Create Meaning in Medicine

Women are often taught to push through pain, discomfort, and other symptoms they assume are simply part of aging. Dr. Michelle Singer, a board-certified OB-GYN and cosmetic gynecologic surgeon, joins Drs. Erin Hurley and Joanne Sotelo to discuss women's health, anatomical education, and creating psychologically safe spaces where women can speak openly and without shame.

Dr. Singer also shares her journey of leaving traditional practice to build a career aligned with her values, while expanding into speaking, women's health education, leadership, and voiceover artistry. She explores why women in medicine don't have to choose just one identity or stay in one lane.

Key Takeaways To Listen For

• Many women normalize symptoms like pelvic pain, urinary leakage, brain fog, heavy bleeding, and menopausal changes even when those symptoms are disrupting their lives
• Psychological safety and patient education can transform deeply intimate medical care into an experience of trust, relief, and empowerment
• Cosmetic gynecology is not only about appearance. For many patients, it intersects with comfort, sexual function, healing, and reclaiming confidence
• Physicians do not have to stay confined to one identity, one role, or one version of a medical career
• Practicing medicine with heart sometimes means creating a new path when traditional systems no longer allow you to care for patients the way you know they need

"Not just because it's common doesn't make it normal, and that's what I want women to understand." — Dr. Michelle Singer

About Dr. Michelle Singer: Dr. Michelle Jones Singer is a board-certified gynecologist, cosmetic gynecologic surgeon, and keynote speaker on a mission to change the conversation around women’s health. For more than 20 years, she has helped women navigate topics that are too often misunderstood, dismissed, or never discussed at all. Through her clinical expertise and engaging storytelling, she empowers women with accurate, evidence-based information that replaces embarrassment with confidence.

As a speaker, Dr. Jones Singer helps audiences understand that women’s health isn’t just a medical issue. It directly influences leadership, confidence, relationships, and performance at work and at home. Her goal is simple. To make conversations women have whispered about for generations feel normal, empowering, and impossible to ignore.

Connect with Dr. Michelle Singer:

Website: https://www.indianapolis-cosmetic-surgery.com/ 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellejonessingermd/ 

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

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@michellejonessingermd5733 

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

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Find every episode at https://www.createmeaninginmedicine.com

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Many high-functioning women appear to be doing everything right, eating well, exercising, staying productive, and showing up for everyone around them, yet still feel exhausted, disconnected, or unwell. In this conversation, Drs. Erin Hurley and Joanne Sotelo speak with Brooke Erickson, a functional nutritionist, about the foundational pillars that are often overlooked, which are circadian rhythm alignment, nervous system regulation, sleep, energy management, and authentic living.

Together, they explore how small daily shifts like morning light exposure, meal timing, outdoor time, and honoring personal limits can create meaningful change, especially for women in medicine who are used to pushing through and performing at a high level.

Key Takeaways To Listen For

• High performance can hide dysregulation, and as Brooke explains, productivity alone is not a reliable measure of health or wellbeing
• The body responds not only to food and exercise, but also to safety, rest, light exposure, stress levels, and emotional alignment
• Small, repeatable practices like getting outside in the morning, eating consistently, and reducing artificial light at night can have a powerful cumulative effect
• Healing often begins with paying attention to symptoms as signals instead of treating them as inconveniences to push past
• Sustainable wellbeing requires understanding personal capacity, protecting energy, and making choices that feel authentic rather than performative, a core theme in Brooke’s Quantum Nourishment approach

"I want to instead teach people to trust and listen to the wisdom of their body. I want them to believe that their body has infinite wisdom in its ability to heal itself when we just give it the right conditions." — Brooke Erickson

About Brooke Erickson: Brooke Erickson, MS, CN, is a functional nutritionist with more than a decade of clinical experience specializing in functional nutrition, circadian rhythm science, and nervous system regulation. She is the founder of NOURISHTHRIVE and creator of the Quantum Nourishment Framework, a whole-body approach to healing that integrates functional nutrition, circadian biology, nervous system support, and Human Design to help clients restore energy, improve resilience, and reconnect with their body's innate wisdom. Through her work, Brooke helps people uncover the deeper patterns behind fatigue, hormone imbalances, digestive issues, and burnout, empowering them to work with their bodies instead of against them and create lasting, sustainable wellbeing.

Connect with Brooke Erickson:

Website: https://thrivewithbrooke.com/ 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brookeaerickson/ 

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

Circadian Product Guide. https://thrivewithbrooke.com/product-recommendation/ 

Circadian Rhythm Masterclass: https://thrivewithbrooke.com/circadian-rhythm-masterclass-sleep-energy-hormones/ 

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Find every episode at https://www.createmeaninginmedicine.com

▶️ Watch on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@createmeaninginmedicine

🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/create-meaning-in-medicine/id1752701820

Some patient encounters end when the visit is over, but their emotional impact often doesn't. This episode explores the hidden emotional weight physicians carry and why it often goes unrecognized.

Through discussions around medicine, caregiving, and emotional well-being, the episode examines why women physicians may be especially vulnerable to carrying this emotional load into their personal lives, how unresolved stress can affect mood, sleep, relationships, and connection, and why self-compassion is a more sustainable approach than simply pushing emotions aside. The conversation also shares practical ways to process difficult encounters, from naming the experience and creating intentional transitions between patients to seeking supportive debriefs and building small moments of regulation into the day.

Key Takeaways To Listen For

• Some clinical encounters leave behind emotional, mental, and physical residue even when a physician appears calm and composed on the outside
• Strength is not the absence of emotional impact; it is the ability to notice it, process it, and respond with self-compassion
• Women in medicine often carry a double load by bringing the emotional weight of patient care home into ongoing caregiving responsibilities
• Brief transition rituals between patients can help interrupt accumulation and make it easier to stay grounded throughout the day
• Ignoring emotional hangovers does not make them disappear; it often shifts the burden into burnout, tension, disconnection, or other downstream effects

“There is a tool in coaching that's pretty universal. That it's learning to name our emotions, and I would transfer that here to naming the encounter before you move on.” - Dr. Joanne Sotelo

Connect With Us

Find every episode at https://www.createmeaninginmedicine.com

▶️ Watch on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@createmeaninginmedicine

🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/create-meaning-in-medicine/id1752701820 

Most of us stopped singing somewhere around the time we were told we weren't good at it. We stopped dancing when it became a performance. We stopped playing when we learned to be serious. And in that process, we lost access to what Dr. Dao calls our most fundamental human languages, the ones that live beyond words, beyond analysis, beyond diagnosis.

Dr. Dao has spent his career helping people find their way back to those languages, through the body, the voice, and the imagination. In this episode, he joins Drs. Erin Hurley and Joanne Sotelo to talk about why physicians may need this more than most, and where to begin.

Key Takeaways To Listen For

• Medicine trains us to observe, analyze, and perform. Healing often requires something else: participation, expression, and presence with others
• Becoming an expert on your own patterns, knowing where they came from, naming the diagnosis, does not always change them. The body, voice, and imagination can move us where insight alone cannot
• Play is not the opposite of seriousness. It is the opposite of rigidity. Dr. Dao makes the case that play is an inherently open-ended, exploratory state where there is nothing to prove and nothing to achieve
• Georgian folk singers don't sound the same when classically trained performers sing their songs perfectly. What's missing is friendship. The singers who carry the deepest meaning are good mates who have been singing together for years. The same is true in medicine: the quality of connection in the room matters as much as the quality of the skill
• Reconnecting with the body, voice, and creative expression is more accessible than most people think. Dr. Dao's suggestion: ask yourself what game you loved as a child. Carl Jung did exactly that to reconnect with deeper parts of himself

"All of our ancestors sang, and danced, and took part in rituals. It is not just trauma that is intergenerational. We have inherited countless songs, myths, and stories that live within us, and they long to be shared and expressed again." — Dr. Swan Dao, PhD

About Swan Dao, PhD: Dr. Swan Dao is the founder of the Institute of Devotional Arts, which renews the purpose of art in the service of life.

Swan studied philosophy at the University of Oxford, theology at the University of Chicago, and theatre at the École Jacques Lecoq in Paris. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, with a focus on self-transformation and system change.

A certified coach, psychotherapist, and experience designer, Dr. Dao works across transformative education, mental health, and cultural regeneration. He designs and leads expressive therapy programs for the world's largest conference on trauma and wellbeing.

He is known for guiding people through distinctive experiences that restore neglected human capacities: intuition, imagination, contemplation, and embodied forms of knowing, relating, and meaning-making.

Dr. Dao seeks to revive a vocation once shared by art, theology, and psychotherapy: the care of the soul.

Connect with Dr. Swan Dao, PhD

Website: https://devotionalarts.org

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/swandao/

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

Oxford Transformed Trauma Conference: https://mastersevents.com/oxford-2026/

Connect With Us

Find every episode at https://www.createmeaninginmedicine.com

▶️ Watch on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@createmeaninginmedicine

🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/create-meaning-in-medicine/id1752701820

Love, loss, and the reality of death shape this conversation as Drs. Erin Hurley and Joanne Sotelo speak with celebration and grief expert Sherry Richert Belul. Through stories of loss, dementia, and inherited belongings, they explore how preparing for death can help people live and love more intentionally.

They discuss how simple choices, such as advance directives, important contacts, digital organization, funeral preferences, and plans for meaningful possessions, can ease family burdens and prevent unnecessary confusion and added grief.

Beyond the personal stories, the episode offers practical guidance on how to start planning one step at a time, why accountability matters, and how preparing ahead becomes an act of love for the people you leave behind.

Key Takeaways To Listen For

• End-of-life planning is not just administrative work; it is a final act of care that can spare loved ones confusion, conflict, and added grief
• Remembering that life is finite can sharpen how we love, what we prioritize, and how intentionally we choose to live
• Many assumptions about belongings, memorials, and legacy disappear once families have honest conversations about what truly matters to them
• Small steps count, especially when the process feels overwhelming; one document, one list, or one conversation can make a meaningful difference
• Voice recordings, love lists, and personal messages can become deeply treasured gifts that preserve connection long after someone is gone

"Remembering that I'm going to die is the thing that helps me live and love better. It has changed my life to put my end-of-life plans in place because it reminds me every day. You know, my time is limited." — Sherry Richert Belul

About Sherry Richert Belul: Sherry Richert Belul is a certified High Performance Coach, celebration and grief expert, author, and the founder of Simply Celebrate, where she helps people find creative, intentional, and impactful ways to celebrate life, express love, and navigate grief with compassion. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Town & Country, and The Wall Street Journal, and she is a sought-after speaker and workshop facilitator on topics including celebration, legacy, meaningful relationships, and intentional living.

She is the author of The Love List of a Lifetime, an end-of-life planner that blends practical guidance with heartfelt legacy-building, and Say It Now: 33 Creative Ways to Say I Love You to the Most Important People in Your Life. Through her books, coaching, and Simply Celebrate community, Sherry inspires people to deepen their relationships, reduce unnecessary suffering, and create lasting memories by expressing love while they still can. Her work is rooted in the belief that remembering life's finite nature helps us live with greater joy, purpose, and connection.

Connect with Sherry Richert Belul:

Website: https://simplycelebrate.net/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sherryrichertbelul/ 

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

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

Book - The Love List of a Lifetime: https://www.amazon.com/Wish-List-Lifetime-Practical-Instructions/dp/1684816998 

Nokbox: Disclaimer - Sherry gets a small commission for any purchases through https://www.thenokbox.com/?sca_ref=9919405.jmuG5veeXW 

Connect With Us

Find every episode at https://www.createmeaninginmedicine.com

▶️ Watch on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@createmeaninginmedicine

🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/create-meaning-in-medicine/id1752701820

Assumptions feel efficient in high-pressure environments, but this conversation makes the case that they often cost physicians far more time, energy, and connection than they save. 

Through stories from clinical leadership, family life, and coaching, the discussion explores how negativity bias shapes interpretation, why curiosity interrupts unnecessary conflict, and how a simple pause can create the conditions for psychological safety and trust. The episode makes the case for slowing down long enough to ask better questions, protect already-limited emotional bandwidth, and develop stronger relationships at work and at home.

Key Takeaways To Listen For

• Negativity bias may be protective, but in modern medicine it often turns incomplete information into unnecessary stress and disconnection.
• A brief pause before reacting can prevent a small misunderstanding from becoming a much larger emotional and relational drain.
• Curiosity changes the tone of hard conversations by replacing blame, defensiveness, and judgment with openness and clarity.
• Psychological safety grows when people feel safe to share and tell the truth without fear that it will be used against them.
• Protecting energy includes reducing the mental and emotional drain caused by conclusions we jump to before we have the full picture.

"The more you can create psychological safety and the more you can bring in curiosity, the more relationship building and rapport you're building, and that's going to lead to trust." — Dr. Erin Hurley

Connect With Us

Find every episode at https://www.createmeaninginmedicine.com

▶️ Watch on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@createmeaninginmedicine

🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/create-meaning-in-medicine/id1752701820

Dr. Joanne Sotelo leads a candid conversation on what mental health truly means for high-performing professionals, moving beyond crisis and diagnosis to everyday emotional, psychological, and physical well-being. She names the subtle warning signs: sleep disruption, emotional numbness, caregiver exhaustion, overworking, people-pleasing, and irritability, and emphasizes that looking “good on paper” doesn’t erase hidden anxiety, burnout, or disconnection. Alongside co-host Dr. Erin Hurley, she unpacks how early mental health struggles often begin, how stigma and limited access still block care, and why open, shame-free dialogue in medicine is essential. Together, they offer practical, compassionate steps, honest self and peer check-ins, nervous system regulation, rest, movement, breathwork, boundaries, and real connection, while urging listeners to seek professional help early and making crisis resources explicit.

Key Takeaways To Listen For

• Mental health is not limited to severe diagnoses; it includes everyday emotional, psychological, relational, and physical well-being that shapes how people think, feel, respond, and connect
• High-functioning, outwardly successful professionals can still be experiencing significant anxiety, depression, burnout, or emotional disconnection beneath a “perfect on paper” life
• Many struggles begin early in life, with a large proportion of lifetime mental illness starting in adolescence and young adulthood, yet stigma and system barriers still prevent many from receiving care
• Simple, consistent practices, such as honest self-check-ins, truly asking others how they are doing, prioritizing sleep, movement, breathwork, and nervous system regulation, act as protective “deposits” in mental and emotional health
• Isolation amplifies suffering, while connection, self-compassion, clear boundaries, and a willingness to seek help early can interrupt a lifetime of struggle and model healthier norms for others

“Just because we are doing what we're supposed to do, that we look good on paper, doesn't mean that we need to ignore everything else.” - Dr. Joanne Sotelo

Connect With Us

Find every episode at https://www.createmeaninginmedicine.com

▶️ Watch on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@createmeaninginmedicine

🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/create-meaning-in-medicine/id1752701820 

Every elite athlete performs with a coaching staff behind them. It's just part of how high performance works. Physicians perform at the same level of intensity, with far higher stakes, and a coach was never part of their contract, their training, or anyone's expectation.

Drs. Hurley and Sotelo both hired their first coaches when physician-specific research on coaching was still in its early stages. For Erin, the twelve months that followed included a breast cancer diagnosis and her mother's failing health. For Joanne, early skepticism as a psychiatrist gave way to building and running a group coaching program inside her own health system. In this episode, they make the evidence-based case for why coaching belongs in medicine as the rule, not the exception, and what it looks like to advocate for it inside your organization.

Key Takeaways To Listen For

• Physicians are trained for elite-level performance but rarely given the support that athletes and executives simply expect as part of how their world works
• A randomized trial showed a 29.6% absolute reduction in burnout rates with small group coaching; a separate 2024 RCT by Kiser et al. found significant improvements in burnout, fulfillment, and work engagement in just three months
• Women are leaving medicine at a median age of 49 compared to 64 for men, and inadequate support is a factor organizations can no longer afford to ignore
• Coaching and therapy serve different purposes and physicians don't have to choose: the most effective outcomes often happen when both are part of the picture
• Replacing one physician costs anywhere from $500,000 to over $1.2 million, and physician turnover costs the US healthcare system an estimated $4.6 billion annually

Resources Mentioned

• AMA Physician Turnover Calculator: search "AMA physician burnout calculator" to access through the AMA website
• Learner Plus: a platform offering self-directed CME credits that can be applied toward coaching programs

"One of the things I love about coaching is that it's very future-oriented. You make a different decision, you're going to get a different outcome." — Dr. Erin Hurley

Connect With Us

Find every episode at https://www.createmeaninginmedicine.com

▶️ Watch on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@createmeaninginmedicine

🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/create-meaning-in-medicine/id1752701820

Medicine is supposed to heal. But for many patients, and for the clinicians who care for them, it can also be the source of deep and lasting harm. In this episode, Drs. Erin Hurley and Joanne Sotelo sit down with Diane Solomon, PhD, a retired psychiatric nurse practitioner and nurse-midwife, to explore how medical encounters themselves can become traumatic, and what it takes to change that.

Together, they trace how experiences like objectification in teaching hospitals and the relentless pressure to prioritize speed over patient autonomy shape both the people receiving care and the people delivering it. They explore adverse childhood experiences, the connection between early trauma and adult health behaviors, and how many healthcare professionals enter medicine carrying wounds they were never given language for.

The conversation also gets practical: how honest apology and repair change outcomes, why boundaries aren't selfish, and what it looks like for women in medicine to strategically change the culture from within.

Key Takeaways To Listen For

• Medical encounters cause real harm when patients are objectified, exposed, or dismissed, and that harm doesn't disappear just because it's never acknowledged
• System pressure pushes clinicians to prioritize speed and outcomes over patient autonomy, often without anyone naming it out loud
• Many clinicians carry significant adverse childhood experiences into medicine, which can drive both their calling and their risk of exhaustion
• Boundaries, saying no, and genuine rest are essential for women in medicine, not indulgences
• Honest apology and validation after harm can be deeply healing and meaningfully reduce both conflict and litigation

"I think women need to understand that it is not selfish to take care of themselves first." — Diane Solomon, PhD

About Diane Solomon, PhD: Diane N. Solomon, PhD, is a retired psychiatric nurse practitioner and nurse-midwife, nurse scholar, and writer who has spent decades at the intersection of clinical care, trauma, and narrative medicine. She earned her MSN in Nurse-Midwifery from Yale University and her PhD in Nursing from Oregon Health & Science University, with advanced training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

Diane completed more than two decades of clinical experience in adult psychiatry and maternal mental health, alongside faculty roles at OHSU. She writes the "Narrative Nurse Practitioner" column in Psychology Today and is widely published on end-of-life care, mental health, and the lived experience of illness. She's an award-winning writer and a consistent voice for compassionate, patient-centered care.

Connect with Diane Solomon:

Website: https://www.dianensolomon.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/diane-n-solomon-phd-7776a6166/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61555018240030

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

X: https://x.com/DianeSolomonOR

Connect With Us

Find every episode at https://www.createmeaninginmedicine.com

▶️ Watch on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@createmeaninginmedicine

🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/create-meaning-in-medicine/id1752701820

Centered on the voice and expertise of Dr. Joanne Sotelo, this conversation unpacks why awareness alone doesn’t change the lives of women in medicine and how real transformation comes from upgraded standards and identity shifts. In dialogue with Dr. Erin Hurley, Dr. Joanne explores how “doctor programming” normalizes self-neglect, overworking, and emotional exhaustion, and explains why we don’t rise to our goals, we fall to our standards. Together, they walk through getting specific about desired outcomes, redefining what is no longer tolerable, and using “I am” identity statements to support new behaviors. With practical examples, journal prompts, and a focus on nervous system regulation, they invite women physicians to stop living by outdated expectations and start intentionally creating lives that align with their values, well-being, and future selves.

Key Takeaways To Listen For

• Awareness is only the first step in personal growth; without committed action, insight remains intellectual and keeps people stuck in analysis paralysis
• Vague desires for balance or harmony need to be translated into specific, measurable outcomes so progress becomes visible and intentional
• Standards are identity in action, and daily life tends to fall to the level of what is tolerated rather than rise to stated goals
• Deeply ingrained beliefs about productivity, self-sacrifice, and always saying yes can trap women in identities that clash with their desire for rest, boundaries, and self-care
• Sustainable transformation comes from small, consistent actions, nervous system regulation, and repeated “I am” statements that align behavior with a consciously chosen identity

“Without a shift in identity, it's really difficult to step in fully into the things that we want to do.” - Dr. Joanne Sotelo

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Do you want to hear more from the doctors of the Create Meaning In Medicine podcast? Discover more empowering content when you go to https://www.createmeaninginmedicine.com!

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