When the Finish Line Doesn’t Feel Like You Imagined
You have spent years living for a future date on the calendar. You’ve told yourself—and likely your children—that life would finally begin once training was over. You’ve navigated the long hours, the solo holidays, and the heavy lifting of home life with the belief that a change in schedule and a larger paycheck would finally bring the peace you’ve earned.
But now that you’ve reached the “pot of gold” at the end of the residency rainbow, you might be surprised to find that you still feel exhausted, misunderstood, and a little bit lost. If the life that looks so good on paper still feels like a struggle, I want you to know you aren’t doing it wrong. You are simply processing the reality of an ultra-marathon.
The Trap of the “Better When” Narrative
In the medical community, we are often conditioned to focus on the outcome rather than the relationship. We see the depravity of our current situation—the lack of time, money, and sleep and we assume that the presence of those things will automatically solve our internal unrest.
The truth is that while the end of training is a massive milestone, a change in circumstances doesn’t automatically rewire years of survival-mode habits. For many of us, the problem wasn’t just the grueling schedule or the system; it was that we lost ourselves while keeping everything else running. We focused so much on reaching the finish line that we forgot how to take care of our own needs and our own joy along the way.
Why It Still Feels Hard
When you finally get the house, the car, and the vacation, but you still feel terrible, it’s easy to think something is wrong with you. It is isolating to realize that the official support systems we expected—the kind you see in military or civil service families—simply don’t exist for the people standing next to the doctor.
You aren’t broken, and you aren’t ungrateful. You are tired from a decades-long journey where you were expected to figure it out quietly and smile through the mess.
Tools to Rekindle Your Own Fire
Moving from just surviving to actually thriving requires a shift in where you place your attention. It starts with rebuilding the most important relationship you have: the one with yourself. Here are a few ways to start that process, pulled from my own 22 years of marriage to a neurosurgeon and my work with hundreds of women in this community:
- Identify Your Joy: Think back to what lit you up before survival mode took over. For many of us, this is a creative endeavor that has been neglected for years.
- Create Your Own Rhythms: Don’t wait for your spouse’s schedule to change to start living. Create systems and routines that nourish your soul regardless of what time he gets home from the OR.
- Prioritize Intentional Connection: When you do have time together, make it count. Move away from the “scrolling and chores” habit and choose intentional communication to foster compassion.
- Stop the Autopilot: Acknowledge the “it’s a lot” factor. Admitting it is hard is the first step toward changing how you navigate it.
Tending the Fire Within
I often think of our inner identity as a little fire. When you are in residency or early attending life, that fire can feel like it has gone completely out. But that creative energy and sense of self are still there, waiting for a little kindling.
You owe it to yourself to make the relationship with you the most beautiful and important one in your life. When you are nourished, you aren’t showing up for your family from a place of irritability and resentment; you are showing up from a place of abundance.
If you are nodding your head because you’re tired of waiting for life to “get better” on its own, I’d love to walk alongside you. You can listen to more of these honest conversations on the Supporting Physician Spouses podcast, or if you’re ready for a deeper dive into your own identity and routines, you may be interested in coaching with me. Click the Work With Me button above.
How long have you been waiting for things to feel better, and what is one small thing you can do for yourself today?
