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The first time my doctor-husband counted a large sum of cash into my hand, it was thrilling. Intoxicating.

In my family of origin, everything was measured out — money and love.

So when he handed me piles of cash, I felt loved. I felt cared for. I felt safe.

I also felt sick. I was becoming an accomplice — to what exactly, I wasn’t yet sure.

Workaholism is a sneaky foe, especially in medicine.

It was a weeknight.

I now know, Basem Goueli MD/PhD/MBA had already been working countless hours by the time a hesitantly reached out on LinkedIn.

“How much do you know about Hemochromatosis?" I messaged, referring to a genetic blood disorder that I’ve been managing for more than a decade.

“How can I help?” came the hematologist/oncologist’s immediate response.

Over the next few days I sent him charts of lab results and levels, as he requested.

I am often asked, "Why do you coach doctors?"

The short answer is almost too easy and doesn't really tell the story: I was married to one for 24 years.

The marriage did not work out, though we are great friends and consider each other family to this day.

Many marriages don't work out, but in our case and in many ways, medicine killed our marriage.

It was the mistress from the moment he came home not smelling of another woman's perfume, but of formaldehyde from anatomy class.

What goes around comes around. Sometimes even in a single day.

The day started with coach Theresa Callahan to share our coaching tools with each other. It was my turn to receive.

It was a tune-up of sorts, something we all need from time to time.

I walked away from the session with a name for my Pleaser saboteur, and box to leave her B.S. in when it's time to gather my superpowers and do what I am really here to do: Touch the souls of those with whom I cross paths so we can all vibrate at the highest level.

I knew I'd have an opportunity to pay that gift forward. But I didn't think it would be so soon.

I used to date as though my life depended on it.

Sometimes I went on several dates a week.

I’d get dressed up, but not too. I’d put on make-up, but not too much.

I’d try to look like myself, but not too much.

“Too much” was the moving bar I tried to stay below.

his is one of many people who take care of my mom in memory care. His name is Evans.

Don’t even think about being sad around him. He has a laugh that will shake you right out of it.

It is the sound of mischief and play.

The sound of it rings out in this mostly silent community of people who've mostly lost their voices, their connections, their memories.

Evans’ laugh comes from his soul, maybe from his childhood long ago in Kenya. But also from where he is in each moment: with our mothers and fathers, and with those of us who still remember what our mothers and fathers were like before Alzheimer’s.

When I married my husband, I had no idea that one day there would be a mistress.

When I met the man who would become my husband, he was not yet a doctor. He was 22, a black belt, a waiter in a fancy restaurant and very handsome. He knew all kinds of things about champagne and paté, cocktails and sushi.

We met in our college martial arts club. I was 19, and on fire with a newfound power of using my body to make fierce poetry with my hands and feet. He was drawn to that.

I was smitten with his kicks; his cool mix of fighting skills and culinary sophistication.

He was a bit of a bad boy with great potential. He was still on the cusp of choosing a direction for his life, wavering between culinary school and medical school.

I told myself I didn’t care what he did, as long as he was happy.

But looking back, I had secretly hoped he’d pick medicine — and that medicine would pick him.

In her small room, my mom is wrapped as tightly as a burrito in her light summer blankets.

I know she likes this. She is swaddled.

I sit on the side of her, while Nick, a music therapist with Moments Hospice sings to her. He sings to us, really, because I make sure I am there to receive this sound with my mom.

"Music therapy is clinical and evidence-base use of music intervention," says Jennifer Hicks, a music therapist, who was part of today's Wellness Wednesday, a Minnesota Public Radio podcast, hosted by Angela Davis.

It connects Mom and I, over years and lifetimes.

"Because work was the problem," says Dominic Corrigan MD, founder of Physicians Anonymous, "What did I do? I just worked harder -- until I just hit a point where I could no longer work."

My client, “Sam”, works all the time. He falls asleep with his charts.

My other client, “Bill”, starts working on his charts, but then thinks, “I’ll just book this flight. And then I’ll get caught up on my laundry.” It’s hours later and he hasn’t finished his charts and he feels like he got hijacked and accomplished nothing.

As soon as I tasted the grace and power of Tae Kwon Do, I was in love.

The conditioning was the hardest thing I'd ever done.

We ran in circles. Then -- quick change -- the other way.

We ran backwards.

We skipped. We hopped.

We jumped, knees to chest, 100 times.

I am trying to diagnose my Mother Tongue plant’s illness the other day, when my client arrives for his session.

It is a big plant comprised of a jungle of vibrant knife-like fronds and some other drooping ones that are causing my concern.

“What’s wrong with it?” he asks.

An orthopedic surgeon, he fixes knees and shoulders very well.

But plants are a complete mystery to him.

“See how droopy it is?” I ask. “It wasn’t like this before.”

“Hmm,” he says.

His mother, like mine, is dying. He has bigger fish to fry than my plant.

Today I read poetry to my mother.

I find her tucked up nicely in her bed. She sleeps much of the times these days.

I run both my hands down her shoulders and arms swaddled in light covers, saying softly, “Hi, Mom.”

Even if she no longer knows me in the way I know my children, on this linear plane of time and space, I like to believe that when she hears “Mom” in my voice, the word wends its way into a room of her soul where words like Mom and Dad, Daughter and Son live beyond Alzheimer’s in timeless storage.

I sit beside my mother in her close room, the shades drawn against the August heat in Minneapolis. Outside, I know the lake is glistening. Birds are resting.

She is comfortably reclined in her Cadillac of a wheel chair that she got as soon as she began losing enough weight to trigger hospice care.

She is wisp of her former body. Light as a feather.

When I was a young girl, I used to sit beside her while she read

I’ve done some weird things in my life.

How weird?

Boundary-pushing, assumption-challenging weird.

When you’re a physician, seeking support is a radical act.

The barriers are both internal and external.

The culture, business and regulation of medicine are to blame externally, while there are internal attitudes that also make asking for help difficult for physicians…

15 years ago, Marco was hit by a drunk driver.

You cannot tell by looking at him. But it changed him forever.

“I am a student of fear,” he says matter-of-factly.

Successful in his industry — one that is based on keeping information secure — Marco has found himself at a standstill. Stalled out.

He’s come to me to help him ignite the fire of inspiration again.

Many years ago, when my husband was an intern at Cook County Medical Center in Chicago, he called to let me he’d be home in 23 minutes.

That’s what he said.

He liked to use exact numbers like that, as if the specificity would some how make it true; that this exactness would ensure that he really did have some control over his life.

But it would not be 23 minutes. Nor even 30.

• Are you looking for guarantees or promises from a coach that you would never give your patients?

• Are you really in the market for a therapist rather than a life coach — someone to address mental health issues, like depression or anxiety from a clinical perspective?

• Are you in the market for a consultant — someone to give you advice or tell you what to do?

• Are you looking for an accountability buddy? Someone to only hold you to your word?

Dr. Dominic Corrigan appeared to have it all.

He’d wanted to be a doctor since he was young.

So he worked hard, got the right results for med school, took out a loan and did what it took to realize his dream.

“I was high functioning, upwardly mobile, respected specialist leading a department, doing international research, sitting on charity boards and the PTA,” says Corrigan — a pseudonym for the founder of Physicians Anonymous, an international doctors-for-doctors support platform.

Raising this young woman has taught me everything about being a coach. But not the way you’d think..

From the moment she was born, coming down the birth canal into the light, my daughter has called me forth.

Not to be her savior, or to take credit as her creator — who people become is too mysterious and wild for one mom to take credit (or blame) for all that.

There was a moment where the cord was wrapped around her neck. Every time I pushed, it tightened. I could see her heart rate directly effected by this on the monitor.