Permission to go

I want to talk about something that doesn't get discussed enough in veterinary medicine. What happens when the workplace breaks you. Not the medicine. The medicine was never the problem. I loved the medicine. I still love the medicine. But there are places in this profession — and I imagine in many professions — where the culture is quietly corrosive.

Where promises are made and not kept. Where the rules apply differently to different people. Where you find yourself carrying your books home in a backpack every day because nobody ever made space for you at the table. I stayed longer than I should have. Because I was hopeful. Because I had worked so hard to get there. Because leaving felt like failure. It wasn't failure. It was survival.

Here is what I know now that I wish I had known then: You are allowed to leave a place that is not right for you. Even if you signed a contract. Even if you worked hard to get there. Even if leaving is complicated and messy and painful. You are allowed to go.

If you are going through similar energies as mentioned above- Your calling is not the same as your current employer. Your profession is not the same as the place you are practicing it. And your value does not decrease because one workplace failed to see it.

I wrote about my personal experience and a very real reason I almost walked away from veterinary medicine in my memoir, The Unicorn — I am not the only one who has been there, and I am again hopeful and I know that it will help provide a guiding light to someone like me that had that light dimmed by the caregiving industry.

And because the years I spent healing from that experience deserve to mean something for someone else. If you are a veterinarian — or any professional — carrying the weight of a workplace that is quietly breaking you: you are not alone. And you are allowed to go.

— Dr. Scott, DVM | Founder, The Indigo Phoenix® A healing space for the humans who love animals.

You may find my book at: www.theindigophoenix.com/