Raising children as a physician is part of modern professional life. But it wasn’t always viewed that way.

My mother was accepted to Harvard Medical School in 1954 but turned down the offer. I learned this too late in my mother’s life for details but my father suggested that she struggled with the decision but was ultimately afraid that she couldn’t be a mother and a doctor. She chose instead to be a mom.

I find main stage comments like this inspiring considering that I was raised by a woman who
likely lived with what if. I say ‘likely’ because I can only guess what she wondered all those years. Even with my decision to enter medical school the details of her decision were something she kept to herself.

Her granddaughter is growing up in a world where
professional excellence and children are not mutually exclusive. The path has been cut by those like Dr. Rebecca Minter and others willing and determined to set the example for what’s possible.

While many take the physician mother for granted I quietly see them as part of a remarkable progression.

Image: My mom and me in the backyard of our home in Westwood, Massachusetts