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As a mother and a doctor, I know you are sometimes worried and afraid, overwhelmed and overstretched. But your families depend on you to be their foundation. You're imperfect. And that's okay.
Because you are something better.
You're whole, fierce, and unshakeable.

If you’ve followed this blog for any amount of time, you might be familiar with the idea of medicine + Medicine plus motherhood. Medicine plus photography. Medicine plus writing. Medicine plus coaching. “But Dawn, I don’t have hobbies!” No problem, everyone is different. Medicine can be deeply fulfilling. Motherhood can be deeply rewarding. In both […]

I decided to take a one-year academic sabbatical to focus on my family while building my career as a coach. It’s one of the scariest things I’ve ever done. For the next year, I will be unemployed from the hospital. I’ve been unemployed before while on my two maternity leaves. But we all know those […]

To summarize it, this is how I map out the approaches to your great life. So, the “easy-no” is where you want to optimize efficiency. The “difficult-no” is where you want to understand your ego, internal validation and shame resilience. The “easy-yes” is where you want to harness the power of rituals and habits with […]

When I was an emergency medicine resident, people asked me “why are you interested in aerospace medicine?” When I was in business school, people asked me “why is a doctor studying business?” When I was in photography school, well…no one really cared what I did for a living in photography school. When I was in […]

For your great life to occur, it’s important to understand the difference between saying no out of fear and saying yes out of obligation. When you say yes out of a sense of obligation, really this is a “difficult-no.” But when you say no out of fear, really you’re dealing with a “difficult-yes.” In both […]

One summer, I was invited to six (6) weddings! Three of those weddings were on the same day. Luckily, I wasn’t close to one of the inviters (an “easy-no”), but I really wanted to attend the other two weddings happening on the same day. Technically I attended five weddings that summer, but in reality I […]