What Healthcare Leaders Will Take Away
This episode is for physicians, APPs, nurse leaders, and healthcare executives who have been the patient, the caregiver, or the person carrying a loss, and who have never quite known where that belongs at work. Rebecca N. Thompson, MD MSc, is a family medicine and public health physician in Portland, Oregon, and the author of Held Together: A Shared Memoir of Motherhood, Medicine, and Imperfect Love. She spent more than a decade on it; twenty-two women appear, Thompson among them, half of them medical professionals. In conversation with Dr. Lillian Liang Emlet, she makes a plain case: the split many clinicians maintain between the healer self and the human self is not professionalism. It costs something, and what it costs is honesty.
Listeners will take away four things. First, why clinical knowledge offers so little protection once you are the one in the bed. As Thompson puts it, “The knowledge that we have, it just can’t protect us.” Second, where the professional line actually sits, drawn from a physician who never told her own patients her story and found they could tell anyway. Third, what a leader’s first permission sounds like, and why she argues “talking about our imperfections can really bring us into community.” Fourth, a concrete list of what programs and institutions can put in place for clinicians building families.
Thompson is not asking leaders to disclose more. She is asking them to stop pretending the two selves are separate.
What Actually Changes When a Clinician Becomes the Patient?
What she received was not uniform. She describes care that was “absolutely wonderful,” even “literally life-saving,” alongside care that was not, and she is specific about the pattern: being “dismissed sometimes as women especially were being told that we’re anxious when actually we’re having internal bleeding or things like that.”
The isolation compounded because the subject stays quiet. She points out that reproductive care and pregnancy complications are still not the sort of thing people bring up in casual conversation, and that when it was happening to her almost twenty years ago it was more closed than it is now. The result was a physician who could not name what was happening to her while it happened. Her word for it is disorienting.
Dr. Emlet names the version most clinicians recognize. You hold it while you work, the grief on one side, the right thing at the right time on the other, and the ordinary mundane tasks in between, all at once, and there is nowhere to put it.
Why Should a Leader’s Own Patient Experience Show Up in How They Lead?
She immediately fences the claim in, which is what makes it usable. “This is not about oversharing, this is not about destroyed boundaries.” She then reaches for a more precise word than honesty, “maybe authenticity is a better word,” because the standard is not that you share everything, but that “we expect to be able to be at least some of our full selves in whatever context, the part that’s most relevant to that.”
Then she draws the line out to the patient. “If we can’t show up authentically, how can we expect our patients to share their own stories honestly?” A clinician who performs having all the answers is asking a frightened person to be the only vulnerable one in the room. Her description of what patients actually want is worth quoting whole: they want to know you are guiding them and advocating for them, but “they’re much better served when they also understand that you’re still figuring things out, too, and you want to travel alongside them to serve them more than to stand over them and tell them what to do.”
Dr. Rana Awdish makes a closely related case from the critical-care side of the same experience, in Dr. Rana Awdish on reinhabiting the body after critical illness.
How Do You Share Your Own Story Without Crossing a Professional Boundary?
And yet, she says, “they can tell. They can feel it when you’re listening from a place of having been through something yourself.”
Her worked example is Rachel’s story, one of the chapters in the book. Rachel arrived at the clinic overwhelmed and unsure where to start, and Thompson is her doctor in that chapter. Nothing was disclosed. What Rachel describes afterward is atmospheric: she felt listened to, she “felt held in a different way by our practice than she had before,” her concerns were not minimized, and the whole practice, the nutritionist and the staff included, got behind figuring out why she could not stay pregnant. Thompson’s summary is the operating principle for any leader weighing what to say: “We didn’t have to say a single thing about the specifics.”
The distinction she draws is between carrying something and announcing it. “When we carry that vulnerability, we carry that history. Not that we articulate it aloud necessarily, but we’re humbled by it, and we carry it with us.”
Dr. Emlet names what that is in practice: an embodied way of working rather than a purely cognitive one, which is much of the reason narrative medicine and structured processing earn their place.
Where does it go?
If you have been the patient or the caregiver and have never had a place to put that experience at work, that is a conversation worth having out loud. Book a clarity call.
What Is the First Permission a Leader Can Give a Team?
“Talking about our imperfections can really bring us into community,” she says, and she names the paradox underneath it: “how exploring uncomfortable ideas can really bring us comfort.” She thinks this is true for individuals and more true for teams.
The mechanism is permission, and it only travels in one direction. When a leader names a struggle, “it gives other people permission to talk about difficult topics too.” Her instruction to leaders is explicit: “And I think that’s what leadership needs to do, is give people permission,” “by leading in imperfection, by leading in recognition of humanity.”
She is also clear about what this is not. It is not a milestone you reach. “There’s no end point. There’s no real goal,” she says, and there is no single marker that means you have arrived: “We don’t arrive somewhere and all of a sudden we are successful and then we’re done.”
One caution she treats as the main lesson of the book: do not assume shared experience produces shared sympathy. “We can’t just assume that women should automatically be supportive of other women,” she says, or that parents will be supportive of other parents, because there may be “deep stories hidden behind what you see people presenting,” unresolved grief that shapes how someone treats the person in front of them. That applies to the people you lead and to the leaders above you.
What Should Programs and Institutions Actually Put in Place?
At the level of individual leaders:
- Normalize the ordinary reproductive-health business of a working life: trainees managing menstruation, contraception, and fertility monitoring.
- Let people go to their own appointments, and do not count reasonable time spent on their own health against them in evaluations. Her reason is blunt: “we cannot help anyone else if we are not well.”
- Drop the assumption that this generation should sacrifice the way you did. “We can’t just assume that all trainees need to sacrifice in the same way that we may have,” because a different system and a different time make better possible.
At the institutional level, her own description of the list is that it is “kind of back to the grassroots things,” and most of what helps here helps everyone:
- Protected time for preventive care, which she notes gets set aside all too often.
- Reasonable shift lengths and adequate rest.
- Better food available on call.
- Physical space for regrouping: a meditation room, a quiet space, a non-denominational chapel.
- Financial reality, which she treats as part of health: how a resident is supposed to fund routine pregnancy care, fertility treatment, raising children, or an adoption pathway on a resident’s resources.
- Support groups, and job-sharing arrangements she notes may not have been done as much before.
Her stated goal for all of it: “let people plan more confidently for integrating their family lives into their professional lives.”
Dr. Emlet adds the economic backdrop, the career earnings gap between women and men in medicine, driven substantially by the part-time years that fall in the same decade as caregiving, and compounded by people being told for years that part-time meant undervalued. Thompson’s response reframes what “part-time” is even measuring: “You just see this little bit of what we’re showing up for at work and everything else that we’re juggling.”
Dr. Cindy Van Praag works the same terrain from the other direction, in balancing motherhood and medicine.
For leaders carrying more than they say
Leading a team where people are carrying more than they say? Our executive coaching for healthcare leaders is built for exactly that.
Is a Book Like This Only for People Building Families?
The scope is wider than fertility on two axes. Motherhood appears in many forms, including biologic, adoptive, foster, surrogacy, and step-parenthood, alongside questions about mothering a community rather than a household. And the arc is generational rather than obstetric: the oldest collaborator is in her mid-seventies, and the stories run from teen pregnancy through the long life of a family.
She also resists the assumption that hard material makes a heavy book. “This is not a sad book,” she says. Some of the stories are heartbreaking, “but in the end, every one of these people comes out stronger.” Her formulation for the whole project: “these are the extraordinary moments in the lives of ordinary people.”
What Can a Leader Do Today?
The framing matters more than it sounds. She is explicit that the goal is not to get past what happened. “I don’t think we ever need to get over things that have happened. I think we need to understand them and learn from them.” What she is describing is incorporation rather than recovery, helping people understand an experience well enough that it becomes part of who they are.
And she pairs it with agency. “We can choose to make meaning, to create something better out of it,” even about paths nobody would have chosen.
Dr. Carolyn Roy-Bornstein takes a similar turn from personal experience to practice in gratitude as a healthcare leader.
Key Takeaways for Healthcare Leaders
Frequently Asked Questions
Does my own medical experience belong anywhere in how I lead?
How much should a physician leader share with their team?
Why did being a patient feel so isolating even though I am a clinician?
What can a residency program or nursing leader actually put in place?
What is a shared memoir, and who is in Held Together?
Who is Dr. Rebecca Thompson?
Keep listening
More conversations with physician authors are in the Author Interviews Collection.
Episode Transcript
Download transcript (.txt) ↓︎Segment 01
The lines the conversation turns on (From 00:00)
Cold open: Thompson on being told women are anxious when they are actually bleeding internally, on why continuing to show up requires imperfection, and on the main lesson of the book — the deep stories hidden behind what people present, which shape how they treat each other.
Segment 02
Fractured selves, and a welcome (From 01:00)
Dr. Emlet’s hook — the healer identity at odds with the experience of being a patient, a caregiver, or someone carrying a loss — and her introduction of Dr. Rebecca Thompson, author of Held Together, framed around integrating those selves rather than compartmentalizing them.
Segment 03
There is no typical week (From 02:00)
Thompson on a practice that has taken many forms: residencies, full-spectrum primary care from prenatal care and births through hospice, telemedicine consults helping people in under-resourced areas decide whether a two-hour drive to the emergency room is warranted, and community volunteering in an EMT-type role out of her wilderness medicine roots. All of it connects to women’s, children’s, and families’ health, and she names sharing the stories of patients, friends, and medical colleagues through this book as the work she is most grateful to be doing.
Segment 04
The thread you cannot see while you are living it (From 04:00)
Dr. Emlet on how the through-line of a career only becomes visible in hindsight, Thompson noting that the professional list left out family life and everything else she juggles, and the first real question: where was she when the idea took root, and what made a decade-long project possible?
Segment 05
Start where you are (From 05:00)
Thompson’s advice to anyone holding a creative project outside their professional role: start where you are, start before you are ready, and accept that it happens in tiny iterative increments. Then the origin — a complicated path to parenthood, a first attending job, and a series of complicated pregnancy losses in which she became the patient herself.
Segment 06
The knowledge does not protect you (From 06:00)
Being on the patient side as isolating and confusing even for a physician; the wonderful, life-saving care she received and wanted to pay forward; the care that dismissed her as anxious during internal bleeding; and why reproductive complications stayed hard to talk about — more so almost twenty years ago — leaving her disoriented until time gave her distance.
Segment 07
A second residency, and a leap of faith (From 08:00)
Changing careers to focus on women’s and children’s health: a second residency in family medicine begun just after a third pregnancy loss, with no idea whether or how parenthood would happen or how any path would fit a resident’s time and money. Her son arrived during that residency and her daughter just after, and the women she met along the way made her want to build something larger than isolated struggles.
Segment 08
Masking it at work (From 09:00)
Dr. Emlet on how much of this gets masked, and how hard it is to find space to speak about it in a clinic or hospital while holding grief and clinical focus and the mundane simultaneously. Thompson on the layered meaning of the title: holding ideas that seem mutually exclusive, and how vulnerability becomes the power to help others. Dr. Emlet on vulnerability as the hardest thing to build in organizations, teams, and training programs, and on making a space safe enough that people can belong.
Segment 09
Was crossing that professional line hard? (From 11:00)
Dr. Emlet asks whether weaving her own vulnerability into the book was a hard professional line to cross. Thompson’s answer starts with a boundary: she was not telling her story to patients who came for care, and the project sat well outside her clinical practice, even though many collaborators had been her patients for years.
Segment 10
What a shared memoir is (From 12:00)
Twenty-two women in the book counting Thompson herself, half of them medical professionals across physicians, nursing, EMT, psychology, and massage therapy. Why this is neither an anthology nor a traditional medical memoir: the books she has admired for decades show the clinician’s point of view on a patient’s story, and she wanted more than that.
Segment 11
A decade of iterations (From 13:00)
How the collaboration actually worked — years with each woman individually, mostly through oral history and recorded interviews, walking in the community, at a coffee shop, or by phone, over countless iterations — and the structure that resulted, with her own story appearing at intervals where it intersects with someone else’s. Then boundaries as a live clinical question for any clinician: how much do we share, where do we share it, and what is the context? She answers it by way of Dr. Emlet’s own mission language about helping find a path where none exists, saying she had found no project like this, in which a physician collaborates with her patients, her colleagues, and people in her community to share that kind of experience.
Segment 12
Going first (From 15:00)
Her reason for including herself: she was asking people to share their most vulnerable material, and could not expect that of them without doing it herself. She says she never hesitated on the question itself, only on how to do it and what angles to take. Then her editor’s correction to “I’m just shepherding them,” and her attempt to hold both the shepherding and the leadership.
Segment 13
Who the book is for (From 17:00)
Dr. Emlet on the book’s reach beyond healthcare, and on how many people are inside a fertility or family-timing experience at any moment, including male colleagues, with the resulting undercurrent of stress. Then her question about the subtitle: why *imperfect*? Thompson begins her answer by tying the word back to taking small steps, being vulnerable, and starting when we are not ready — all those themes tie into it.
Segment 14
Why imperfect (From 18:00)
She finishes the thought: continuing to show up and take risks is where the possibility sits, and that requires imperfection, because nobody gets it right the first time and arriving at “right” was never the goal. Dr. Emlet adds the point from the book’s introduction — that the hard is where we are formed.
Segment 15
Written to be entered without background (From 19:00)
Her intent that the book be approachable: no parenthetical definitions, no heavy-handed explanation, learning by walking alongside each person. Motherhood in many forms — biologic, adoptive, foster, surrogacy, step-parenthood, and mothering a community.
Segment 16
An endorsement from a college advisor (From 20:00)
Arthur Kleinman, the physician, author, and psychiatrist out of Harvard Medical School who advised her thirty years ago in college, reconnected with her, read the book, and wrote a blurb saying mothers, fathers, doctors, and nurses should all read it.
Segment 17
The long arc of a family (From 21:00)
Dr. Emlet on the interwoven networks everyone belongs to, including broken and recreated families. Thompson on her paraphrase of Kleinman’s closing point about catching life itself, and on why this is not a book of birth stories: the oldest collaborator is in her mid-seventies, and the range runs from teen pregnancy across generations.
Segment 18
Why leaders need this (From 22:00)
Dr. Emlet’s case that leaders are taught to cloak exactly these experiences while carrying them personally and holding a work family at the same time, and her question: what is the first permission a leader should be given to start undoing the internal narrative about hiding?
Segment 19
Permission, and the paradox underneath it (From 23:00)
Thompson on talking about imperfections as a route into community, and on how exploring uncomfortable ideas brings comfort — for individuals, and more so for teams and networks. Naming a struggle gives other people permission to raise difficult topics, strengthens a group’s capacity for what comes next, and constitutes leading in recognition of humanity.
Segment 20
There is no arrival (From 24:00)
Dr. Emlet on leaders whose willingness to say “I’m not perfect either” is their greatest strength, and on how much work life directs personal wellbeing. Thompson on striving and improving over arriving: there are goals along the way, but no end point and no one marker where we get there, and no growth in believing you are finished.
Segment 21
What leaders should have in place (From 25:00)
Dr. Emlet’s question about nursing directors, residency program directors, and chief medical officers — what policies they need and what they are unprepared for around fertility, starting a family, and time off. Thompson’s answer begins with leaders becoming the community they wish they had had, and normalizing trainees managing menstruation, contraception, and fertility monitoring.
Segment 22
Appointments, assumptions, and inherited sacrifice (From 26:00)
Letting people attend their own medical appointments without penalty in evaluations, because we cannot help anyone if we are not well; the warning against assuming support falls along gender lines; the deep stories and unresolved grief people carry into how they treat others; and the refusal to require of trainees the same sacrifice a previous system required.
Segment 23
The institutional list (From 27:00)
What helps everyone, not only people building families: protected time for preventive care, reasonable shift lengths, adequate rest, better food on call, and physical space for regrouping — a meditation room, a quiet space, a non-denominational chapel.
Segment 24
Money is part of health (From 28:00)
How a resident is meant to fund routine pregnancy care, fertility treatment, raising children, or adoption, and what creativity could add: support groups and job-sharing arrangements that let people plan more confidently for integrating family life with professional life. Then Dr. Emlet begins the economic question — that women in their child-caring and elder-caring years carry a salary discrepancy that has been widely reported.
Segment 25
The part-time penalty, and the iceberg (From 29:00)
Dr. Emlet on the career earnings gap between women and men in medicine, on why caregiving years push people toward part-time roles, and on the compounding effect of being told for a decade that part-time meant undervalued — across what may be the most consequential decade for raising the next generation. Thompson’s answer: part-time only in what is visible. We are icebergs, and what shows at work is a small part of what someone is carrying, as her own opening list of professional roles already demonstrated.
Segment 26
What never gets counted (From 30:00)
The rest of the ledger that no schedule accounts for: staying healthy, eating well, resting, moving our bodies, being out in the environment. Then Dr. Emlet on whether leaders are cultivating a place where people can be their whole human, and her question about the cost to patients, society, teams, and organizations when clinical leaders never integrate their own patient and caregiving experience into how they lead. Thompson’s answer begins: the cost is honesty.
Segment 27
Not oversharing, but not sealed off either (From 31:00)
Thompson’s elaboration: not oversharing and not dissolved boundaries, but showing up as human. She reaches for a more precise word, offering that “maybe authenticity is a better word,” since the standard is bringing at least the relevant part of your full self into a given context. Then the consequence for patients, who cannot be expected to share honestly with someone performing having all the answers.
Segment 28
Alongside, not above (From 32:00)
What patients actually want from a professional: guidance and advocacy, plus the understanding that you are still figuring things out and want to travel alongside them rather than stand over them. Dr. Emlet on how people from every walk of life respond better to shared humanity than to preaching.
Segment 29
Rachel’s story (From 33:00)
Thompson on a chapter where she is the unnamed physician: Rachel arrives overwhelmed and unsure where to start, is told nothing about what Thompson has been through, and describes feeling listened to and held differently, with her concerns not minimized.
Segment 30
Carried, not articulated (From 34:00)
The practice getting behind Rachel to work out why she could not stay pregnant, and Thompson’s point that nothing specific had to be said. Carrying vulnerability and history without articulating it aloud — which Dr. Emlet names as embodied practice, and ties to narrative medicine and processing.
Segment 31
Not a sad book (From 35:00)
Why the collection is hopeful despite heartbreaking material: everyone in it comes out stronger, and people can choose to make meaning of paths they would never have chosen.
Segment 32
Understand it, do not get over it (From 36:00)
Incorporating an experience into identity rather than moving past it — because we never need to get over what happened, we need to understand and learn from it. Then Dr. Emlet’s closing question: one tiny act a listener could do today to be more integrated and embodied. Thompson begins her answer by pointing back at that last point: think about what you have been through and how it has helped you grow, because the most inspiring thing in clinical medicine and in assembling stories like the ones in Held Together is watching people grow and change.
Segment 33
How have you grown? (From 37:00)
Thompson finishes the thought: hold the vision of how your story has shaped you, for good and for bad and everything in between, then ask in what ways you want to grow next. Dr. Emlet on growth as the alternative to decline, and her question about where to find the book, the discussion guides, and how to invite Dr. Thompson to speak. Thompson points to her website — rebeccanthompson.com, with the middle initial, because there are lots of other people with the same name — where the reviews, endorsements, audiobook samples, and full introduction live, along with her invitation to anyone able to get a copy to help support the project.
Segment 34
The affiliate link, and the discussion guides (From 38:00)
The affiliate link on her site that sends a portion of proceeds to Postpartum Support International’s maternal and family mental health work. Then the discussion guides built with the collaborators for book clubs and teaching sessions across residencies, nursing training, social work, and psychology, spanning themes from pregnancy complications and assisted reproduction to adoption, fostering, and cultural and religious influences on family building. Her hope that the book reaches any teaching setting relevant to primary care — including pediatric psychiatry, women’s health, family health, and obstetrics, and every healing profession, not only physicians — and how the work has changed: the book has been out about a year, the first year went mostly to conventional book-tour things, and in the past few months she has begun travelling with the collaborators, locally and around the country and virtually, to speak with residents, early faculty members, and trainees.
Segment 35
Ordinary people, extraordinary moments (From 40:00)
Dr. Emlet on how prevalent loss is and how alone people still feel, and on training the next generation to have these conversations across professions. Thompson’s closing line about ordinary people getting through extraordinary moments, and the invitation to subscribe and leave a review.
Read the full transcript
Transforming Healthcare Coaching Podcast — Episode 117: Held Together with Dr. Rebecca Thompson. Host Lillian Liang Emlet, MD MS CHSE CPC ELI-MP in conversation with Rebecca N. Thompson, MD MSc. Published July 13, 2026.
Rebecca Thompson: Sometimes as women especially were being told that we're anxious when actually we're having internal bleeding or things like that When we just keep showing up, being willing to take risks to improve ourselves, to improve our relationships, to improve the world, that's where there's so much possibility, and that just requires imperfection. We can't just assume that women should automatically be supportive of other women and this is the main lesson of the book, I think, deep stories hidden behind what you see people presenting that may cause them to have sadness or resentment or unresolved grief from things that they've been through that they then bring to how they treat other people.
Lillian Liang Emlet: So healthcare professionals and leaders often feel fractured. Their identity as a healer is at odds with their experience as a patient, a caregiver, or a person navigating loss. We are so lucky to have today Dr. Rebecca Thompson, author of the book Held Together. Becca's going to come together with us to share some stories about what it's like to hold space for so many stories in this book, and this book offers a framework for integrating those selves so all of us in healthcare can lead and care from a place of wholeness rather than Compartmentalization. Welcome, Becca, to the show, Transforming Healthcare Coaching.
Rebecca Thompson: thanks so much for having me, Lilly. I've been looking forward to this conversation
Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah, so Becca, you're a family medicine physician and a public health physician in Portland. And for the listeners who don't know you yet, what does a typical week look like when you're not writing books and not moving into the, your next literary, piece?
Rebecca Thompson: Oh, wow. I don't think there is a typical week, I have to say. So I guess I'll say over the years, my practice has taken many forms. Everything from, of course, going through the residencies as we all know about, to, right after finishing my family medicine residency, practicing in a full spectrum primary care practice, doing everything from, prenatal care and attending births, all the way through older, adults, hospice care and everything in between. and I've also worked in telemedicine, helping provide consults for kind of under-resourced areas, helping people decide when it's worth that two-hour drive to go into the emergency room to be seen. I've lately been doing community work, volunteering with local sports organizations and providing kind of, EMT type of a role back to my wilderness medicine roots, which is how I got into medicine in the first place. So just a wide range of interests and, experiences, but all of them really do connect to women's, children's, and families' health over all those years. And I'm just most grateful and honored to be able to do the work lately of helping share the stories of many of my patients and, friends and medical colleagues through this work, through this book.
Lillian Liang Emlet: That's incredible. I think so often in healthcare we don't have a leader to show us the way of how that thread of the story is there, and that you don't really realize it's there when it's happening to you. you try to set these goals or these ambitions for what you think you n- want to do or need to
Rebecca Thompson: Right
Lillian Liang Emlet: and yet the story and the thread of the, of what's most important, as you just mentioned, the stories of the women, the physicians, the clinicians, the caregivers, that's the thread that bubbled up to the surface. just as you were living life, doing all of the things that all of us can r- relate to. Doing a little bit of
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah.
Lillian Liang Emlet: trying clinic practice, doing all the different things. And so
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah.
Lillian Liang Emlet: curious
Rebecca Thompson: just my professional life. I mean, I didn't even mention all the family life and juggling, personal interests and helping, helping community things, taking care of the kids, being a partner to my husband. there's so much more. I was just talking about the professional side, so.
Lillian Liang Emlet: Right. Well, that sort of leads into my first question. so y-
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah.
Lillian Liang Emlet: is really what... This project took more than a decade in the making, and for all of us, hopeful someday authors, we, we have these secret hopes or little scribbles in our journals and on our computers. But set the scene for us. Like, where were you throughout this time when the idea first took root, and, what made it possible? Like, how did that first, tipping point happen, right? because
Rebecca Thompson: Yes
Lillian Liang Emlet: point where you're like, "You know what?" And now you do mention it a little bit in the beginning of the book, but I'm curious, how it finally became, after you held so many stories for so long, to bring them to light.
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah, well, I'm happy to tell you that story, and I want to highlight what you said going into it, that it was those tiny little moments. It was fitting it between the cracks over those 10 years. So the small steps, I would encourage anybody who does have that vision, that dream of writing something or even doing any kind of bigger creative project, making a film or developing a community support network. So whatever that creative project is outside of your direct professional roles, just start and start where you are. Start before you're ready, as I know you like to say. just show up, and it happens in tiny little iterative incremental steps. but okay, so going back to the story. Essentially, what, it all comes down to that I had a really complicated path to parenthood, and that's where the story begins. back when I was just finishing up my medical training in my initial residency of public health and starting out on my career, first new attending job, that seemed like a pretty good time to start a family. And my husband and I, very quickly, we went through a series of, complicated pregnancy losses, medical situations where I became a patient myself. And even as a physician, being in that side of healthcare, on that other side in that role, was very isolating and very confusing. The knowledge that we have, it just can't protect us when we are the ones who are the patient or we're taking care of a family member or a friend, someone, a loved one. and it really shaped my career because as I went through those things, I received some absolutely wonderful care, literally life-saving care. I wanted to pay it forward. I wanted to take what I learned and have it benefit others and not just be kind of my own isolated story. And of course, like everyone, I received some less than fantastic care and was dismissed sometimes as women especially were being told that we're anxious when actually we're having internal bleeding or things like that. and I wanted to help prevent those things from happening to people. So essentially to take my own experience as a patient and merge those worlds of physician and patient. now, I also realized that when I was in the thick of that, I mean, culture is getting better, but we don't talk a lot about reproductive care, pregnancy complications. it's far more open than it was, almost 20 years ago when this was happening to me, but it's still not something that people just bring up in casual conversation most of the time. So I was hesitant to talk about my story. And honestly, everything was happening so fast for me, and, the medical things were snowballing so fast it was hard to know what to say, where to start. It was just very disorienting thing. but once I was able to, like, time was passing, I got a little distance on it, I felt like I could start to see the bigger picture, and I was ready to start sharing it now to see if, that would help others share their stories too. But meanwhile, I realized that not only did I want to, see this from the physician-patient intersection, but I really needed to change my actual career. So this is when I went back and did a second residency in family medicine to focus on women's and children's health. it was a really big leap of faith because I had just had my third pregnancy loss. I didn't know yet how and when and if I'd ever become a parent, or at least a biological parent, or how any other reproductive assistance or adoption or any other path would fit into the time and money of a resident, you know, resident's limited resources. but I took that leap of faith. I did that other residency. I had my son actually during that residency and my daughter just after I graduated, so a bit of a spoiler that, I did end up having kids. but all the people I met along the way, the incredible women, the stories they told me, their families that over generations, the ways that relationships grew and changed and families stayed together or fell apart, it was so inspiring and it made me want to create something, again, bigger out of all these small, isolated, siloed struggles to show other people that they were less alone, too, in the world
Lillian Liang Emlet: That is incredible. and I
Rebecca Thompson: I think
Lillian Liang Emlet: you really bring up something, the fact that we so, we mask all of these things. and it's really hard to find a place or a space that, that, that's comfortable to be able to talk about these things at work, because you're holding them simultaneously even when you're in the clinic or you're in the hospital. you're holding the duality of being a patient with burdens and grief simultaneously while you're focused and doing the right thing at the right time and doing the mundane also
Rebecca Thompson: Yes.
Lillian Liang Emlet: the time that you need. And it's really hard to express that
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah, Lillian, that's-- I love that you mentioned that, those dualities and the conflict, the tension between them, because as you might imagine, the title Held Together has many layers of meaning, but that's kind of one of my favorite, is the contradictory part, where as women, as physicians, as any kind of healthcare professionals, we can hold these ideas at the same time that seem mutually exclusive, grief and joy and, struggle and redemption and, like, all of these things. We contain all these complexities. And so to see that, to shine a light on that, to show how we can be vulnerable and it brings us power to help others, right? I think that's the essence of medicine
Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah. Well, I mean, vulnerability is probably the greatest, hardest thing that most of us in organizations, teams, groups, and even training programs to try create the safe enough space to be vulnerable enough so that people can belong. so when you brought together these stories, many physician writers will just collect the stories of their patients, right? And then sort of, tell us that they come to life. But you have a, actually a vulnerability of your own that you share and weave very openly in the book. And was that a hard professional line to cross? And, was there a moment where you're like, "Actually, I probably should not share my story"? I'm just curious.
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah, no, I really like that question because I think it comes back to why it's so important to be vulnerable and how it shapes the care that we can give. Now, these are not-- I was not telling my story to my patients when they showed up for care. That's not what this was about. This was a project far outside of my clinical practice with, friends, colleagues, and former patients. This is not something I was doing in conjunction with the care I was providing clinically. although many of the people in the book I knew because they had been my patients for many years. And as I was transitioning through all these different roles that I mentioned right at the beginning of our conversation, and some of them were like, "What's next?" I'm like, "I don't know, but certainly some kind of writing project. If you want to know more, stay in touch," and it developed into this. and so, I would highlight-- I'm going to get to your question, about the vulnerability and sharing the personal story, but I want to maybe share first for the context, that half of us in this book, so there are twenty-two of us total, half of us are medical professionals ourselves. Everything from physicians, family medicine, pedes, geriatrics, child psychopathology, like a range of physicians, but also nurse, EMT, social-- well, social work is the family member of somebody, a psychologist, massage therapist. We have a range. And, like you said, this was not the typical book that a lot of physician authors, physician writers put together. I love medical memoir and I love anthologies, and this is not an anthology. And it's also not the traditional medical memoir. I call it a shared memoir because while all the ones that I found, all the books that I've loved over the years from my, most esteemed, beloved physician authors, they show the clinician's point of view. And as you kind of alluded to, they may not get into their own vulnerability as much. They do to some degree. that's part of what we love about those memoirs. But they're always showing the clinician's point of view on their patient's story And I mean, I love these books. don't get me wrong.
Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah
Rebecca Thompson: admired them for decades, but I really wanted to show more than that. And so I didn't just ask people to write something up and give it to me as an anthology being lightly edited. I worked over the course of that decade with each of these women individually, collaboratively, mostly through oral history and recorded interview, three hours more at a time, walking in the community, sitting at a coffee shop, talking on the phone if they're not local. And we worked collaboratively to develop this story over countless iterations. Back to the iter- iterative process that's so important in your work. I could not even imagine how many iterations any given chapter would have been over the course of several years, and the whole project being just over 10. so I really do want to distinguish it from the typical kind of collection of stories, and it's also told where you see my story at intervals, and it pauses to share the story of one other woman where her story intersects with mine. So that's really unusual, I think, as you see the threads between people.
Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah. I love
Rebecca Thompson: I don't want to neglect your original question that got me down this other path of telling you about, the process of the book, because I do think it's really important that as clinicians, we recognize those boundaries. Like how much do we share? Where do we share them? What is the context, right? But ultimately, I think this comes to your mission statement of helping find a path where none exists. As I mentioned, I didn't feel like there was any project like this where it was a physician collaborating with her patients, with her colleagues, with people in her community to share that kind of experience. And so I felt like I'm asking people to share these most vulnerable things, right?
Lillian Liang Emlet: Right
Rebecca Thompson: How could I expect that of them if I'm not willing to do it myself? So I wouldn't say I ever hesitated, in terms of your question about that. I thought a lot about how to do it and what angles to take and how it spoke to my other collaborator stories. but I wouldn't have done this project if I weren't willing to be vulnerable myself
Lillian Liang Emlet: Right.
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah. So, it makes me reflect too on what a conversation I had with my acquiring editor, the editor who kind of picked up the book for the publisher initially. I've always felt like I'm shepherding these stories. I'm sort of this conduit. I'm channeling the other women's voices, and I have, authored the book, if you will, written, I'm using air quotes. but, I couldn't have done any of this without them. This is about their stories, and I want to give them that full control and ownership too. But the editor, when we first were talking about it, she framed it differently. I was saying this, "I'm just shepherding them." She's like, "No, no, no. This is about creating the space and being that physician, that vulnerable, person willing to step up and say, 'I'm going to share these things.' That's what was so important, and the stories wouldn't be out there if I hadn't been willing to go first." So
Lillian Liang Emlet: makes
Rebecca Thompson: I'm grateful for that perspective. I try to remember it. I still feel like I'm shepherding, but I do try to claim some kind of ownership for that leadership at least, even while remaining very humble that, none of us could do this alone, of course.
Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah.
Rebecca Thompson: So
Lillian Liang Emlet: no, I hear you. I think the reality is, as authors, your job is really has been to create the place for readers. And so
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah
Lillian Liang Emlet: book is not just for healthcare professionals. This
Rebecca Thompson: No
Lillian Liang Emlet: for anyone who is ever had any kind of female in their life who has had any kind of women's health related reproductive, in any way, shape, or form is to
Rebecca Thompson: Which is everybody.
Lillian Liang Emlet: which is sort of, everybody. Just saying. because if you're not in, in the thick of it yourself, I mean, because there is so much infertility now, there is so much more prevalence, even with my own male colleagues, right? They're going through it, too, even when I'm going through it, right? In terms of that journey for when to start the family and how that's looking and how it's not looking and the undercurrent of stress that's there all the time. In the title you say it's a shared memoir of motherhood, medicine, and imperfect love, and I'm curious why you chose the word imperfect
Rebecca Thompson: I think that comes back to taking small steps and being vulnerable, starting when we're not ready. All those themes tie into it. I think when we just keep showing up, being willing to take risks to improve ourselves, to improve our relationships, to improve the world, that's where there's so much possibility, and that just requires imperfection. I mean, we're never going to get it right the first time, and I don't think getting it whatever right even means, I don't think that's the goal. I think the goal is to find new ways to look at things and creative outlets, even as, maybe science-minded people and science-minded professions thinking of new approaches and innovations and iterative innovations for sure
Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah. And I also think even in your introduction, you really comment how things are very hard and at the same time through the hard is actually how we're formed.
Rebecca Thompson: Exactly. and that's why I think, I love that you brought up how this book is for sort of anyone who has these things in their lives and truly that is anybody, because you don't have to be a healthcare professional to enjoy these stories, I think, or to benefit from them or however you may look at it.
Lillian Liang Emlet: No
Rebecca Thompson: I think that, we were really intentional in telling these that I wanted it to be approachable. A big part of my goal in medicine to translate medicine for people, in writing to make it accessible and approachable and engaging for people. You have to be a curious reader and someone who, wants to learn things, but you absolutely don't need any background because we're going to teach it to you in a really immersive way. So you don't need to know, for example, what preeclampsia is to live that with one of these women and see what happens as a mystery unfolds and things develop. you don't have to understand what the NICU is. You're going to learn all about it. And I never have any situation where I'm sort of defining things in parentheses or, anything heavy-handed. Truly, you learn by walking alongside each of these people. And while they do all identify as women and as mothers, those definitions are really broad. So there's certainly, questioning of norms of feminine expectations and gender fluidity and, motherhood in so many forms, biologic, adoptive, foster, surrogacy, step-parenthood, even how do we mother our communities, beyond any kind of biological or even, traditionally familial ties. and, I have to say one of the, one of the most, meaningful endorsements that the book received for me was one of my college advisors, who is Arthur Kleinman. He's this incredible physician, author, and psychiatrist out of Harvard Medical School, and he was my advisor 30 years ago back in college. and he and I reconnected because of just, I reached out to him to tell him how he'd influenced my career over time a few years ago and mentioned the book, and he wanted to read it, got him a copy, and, he just wrote the most beautiful blurb endorsement about how, mothers and fathers and doctors and nurses should all read it. And I think it does span all of generations, all of life.
Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah. I mean, because at the end of the day, the reality is we are somebody's sibling, parent, child. We all have that, that interwoven network, I mean, in terms of belonging to someone somewhere. And like you said, these aren't perfect, so there are broken families, and there are
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah
Lillian Liang Emlet: and recreated,
Rebecca Thompson: Yes. Yes, and that highlights too, so the, I think his, the final point of his comment was something like that we had caught life itself and shared it with us. And to me, that's about how while these stories do touch on fertility issues, as you mentioned, and my story was sort of early complications in pregnancy, it doesn't stop there. This is not a book of birth stories or fertility, journeys alone. it really is about the long arc of family life's, life over generations. And our, the oldest collaborator in the book is in her mid-70s. We had, people talking about teen pregnancies all the way through that kind of generational lens. So it really does cover just a huge range of experiences, and it's not just for people in the beginning stages of thinking about a family.
Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah. No, I love this.
Rebecca Thompson: Oh, thanks.
Lillian Liang Emlet: we're, transforming healthcare coaching. We really like to coach leaders. And so leaders actually need to know about these things, primarily because I will argue that a lot of people in leadership are taught to cloak a lot of these things. They themselves are personally going through
Rebecca Thompson: Absolutely
Lillian Liang Emlet: emotional things, their family, their extended family, and at the same time you have w- work, quote unquote, families,
Rebecca Thompson: Right
Lillian Liang Emlet: also teams and things are happening within your own colleagues. So a lot of the times people think that leaders have to check their own humanness at the door to stay professional. And what's the first debunking, first permission that you'd like to be able to talk to... because, you speak to people who are in leadership, CEOs,
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah.
Lillian Liang Emlet: chairs,
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah
Lillian Liang Emlet: they read this book and when you talk with them about how this, it can inform their leadership style, what's the first permission you'd give them to start undoing any kind of internal narratives about sort of, hiding things?
Rebecca Thompson: yeah. I think that talking about our imperfections can really bring us into community. So the idea behind this, in my mind, is that another paradox here, another contradiction and tension, how exploring uncomfortable ideas can really bring us comfort. And I think that's true as individuals, but it's also even more so maybe true in communities, on teams, in networks of people, because when we talk about our struggles, again, just another word for being imperfect, right? Recognizing those imperfections in our lives, in our choices, in the options we're presented, it gives other people permission to talk about difficult topics too. And I think that's what leadership needs to do, is give people permission, because of course, that helps us feel less alone as individuals, which is, I think, a good thing in any way, even contributing to a team or just for your own peace of mind. but it really does strengthen our ability to weather the next challenges, because there will always be more, right? For our groups, our institutions at whatever level. so just giving people that kind of permission by leading in imperfection, by leading in recognition of humanity
Lillian Liang Emlet: And I do think there's d- definitely many people who that is their greatest strength, that because they're willing to have the hard conversations and say that, "Hey, I'm not perfect either. our goal is to try to get through all this life together." And that, and work-life is huge. Work-life,
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah
Lillian Liang Emlet: really does direct a lot of our own personal wellbeing and s- in the clinical s- spec sectors
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah, it's much more important to be striving and improving and recognizing each other's work than it is to... there's no end point. There's no real goal. We have, you know, goals along the way to things, but there's no, one marker where we get there. That's the myth, right? We don't arrive somewhere and all of a sudden we are successful and then we're done. I mean, there's no growth in that.
Lillian Liang Emlet: Right. so what kinds of things does the book think about when we think about leaders, like nursing directors or residency program directors, chief medical officers? what are some of the challenges they have, that as a leader that they really should have in place as policies? And what are they really not prepared for when it comes to supporting their staff and their team with these, things that have come up in the book?
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah
Lillian Liang Emlet: or fertility or starting a family and time off.
Rebecca Thompson: Right. Well, I think, when we're in the leadership role, we can be that community. we can recognize, acknowledge, and create that space that we maybe that we wish we'd had when we were going through this, especially if we're a little bit on the other side of things. And that may look like, moving through the life stages we're thinking about n- normalize, trainees managing menstruation, contraception, fertility monitoring, allowing people in all, fields, in all, kinds of medical care they might receive to go to their appointments as they need to care for their own health and, not criticize them in their evaluations for taking reasonable amounts of time to look after themselves because we cannot help anyone else if we are not well, right? we can't really assume that everything falls along gender lines. So we can't just assume that women should automatically be supportive of other women or parent, parents should be supportive of other parents. and this is the main lesson of the book, I think, deep stories hidden behind what you see people presenting that may cause them to have, sadness or resentment or, unresolved grief from things that they've been through that they then bring to how they treat other people. So we have to be careful about the assumptions that we're making about people's stories when we are in the leadership positions or when we're being led, the stories that our leaders may carry. so, once we get through it We can't just assume that all trainees need to sacrifice in the same way that we may have. Again, in a different system, in a different time, we can hope to make things better and, not just as bad as whatever we had to navigate, right? So that's sort of at the leadership level of individual leaders. And then institutionally, I think that, most of the things I would consider in terms of optimizing fertility-related health or parenthood or early parenthood, they can benefit anybody's health. So again, coming back to this carving out time to take care of yourself, going to appointments that you may need for preventive care especially, which gets set aside all too often, with schedules, with the kind of reasonable shift lengths, adequate rest, making better food available on call. It's kind of back to the grassroots things. Is there physical space for, regrouping or re- you know, a meditation room, a quiet space, a non-denominational chapel, like just some physical space. and then even things like financial considerations, which is another part of health. I alluded to really briefly how does a resident carve out the resources for family building in any kind. consider the course of routine pregnancy care, fertility treatments, raising children, the adoption pathway, and how to budget for some of that. So those are just a few ideas. but again, I think we can get creative. So when we're thinking about pregnancy and parenthood-specific ideas, we can have support groups, we can have job-sharing ideas that, maybe haven't been done as much before, and, let people plan more confidently for integrating their family lives into their professional lives. That's what it's, whether it's the goal at the core.
Lillian Liang Emlet: Oh, I dream for a day where this is
Rebecca Thompson: Right?
Lillian Liang Emlet: and you could talk about, right,
Rebecca Thompson: Oh,
Lillian Liang Emlet: your career. I can't even imagine, We know that, for statistically women in their child-caring and elder-caring years will often, the reason why there is such a big salary discrepancy, there's been all this news
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah
Lillian Liang Emlet: a $3 million gap between women and male physicians, and that's mainly because at the end of the day, f- for love it or hate it, the reality is in most cultures around the world, when things hit the fan, at the end of the day, it's going to be a woman that can do both, can
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah.
Lillian Liang Emlet: do both, and therefore may take a more part-time role. And to be able to have, like you said, the job crafting and also, the expression that you're not undervalued,
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah.
Lillian Liang Emlet: second thing, th- why
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah
Lillian Liang Emlet: don't end up taking those positions is because years of being told that you're also undervalued because you were only part-time, only part-time for a decade, for the probably the most important decade of life in general to launch, successful humans, then they're undervalued,
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah, and only part-time in the thing that, things that are visible. We're the, we're, we are icebergs. You just see this little bit of what we're showing up for at work and everything else that we're juggling. Like when we first started this conversation, like here are some professional roles I've had, but that didn't even cover everything else. And not to mention, like I said in the last bit, like making time for preventive care and staying healthy, eating well, resting, moving our bodies, being out in the environment, like all the things that give us balance. Doesn't even account for any of that.
Lillian Liang Emlet: Right, right. Which, I think that's the other most interesting thing, I think, for leadership and what your book really sort of highlights is the fact that how, as leaders, are we really cultivating a place that we can be our whole human? And so
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah
Lillian Liang Emlet: really to you, what's the cost to patients, to society, to teams, to your organizations when clinical leaders never integrate their own patient and caregiving experiences into how they lead? Because we've all been there, including anyone I know who's in leadership. We've all been there. there's a cost if we just continue to just pretend like nothing ever happens. I'm curious whether, you've thought about able to design it differently because we have all also been patients and caregivers ourselves.
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah, I think the cost is honesty. If we're not being honest, and this is not about oversharing, this is not about destroyed boundaries and, ignoring that. this is about just showing up as human, right? So if we lose that, we lose honesty. And if we're not being... Maybe authenticity is a better word because it's not that we openly share everything when the context isn't right, it's that we expect to be able to be at least some of our full selves in whatever context, the part that's most relevant to that. And if we can't show up authentically, how can we expect our patients to share their own stories honestly? If we are completely guarded about, acting like we always have all the answers or we're always perfect, it's really hard for most people when they're in the patient role to show up and be vulnerable and ask for help that they need in things where they feel imperfect. They want to know that as a professional, you're guiding them, you're advocating for them, but I think they're much better served when they also understand that you're still figuring things out, too, and you want to travel alongside them to serve them more than to stand over them and tell them what to do
Lillian Liang Emlet: That's such a, that's so well said. I just always still think every single person I ever meet, Lyft and Uber drivers, random people on the bus,
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah.
Lillian Liang Emlet: they know we
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah. Yeah
Lillian Liang Emlet: have greater respect for us when we're not preaching and instead coming alongside and being a little more human,
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah
Lillian Liang Emlet: and sharing that s- shared humanity. We're all just trying to figure out and advocate to fight for you
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah. And to that point, it's, as I was saying earlier, it's not that we're literally sharing these stories. I'm not-- I wasn't telling my patients these stories in the exam room, but they can tell. They can feel it when you're listening from a place of having been through something yourself. And, I remember specifically there's one story in the book, Rachel's story, where she has come into a clinic looking for help with a problem that's very overwhelming to her, doesn't know where to start. And in about half the stories, I'm never named, but I'm the physician or the friend who has a conversation with a person within her chapter too. And in this case, I'm Rachel's doctor that she shows up to get care from when she's kind of in a place of great confusion, if you will. And, I didn't tell her what I'd been through beforehand, but she talks about how she just knew something was different. Like she felt listened to. She felt held in a different way by our practice than she had before, by the way that her concerns were not minimized. we really, and I say we, it was myself, the nutritionist, the staff, we all got behind her in really helping her figure out why she'd been having all these complications, couldn't stay pregnant. We had this goal of helping her have a baby, and she felt it. We didn't have to say a single thing about the specifics. She knew that we understood at a deeper level, and that's what I'm talking about. When we carry that vulnerability, we carry that history. Not that we articulate it aloud necessarily, but we're humbled by it, and we carry it with us
Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah. What you're describing really is an embodied practice,
Rebecca Thompson: Yes.
Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah. and I think that you're right, that so much of, the reason why narrative medicine and why processing is very helpful, because if you don't come from that space, not only are you, have you not gone through the arc of emotions yourself, so you hurt yourself, but that also makes you still more like a cognitive clinician
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah.
Lillian Liang Emlet: theoretical robot. And, the reality is AI robots are kind of going to be great at regurgitating information, but it's the human side of things that, that makes us the clinicians, the
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah. And I would say also that's why these stories and this book, this is not a sad book. The stories are all about a challenge that each of us has encountered, or several, many challenges. but it's really hopeful and optimistic. you're going to see the ways that people get through these things, and yeah, some of the stories are incredibly heartbreaking, but in the end, every one of these people comes out stronger. And I think that's the message, is we can choose, even in the face of paths we would never have chosen and things we really wish had not happened to us, we can choose to make meaning, to create something better out of it. I think that's the ultimate take-home for stories like this, for clinical practice, working with our patients, is how can we help people understand what they've been through so they can embody it, they can incorporate it into their identity, and not necessarily move past difficult times, because I don't think we ever need to get over things that have happened. I think we need to understand them and learn from them and that's ultimately what gives our lives meaning and purpose
Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah. thank you so much for this time together.
Rebecca Thompson: Thank you
Lillian Liang Emlet: question is, if a listener does one thing today based on our conversation, one tiny act do to be more integrated, embodied, and to be able to hear their own story inside their own life, what should it be?
Rebecca Thompson: So many things we could say to that Well, I think about what you've been through, how it's helped you to grow, coming back to that last point. I think the most inspiring thing about in clinical medicine and in putting together stories like the ones in Held Together is about watching people grow and change. So to keep yourself, with that vision of how your story has shaped you for good, for bad, for, again, anything in between, how have you grown? Think about how have you grown and what, in what ways do you want to grow next?
Lillian Liang Emlet: I love that. Because if you're not growing, you're probably on the path towards dying. And so like we're all growing in all different ways as long as we're here for the story. So where can people go to find the book, the discussion guides, and
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah
Lillian Liang Emlet: you would like to invite, Dr. Thompson to come speak to your organization, your trainees, host a book club, how do they reach you?
Rebecca Thompson: Well, thanks for that. yes, the website, my website has everything. I'm sure it'll be in the show notes, but it's rebeccanthompson.com. The N is important because there are lots of other people with the same name. so check that out. We have the reviews, endorsements, audiobook samples, the full introduction to the book you can read there. if you are able to get a copy, it'd be fantastic to help support the project. There's, I have an affiliate link to Postpartum Support International on my website, which does maternal and family mental health work, and a portion of the proceeds, if you use that link, will go to them so that we'd really appreciate that. but as you mentioned, discussion guide. So this is the core of kind of what I hope to do next. with the collaborators, I've put together a vast range of discussion guides, for book clubs, for teaching sessions, residencies, nursing training, social work, psychology, everything. And these are groups of questions kind of centered around themes ranging from, pregnancy complications and assisted reproductive technology and adoption and fostering to everything from those early things to, religious and social and cultural and racial influences on family building and relationships. And it's my dream that this book gets brought into any teaching setting that could be relevant to primary care, including, pediatric psychiatry, women's health, families health, OB. I just really... And not just physicians, like I said, all the healthcare, all the healing professions. the book's been out for about a year, and the first year was more focused on kind of conventional book tour things. And just in the past few months, I've really started with the collaborators going both locally and traveling around the country and virtually to do events, to talk with residents, early faculty members, different trainees in clinics and programs relevant to this. So I would love to keep doing this work indefinitely, and I think these kinds of stories just really can make an impact on improving women's and families' health over time. That's my dream.
Lillian Liang Emlet: Thank you so much for being here with us, Becca. And
Rebecca Thompson: Thank you
Lillian Liang Emlet: going to be really amazing to watch this book hopefully bring together some really invisible places. I think a lot of... I mean, I've many women, suffer loss at some point along the way, and it's always amazing. It's so prevalent, and everyone still feels so alone.
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah.
Lillian Liang Emlet: this is a
Rebecca Thompson: Yeah
Lillian Liang Emlet: a possibility to be able to train the next generation to be able to have thoughtful conversations so that all professions can support each other
Rebecca Thompson: Yes.
Lillian Liang Emlet: can support each other,
Rebecca Thompson: Yes
Lillian Liang Emlet: the other, that's the other real reality. It's actually, it's sister helping sister
Rebecca Thompson: Yes, absolutely
Lillian Liang Emlet: a parent helping parent, really.
Rebecca Thompson: Yep. Person helping person. Just
Lillian Liang Emlet: yes
Rebecca Thompson: we're all the same, and these stories show that we're just ordinary people. I like to say these are the extraordinary moments in the lives of ordinary people, and we got through it, and you're just one of us, so you can too
Lillian Liang Emlet: Yeah, I love that. Well, thank you so much for being on the show, and thank you
Rebecca Thompson: Thank you
Lillian Liang Emlet: you've listened this far, please subscribe, and leave us a review on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, anywhere that you're listening from. Thank you so much for joining us, and we will see you on the next episode
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References & Mentions
Your Host
Dr. Lillian Liang Emlet
Physician · Executive Coach · Founder, Transforming Healthcare Coaching®
Lillian is a practicing physician, certified executive coach, and the voice behind the Transforming Healthcare Coaching® podcast. She works with clinicians, clinical leaders, and healthcare executives leading through role transitions, seasons at capacity, and culture change — helping them lead with clarity, intention, and sustainability.
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