This past Sunday I hosted my family over for Easter dinner. I had decided about a month ago that I wanted to host this year, which likely came as a bit of a surprise to my family. It was only a month prior that I experienced a severe major depressive episode, that reached so deep into darkness that I ended up holding a family meeting to share what I was experiencing—and most importantly, the darker thoughts that had taken hold. As hard as it was to be that vulnerable about something so jarring, I knew bringing awareness to my family was necessary. I needed to create a safety net to help me get through to the other side. 

I have experienced depression on and off in my adulthood—I recall my first episode during my first year as a bedside nurse, working with acute leukemia patients. For those not in the medical field, to say leukemia patients are an acute population feels like an understatement, and sadly, we see many poor outcomes. At 23-years-old I was being confronted with death on a regular basis. I had a string of patients who were younger, my age or only a few years older; and I watched them succumb to their illness one after the other. These were not peaceful deaths, and I still carry them with me more than ten years later—I remember their names, their faces, and the life lessons they shared with me.  

I was living with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) without even realizing or acknowledging it, and so I turned to therapy and medication to try and combat some of what I was up against. It wasn’t long before I made the difficult decision to step away from bedside nursing—a form of self-care I didn’t yet know I needed. I moved on and took a new role working with breast cancer patients in an education and emotional support focused role. Being removed from physical aspects of providing care and transitioning to a supportive role, along with working with a population who by and large experience better outcomes, made a big difference for my mental wellness. 

Interestingly, in 2018 I returned to malignant hematology (blood cancers such as acute leukemia), this time working with the multiple myeloma population. There was much about this population that I enjoyed, including the ever-changing landscape of available treatments. But just as was the case with my prior work with leukemia patients, I saw a lot of poor outcomes, and witnessed far too many young patients pass away. It was also during my time in this role that we experienced the onset of the pandemic, arguably one of the most difficult battles experienced by healthcare workers in our history. There was no time to process what was happening, or what we as healthcare workers were being asked of. So, it wasn’t until the end of 2023 that I was forced to confront the trauma I had been living with for the past five years. 

Everything came to a head after my car accident. There were the physical injuries, of course, but then came the mental anguish. As I would later come to realize, my body had been in a state of hyperarousal—a constant state of fear and anxiety—for the past five years, confronting one trauma after another and pushing past it instead of working through it. That paired with mounting work stress in an overtaxed healthcare system and toxic workplace was enough to break anyone. 

The chain of events following my car accident has been incredibly eye opening. While my physical injuries have been the primary focus for so long, they were also responsible for tearing open internal wounds that I didn’t even realize were there—and that is the thing about trauma—it can be a completely unrelated event that can open the flood gates and expose traumas we have been living with, and often not yet processed. 

As I prepared to host Easter dinner—a gesture of healing in itself—I found myself reflecting on how far I’ve come. And as always, Taylor’s music had a way of helping me process the pain I had buried. The song that comes to mind is epiphany from folklore, Taylor’s eighth studio album. A haunting track she wrote as a tribute to her grandfather’s experience in World War II and to the frontline workers during the pandemic. When I first heard it, I remember thinking ‘she gets it.’ The quiet horror of showing up to work every day, bearing witness to suffering, and having no time to grieve.  

🎵 Something med school did not cover 
Someone’s daughter, someone’s mother 
Holds your hand through plastic now 
“Doc, I think she’s crashing out” 
And some things you just can’t speak about 

Only 20 minutes to sleep 
But you dream of some epiphany 
Just one single glimpse of relief 
To make some sense of what you’ve seen 🎵

And when I think about it, much of my time working in oncology has been this way. Don’t get me wrong, working in oncology has had countless rewarding moments, but it is difficult to outshine the pain and suffering we bear witness to daily. 

As described in Daylight, for a long time, I lived in red—burnout, fear, grief, depression. Everything felt too intense, too fast, too painful. But slowly, through therapy, support, and a lot of inner work, I’ve started to step into something softer—something golden. Hosting Easter dinner wasn’t just about the roasted chicken or pastel centerpieces. It was a reclaiming of joy. A small but meaningful reminder that healing is possible. That I can move through the pain and still find hope on the other side. It felt like a small victory, and not in the way that meant everything’s perfect or “over”—but in a way that means I have the tools, the support, and the strength to face what life throws my way.