Episodes to Enjoy!

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…

Dr. Sarah Weber and I met at the AAP National Conference, where she was presenting on cultivating joy, and immediately I knew I wanted to speak with her more in depth. I was curious about her ideas on joy, and more importantly wanted to hear the full story behind her work. Sarah is a practicing academic pediatrician, a physician coach, and someone who had to honestly reckon with how burnout was eating from the inside out. Sarah talks about her burnout starting gradual. Setting roots and festering in the background and she almost didn't catch it until a random webinar described her symptoms back to her. She saw she exhibited clear signs of medical burnout and knew identifying the issue was only the start. She had to rewire herself to learn stillness, starting with 10-minute meditations, that at first she couldn't commit to. Now Sarah participates at silent retreats, rediscovered her creative self through pottery, and laughs at the days she considered quitting medicine to sell…

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.