When I finally got sick after weeks of call shifts, travel, conferences, and family obligations, I found myself thinking about a hard truth: doctors do not really have sick days

One bad practice is not a reason to quit the season. That lesson applies just as much to adulthood as it does to middle school basketball. Lately, I’ve realized that helping everyone else can become a clever form of procrastination from my own work. Sometimes growth means staying focused on your own path long enough to see it through.

May has become its own special form of chaos. Between graduations, recitals, travel, hospital shifts, and work obligations, I find myself changing outfits in airport bathrooms and juggling Zoom calls between flights. Somewhere in the middle of all of it, I’m realizing that balance is not something you achieve once. It is something you keep practicing.

I flew to ACOG exhausted, overbooked, and running on very little sleep. I didn’t attend a single lecture. Instead, I spent the weekend reconnecting with people who shaped my career and my life, including the physician who once recognized my postpartum depression before I could see it myself. In the end, the whirlwind was completely worthwhile.

In the middle of a chaotic call shift, a five-year-old handed me a folder of drawings with ‘Thank you Dr. Braden’ written across the front. It stopped me in my tracks. In medicine, we talk about outcomes and procedures, but sometimes it is the smallest gestures that remind you why you chose this work in the first place.

Perfection is impossible, but integrity is always available. The older I get, the more I realize that saying ‘I was wrong’ or ‘help me understand’ is not weakness. It is strength. Vulnerability does not diminish credibility. It deepens it.

I have always been an inside person. Dirt, bugs, and nighttime walks in the woods were never really my thing. But during spring break in the North Georgia mountains, I found myself standing in the dark, staring back at a pair of glowing eyes, and feeling something unexpected: wonder

For years, I believed that if I stopped juggling every ball, everything would fall apart. But beliefs are not facts. They are stories we tell ourselves, often inherited, often outdated, and sometimes quietly harming us. This year, I am learning to examine those stories and return the ones that no longer fit.

After stepping back from full-time medicine to raise my first child, I was supposed to feel grateful for the slower pace. Instead, I felt restless and lost. So I answered a Craigslist ad, joined a band, and became a lead singer. It may have looked unexpected, but it helped me rediscover a part of myself I desperately needed.

Most people set alarms to wake up. I set one to stop working. After years of believing productivity was the measure of my worth, I’m learning that rest is not the opposite of discipline. It is a practice that requires just as much intention.

The app is ready. The milestones are met. The validation is there. And yet I could not hit ‘go.’ For weeks I told myself I was procrastinating, that I was afraid, that I was not moving fast enough. What if, instead, I simply needed to trust myself?

I am excellent at doing many things at once, but that does not mean my time feels expansive. As I’ve learned the difference between chronological time and magnified time, I’ve realized that protecting focus, not adding more tasks, is what will finally give me the space I’m craving.

For years, I believed that if I stopped, everything would fall apart. But after two weeks of real rest, I learned something surprising. The world kept turning. My work survived. And I felt healthier, calmer, and more myself than I had in a long time. Surrender, it turns out, is not giving up. It is choosing peace.

It really does take a village, but not just to raise a child. It takes one to raise a mom. Between six jobs, five kids, and one growing company, I’ve learned that asking for help isn’t weakness; it’s wisdom. My sister, my friends, and my fellow moms are the reason I can keep showing up for everyone else.