The Big Change

(No, I didn't buy a Trump coin)

The Big Change is here. No, not menopause; I’m a doctor and I will never go through that shit. HRT all the way, baby! (It’s safe for me personally; check with your own doctor for your own risk/benefit discussion.) Well that sure made things weird. I wasn’t a debutant, so it isn’t unusual for me to make an inappropriate entrance.

Until recently I hadn’t written for a year. I thought I was fine, but I had some incubating to do, the scope of which I hadn’t anticipated. Someone I trust deeply told me I needed to get out of my house for a few weeks, and I agreed. Although my grief was transforming, and I was in love with the solitude of my house in the forest, giving up my career left me spinning in a way I never predicted, and the longer I went without working, the emptier I felt, and the more I began questioning my future. So I packed my bags and flew to be near a large mass of friends for several weeks last fall. I remember telling the Universe as I headed out the door, please let this be the total reset that I need. Lesson one: the Universe listens. Not only was the trip filled with steps that led me forward and unrooted me (no pun intended) from my seclusion in the forest, but my life as it currently stood was unknowingly being erased. I stayed with dear friends. Got a mani/pedi and haircut for the first time in a few years. I had long talks over coffee. Went on walks. Spent time with a therapist. Meditated. Had countless hours of massages. Every part of the trip was healing for me, relationally, psychologically, spiritually, physically. And when I returned home, my laptop wouldn’t turn on. The Genius at Apple couldn’t turn it on, let alone find anything on the cloud, and this genius hadn’t backed anything up. Documents, everything from my mom’s estate, the slideshow I made for her memorial service, the books I had outlined and been working on. The CV I had been building for decades. All gone. Unretrievable.

Surprisingly, I didn’t flinch. I asked for a reset, and got it. I was literally being pulled away from my backing, like a favorite childhood sticker that could only be used once. It felt so big. So big, in fact, that I didn’t even buy another computer. I dove deeper into reading, into meditation, and into planning my future, answering my own question: how can I follow my calling outside of medicine? How can I throw out the bathwater without the baby? How could I use decades of tools learned studying first chemistry, then medicine, then psychiatry, then addiction psychiatry and addiction medicine, then neuropsychiatry? How could I leave what I felt was the toxicity of medicine while using my gifts and tools, yet NOT practicing medicine?

In total, I sat in this space for several years. It made room to dive into interior design, putting my money where my mouth was and actually making bathrooms and bedrooms and a kitchen and a home. I discovered the freedom of retirement—of actually being able to show up for friends in need, to be flexible in my schedule to accommodate other people after the decades of the inflexibility of medicine, and of being on call 24/7 for people whose lives came before my own. The hardest lessons were the ones I couldn’t pinpoint, and I had years of feeling “off.” I couldn’t access my creativity once I ran out of savings for remodeling. I couldn’t write without a computer. I didn’t want to write. I don’t have a tv. I just couldn’t figure out how I could feel so strongly that my life’s calling hadn’t changed, but the way I fulfilled it absolutely had to. I had been working towards this career since age seventeen. How could I pivot so drastically without support? Without the courage that only comes from being young and still having an undeveloped prefrontal cortex? At this age I filter every decision. I over-filter. I was working to change that too, as I was strengthening my intuition and my heart, relinquishing my self-imposed identity of “100% brains.” Dr. Love had retired, but retirement from an identity happens in phases. Jenny was surfacing. The last time I had to think about my career path was in my teens; in medicine everything is an option, an open door. Having closed them all, yet still feeling called in service to others, what on earth could I do? I still have med school loans!

There’s no easy way to summarize a process that started silently several years before I lost my mom, that grew into a roaring full-body NO MORE nine months after she died, when I quit my job. I continued following the breadcrumb trail of books and people and synchronicities that felt specifically left for me to find. The ethereal scavenger hunt eventually led me to the space of working and serving in a new way without abandoning my knowledge. What if I bring the human spirit—the soul—into the anatomy text book? Well, not exactly. It just isn’t there and doesn’t physically exist. But what if it is, and it does?

My friend who works in interior design (whose peaceful cottage in Laguna Beach housed me on my October healing journey) had recommended a book called Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara, and once I realized what I was going to do, everything came together.

I want to introduce you to my new career: a spiritual mentoring/consulting/coaching business called Unreasonable Love. Unreasonable because my colleagues will think I’m crazy since there isn’t a soul in the anatomy textbook, and soul-talk is decidedly un-medical (another reason to retire my license and boards). But more than a tongue-in-cheek nod to my unconventional swerve, what I’ve learned over decades of practice and training is how much of our physical and psychological problems is rooted deep in the subconscious—a place that’s challenging to access and even more challenging to reframe, because we have solidified our survival instincts there by age five or six, and it quietly dictates how the conscious brain (which we use only 5% of the time!) operates and reacts. Survival-related fear and warning systems reside deep within, and when fear runs the show subconsciously, love and joy can’t be expressed or experienced fully.

The truth is, we aren’t meant to be filled with fear; we are meant to be filled with love. We ARE love. That is our true birthright—not the experiences that filled our early years. We are capable of holding an UNREASONABLE amount of Love, which can transform not only our own experiences, but carries a ripple effect to those around us. It is the foundation that supports the true nature of who we are and what we want to accomplish in life.

The link to my website is now in my bio. This isn’t a sales pitch; you are my community and this is a huge pivot in my life I want to share with you! My Substack isn’t going to change; its my creative outlet. This is still the same me, the same humor (should I put that in quotes?), the same authenticity you’ve always experienced in this space. I don’t know how Substack and my business will blend, but I sincerely hope you’ll come along for the ride, leave comments, send notes, ask questions. Curiosity and creativity are some of our greatest spiritual tools. Come use them with me!