Change is definitely afoot.
A couple of days ago, I wrote about no longer shifting my boundaries just to keep people in my life. Now it’s time to apply that same principle to something even harder to let go of—my professional identity.
Let me be clear up front: this does not mean I’m walking away from my opinions on healthcare. Not even a little bit. It simply means I am no longer speaking from the position of a frontline provider.
For a long time, I’ve been holding onto that version of myself in small, almost invisible ways. I stayed subscribed to professional journals. I kept the emails about conferences. I let the constant stream of “4.2 recommended articles” continue to show up in my inbox.
It wasn’t about learning.
It was about holding on.
And if I’m being honest, it wasn’t any different than holding onto relationships that were already gone.
At some point, reality stops being negotiable.
After everything that happened, my professional life didn’t slowly fade—it ended. The final nails in that coffin weren’t subtle. They came in the form of strokes. Multiple strokes.
I’m not incapable. I can still write. I can still think. I can still communicate.
But I also know this:
Medicine does not allow for hesitation.
Critical thinking in healthcare isn’t just about getting to the right answer—it’s about getting there fast. Time matters. Seconds matter. And I would be lying to myself if I said my processing speed hasn’t changed.
That alone is enough.
But it’s not the only factor.
There’s also the part people don’t like to talk about.
When the strokes happened, I was already under investigation related to my substance use. That record exists. It’s public. It follows you across state lines, across systems, across opportunities.
Even if I could get licensed again somewhere…
Who would hire me?
We love to talk about redemption in this country. We love to say people can recover, rebuild, come back stronger.
But that narrative has limits.
And those limits become very real when liability enters the room.
Healthcare systems don’t hire stories of redemption.
They hire risk profiles.
I can still hear a voice in the background—someone I knew—calling me a quitter.
Saying that stepping away means I’m not trying.
And I’ve thought about that. I really have.
But there’s a difference between quitting…
…and recognizing reality.
This isn’t walking away because it’s hard.
This is walking away because the combination of cognitive change and professional history makes returning unrealistic—and potentially unsafe.
No organization is going to look at my career and see the years of solid care, the problem-solving, the bedside manner.
They’re going to see the liability.
That’s not bitterness.
That’s how the system works.
And that brings me to something uncomfortable.
We are a society that claims to believe in second chances.
But only up to a point.
I’ve seen this before, long before it applied to me.
Working in homeless outreach, I met people who had made mistakes—some big, some small—and lost everything because of it. They weren’t incapable. They weren’t beyond repair.
They were just… marked.
Blacklisted in quiet, systemic ways.
We don’t always say it out loud, but we enforce it all the same:
You get one real shot.
And if you mess that up badly enough, you don’t get another.
So the decision, in the end, wasn’t really mine.
It made itself.
Just like with certain relationships, I tried at first to adjust my expectations. To leave the door cracked open. To tell myself, “Maybe someday.”
But deep down, I knew.
And holding onto that “maybe” was doing more harm than good.
So I started letting go.
I unsubscribed from the emails.
I removed myself from the conference lists.
I stopped the steady drip of reminders about a life I’m no longer living.
That doesn’t make me uninformed.
It doesn’t silence my voice.
It just means that when I speak on healthcare, I do it intentionally—not because my inbox told me to.
And strangely enough…
there’s a sense of freedom in that.
Because I’m no longer being reminded, day after day, that one mistake erased a lifetime of doing things right.
That doesn’t mean I agree with how the system works.
Not even close.
We need to do better.
We need to stop pretending that perfection is the only acceptable standard for people who are otherwise capable, experienced, and human.
Because I’ve seen what happens when we don’t.
People fall.
And then we make sure they stay there.
But even with all of that…
there are still things that remain.
My dog will always give me another chance.
My mom always gave me another chance.
And the people who are truly in my life now—they’re still here.
Those are the things that matter.
Those are the things that stayed.
And for the first time in a long time…
that feels like enough.