The Person Who Remained
Week 4 of the June book club: Essentialism by Greg McKeown
I used to think I was the sum of what I could do. Doctor. Survivor. Partner. Mother. The woman who returns emails at midnight. The voice on the podcast. The body that doesn’t break.
But roles are scaffolding. Useful, until they’re not.
This became clear the day I sat in the car for an hour after a therapy session, unable to start the engine. My therapist had asked a simple question: “Who are you, if you’re not helping anyone?”
I didn’t have an answer. I still don’t. But I’ve started to notice the shape of the silence that followed.
In that silence, I wasn’t a physician. I wasn’t performing empathy or certainty. I wasn’t instructing or comforting or offering. I was just a person with my hands in my lap, unsure. And still—alive. Still here.
The essential self isn’t a résumé. It’s not your medical license or your parenting philosophy. It’s not how many people need you. It’s who you are when the performance stops.
When I let go of the roles—even briefly—I find someone quieter. Fiercer, in a way that isn’t about striving. She walks slower. She notices birdsong. She weeps when her daughter laughs with abandon. She doesn't have a five-year plan, but she knows when she’s lying to herself.
Medicine taught me how to inhabit roles. Illness showed me how easily they vanish. Motherhood—at least the way Elise and I live it—reminds me daily that love isn’t a role. It’s a risk. A choosing.
So who remains, when I let go?
A woman still learning how to live with softness.
A voice still speaking, even when no one’s clapping.
A body that knows when it needs to rest.
A self that is not essential because of what she does—but because she is.
- Doctor Nobody