Self-Love in the Emergency Room
Some time ago, I saw a patient in the Emergency Room, a mother of two school aged children. It was about 7pm that cold November evening. She needed emergency surgery and a blood transfusion. She asked me “Doctor, can you get me out of here by 11pm?” I was taken aback by the question because her body was undergoing a major trauma. She was having a miscarriage, which is both emotionally and physically draining. Most times, miscarriages take place without medical intervention, but in this case, she needed help. She needed a medical procedure, a minor surgery known as a D&C, to stop the bleeding and evacuate the remaining non-viable fetal tissue. She had already bled so much, at least 2 liters of blood by my estimate, that she needed a transfusion.
This woman wanted to leave the ER in 4 hours! I didn’t even think I could complete the tasks at hand by 11pm. These tasks included getting her ready and consenting her for surgery, performing the D&C, recovery from the procedure and anesthesia, making sure she wasn’t in pain, and importantly, the transfusion. I asked her why she needed to leave so quickly. “So I can get my kids off to school tomorrow morning” she said. I looked at her, smiled, and we both had a big laugh.
“Spoken like a true mother, I think I would have had the same thought in my head.” I smiled as I spoke. Completely understanding where she was coming from, I firmly, yet compassionately stated, “It’s okay if your kids are late for school tomorrow. You need to be well.”
After the surgery was over, the patient and I laughed about it again. Mournfully, her request to leave the hospital that evening is a common and typical story that I have encountered in my 25-year career as a physician. Here is another that stood out in my mind.
A patient came to see in the office me feeling like her hormones were out of sorts. This is a frequent scenario for many women who come to the GYN’s office. When I took what is referred to as a “social history”, she was a full-time student, mother of two children, working a full-time job; and her father had recently passed away. Reading that sentence alone makes me tired! I said to her “Wow, you are managing a lot!” and the waterfall started. She finally started to let it all out and I held space for her to cry in my office.
Our society has programmed women to put ourselves last. Who comes before us? The kids are usually first, then our partners, then work, and even the family pets come before our own well-being. Yet with no doubt in my mind, women are the cornerstone of society. This is my experience as a physician dedicated to women’s healthcare for 25 years. When we are well, our families thrive, and if we are not, our families will not blossom. Our families, especially our children, co-regulate with our energy, so if we are worn down and our nervous systems are depleted, then our children feel this and it throws them off as well. I am witness to this truth in my own personal life and in many of my patients and their families.
The first 8 years of my motherhood journey, I was mentally un-well. This came out in the form of anxiety. I was doing it all. I worked a full-time job as chief of GYN and then would make it home on time to make a very healthy meal for my family. I woke up at 5am and worked out for one hour boot camp down at the lake and came home in time to get the kids ready for school. It really seemed like I had it all together but the real me was dying inside. I had no boundaries, both physical and energetic, my meditation practice was just keeping the lid on a pot that was ready to boil over, my kids were so dysregulated around me.
From a very young age, we have been programmed to do it all, to be everything to everybody and sacrifice ourselves. This is especially true in my Chinese culture. We see this social conditioning on TV, in the movies and in advertisements and we mirror our own mothers who tried to do it all as well, at the expense of their own health and happiness.
Our self-worth is linked to our outward appearance. Better be slim and beautiful and have at least a B cup bra size. Perfect moms are all over the TV for us to emulate. They have it all together, know exactly what to say to their children in a difficult conversation and they don’t get tired. In the movie “Mother’s Day”, Jennifer Aniston plays a divorced, but perfect mom. She’s gorgeous, well dressed, never a hair out of place, and she knows exactly what to say to her children all the time and then of course, the kids listen and do what she tells them.
Men in our society have their own wounded masculine spirits. Where egos run amok, they dominate, lead and control without love and compassion. Colonization, power, wealth and accumulation, competition, sometimes unscrupulous business ethics, objectification of the feminine are traits of a successful man in our society.
The Mask you Live In is a powerful documentary of the way our boys have been conditioned in society. Boys are not allowed to have emotions and they cannot display affection and love to their bros. They need to be tough and strong. As a result of this suppression of the authentic male, there has been an overall increase in violence, including self-harm, suicide, gun violence and mass shootings.
The wounded feminine is needy, insecure and co-dependent. She is unable to express her authentic self because she doesn’t really know who she is. Playing victim is second nature. Thus as the wounded masculine and feminine come together and try to raise the next generation, we re-create the same problems for our children. These wounds are centuries old, passed down through the distortion of love and an imbalance of feminine and masculine power.
Mother passes it to daughter and Father passes it to son. For me, I became my mother and didn’t even know it until I turned fifty. My mother is a very giving human being, relentless in her love for her family, doing her best from her own wounded place and always putting herself last. Not once did she say while we were growing up “I’m too tired to help you, can you help yourself?” She would offer me a massage before she offered herself one. She took me to the hair salon, but she cut her own hair. She would ensure that everyone else had eaten before she herself ate. She made sure I had nice clothes to wear, and she wore old, faded clothes. Yet the sacrifice paid off, in a way, as both me and my brothers went to college and grad school. Yet in conversations, people always referred to my father as the one who earned the money to pay for school, even though my parents owned a business together.
We grew up in Jamaica, a place where we had many visitors from overseas. My mother always played hostess, entertaining friends, relatives, and friends of these friends and relatives. She made sure everyone had a good time, sacrificing her own happiness. This was common in Chinese culture as well. Her own self love and self-worth was not important, after all, she was just a girl.
I learned the feminine wound from my mother, not intentionally; it was just what I grew up with and my mirror neurons adapted. The lack of self-love and self-worth was also fueled by growing up in an alcoholic household. Because the heart collective of the family was closed, I learned what it meant to be loved and to love from the television and I filled in the blanks. I was attractive enough, even though I felt ugly on the inside, and external validation came with good grades and a good career.
And so I subconsciously re-created the family that I grew up in. I had children with a man who was just as wounded as I was. Showing off money, bikes, being controlling and domineering was the everyday norm in our house. I was a successful physician with two beautiful very smart and funny children, living in a nice neighborhood in the Bay Area of California with the family. On the outside, others were envious, but the home was chaotic and an emotionally unsafe place for the children as mother and father both were unaware of these distortions that were passed down to us.
The glass floor, my vulnerable ego that I was protecting, was about to shatter; and then I finally woke up. This awaking took several years, many ceremonies with entheogens and an infinite number of resets to my nervous system. I finally got to the root cause of my suffering, lack of self-love and self-worth.
It’s because of this awaking that my patient and I were able to laugh about her absurd request. I was able to say to her with both love and firmness, “I’m not going to let you do that, I’m going to keep you overnight in the hospital and your husband will take your children to school tomorrow. He might not get it perfect, but you are more important.”
Maiden, Mother, Queen and Crone are the phases of a woman’s life. As I morph into Queen with the help of Goddess, I discover myself and I learn to love who I am. In my true nature, I become my authentic self and stand in my truth. My throat chakra is no longer suppressed. My heart is open.
In our feminine divinity, we hold healthy compassionate boundaries. Through heart opening and vulnerability, we have great strength. We are creative and authentic. We practice forgiveness and we are empathetic. We support the family and community systems as the true cornerstone.
I am a cycle breaker. It is hard work. I do not want to pass the feminine wound down to my daughter and I am determined to do my best to break the cycle for my son too. One of the greatest gifts we can give our own children is to love ourselves and be happy ourselves. They in turn will learn to love themselves in the process.
My ex-partner never bought me flowers for the 11 years together as parents. I do recall he made me go to the florist once and buy my own flowers and some for his mother on Mother’s Day. My shadow work lies in why I agreed to even do that. Miley Cyrus said it best.
“I can buy myself flowers
Write my name in the sand
Talk to myself for hours........
.......I can take myself dancing
And I can hold my own hand
Yeah, I can love me better......”
Friends, family, brothers and sisters, this is self-love! A special thank you to my spiritual teacher, Dani Montoya for her work in helping me understand these distortions.