The road to be a doctor is fraught with many dangers, toils, and snares (through many of which I’ve already come). Now, 7th months shy of another ending, I feel ready and yet totally unprepared for what lies ahead. It’s not that I feel clinically unprepared (although I know I still have a lot to learn), it’s that I’m still unsure of my path, even as I am starting it. After fighting off the beast of residency, I feel like I just want to pick up the scraps of myself and walk out whole.

And here I am. At a new beginning. A new path. A new start. But as I speculate about leaving academic medicine, essentially all I’ve ever known, and try to forge a way for myself into the world of policy and health innovation and social justice work to get about the business of reshaping and re-envisioning the future for impoverished children and families in our country, I find myself feeling more lost than ever and afraid I won’t find my way.

And so it begins, my blog and my hopefulness – my start to reconciling my passion for justice with my training in clinical medicine, and all the little things that happen along the way. Rhea. MD. This is who I am. And this is what I do.