The Difference Between Quitting and Honest Discernment

I stopped writing about life during my husband's training and the first year out of training on June 26, 2014.

And I know because I looked it up.

But what I didn't need to look up was the feeling that I had on that day.

I had been writing for years about what was coming, about...

the finish line that we were anticipating about how if we could just get through residency, through fellowship, through the season that was taking everything from us, that we would arrive somewhere better, somewhere worth it.

And I wrote that because I believed it.

I wrote that because that is the message that so many of us were given.

And I wrote it because we were still in it and I really needed it to be true.

And then like with so many things, then we weren't in it anymore.

We arrived.

And I sat down to write and I had nothing to say.

I had been telling women just like me to hang on that it was going to get better.

And then we got there and it didn't feel the way I had been promised.

And I couldn't keep writing something that I no longer believed was the whole truth.

It felt like a fraud, and I could not do it.

I had been counting on a rival to do something that a rival cannot do.

I had assumed that if we could just survive the hard years, that something on the other side would fix what the hard years had done.

But time marches on whether we want it to or not.

That's true whether we change or not.

And I had been waiting, not working.

I had been surviving, not building.

And I had no idea that was even a distinction worth making.

So I closed the laptop.

What I didn't know then and couldn't have known then is that stopping was the most important thing I ever did for this work.

Welcome back to Supporting Physician Spouses.

This is the go-to podcast for physician spouses who are done white knuckling through life married to medicine.

I am your host, Kendra Harvey, professional certified life coach, advocate, mentor, and the person who will say the things that no one else is saying, but we're all thinking.

I stopped writing about life during my husband's training and the first year out of training on June 26, 2014.

And I know because I looked it up.

But what I didn't need to look up was the feeling that I had on that day.

I had been writing for years about what was coming, about...

the finish line that we were anticipating about how if we could just get through residency, through fellowship, through the season that was taking everything from us, that we would arrive somewhere better, somewhere worth it.

And I wrote that because I believed it.

I wrote that because that is the message that so many of us were given.

And I wrote it because we were still in it and I really needed it to be true.

And then like with so many things, then we weren't in it anymore.

We arrived.

And I sat down to write and I had nothing to say.

I had been telling women just like me to hang on that it was going to get better.

And then we got there and it didn't feel the way I had been promised.

And I couldn't keep writing something that I no longer believed was the whole truth.

It felt like a fraud, and I could not do it.

I had been counting on a rival to do something that a rival cannot do.

I had assumed that if we could just survive the hard years, that something on the other side would fix what the hard years had done.

But time marches on whether we want it to or not.

That's true whether we change or not.

And I had been waiting, not working.

I had been surviving, not building.

And I had no idea that was even a distinction worth making.

So I closed the laptop.

What I didn't know then and couldn't have known then is that stopping was the most important thing I ever did for this work.

Welcome back to Supporting Physician Spouses.

This is the go-to podcast for physician spouses who are done white knuckling through life married to medicine.

I am your host, Kendra Harvey, professional certified life coach, advocate, mentor, and the person who will say the things that no one else is saying, but we're all thinking.