I love that I somehow have become a source of inspiration for so many amazing young women - especially since after graduating from HMS and balancing a family - it motivates me to hear how I motivate you, if that makes sense at all! But a reader recently pointed out a forum online (forums are usually the source of all things negative on the internet lol) where women (some of whom claim to know me? But obviously are not women who know me) were bashing me for "hiding" my true relationship story with N and trying to make the start of it look "perfect," and for some reason I feel like I should say something about it.
I usually don't address things like that on here because quite honestly it's nobodies business and I share what I choose to share. But I also love sharing when it could potentially help someone else, so for that I'll only slightly address it lol. Because at the end of the day I get the question all of the time - how are you so happy, how do you keep a healthy relationship, how do you find motivation - and the root answer to most of those questions is (in as nice a way as possible to say it lol), I don't care what other people think (for the most part, but let's be real we all care a little bit) and I don't focus on the past. And I'm hoping that I can convince you all to care a little less and not focus on your past as well.
So for those of you who likely don't know since you arrived at my blog well after all of this, or those who think they do know, yes I had a boyfriend through the first 2 years of medical school who was not N, and yes we happened to be high school classmates, but we only started dating at the beginning of medical school (to address the people who claimed we were "high school sweet hearts"). I actually had a different boyfriend in high school and college, that horrible abusive relationship I alluded to in a previous post. Yes I deleted the blog posts that included that boyfriend, the same way most people delete pictures of their ex from their Facebook profile pictures or anything else. And yes I deleted posts that initially addressed any of that when it first happened, not to make my story look more perfect, but because I was applying to residency and anything too personal got taken off the blog because people who were going to be deciding the outcome of my future career could see it. In the deleted post where I had shared briefly about our story, these "women" couldn't believe that N and I were actually best friends throughout medical school, because I had never posted about him before. I don't know about you guys, but in my previous relationship, my boyfriend at the time would not have been happy about me posting pictures of another guy - I think that's common sense. I think it's also common sense that I don't share every person in my life or all of the events in my life just because I have a blog and choose to share some things. They also couldn't believe that Liv was actually "planned." And I scratched my head, where have I ever said that Liv was 100% planned? As much as conceiving her wasn't an accident, she certainly was a surprise. N and I made the choice to stop using birth control in hopes that we'd eventually get pregnant, but eventually being like a year or two. I had been on birth control since high school and honestly didn't even know if I could get pregnant, so we figured we'd give it some time and eventually it would happen by residency. To our surprise we got pregnant the first month off of birth control! Which ended up being perfect timing, because we made it perfect timing. There's more I could address (like whether or not we're actually black, wtf?), but I honestly just don't think it's worth it.
I share all these super personal things again not because I feel like I need to explain anything (those who were writing negatively about me had already "sworn off" my blog because I was now being "fake" anyway lol), but because I think sharing some of the drama and imperfections is what should be inspiring about our story (and what usually gets left out, not in an effort to make it look perfect, but in a very purposeful attempt to only focus on the positive). Life isn't perfect, things don't go as planned, people are gonna talk crap behind your back or on internet forums, and that's perfectly fine. As I always like to say, life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react. I am happy because I fight to be happy. I am where I am because I left people behind who I didn't need, who held me back, and instead chose to surround myself only with a small circle that truly cares and is moving forward with me. And I really hope that you as young women can learn to do the same. It's a shame that many women do such a horrible job of respecting other women's relationship decisions (or life decisions in general for that matter). No woman should fear leaving a relationship that they know isn't right for them because what another person may think, especially other women.
And if folks wanna pop off (please watch this if you haven't seen it yet haha) let them find a plan for your life. Because I can guarantee you they won't. So do what's right for you and keep it moving!
