Lean Out Podcast

Revisioning with Sarah Wittry

• Dawn Baker • Season 2 • Episode 33

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In this episode, Dawn Baker talks with Sarah Witry. Dr. Wittry is a hospice palliative physician and certified mind-body coach dedicated to empowering women physicians. As a mom of four, she balances a rich family life with her passions for yoga, books, travel, and engaging in deep conversations over good coffee.

Sarah is particularly interested in helping others find harmony, stress resilience, emotional regulation, and nervous system regulation. In our conversation, we cover Sarah’s recent transition to part-time clinical work, her experiences with coaching, how she built her family while working as a resident and fellow, and much more. 

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Welcome to the lean out podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Don baker. Are you looking for a new approach to finding authentic and sustainable work-life balance? You've come to the right. Place. For inspiration. information. and a community. community. of like-minded. Professionals. Let's get to the show. Hello? Hello. Thanks for being here. It's about to be November and each year in November and December, I run a holiday sale on my coaching services, if you've been interested in coaching, but haven't pulled the trigger yet. Now is the time because basically you get six sessions for the price of five. Invest in yourself this winter. So you can have your best year yet in 2025. You can schedule a free discovery call with me by going to my website, www.practicebalance.com. Today, my guest is Sarah Witchery. Sarah is a hospice palliative physician and certified mind, body coach dedicated to empowering women physicians. As a mama for she balances a rich family life with her passions for yoga books, travel and engaging in deep conversations over good coffee. I identify with this description wholeheartedly. Sarah is particularly interested in helping others find harmonies, stress, resilience, emotional regulation, and nervous system regulation. In our conversation, we cover Sarah's recent transition to part-time clinical work, her experiences with coaching. How she built her family while working as a resident and fellow and much more. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Sarah. Sarah Witry, welcome to the Lean Out podcast. Can you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your work life balance today? Sure. Thank you so much for having me, Dawn. I'm happy to be here. I live and work in Columbus, Ohio, and I work at part time, I'm like 0. 7 of a full time physician as a palliative and hospice medicine physician at a hospital system here. I am also a life coach for women in healthcare, and I'm also a wife and a mom of four kids ages. To through well, and so that keeps me, full and I've, you know, edited a lot of things along the way to try to find a more sustainable rhythm and balance for myself. And really, I feel like it's kind of an evolving process to find, the balance that I crave and kind of the life that I want to be living. So I would say it's, it's an ongoing work in progress. I did my residency in physical medicine and rehabilitation. It's also called PM& R physiatry. I went to an osteopathic medical school, so I was really into already, like, the musculoskeletal stuff and kind of the hands on, you know, diagnostics and. Um, that connection, I think, with people is what I enjoyed, I was at a big academic medical center in Washington state in Seattle. And a lot of the time in my rehab training, I was also interacting with the palliative care team. And I became quickly like their biggest fans because they just had a really special role on the teams, in the patients that we were seeing together. I was just really, really impressed with their communication, and being able to like bring so much compassion, but also a lot of like, Transparency that I felt like was lacking for better words, with other specialties, and talking about, you know, some of the hardest stuff, that we talked about in medicine and health care, I've never known anyone to go into palliative care medicine from, PM and R. So that's unique. And just so the audience knows and I know, can you do any specialty and go into that or does it have to be certain specialties? Yeah, no, you can actually do any specialty. I trained with people who, you know, had completed their residency in obviously internal medicine, but also in. Something like psychiatry or trauma surgery or ICU care, right? So it can really be anything, and some people do it later in their careers, like they practice as a certain specialty for, you know, a couple of decades. And then they practice palliative toward the end of their career. Anybody can do it. That's cool. So you talked about how you're 0. 7 FTE. So I assume that you didn't start out that way. So what is it that prompted you to lower your status from full time to part time? Yeah, that's a good question. I would say. Um, in residency, I knew that I wouldn't want to do full time, not because I didn't like medicine, but just the way that medicine is practiced and what it requires of us, it really requires, way more than full time, and I knew that I wanted family, and I knew that I wanted a lot of other parts of life to, you know, Be able to have space. And so, I would say I had the knowledge and the desire to do it a lot ahead of time. Logistically, I ended up sticking out full time, all the way through being able to complete my loan repayments, which require you to work full time. And that's 10 years worth, so it's like, starts in residency, kept going, and then at the point where I was able to finally have that loan repayment done. Then I knew I could cut down and, uh, that was very freeing for me to be able to do. Yeah, I feel like I was in the same place as you, I knew that there was more to life than just medicine, especially going into medicine as a second career. And so I went looking for jobs. knowing that I wanted something that built in a fair amount of downtime and time that I could pursue other things. Yeah, it's been a really good change, but there's been a lot of, Work, personal work I've had to do, like even leading up to that transition, as well as just being able to talk about it more openly with my colleagues and just people that have, well tell me about that, um, like why? Yeah, yeah, good question, I think that the culture of medicine is that you only go part time if you are like near the end of your career, or you can't cut it, or, you know, like there's all these narratives about it. I think a lot of people and people that work in medicine think that, if you are a good doctor and you really care a lot about your patients and the field and all that, that you're going to be, you know, working countless hours, like at work and hospital and also outside of the hospital. Right? And you're just going to, like, revolve your life around medicine. When I started telling people that I wanted to go part time or that I was going to go part time, a lot of the messages I received were like, oh, but why? Or you're so young. You're so young to do that already. It can bring up a lot for people that have continued to kind of stay in the norm, right? With medicine and the degree of which it can be kind of all consuming, So I think that it feels sort of threatening to people, is my stance. Absolutely. I, I 100 percent agree with you and I think it doesn't even just apply to medicine, this applies to a lot of things. It applies to anything people compare themselves in. Um, anytime you're doing something that's unusual, even just living an unusual lifestyle, like we do living on a homestead, people are sometimes like, wait, what? And either don't understand or they Are jealous or there are various reactions that you get so, the other side of what you do this coaching, how did you get interested in incorporating that into your work life balance? I got really interested into coaching in the pandemic. Because I personally needed it, um, and that's when I discovered it. I had, I feel like been able to with different efficiencies and systems and like self help books and podcasts and all these things I was doing on the side that I enjoyed. Um, it's like personal growth. I felt like I was able to hack it, right? Like, until a point where the pandemic was, all consuming and the hospital felt like it was on fire. My home life felt like it was on fire. It felt really, really bad for a while. Like, several months. Um, and so I personally needed some new tools and new support systems, right? And ways to help myself get out of that. And that's how I became, a much more empowered person getting back in the driver's seat of my life and figuring out what it is that I did want instead. So. As I got further into it I saw a lot of parallels, honestly, between the kind of things I talked to my patients about as well as what I was experiencing in life coaching for myself, and really felt this sense of passion to, to coaching myself because I saw not just myself had the benefit, but just seeing, like, the level of burnout around me. With my own colleagues and hospital system, and so. I was, wanting to help people to not live as long in that place of feeling like they're overwhelmed and they have no choice over what they do or how their life goes. Yeah. Well, specifically for you, what types of tools or techniques helped you to get out of that dark place during the pandemic where you felt like just reading and listening to podcasts weren't enough? Mm hmm. Um, I think some of the most transformative work was really like, revisioning, which just means to me, like, what could be different? I knew all the things I didn't like, and what I was frustrated by and what I wanted to be different. But didn't feel like I could affect a lot of change in those areas. I didn't feel like I had control over them. So, um, my coach really challenge me to a lot of like, what do you want instead? And how do you want to feel? So it really tapped into getting myself out of like thinking, thinking, thinking my way out of a problem to like feeling. And so I feel like coaching for me, really incorporating, you know, the emotional aspect, the body and. The grounding in the here and now, helped me immensely be able to, access, the kind of things that I wanted instead, what my more ideal version of life would look like, and also what it would feel like, um, and then be able to kind of chart the path from that place. And so really some of the tools and the stuff I still use today are like a lot of the emotional regulation tools and a lot of the stress management. tools that involve linking up my mind with my body. So you have four kids, age two to 12. And I have one kid and my kid was yelling at me earlier today while she was doing her, her math homework. And I just, I can't imagine having four. So how do you balance doing coaching with doing clinical work and having four children of that age? For me, it feels less like a balance. It's like you can't separate things as much as you want to. And so for me, the way that I figured out at least how to make things feel less heavy and burdensome when there's so many kind of things to juggle is I make my own time. Very much non negotiable. So there's things I'm an introvert by nature, right? Right. Right. I'm also just like the type that absorbs a lot of energy, emotional energy from others. Both my patients and my family. So I need a lot of time, on a daily basis whether it's, I like to do a lot of yoga or I like to do reading, um, just like quiet times for me. And if I am able to fit them into my day, a little bit in the morning, a little bit in the afternoon, a little bit in the evening, And then some longer stretches throughout the week. That's what fuels me to be able to, you know, show up as my best self with my kids, with my colleagues, with my patients, with my clients. So I would say if I don't have that time and I don't like take that time for myself. I'm kind of a hot mess, um, in all other areas, if that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. I talk about with my coaching clients a lot, the concept of energy management and just merely identifying what things are zapping your energy and then knowing what give you back energy. Because if there's some things that Deplete your energy that you can't just eliminate from your life. You can't eliminate everything such as like calling your mother in law or, you know, something doing a certain work task that is required of your job, but you know, is difficult for you, you then need to go and replenish yourself. And figuring out a time course for that, do you need a little bit of time every single day or do you need it every other day or how many days a week is it that this depleting activity has to occur? Can it occur less numbers of days per week or something like that? So it really resonate with that concept. And I think it's probably even more important when you have more roles like you do. I love that too. For a working mom, it's, so important that we know what tasks are draining us. And can we do those things differently, right? Those things we have to do, maybe done a little differently. Can we, which ones can we delegate? You know, I like to cook, but I don't need to cook every meal. Like, so I outsource that when I can, and meal prep and just like things that you have to do, but, you don't need to do all on your own, I think is really like, gives us a sense of Freedom as well, and we feel less of that, like, mental burden. Yeah, give me some other ideas of things that you have started to outsource that you didn't used to. Yeah, cleaning. We have a cleaner every other week, for our house. We have a lady that comes twice a week and does things for us, like, prepare meals, components of meals, um, sometimes we have her do, errands, like, running to the library, the pharmacy, UPS. Those are things I don't, like, enjoy, but need done. I've delegated dog walking to our oldest child, right? Just stuff like that. Um, that I think really does help me to free up. Time, energy, um, and each of them have been a little uncomfortable initially. So I'm like, well, I can do that better or I can do it faster or, it takes time to train someone else how to do it. And that's true. But I feel like once you have started that, it really is like exponentially helps you. For you, you buy back so much of that time over. Mm hmm.

SW2-dawn

I know that you had some unconventional methods for building your family. Can you talk a little bit about that if you're comfortable?

SW2-sarah

Sure, sure. So yeah, definitely not the way that I would have necessarily thought, that we'd, you know, grow our family. So we had, an idea of when we would have kids and I very specifically planned it for like a particular year in residency that I thought was going to be more manageable to have my first baby or get pregnant. And then when that finally came, we were really looking forward to it. It's like all the things thought, I mean, I, I think I had the expectation to be like a couple of months or something. Right. But I experienced infertility, um, which was totally out of left field for me. Not something I thought was going to be, part of my story. I don't think anyone probably does. And so that was really challenging to go through like as a resident. It was like big part of my life in terms of like wanting to have kids and really like desiring that. So it felt crushing to be honest. And yeah, there was not a lot of support, or at least I did not seek out a lot of support at the time, for going through infertility, but we decided to, to become foster parents, in the state of Washington. Partially we learned about it and then discovered, the need and desire to do it then almost, but also it was a place where, like, financially and logistically, It was not feasible for me to go through like any type of workup or IVF or anything like that in residency or fellowship, So yeah, one of those unexpected life turns, I guess, and, ended up, becoming foster parents, which took like nine months. I was, people ask how long it takes to go through that process. I'm like, like same as a pregnancy. We welcomed our first baby in our home. He was only three weeks old at the time. So it felt like really crazy from the time we got licensed to when we, welcomed him home. It was only like a couple of weeks and we didn't know whether he, you know, a child would be a boy, a girl, what age, like we had to define sort of like ages that we were willing to take in, but it was just like super, there was a lot of uncertainty about, you know, what that would be like, and even. After having him and loving with falling in love with him, of course, and like becoming a parent that way, there was still a lot of uncertainty because, you know, the, the goal of foster care is always to reunite with biologic family, if it's safe to do so, even if it's like an extended family member or something like that. And so, it's super challenging, I think, for foster parents to, be very attached to the child and then you don't have any control over, if and when they are reunited with, their family. So, that was like, kind of how we had our first child come to us, and we did, end up being able to adopt him when he was just over a year, which is pretty rare in the foster care system. So

SW2-dawn

Wow. Okay. And so since then you have adopted three other children through fostering or

SW2-sarah

two of ours are adopted and two are biologic. Yep, so Asher was our first, the one I talked about. Then I unexpectedly got pregnant with, Jude when he was, when Asher was like, one. So I remember like we were going through the adoption day and everything and our family was there and it was like this big exciting thing and we also had just like found out I was pregnant, so we shared that news. And then we agreed to take our daughter, who's now 12, we took her in our home when we had a two year old and a baby, um, and she came in at age six, uh, and we adopted her, so that was our third, so we went from like, zero kids to three kids in, you know, two years, it was wild, it ended up being kind of during fellowship year, and then, we wanted one more kid, and I kind of experienced, I guess, I don't really know it'd be called secondary infertility or not, you know, based on, like, the first time I got pregnant was kind of a surprise and we didn't really, like, do anything for it. Then I, again, couldn't get pregnant, but we wanted a baby and we wanted, I don't know, like, we kind of wanted, like, girls and boys to be equal. And so we ended up doing IVF and, Thankfully, was successful and like a smooth process for us. So IVF is how we welcomed our last baby. Um, little,

SW2-dawn

okay. I get it.

SW2-sarah

yeah,

SW2-dawn

And how old is she now?

SW2-sarah

she's two and a half.

SW2-dawn

Okay. So you have really run the gamut. Of having infertility problems as a trainee and also as an attending and doing alternatives to even infertility. Was there a particular step in that process that was. Harder than the other steps. Like what, what was the worst part about, navigating your work life balance with all of that?

SW2-sarah

I would probably say the uncertainty. I think that's been like a lesson I've been learning, right, in life, is like, There's a desire for control and like predictability and being able to like, be sure of something, and not knowing and having to live in that gray zone. I feel like it emotionally was really challenging for me. Because. You know, you just want to protect and you want to do the best you can and you're just like you're not sure you're working within this like gray area of like, I don't know if this kiddo is actually going to be here next month and that's really scary and I still love them and I still want them and I want the best for the it's just like there's a lot of mixed emotions I would say that that definitely at least You impacted, you know, my work life balance, how I was, showing up, And I've had to kind of really work on that to cultivate more of a sense of connection, with kids rather than, wanting things to go a very certain way for them.

SW2-dawn

It's so true that uncertainty is pretty much always present in life. The one thing that you can count on is that things are going to change and nothing else is really, truly certain.

SW2-sarah

Yes, and that's something you know that people have talked to us about a lot of we get a lot of questions about foster parenting or adoption if people are considering any type of adoption and and they're like but isn't that really scary to like not know what the impacts of you know the prenatal stuff or the whatever the reason that they came into foster care the trauma right isn't that really scary not to know and I'm like yes You And I can say, raising biologic children and adopted children, like, turns out it's uncertain for all of them, we don't have any guarantee that, like, what our biologic children, are going to encounter or what struggles or seasons they're going to go through, you know, so I think it's, yeah, it's, like, kind of crazy how it shows up in, in all of parenting relationships.

SW2-dawn

Absolutely.

Now that you are approaching mid career. Is there anything that you know now that you wish you knew when you were starting out just on that cusp of making decisions for your work life balance between being a trainee and being the boss? A piece that I've learned maybe a little hard way, or maybe it feels like tough love, but it's really true for me. And it's like the sense that, like, no one is going to do it for me. Right. And so no one is ever going to come to me and say, Hey, you could consider working part time. You could consider starting your own business like you can do that. You might have like cheerleaders and support and I hope you do um, but I think sometimes we expect like a boss or a system or someone to kind of give us that permission. And really, it's all about us giving it to ourselves. I think that's like, probably what I continue to learn and would, would, would Hope that my younger self, you know, would have wanted to learn that that lesson is just like give your permission to yourself, like what you want to do and then see how you can make it happen. I cannot agree more with that. I have an entire chapter in my book, Lean Out, that's called You Have Permission. We don't give ourselves permission enough, for sure. So that's very good advice. Any parting words for women who are stuck feeling burned out or stuck on the treadmill of achievement and don't know how to take the steps to get off and to do what they really want to do? Being able to have some kind of container where you have consistent support, even just if it's like, you know, getting, helping you find some practices and some things that are for short moments able to, Help you get grounded and such a sense of like, calm and being confident and capable to make decisions for yourself. It's really, really helpful. For people that are really struggling, like. It might feel like getting support is the last thing on your mind, or you don't feel like you can add anything else to your plate. And I feel like that's like. Often the times that we need it the most so that we are able to get unstuck or get out of that. Sooner when we have support and someone that is like looking at things from, a zoomed out view and is able to like bring that compassion and that energy to you to be able to help you see other possibilities. Yeah, I think we're both biased because we've definitely experienced the power of coaching and those kind of support systems. And yet at the same time, I see it over and over and over. People need that help in order to get that extra push to make a change or to just take stock of what's happening with them and become a little more aware and not just in the trenches with the blinders on. Totally. Totally. Totally. Yeah. It's so common. If nothing changes in the next year, then nothing changes. And that is helpful to help people reframe like, oh, yeah, I don't like this. And I don't want to keep doing this for another year or 5 years. I don't want it to be like this. And if you can at least come to that, be honest with yourself about that part. At least get your brain thinking about what else is possible if, you know, you don't want this, right? But you're not sure what you want instead. There's at least that opening of a little gap that might be like, Hey, there's something else yes, sarah, I've really enjoyed talking with you and can you tell us where we can find you and what you're up to these days online? Sure. You can find me on social media. I'm on LinkedIn. Um, I have a Facebook group I would love people to join. Called Vibrant Humans, which is also the name of my podcast. And so that comes out every week and it's just little bits on, you know, personal development, kind of. What it's like to grow and change and evolve as a working mom and some of the challenges that we face, in that space. Um, and then you can find me on my website, it's essentially vibrant humans, then my name, and that is where you can find out more about, you know, monthly membership that you can join for working moms that I run. As well as coaching with me Well, thank you so much for being on the show. Really appreciate our conversation today. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Sarah has a very unique family situation and a unique work-life doing hospice and palliative care medicine. I'm sure her work is very rewarding, but I'm also glad she's been able to hone her clinical schedule a bit more in this past year because she's got a lot of other important roles in her life too. Here are my takeaways from our conversation. Number one. Energy management is an interesting concept because it's so different from person to person kind of like balance. Spend some time thinking about it for yourself. What activities that you do severely deplete your energy. Is there any way to eliminate them from your life or maybe outsource them? If there's not a way to do either one of those, can you counteract energy depletion with activities that you identify that help to replenish your energy? This comes with self-reflection and self knowledge and some experimentation like Sarah demonstrated. She knows. She needs a certain amount of alone time each day, and she knows what activities help her to replenish energy. Number two, there are many ways to build a family. And if having one is an important part of your value system and vision for life, there are lots of resources and options for you. If you're struggling with fertility, IVF is not the only option. Sarah had a strong desire to become a mother. She chose not to do fertility treatments when she initially wanted to start her family, because she was in training. So she became part of the foster adoption program. There's also traditional adoption. Number three. Along the lines of number two, if you really want something in your life, let's say you want to adopt a new role or to let go of an old role or to make a change. You are the one who needs to take the reins. No one else is going to give you permission. If you don't know where to start, figure out how you want to feel. Start there and revision your life. My question for you today. Is how do you want to feel? Thanks for listening to the lean out podcast. If you find these conversations inspiring and useful, please forward them to a friend and also leave a review on iTunes or Spotify so that other people can find them easier. If you want to get in touch with me, you can find me at my website, practice balanced.com, where you can subscribe to my newsletter and get updates regularly about new podcast episodes, blog posts, speaking, engagements, and coaching services. You can also support my work by buying my book, lean out a professional woman's guide to finding authentic work-life balance for yourself, a friend, family member, or coworker. Have a great day and we'll see you next Time.