wide smiles, they love and accept each other exactly as they are. they don’t forget that family. comes. first. they don’t forget that our family is our first classroom, that relationships are the most irritating glue that holds us together on our own hardest days. that failing to be true to ourselves and our hopes and our dreams and our needs is a recipe for sickness, for death. that love and patience and talking heal more hearts and minds and bodies than the most expensive surgeries and prescriptions.
i finally know why i have always known, that family medicine is the only place i will ever be in western medicine.
