Coming Home: What Doctors and Soldiers Have in Common

When I my doctor-husband finally came home, our dog would greet him with her whole body of yearning and relief; tail wagging furiously, whining, smiling, crying.

I watched with jealousy as our dog received from my husband what I yearned for; he'd nuzzle her, still in his scrubs and use his last ounce of energy to whisper sweet nothings in her ears.

I didn’t know how to ask for what I needed. How could I?

Just as he’d signed up to be a doctor; I’d taken a vow to be married to that life.

So we’d have a drink and chat. Usually about something superficial. I could tell he was far away.

Most of the time, he kept his stories locked away with the understatement of the year: “It was a normal day.”

By the end of the day, he was so drained, he must have felt that no story he could tell me could bridge the huge divide between the battlefield of the hospital and the home we shared.

Only now do I see this was one of signs of being married to a man who went to battle everyday.

This inability to really be home starts in residency — maybe even earlier.

Doctoring isn’t just any work, after all. It’s work that is messy and doesn’t always adhere to the confines of 15-minute appointments. It’s human life — and death.

Soldiers of war experience this too. And even military personnel who are not on the battlefield.

One of my clients has been in the military since she was 17.

She is the picture of courage and grit: a sharp shooter and a quick study, she masters every job she’s given by the military.

She’s now looking to get out. This decision demands more courage than anything she’s ever done.

Faced with this, she is paralyzed, dogged by the tasks she needs to do to complete the transition out, including look for jobs, take classes offered by the military.

By the time she gets home, she is exhausted and overwhelmed. “So, I just sit on the couch and watch TV,” she says.

That faraway look. Home but not home.

What make soldiers and doctors good at their jobs are also the very things that make it hard to leave work at work.

My former husband was, and is, very good at his job, especially when it comes to compassion and care for his patients.

At work, he gives his all. He sits with grieving families, helping them understand what’s happening with their loved ones and even crying with them as they die.

I knew this and it was part of why I loved him.

To ask one more thing of him when he’d given every ounce of his soul all day seemed selfish and childish. So I tried to be civilized and grown up, swallowing my need for love, to be seen and cared for the way his patients were.

They are soldiers in a war going on in our very midst, but behind clinic and hospital walls.

But who is that soldier or doctor when they come home from work?

My military client’s inaction is tearing her up. If she waits long enough, the decision to stay will not really be a decision at all; it will happen by default. Signing out, is a defiance of all that she knows. “So why leave at all?” I ask. “What’s the risk of staying?”

“That I won’t know myself,” she says. “That I won’t be myself. Everything is prescribed here: even how to talk.”

Many doctors face a similar risk of losing themselves. Within the walls of the hospital or clinic, they know exactly how to act, what’s expected of them. Even if it’s impossible and toxic, it is familiar.

The identity of soldier or physician — or many other job titles — comes at a cost; there is the risk of becoming so identified with the job, that you don’t know what you are when you are not being a doctor. The more you work, the more entangled you become with the job and the harder it is to really come home — to the place where connection to friends, family, spouses begins.

You may even lose sight of what actually gives you pleasure any more, or how to truly relax.

For some doctors, my former spouse included, returning home is to face a hollow feeling, a deep sense of loneliness, even when surrounded by people who love them most.

The chasm between your identity and the essence of who you are grows wider and wider, until the only place you feel at home is at work.

But knowing oneself isn’t a “nice to have” quality. It is a profoundly human desire.

There’s a cost of not knowing oneself. It shows up as mental health challenges of depression, anxiety, addiction and more.

For soldiers and physicians, death comes with the territory. But the hardest part of all may be this: To face the messy business of living.

Becoming a marksman for your own deepest held values, your most powerful callings of the heart may in fact be the greatest challenge you’ll ever face. And the most important.

The commitment to oneself, to venture into that uncharted world of You, this is the real work of grit and courage.

To feel at home in one’s own heart is one of the highest callings of being human. This is the work of coming home.