The Story of Pause & Presence

This is the story of how Pause & Presence came to be. This is part of the story that hasn't been shared before.

The through-line: Trust your inner knowing and follow it.

Every turn in my story has been an act of trust.

Leaving Kaiser. Building Pause & Presence. Choosing Nicasio Creek Farm. Choosing to work with Mark. Choosing to give a TEDx talk. Choosing to work at the national level. Choosing to circle back and share my work with teams and institutions.

Each piece was built on the trust of the one before it.

Where the Name Pause & Presence Came From

The name Pause & Presence arrived during a literal pause - the very first week of my sabbatical, while hiking in a rainstorm on a tropical island with Mark.

The Pause creates space to see what is next, unwind the nervous system, and access inner knowing.

In this case, it only took a few days of pause. In my experience, it often doesn’t take much.

Presence is being fully embodied. Dropping into your body. Becoming a permeable membrane in safe spaces.

Without the pause, there is no inner knowing. Without the presence, there is no intentional transformation.

Pause & Presence is the foundation of everything I do.

It is literally how I live and move through the world these days.

The Turning Point

Twenty years at Kaiser. Pediatrician. Physician leader. Physician wellness chief. I had accomplished ‘all the things’ on paper.

Yet I was not having fun.

I felt uncomfortable. A gnawing. A sense of dissatisfaction.

My catalyst was not this.

It was a significant mental health crisis in my husband.

It often takes someone else to give us permission to invest in ourselves. I wish I hadnt waited.

I started by working with a coach. I didn't even know what I was looking for. I simply knew I wanted somethign to be different.

Before the end of my coaching, I signed up for yoga teacher training and coach training, giving myself permission, not obligation, to use either. I was simply learning, growing, and maybe gathering tools to use inside my wellness institution. Though I did invest in all of it myself, so I was free to make of it what I wanted.

At that time, I had no plan or desire to leave clinical medicine.

I resigned from TPMG/Kaiser right before COVID. I did not know the pandemic was coming.

Kaiser's outside-work policy forced a clean break.

I thought it was a negative thing. It turns out it was the thing that got me to do what I actually deeply wanted.

COVID eliminated the safe backup plans I had set up. So as I had learned to do through coaching, I went all in.

Retreats Found Me

By 2021, things were going really well in my coaching business. I had renewed contracts with Stanford. I had many 1:1 coaching clients, as well as a small-group coaching program called Ongoing Presence for clients who wanted to keep working with me.

Then, serendipitously, I landed at a yoga retreat center on a family vacation. It had become an Airbnb during the pandemic.

I got intense signs to do retreats there.

I was able to make a reservation and hold my first retreat within six weeks.

When you know, you know.

Mark cooked for that retreat because there were no caterers available at the time, because of the pandemic.

He said he would do it “just once.”

The feedback from the happy women physicians who came was “keep him.”

I loved the in-person work at retreats. I needed it to balance out all the Zoom time.

Thirty-eight retreats over five years now.

I followed my nose. Which is actually my heart.

And Mark came along with me.

Hiring “Someone”

By 2022, I was so busy that I told Mark I needed to hire someone. He suggested I hire him.

I thought he was crazy.

He had seen the energy of what I was doing at retreats. He was a part of it, but wanted to truly be able to be part of it- rather than balancing his law job at the same time.

I made hiring him my master coach training project proposal because it felt really hard to me. You aren’t supposed to work with a spouse. It felt like “a lot of pressure” on me and Pause & Presence to fully support our family. We are not independently wealthy, we have three children, and we live in the Bay Area.

They said no.

I did it anyway.

In April 2023, Mark left his job as a lawyer and joined me full-time.

Trust compounded.

Mine. His. Ours.

As our trust and courage grew, the business grew — exponentially

Nicasio Creek Farm

Our quest for our own retreat space began when the owners of our original retreat center offered to sell it to us. In the end, we couldnt make that work. We were not on the same page about price and value, and there were, of course, issues once we delved in.

Thankfully. Where we ended up is so much better.

Why?

Because we created it.

Nicasio Creek Farm has become a literal extension of us.

Purpose-built for this work.

This adds potency to the work.

I hear it again and again after retreats.

The space is magical. Intentional. “Being here adds so much.”

The right space amplifies the right work. The right space is key to consistent, extraordinary results.

Not just the nature and the surrounding area, but the small things. The windchimes, furnishings, and intentional spaces. The energy.

We do it all ourselves. Gardening. Cleaning. Designing.

It gets more and more intentional and supportive the more we use it.

What I Did Not Expect

I worried that all this change would limit my family. We had to sell and move away from my children's family home to do this. Both their parents changed careers. We introduced uncertainty and risk to follow our dreams.

Our choices expanded our children's belief in possibility and gave them permission to follow their dreams. To live their biggest life. To create lives that are uniquely theirs.

They have said, "If you can change, anybody can change."

What you model is much more powerful than what you say.

I used to show them one version of me. Now I show them the best of me.

The best of me is all my grandkids have ever known.

What Would Love Do?

This remains the question that grounds everything I do now.

Love for myself, for others, and the greater world.

AND and not OR.

This question instantly grounds my nervous system.

It works in the moments that rip you apart. Leadership. Parenting teenagers. Big life decisions.

It works in the little moments.

Sharing it in my TEDx talk was another pivot moment for me. Being visible in that way, has been yet another identity shift

What I Hope You See

Medicine taught us not to trust ourselves.

Trust yourself equals potency, impact, alignment, and aliveness.

The world does not collapse when you follow your inner knowing. It expands.

You develop the capacity to navigate with grace, compassion, and ease, and you create things you never dreamed possible.

Life on the other side is more aligned, more potent, and more fun.

If this resonates, trust yourself. Trust the nudge. Why not join an upcoming retreat. Or reach out for 1:1 coaching (where I started.)

I cant wait to read your story.