Does your life path sometimes feel like a wild obstacle course with unforeseen changes and challenges at every turn? If you’ve encountered unexpected shifts in your relationships, work life, finances, or health, you know how daunting and stressful they can be. Yet when we learn to embrace the hurdles life brings us, we can use them to shape our stories and path in life.

Today, I’m joined by Dr. Rebecca N. Thompson, a fabulous family medicine and public health physician and author, who will offer her wit and wisdom on growing and making meaning from the changes life brings our way. Topics discussed include chosen family, life challenges, medical issues, vulnerability, stories, meaning, self-development, marriage, children, dreams, connection, friendships, change, new experiences, sadness, and hope.

Please note that this episode may contain sensitive material; listener discretion is advised.

Emergency Assistance Note: If you or someone you know needs immediate support, please call your emergency services. In the US, 24/7 help is available by calling “911” or “988” (Suicide and Crisis Hotline). Support/informational links are in the show notes.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: No expert in this (or any episode) is offering medical or psychological direction; the content is purely informational in nature. Please consult your physician or healthcare provider before undertaking any new regimen or procedure.

https://www.nami.org/support-education/nami-helpline/

Connect with Dr. Carla Manly:

Website: https://www.drcarlamanly.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drcarlamanly/

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/drcarlamanly/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drcarlamanly

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carla-marie-manly-8682362b/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dr_carlamanly_imperfect_love

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr_carla_manly

Books by Dr. Carla Manly:

Joy From Fear: Create the Life of Your Dreams by Making Fear Your Friend 

Date Smart: Transform Your Relationships and Love Fearlessly

Aging Joyfully: A Woman’s Guide to Optimal Health, Relationships, and Fulfillment for Her 50s and Beyond

The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships

Imperfect Love Relationship & Oracle Card Deck by Dr. Carla Manly:

Etsy

Amazon

Connect with Dr. Rebecca N. Thompson:

Website: http://www.rebeccanthompson.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-thompson-md-msc-99458a65/

—

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Feeling Challenged? Create Your Amazing Life Path!

Transforming Challenges into Growth and Meaning

Does your life sometimes feel like a wild obstacle course with unforeseen changes and challenges at every turn? If you have encountered unexpected shifts in your relationships, work life, finances, or health, you know how daunting and stressful they can be. Yet when we learn to embrace the hurdles life brings us, we can use them to shape our stories and path in life.

I am joined by a fabulous family medicine and public health physician and author who will offer her wit and wisdom on making meaning and growth out of the changes life brings our way. We will focus on this audience member’s real-life question. “Since I was a kid, I envisioned my life as a white picket fence plan with a husband, two kids, and a dog.”

“I know it is a stereotype, but it is what I always dreamed I would have. I am in my late 30s and divorced from the man I thought was my life partner. I have made it through two major health challenges, cancer and major injuries from a car crash. I feel sad a lot because life is passing me by. It seems my dreams will not come true. I feel stuck. Do you have any suggestions to help me find hope?” With that question as the focus of our episode, I am Dr. Carla Marie Manly. This is Imperfect Love. Please note this episode contains sensitive information audience’s discretion is advised. If you need more information, please see the special links in the show notes.

I am joined by a tremendous special guest, Dr. Rebecca N. Thompson, family medicine and public health physician and author of the fabulous book, Held Together: A Shared Memoir of Motherhood, Medicine, and Imperfect Love. Welcome to the show, Dr. Thompson. It is such a joy to have you with us today.

Thanks so much for this opportunity.

Dr. Rebecca’s Deep Love For Learning And Reading

It’s such a pleasure to have you. Before we launch into this really important topic, it is so rich and deep. Could you tell our audience just a little bit about what makes you, you?

Some of the most visible identities that define me are relational, like doctor, mother, partner, and friend. That is not in any priority order, of course, because the emphasis on any one of those roles will change based on what I am focusing on in the moment. All of those parts exist in me in some way that is woven together into these intricate and constantly shifting patterns. I think more importantly, at the core of this, at the core of all these relationships that I value because of who I am, I would say that my most defining characteristics are curiosity and a deep fascination with the connections between things.

What a beautiful backdrop, and the curiosity piece, and looking for those connections. That is a beautiful way of being in the world. Those qualities are among my favorites.

It ties into your work as well, because a really central part of curiosity means that I love to learn. I have always loved to read. You, as an author to value books and reading and learning. I feel like it just opens up the world for us to learn anything we are curious about, and especially as kids, when every idea is new. This is an important part of the answer to who I am is what I am drawn to because of reading and loving to learn, and that curiosity. Like you, I am drawn to things that other people typically consider difficult or painful or uncomfortable in some way to talk about in everything from professional life to friendships to parenthood.

Thank you for sharing that. You made me think of that Mr. Rogers quote about anything human is mentionable. Anything mentionable is then manageable. When we learn to talk, when we learn to be curious, and most of all, when we learn to listen, hold space for other people, we become these receptacles.

That is exactly it. That is the origin of the book that I know we will talk about later. As I have gained more professional experience and more life experience over the years, I feel like that curiosity is what has just grown into wanting to take an active role in sharing stories that are too often dismissed or ignored or thought to be not important enough to talk about. We do not need to shy away from those. We need to shine a light on them and listen more deeply. That is where we find those connections, where we find those patterns, the moments in ordinary people’s lives that show us what we have in common. That is the heart of it.

The Invaluable Gift Of Being Present

Sometimes, even if we cannot find something that we have in common with someone, we can find threads that are so different from who we are. Those threads, if we are open to them, can be so alluring, interesting, and challenging if we do not judge them as right or wrong or good or bad. You also already brought up a piece. I was collaborating on my next newsletter. The piece I was really focusing on highlighting in there was that piece of in gatherings, whether it is a holiday gathering or just two friends or a group of people, what is that gift that you can bring to that gathering?

We often think of giving presents or bringing food. If we bring that gift of presence, just being present, not that we have to be a dumping ground for other people, but in our very disconnected world. One of the best gifts we can give is 5 minutes, 10 minutes, or an hour of our soul time. Just that space for listening.

Showing up for other people and learning those more nuanced stories that are behind the visible identities that we are so used to using to define ourselves. What do they really care about? What has really shaped them?

Listening in a world where there is so much difference, so much profound judgment from all spaces. If we can be in that non-judgmental space, it does not mean we have to agree with what is being said. If we can be in a space of not judging, that holding space.

At least receiving it, right?

Yeah.

Knowing that we, again, are not perfect. Of course, we will have our judgments, but we can still be a safe space for people to really show what they care about and who they are.

Even when judgments arise, I learned this way back when I was in doctor school that every researcher has a bias. If you can learn to either acknowledge the bias and be that just simple and straightforward with it, or ideally bracket the bias, put it over to the side, so you are acknowledging it, then by putting it to the side, you become a more complete safe space.

Writing The Book “Held Together”

I know in my work every day, I have to take care before every session, make sure that I am completely clear or as clear as an imperfect human can be, so that anything that is in my world is not part of that session. Your book for those audience, if you are not watching on YouTube or some other visual platform, you might not see Dr. Thompson’s book behind us. I do have to say it is a beautiful cover. The reason I am sending it to your book right now, it is called Held Together: A Shared Memoir of Motherhood, Medicine, and Imperfect Love. Clearly, we are already united in that piece.

Your work, you really brought together, which will take us to the audience member’s question. You brought together all of these stories of people whose lives had unexpected turns, these shifts one way or another, health challenges, all of these issues that could capsize the boat of their lives if they did not learn in some way to take those challenges and turn them into opportunities for growth, learning, and connection. Before we really dive into the audience member’s question, could you tell us a little bit what drew you to write this book, because it is very warm, very connective in nature?

The origin of this, of course, goes back into the stories I am interested in, as I mentioned earlier, just those deeper stories, the connections, that have always been there if I look back. The actual events that caused me to go down this path, I was finishing up my medical training, finishing up residency. That was when my husband and I decided pretty good time to think about starting a family. We quickly went through a series of very complicated pregnancy issues and losses.

I just felt, in spite of all my medical training, that the experience was so isolating. Becoming a patient in these settings, where I was used to being the one to provide the care to offer the services, made me feel really lost. For a while, for several years really, I did not feel like I wanted to share these experiences, widely I did not talk about them widely at work. Of course, that is seen as unprofessional. I did not even really talk about them with many of my friends.

As we started to get through the experiences, I did open up a little bit to some of the people around me. It was incredible how the stories from other people just poured out. Everybody had something they wanted to share about how their family life was complicated. These were not all stories about early parents, pregnancy, or fertility. These were just about life and relationships, and health, like you said, and personal health and family health.

I began to realize that, without being overly simplistic about this, we could make something good of it. I am not saying to be naive or that everything that happens for a reason, none of that. I reject that idea. I feel like we make meaning out of things that happen intentionally, we make meaning. I wanted to find a way to preserve the kinds of stories that I was hearing from my patients and my friends and my co-workers, and so many people who had been through things we never talked about.

You never see it on the surface. I approached individuals. It ended up being 21 other women. I asked them if they might want to work with me individually to tell their story and go through this collaborative process of interviews and writing together and prompts, and collecting old journals and distilling everything into the most compelling version of their story that we could create together. That is how this book came to be.

That is so beautiful and touching. I am sorry for all the losses and challenges.

For everybody, thank you. On behalf of all of us, thank you.

Thank you for being so vulnerable and sharing how difficult it was for you as a physician to all of a sudden feel lost because you were the patient and not in control.

It was surprising how difficult it was. That is why it was so difficult, is that it was surprising that it was difficult, which made it more difficult.

I am really with you because I know every time I go to the doctor’s office, I feel out of control. Like, “This is not my realm. I cannot make this person listen or see me.” It can be in any position where we all of a sudden feel as if we are out of our area. This is a key piece of the work that you do is helping people manage, understand when that discomfort is coming up.

When that anxiety and that sense is when this question came through, I thought of my own, like back in maybe I was 6 or 7 years old, where we were given an assignment at school of what we saw in our future. I remember, I am not sure if I had kids, but I definitely had this brick house. I had this little plan for my little life.

This is what was going to happen. My life has been extraordinarily different from what that little tentative plan was. When we fight what life brings our way, because we cannot stop what life brings. We cannot stop the medical issues. We cannot stop, in this case, the poor audience, now divorced from the partner, no kids yet. I do not know about the dog, but all of those things, the car crash, the cancer.

When these things come our way, we all tend to have challenges of some degree in our lives. I know I have learned, I hope, to manage them with grace and a really growth-oriented attitude. It does not make them less challenging in a sense, but I think it does make us, as you said, and I love this piece of almost a tagline for you, that it is making meaning out of them.

Making meaning out of what life brings our way. I think that is where the story piece comes from. Sometimes people think making a story means weaving a tale or telling a lie. No. It is making sense out of how whatever came can be used for growth, enrichment. We might not see it when we are in the thick of things. What do you think?

Unlocking Huge Transformation Through Incremental Changes

It is finding the threads. That was a word used earlier, the threads. It is about the threads. It is about themes that recur in our lives. We do not always see them right away. We do not see those patterns or those relationships right away, necessarily. It is only when we step back and try to tell our stories that we see those connections. In relation to your audience member’s question, what is really interesting about that, and maybe this is part of where to get curious, where to use that idea of curiosity that I so value, maybe would help your audience.

There is a factor here that feels really important to me about time. What they are worried about is time. How is time passing? How are they spending their time? How is it different from what they had expected? One way to get maybe a little bit of hope in the question, get out a little bit of hope, is that there is no way to rush it. As much as they may feel they want to or they want to know what the outcome will be. We never really know.

Even when we think we know, we do not. It is just an illusion for a little bit of time. The reason I bring that up is I feel like all they can do in this moment is try to figure out what is the next right thing. This is so much about small incremental steps. This is something we could really dig into in terms of imperfection, too, because I will say this book, people could look at it and say, “How did you do all this and pull this together?”

People often ask, “How did you make time for this in the midst of these other roles you have?” I have to point out, this book took more than ten years from the idea to the publication. That is not a coincidence. That is a matter of just using small bits of time and taking incremental steps that I knew were not perfect. I knew I would have loved to have had weeks to sit and write, go to a retreat, sit on, and just hours on end.

Occasionally, I got chunks of hours. Those are great. A lot of this was just done in those in-between moments, waiting for something else to happen, sitting somewhere at an appointment, biding my time. How could I use it to jot down some ideas in a notebook? For someone who is wondering where their life is going and it is looking like something really different from what they expected, how can they find some incremental changes, some small steps that will move them toward answering what is next? They do not have to know it all right away.

How To Deal With Timeline Anxiety And Build Your Own Path

I really appreciate that you brought that up because I was thinking of a theme I have encountered in science lately is the timeline anxiety. You really picked up that piece where, for this individual, they have this dream. They have not given up on the dream. It seems it is still there, maybe a bit dim, but you really picked up on that piece about the passage of time. If I do not find that perfect person, that ideal partner that I thought I would have, they did not use the word perfect, but at least that imagined partner.

I really think that is so important because when we realize, as you say, time has a life of its own. One of my favorite sayings is the one that says, “You have never been too old to be what you might have been.” I really think we need to, at every stage in life, because I have people in their early 20s that I work with who have timeline anxiety. My friends have all done this. My friends have all done that, but I have not.

It is really about coming back to the self, not other people’s timelines, and sometimes not your own timeline. Coming back to that place of, as you were saying, baby stepping, not giving up hope. It might mean revising your dream a little bit. Maybe it is not two kids. Maybe it is two adopted children. Maybe it is being a mom in another way. We do not know. It does not mean shutting the door on that, but it does mean possibly doing things like having your eggs frozen, different strategies that you could take to still keep that hope alive.

Also realizing that our dreams do not need to be static. Our dreams are created by our being. We can shift them and change them. When I think of what my life is today compared to what my dreams are, sure, I have been through terrible obstacle courses. I get that piece. The things I have experienced and learned, and done, are vastly bigger than what I would have dreamed of. Sometimes our dreams can be too self-limiting.

To that end, clearly, the future that this person has been envisioning and has hoped for is an important part of who they are. That is one aspect. What else defines them? What else do they want beyond this idea of family life? As you said, what are the ways that even now, while they are in this messy middle, how can they define family?

That is one thing that the stories in Held Together, as I have collected and worked on them with people, really, even more deeply proved to me that family can be anything you make it. People have their families biologically, through adoption, surrogacy, or through community. Chosen family is every bit as important as biological family.

I would challenge this person to say, while they are waiting in some ways, not passively, but while they are waiting for time to pass in any case, to see how some of these things they had hoped for may unfold and come into their lives or not, what else can they do about the other parts of who they are? How can they find their people, find their communities, and be part of bigger families than this one nuclear hypothetical family that they imagine? Where is the rest of their family in the world? Maybe that will bring them some comfort.

Such a gorgeous, gorgeous point. I also like how, when the way you phrase it, because often when we are hopeless, sad, blue, depressed, whatever it might be, we retract, we go more and more within. Sometimes, quite literally, we stay indoors more. As you are saying, if this individual begins to reimagine life and create community, go out, join whether it is hiking groups. I know you like to hike, whether it is a reading group, whether it is an art group, whether you are volunteering.

I believe that when we become more expansive in our energy, and dare to do things that feel a little uncomfortable. Our bodies might be saying, “That is bad, that is dangerous.” Actually, it is just a sign that it is uncomfortable. As long as it is a safe situation, your body is just used to something different. Sometimes that next step in the dream is hidden somewhere, not that you are going out to meet that significant other there or to have the two children, but that sometimes just by making your life bigger and your heart bigger and more open, you make space for what life is going to bring you.

When you spend time in these circles with people who do things that you also care about, sure, you might meet a potential spouse. If that is your goal, then fantastic. If that happens, you will have all these other things in common with them. Also, just your people, you are going to meet other people who enrich your life because you share values and interests. Of course, great if some of that is local to you.

If you do not even live in a place with a large enough community for that to happen, these days, online has its benefits and drawbacks. One of the amazing things is that people who feel like there is not really anyone near them that understands them or shares some really pivotal identity factors with them, this is especially true for younger people.

They can feel less alone. They can feel less detached because they can find their communities in some of these online spaces. I am the first person to admit, I have a conflicted relationship, love-hate with social media and online-ness and all, but it really does allow us to build community beyond the limitations of our geography. That can be quite powerful.

I believe I am with you. That is what we do with our online communities. Do we become more expansive, create more friendships, and have deeper friendships? I have also seen them where people have gone into doom scrolling and are really isolated. If I really hear you, if you are going, whether it is in person or online, if you are feeling something coming alive and it feels good and connective and better, that is a green light. If you are doing something where you are noticing that it is not a good fit, then that is a red light.

Whatever you are doing to build those genuine relationships. It is about that. It does not matter whether in person or virtual. It is the genuine relationships that matter.

Do Not Be Afraid To Redefine Your Dreams

Thank you for highlighting that, because I am going back to a piece you were talking about. It is interesting that in this particular person’s question, there is no mention of family. Not that that is vital. We do not know. They are pretty alone in the world. Do they have family close by? Is their family very distant? The reason I am saying that is if there is an absence of family that feels close, I agree with you. Having a collected family, a soul family, a found family, whatever way you want to talk it, I think that that can be as good, if sometimes not a better fit than a blood family.

Sometimes, you know, the families we were born into are not a good fit in the long term. There is not that deep connection or the healthiness that is necessary for deeper, stronger connections. Being able to use this as almost a pivotal point for assessing this. It is really beautiful that you picked it up, this idea of community and family, that if it is not a launching pad for this dream, at least it is a very important foundation for them to feel connected.

Even if this audience does have close biological family, whether geographically close or emotionally close, I do not think that dismisses the huge benefits of chosen family. People may be incredibly fortunate to have close, wonderful, actual biological and adoptive nuclear families or a family that society conventionally defines it.

That said, we should never expect any one relationship to give us everything. Even if we are in a happy partnership, if we have a good relationship with kids or our parents, any relationship that resonates in the way that a good friendship does brings out something new in us. There is no reason not to look for these ties with people who share something beyond happenstance.

We should seek these out. Even if your audience of the question has amazing support already, they are moving into new questions in their lives. When they can find people who help them reflect on those questions in a new way, in a different way, and figure out who they are now and who they want to keep becoming, that has value beyond the family that they may already know.

I love how you said the piece of who I am now and who I am becoming. That really fits with how I see life. I see life as an opportunity to continue to evolve. If we have one static dream, and I am not saying to discard that dream, but I also think it is important to have many dreams in life. That if one is not quite accessible right now, and this basically is what you are saying as well, we have other dreams to breathe into.

Some of them we have not even discovered yet. These new relationships will help us tap into the potential that we have.

I really appreciate that because it is a reminder of the important piece of continuing to evolve. This question reminds us, and this applies to all audiences, that if you have had a hurdle in life. You have overcome that hurdle, as you likely have. Most people encountered many hurdles. That is a sign of incredible strength, resilience, and fortitude.

When I think of that obstacle course of life, we all have various degrees of them. Some are more intense than others. Yet if we learn to assess them and say, “I made it through that.” This audience, the question tells us, made it through a divorce. They made it through a cancer diagnosis. They made it through a car crash and the serious injuries that came. Those are just a few of the things they mentioned in that question.

I get the idea that this individual is very strong, determined, has fortitude, and has resilience. Those are some of the things when they said, “Can you give me some hope?” When you look at those qualities, there is a lot of hope in those qualities. If you were able to make it through all of those things with or without the support of a community behind you, that is really amazing. Many times, we forget. We know we went through challenges, but we forget to reflect on them. We remember how awful the challenges were, but we get to reflect on the gifts that we chose to accrue along the way.

This ties back exactly into what you were saying about the tagline, this idea of making the meaning. I feel like we have to choose to make meaning even in the face of the unexpected, the imperfect, if you will. This also ties into the idea, and this is an undercurrent through all of the stories in Held Together.

Most of us in this book would not have chosen the challenges that we describe, but we can choose. We choose together collectively to make a bigger meaning out of what has happened to us. This really ties into not just being resilient, but being open to change and being receptive to experiences that have something to teach us or to offer us.

Also, and this is really relevant to your audience, they draw on our own power to shape our stories and define our paths, even sometimes in opposition to what others are telling us is expected of us and for us. My question back to the audience is, is what you thought you wanted still exactly what you want?

Maybe it is, but go out there to get these other experiences that might feel uncomfortable, as you said. Learn more about yourself because you are a really different person now from who you were when you formed this dream. Maybe it is still your dream, but the way you are going to approach it now, at the very least, the ways have changed. The attitude you may have toward it certainly will have changed.

I so appreciate that you highlighted that because it is a core piece of this that can be. Sometimes we look at a dream and say, “I am a failure if I do not make that dream come true.” You said it beautifully that sometimes that dream, that dream was great for a 5-year-old or a 10-year-old or a 20-year-old or 30 or whatever it is.

That is why I brought up my early, when I was a kid, I had a certain dream. Parts did not. The point is that if we give ourselves permission to look and reassess and say, “Is this the dream I want to breathe into now or where I am?” It is not giving up on that old dream. It is giving yourself permission if you want to replenish your life with a new dream. It may be very different.

I like that expression. Replenish your life with a new dream, or at least with some modifications of the dream. Make sure that it is really in line with what you want now. I love that you permit yourself to reconsider it. You might decide it is the same. You might not, but it is okay to question it.

Growth: The Most Powerful We Can Be As Humans

I also think another piece is that sometimes, and I found this to be true with generally all of my clients in some big or small way, a challenge that life brought them, and I know this has certainly been true in my life. Life presents you with a challenge. You make it through it. You do not avoid it. You are like, “Why did life bring me this? I do not need another thing on my plate.”

Later, with a backward glance, you can say, “I was able to use that class or that obstacle or that encounter or that relationship to grow and learn. If I had not done that, I would not be as adept at facing where I am now.” It is my follow the breadcrumb theory. If we learn like Hansel and Gretel did to follow those breadcrumbs and pick them, not necessarily pick them up, but follow them. Sometimes it really does lead us to a place that is a really different path than what we thought, but one that is really growthful.

That is exactly what I was thinking. Everything you have said, everything we have talked about up until here, it is about growth. That is why these stories, the one we are talking about now, the stories you are referring to that everybody has, the stories that we have put together into Held Together, they may sound difficult. A lot of them really are painful, difficult, and truly challenging, but the stories are also fiercely optimistic. I believe that is because watching people grow is the most inspiring thing.

It helps us as readers, as listeners to other stories, grow as individuals, too. I feel like the privilege to witness someone else’s growth is really one of the most compelling things we can do in life. That is your profession, my profession, that is our honor. To help this audience think about that for themselves, and just to watch people around us in our chosen family, people who choose us and people that we choose to walk these stories alongside. Growth is really the most powerful thing we have as humans, at all stages of life.

That is such an important piece of it because for any parent, any grandparent, any teacher, anybody who, as you say, medical practitioner or psychologist, whatever field you are in, even bosses in work environments tend to really love to watch their compatriots grow or watch their children grow.

It is so rewarding in and of itself. When we can turn that mirror on our own lives, and this is for anyone who is experiencing challenges, if you can learn to turn that mirror on yourself, and yes, growth is tough. Growth can be painful. To be able to say, “Yes, I am creating meaning here. I am choosing.”

That is what you really highlight, that we do not necessarily create meaning when we are challenged, but that is a real skill that we must develop is to learn to reflect and make meaning out of it. Make helpful meaning out of it. Sometimes we make meaning out of it negatively by saying, “This is all bad,” or “It is awful,” or “I hate that life brought me this.” Instead of saying, “How am I learning? How am I growing? Can I find one nugget today to help me take that next step forward?” Just one little piece.

That comes right back to the incremental steps. It is not everything at once. It is not a rush timeline. What is the next right choice, action, or idea that I can follow?

It is so interesting that it is at least the second time you use that piece of the next right choice or next right step. I use that phrase in at least a couple of my books, where sometimes that is all we need to do.

It is all you can do. That is okay. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to grow quickly and make meaning quickly. That glosses over a lot of the nuance. We are not very good at nuance as a society. Allowing ourselves to permitting ourselves to take our time in this case. As much as we are able, we feel rushed constantly in our culture. If we can say to ourselves, “I know I am going to work my way through this, but not today, maybe or just this little piece, I can move forward.. It is okay. Not everything all at once.”

Sometimes I believe that the next right step is sometimes as simple and as big as pausing to say, “I am going to take a really deep breath here. I am going to give myself a minute. I am going to write myself a love letter in my journal, or maybe I am just writing my journal.” Sometimes that next right step is simply not palpable. I know in my own life, there are times when I just say, “Just right here. Just be. Just breathe.”

Bringing People Together Through Stories

That can be enough to reset our nervous systems, take the pressure off, because so much of the time, we are putting the pressure on ourselves. That is a key piece in this audience member’s question, where there is a lot of internal pressure. I am not judging that because, as a recovering perfectionist, always recovering, there is a lot of internal pressure at times. Learning to breathe and just create space, you can help let go of some of those pressures. Dr. Thompson, what a glorious work of art you have brought to the world through your book.

Thank you so much.

Do you have any pieces, any additional tips you would like to offer to our audiences?

Growth is one of the biggest things that stands out from our conversation. Alongside that, it is these inspirations that stories can offer us about how others grow. They are so detailed and so specific. The stories and Held Together, stories that we hear from our friends and family as we try to support them.

There are always universal threads. The more specific we get about sharing our experiences, the more we can see this every woman of the things that we all go through. It is the curiosity about that, about the things that are more similar than different at the core of our stories that really leads us to genuine compassion, both for others and for ourselves.

The more stories we have out in the world, the more patient we can all be with each other. I hope that our stories from Held Together offer this to people and that everyone just feels like they at least have a few people in their lives that they can share these uncomfortable but ultimately powerful and optimistic stories of growth and change.

Thank you. I just want to add on, even though Held Together is more geared toward women and women’s stories, I really want to add that it is a book that any gender can read and have incredible takeaways from for self-understanding, for understanding people in your life, whether they are male or female.

While people, men and women, do have different challenges in some ways, we are all more alike than we are different. It is one of my dreams and hopes that men, too, can really learn because our ancestors had storytelling. We are not talking about, “I rode my mountain bike here. I dug a ditch there. I did this there.” Yes, those are lovely stories, but we are talking about stories where we are being vulnerable, we are going deeper, and we are going into that place of meaning.

I am a firm believer that it is not a gendered issue. The more we can all go deeper into the stories of who we are. Share those and invite other people to share their stories. That is when the judgment tends to evaporate a bit more. The connection tends to come in a lot more. It is something I have learned so much from my work. When we peel back the layers that we have learned to develop and the defenses and the masks inside, we are just humans. We are just these imperfect humans.

Thank you so much for sharing that perspective, too, because while I agree with you, all the stories are about people who identify as women and as mothers, but they are certainly not all biological mothers. They are not even all truly completely binary women considering themselves in that way. Some of the most incredible comments and reviews, and things I have gotten have been everything from a wide range of women and moms to several grandfathers in their 70s, 80s, and beyond, who have just talked about how this really helped them understand their families more.

As you said, the human condition. Some of the things that happen in the book only happen to women, but for the most part, these things are what happen to families. Families are of all genders and all backgrounds. We can only benefit from listening to each other more closely and people with different perspectives from ours. Thank you for encouraging anybody to pick it up.

Dr. Thompson, thank you so much for your time, your energy, your warmth, and for bringing this beautiful book into the world to help knit people together. That is the idea to knit us together. Thank you. I am truly grateful.

My pleasure.

To our audiences, thank you as always for joining us. It is such a privilege and a pleasure to be with you on this beautiful journey of life. This is Imperfect Love.

Important Links

• Dr. Rebecca N. Thompson
• RebeccaNThompson Physician
• Held Together: A Shared Memoir of Motherhood, Medicine, and Imperfect Love
• Nami HelpLine
• Mental Health and Relationships
• Dr. Carla Manly’s Website
• Dr. Carla Manly on Instagram
• Dr. Carla Manly on X
• Dr. Carla Manly on Facebook
• Dr. Carla Manly on LinkedIn
• Dr. Carla Manly on YouTube
• Dr. Carla Manly on TikTok

About Rebecca N. Thompson, MD

Rebecca N. Thompson, MD, is a family medicine and public health physician who specializes in women’s and children’s health. Throughout her career, she has sought opportunities to use written and spoken words to make complex medical topics accessible to a wide range of audiences. The author of “Held Together: A Shared Memoir of Motherhood, Medicine, and Imperfect Love,” Dr. Thompson’s book is the result of a decade-long collaboration with her patients, friends, and colleagues to share stories of the many ways that family life can take unexpected turns. Dr. Thompson lives in Portland, where she spends her free time wandering through green spaces, reading in cozy nooks, playing unreasonably complicated board games, repurposing found objects, and accompanying her husband and children on all-weather adventures near and far.