Supporting Physician Spouses

There's a version of physician wellness we've all quietly accepted. The physician finds something that fills them back up. Golf. The gym. A solo trip somewhere. And the family waits for them to come home. Nobody's wrong for needing that. But nobody's talking about what it costs the spouse who's been home all week, holding everything together, watching the car back out of the driveway on a Saturday morning. That's where this conversation starts. Mike and Ashley Christensen are a physician family from St. George, Utah. Mike is an anesthesiologist, about ten years into practice. They have four kids. More than a decade of medical marriage behind them. Together they built the MedGolf Wellness Foundation and a golf tournament series called Clubs and Scrubs. The whole premise: physician wellness that actually includes the family, not just the physician. But before Mike became the person who organizes those tournaments, he was the person Ashley quietly resented for golfing. She'll say it plainly. When he'd head to the course on a rare day off, she was home with kids, running on fumes. His few hours on the fairway felt like something taken from an already thin margin. She didn't say it out loud. She just held it. Then one day he asked her to ride along. Not to play. Just to ride. She had never actually been on a golf course. Her dad had golfed her entire life. She got in the cart, looked around at the open air and the quiet and the people unhurried out there on the grass, and thought, "Oh! This is what you've been doing." She plays now and genuinely loves it. But what shifted wasn't the golf. It was the understanding that a husband who fills himself back up shows up differently at home. And that was what she wanted all along. There's a line from this conversation I want you to hear for yourself. Resentment doesn't come from your spouse having something they love. It comes from being the only one who doesn't. If that landed for you, this episode is worth your time. Mike and Ashley also get into something that has been frustrating physician families for a long time: why hospital wellness programs keep missing the mark. Mike's Doctor's Day story alone is worth the listen. And in the back half, he talks about the physician families he's building this foundation for. Some of what he shares is hard to sit with. It's also exactly the kind of thing this community needs to hear someone say out loud. What You'll Learn (with Timestamps) [00:03:00 - 00:07:00] How Mike went from cold-calling golf courses to founding a nonprofit from scratch [00:08:00 - 00:10:30] What it looks like when physician wellness events actually include spouses and kids [00:11:00 - 00:13:00] Why Ashley's resentment about golf had nothing to do with golf, and the shift that changed everything [00:14:00 - 00:17:00] What hospital wellness programs keep missing, in Mike's own words [00:20:00 - 00:22:30] The physician families Mike and Ashley are building this foundation for, and why it still gets emotional Resources Mentioned Fair Play by Eve Rodsky (mentioned in relation to "unicorn space") MedGolf Wellness Foundation Follow on Instagram: @clubsandscrubsgolf Upcoming tournament: October 3rd, Thanksgiving Point Golf Club, Lehi, Utah, with a portion of proceeds supporting Kylee Dart Your Next Steps Learn more, donate, or register for a tournament: medgolfwellness.org Follow Clubs in Scrubs on Instagram: @clubsandscrubsgolf Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify  

The Lindsay Clancy case opened a lot of important conversations. I was inside one of them last week, talking about the maternal mental health side of what happened. Today I want to stay inside the same story and move to a different part of the room. Patrick Clancy has filed a civil malpractice suit against the physicians who cared for Lindsay. Somewhere, in houses nobody is talking about, the spouses and families of those named physicians are waking up every morning under a cloud that has no guaranteed end date. Nobody is asking how they are. I want to. If you are a physician spouse, you already understand better than most what it means to carry something significant and carry it quietly. You understand the performance of steadiness when nothing feels steady. You know what it costs to make it look easy when easy is the last thing it is. Litigation season is unlike any other hard season I have witnessed inside a medical marriage. It is not acute. It does not move through you and pass. It is ambient. It lives in the background of ordinary life, the school pickups, the dinners, the day that started like any other, and occasionally breaks through without warning when a stack of documents arrives or an application asks the one question you have started to dread. What that does to you personally, to your marriage, to the quiet texture of your daily life, is something nobody is counting. The moral injury your physician carries does not stay at the hospital. The chronic anxiety that replaces their confidence comes home.  This episode is for the spouses in the background. The one holding everything together while the case moves at its own pace on its own timeline, entirely outside your hands. The one who has gotten very good at answering "fine" just convincingly enough to get through the next question. Who is handling it. And who is not okay. And who may not be sure, at this point, whether those two things are still different. They are. And that distinction is where everything begins. What You'll Learn [02:00 - 04:20] The four risks every physician family quietly carries, and why litigation is the one nobody says out loud [04:20 - 06:40] What moral injury is, where it lives, and why it does not stay at the hospital [06:40 - 09:40] The difference between an acute crisis and an ambient season, and why that distinction matters for how you cope [09:40 - 11:20] What "the drop" is, why it happens on an ordinary day, and what it is actually made of [11:20 - 13:40] How litigation changes the texture of a marriage without a single fight or rupture [13:40 - 15:20] The professional ripple effects that come home and quietly reorganize your family's life in ways nobody predicted Resources Mentioned The Hidden Cost of Being the Strong One — free 15-question assessment Your Next Steps Take the free assessment: The Hidden Cost of Being the Strong One Connect on Instagram: @SupportingPhysicianSpouses and @Kendra_ItGetsBetterNow Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify  

A woman who did everything the system tells you to do... reached out early, trusted her providers, brought every insider advantage a medical family has to the table... and it still nearly wasn't enough. When Emily E. Johnson's son was born in 2023, her husband was finishing his fourth year of medical school. Between the two of them, they had more healthcare literacy than most families walking through a hospital door. So when her anxiety started building, day by day, when small things like strapping a car seat or cleaning bottles started to feel impossible, they knew what you're meant to do. They asked for help. Early. Within the first couple of weeks. What they weren't prepared for was what came next. The providers they trusted kept offering appointments months away, then weeks away, then finally next week, while Emily was losing her ability to eat or sleep and having thoughts that terrified her. Two and a half weeks. That's how long it actually took her to land in the kind of specialised care that made the difference. Two and a half weeks doesn't sound like a long time until you're the one living inside a crisis, watching every hour stretch into its own kind of eternity. What struck me most in this conversation wasn't only Emily's story, it was what she's since learned about the rest of the world. In many countries, new mothers are never left alone for the first forty days. Someone comes and stays, cooks, holds the baby so she can rest, treats her recovery as seriously as the baby's needs. Here, whether a mother can access specialised, mother and baby together care depends almost entirely on whether her community happened to have someone fight hard enough, or grieve hard enough, to build it. Fewer than ten of these perinatal partial hospitalisation programmes exist in the whole country, and most exist because of a tragedy, not because anyone decided in advance that mothers deserved the infrastructure. I sat down with Emily to talk through all of it: the traumatic first weeks, the walls between healthcare systems that nearly cost her the help she needed, and what she wants every hospital system watching the news right now to actually do about it. It's a hard conversation and an important one, and I think you'll come away from it, like I did, with more hope than you'd expect. What You'll Learn (with Timestamps) [01:00 - 03:00] Why "we did everything right and still couldn't get an answer" became the scariest part of Emily's early postpartum weeks [06:00 - 08:00] The impossible choice between a months long outpatient wait and the ER, and what finally forced her to go [18:00 - 22:00] What other countries do differently: the 40 day postpartum tradition the US has never adopted [25:00 - 27:00] Why fewer than ten perinatal partial hospitalisation programmes exist nationwide, and what makes them different [28:00 - 31:00] How tragedy, not need, is what actually builds these programmes, including one built after a mother's death by suicide [33:00 - 35:00] The walls between healthcare systems that kept her own providers from ever mentioning the programme that ultimately helped her Resources Mentioned Women Are Dying, Deb: Inside America's Maternal Mental Health Crisis — Emily's book Mission Just One Mom — Emily's site, including her free care-access map and data dashboard Postpartum Support International — mentioned in conversation as a resource for finding language and support Postpartum Support International Your Next Steps Take the "Hidden Cost of Being the Strong One" Assessment Grab Emily's book, Women Are Dying, Deb — currently 99 cents on Kindle for a limited time Connect with Emily at Mission Just One Mom Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify Follow on Instagram  

My kids went back to school on August 13th. I know it feels a little early, but that is our reality. And over the next few weeks, my college kids head back too, which means our household is going from seven people to four in a matter of weeks. Some days I'm looking forward to it. Some days I'm dreading it. The dread isn't about the quiet. It isn't about missing them, though I will. It's about the question the quiet asks. The one that surfaces every single time the schedule shifts and a little breathing room appears. What will I do differently this time? September has a particular energy to it, and it always has. The stores flip to fall overnight. The feeds fill with first-day photos. There's this collective permission slip that gets handed out this time of year, everywhere you look... except, it seems, for us. Because we're the ones managing everyone else's transitions. The logistics. The emotional ramp-up. The getting-everyone-ready. And then a stretch of quiet appears, or it doesn't, and we're standing in front of the same question. What is this season going to hold for me? Not the household. Me. Here's what I've learned after years of working on this, both in my own life and with the women I coach. Survival mode doesn't take a seasonal break. It keeps running in the background, organizing everything around everyone else's needs. When open time appears, the first instinct usually isn't to rest or begin something you've been wanting to do. It's to fill it. More errands. More organizing. More availability, just in case. The motion survival mode requires doesn't stop just because the occasion for it has reduced. This episode is about what it actually takes to claim a season for yourself when survival mode has been running the show. And it starts with a distinction I don't think gets talked about enough: the difference between a habit and a ritual. A habit is something you do. A ritual is something you do that means something. The difference is identity. I share the floor and ceiling framework I use to build habits that survive a hard week, what habit stacking actually looks like in a real season of life, and three examples from my own life, including what our two dogs and a morning hammock taught me about beginning my day as myself before I begin it as anyone else's anything. I also address the two things I hear most from the women I work with. "I don't even know what I want." And "I'll figure it out once things settle a little bit more." If either of those has ever been your honest answer, I want you to hear what I have to say about both. September is here. It's asking you a question. This episode is a good place to start answering it. What You'll Learn [3:00 - 4:45] Why survival mode keeps running even when the schedule opens up, and what this means for both the woman whose kids just went back and the mom with little ones still at home [5:30 - 7:15] The floor and ceiling framework, habit stacking, and why the goal is never the most impressive habit [8:00 - 9:30] The real difference between a habit and a ritual, and why the distinction comes down to identity [9:30 - 14:00] Three real-life examples: the gym during residency, reading before bed, and the morning sun ritual built because two dogs needed to go outside [15:30 - 17:45] What I want you to hear if you don't know what you want, and what I want you to hear if you're still waiting for things to settle Resources Mentioned The Hidden Cost of Being the Strong One (Free Assessment) Episode 32: Honoring Your Personal Seasons (search Supporting Physician Spouses wherever you listen) Your Next Steps Take the Free Assessment Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify Connect on Instagram: @SupportingPhysicianSpouses | @Kendra_ItGetsBetterNow  

On June 26th, 2014, I stopped writing. I know the date because I looked it up. What I didn't need to look up was the feeling I had when I closed that laptop. For years I had been writing to women who were a season or two behind me on this road. Writing about arrival like it was a destination. Writing about the finish line with genuine hope, because I had it. I wasn't performing it. I believed it. I was writing to women who needed someone to tell them it was going to be worth it, and I passed that promise on with my whole chest. And then we arrived. I sat down to write, and I had nothing. The feeling I had been promised, and been passing on to everyone else, wasn't there. What I felt instead was hollow. And I couldn't keep writing something I no longer believed was the whole truth. So I closed the laptop. It felt like stopping. For a long time, it felt like failing something I had built. What I couldn't have known then is that closing it was the most important thing I ever did for the work I'm doing right now. That first blog, the raw, unpolished writing from the most disoriented stretch of my life, is now the foundation of the book I'm finishing. I had no idea any of it was going anywhere when I shut it down. None. This is what I mean when I say meaning is retrospective. There's a line often attributed to Kierkegaard that I come back to often: that life can only be understood backward, even as we're required to live it forward. You don't get to understand what you're doing while you're doing it. You only get the view from far enough down the road to look back and see the shape of it. And what that means practically is that the seasons that looked like nothing were not nothing. They just hadn't found their meaning yet. Today I'm pulling back on my own pivots and stops, two separate stretches of going quiet in my writing, a marathon I trained for and then walked away from without a single regret, and the scrapbooking supplies I moved through four houses because letting them go felt like admitting the investment had been wrong. I also take you back through Aditi Pemmaraju's story from last week, and what it looks like to understand a life only from the far side of it. And then the harder question, the one I want to sit with you on: what are you still carrying through every move? What old chapter are you treating like a quiet accusation instead of a complete one? What season are you still making mean something about your character when it might just be a vote you haven't stood far enough back to see yet? Because most of what looked like quitting from the inside wasn't quitting at all. It was a pivot toward something true. And sometimes a stop is honest discernment. That deserves to be treated that way. This one is for you if you're sitting in a season that doesn't add up yet. Come listen. What You'll Learn [00:00 - 02:00] Why the decision that felt like failure was actually the most important one in my story [07:00 - 08:30] What "meaning is retrospective" actually means and how it shifts the way you hold your past [09:00 - 11:30] The real difference between a pivot and quitting, and why it isn't measured by outcome [12:00 - 15:00] The scrapbooking supplies I moved through four houses, and what finally letting them go revealed [17:00 - 18:30] The questions to sit with if you're still making an old season mean something about your character Resources Mentioned The Hidden Cost of Being the Strong One (free assessment) Your Next Steps Take the free assessment at itgetsbetternow.com Connect on Instagram: @kendra_itgetsbetternow | @supportingphysicianspouses Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify