Health & Fitness Episodes

I loved this conversation with my guest is Dr. Michelle Quirk. She's a general pediatrician, a run coach and the founder of Mindful Marathon. Right out of residency she was newly married, in a new hospitalist job and caring for her dad through his cancer diagnosis and death. She got so depleted that she'd sit in the parking garage crying and picturing herself working at Starbucks. I can absolutely relate to that fantasy. Michelle found her way back one step at a time, starting with a walk around the block, then a marathon, then a whole new career in coaching. She asked for what she needed again and again, and when the system couldn't give it to her, she made big changes. We also talk about runDisney, and for the first time in my life I'm thinking, "I might be a runner." Hope you enjoy it.

For this episode I am welcoming Dr. Cora Breuner, a pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist at Seattle Children's Hospital. She details her journey, beginning with a marine biology detour in college to a Navy scholarship that landed her on a ship with 1,400 people, to years overseas in Japan, to eventually building a career in pediatrics and adolescent medicine. From an over-booked schedule that forced her to cut back to part-time, to a divorce that nearly took her under while raising three young kids, to a metastatic breast cancer diagnosis in the middle of it all, Cora definitely knows the feeling of burnout well. She offers honest insight into the bold, sometimes messy moves it took to keep loving this work despite everything trying to knock her off her feet. I'm so grateful Cora came on to share with us, it's refreshing to hear how she's made peace with the chaos. And today, she shares how movement, mindfulness, and a hand-picked "mentoring family" are what keep her gro…

From the outside, our guest, Dr. Sue Kressly has an impressive career arc. she is the immediate past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics and led the organization during one of it's most politically turbulent moments in pediatric medicine with grace and clarity. Many of us found her to be incredibly grounding during that time, and appreciate the calm she brought during a tenuous time. Dr. Sue Kressly is a tour de force and in this episode she opens up what people didn't see was happening in the background in her life. From feeling trapped 10 years into her career, losing both parents far too young, and the intense risk she took starting her own practice from scratch. She has a way with her words and shares a metaphor about her calendar being like a closet that needs periodic purging. It's practical, it's useful, it's poetic, and it's honestly a good piece of advice when it comes to protecting one's own energy.