A Tribute to the Women in Healthcare Who Hold (instead of Fix) the Whole Human

The hardest skill in healthcare isn’t differential diagnosis. It’s sensing when fixing isn’t the medicine.

As a woman in healthcare, you were taught to use your keen differential diagnostic and detective skills to find and solve problems — that you forgot how powerful it is to honor the moments in life when there aren’t any left to fix (or maybe there weren’t any real problems to begin with).

This is a tribute to the women in healthcare who have come to terms—beautifully, imperfectly, and tenderly—with the bittersweet truth that discharging a patient is one of the most sacred moments of our work.

Because even though you’ve built a relationship with this human…and even though you’ve walked with them through pain, uncertainty, grief, hope, triumph, and healing…and even though it might cost you revenue to let them go and require you to do the work to go find a new client…

You still let them go with honor and reverence.

Not because you’re done caring, but because your care has completed the circle and done its job.

Hats off to the women in healthcare who recognize that a client who becomes a “lifer” and has come to rely on you for physical, emotional, and spiritual support — might actually need a different kind of healing than the one you offer, and keeping them on your schedule simply because “you care” is more about meeting your needs than it is about theirs.

And the best part? Letting a client go doesn’t mean that the relationship ends. It allows it to transform.

Maybe they add you to their holiday card list after you help their mom recover from a stroke.Maybe they invite you to their first triathlon after all the care you gave them to get back on their feet.Maybe they send you a picture of their new baby they birthed after all the pelvic work you did with them.

You become part of the story they tell when they talk about getting their life back, you become the answer to the question when someone asks them “who helped you the most in this grueling journey you have been on?”

And cheers—truly—to the women in healthcare who know that sometimes the best medicine is not fixing anything at all.

It’s sitting with a client who’s crying because their pain flared up unexpectedly — and holding them in the frustration instead of scrambling for the quickest solution or explanation.

Sometimes the best medicine is having the courage to ask the harder, truer question — “What heavy weight are you carrying that might be showing up as shoulder pain today?”

It’s celebrating your client’s wins with them without feeling the urge to turn around and post it on your social media as a marketing moment because your business coach told you this is how you earn credibility.

It’s remembering that humans aren’t meant to be endless projects to fix, heal, optimize, or leverage for your own gain.

Those humans include your patients, and that most definitely includes you.

Did your body just let out an exhale? 

Then In invite you to a toast and a roll call — 

To the women in healthcare who aspire to hold both the full aliveness and the full darkness of your clients (and yourself) without rushing to fix either — I see you.

To the women in healthcare who trust that your clients have the answers inside them, and that your real work is helping them discover just how powerful they already are — I salute you.

If you feel seen — 

Reach out and share with me one moment — recently — when you held a client in their aliveness, their bigness, their wholeness without needing to take credit for it and without looking for the next problem to solve so they could be “even more healed” or “even more healthy.”

Orrrr — tell me about a time you held a client in the dark depths of life without trying to fix it or make it go away.

The truth is , we can’t change the entire system overnight.

But we can normalize what this kind of human and soul healing looks like — so other providers see it’s not wrong to practice this way.