287. When Your Medical Expertise Meets Family Choice: Holding Space with Love
It’s complicated when love and medical expertise collide.
In this deeply personal and heartfelt episode, I share the story of becoming a grandmother—twice over—to beautiful twin girls born at home. As a pediatrician, this choice was outside the guidance I was trained to give. Yet, it was fully aligned with my son and daughter-in-law’s values. This experience, and others like it, have invited me into profound reflection on what it means to love fully while letting go of control.
We explore how to navigate the emotional terrain of being a doctor when family members, adult children, aging parents, and siblings make health decisions that differ from our training or advice.
This episode is a powerful guide for healthcare professionals who find themselves caught between the desire to protect and the practice of presence.
Whether your expertise is welcomed or dismissed, this conversation is about staying connected, grounded, and compassionate, even when it’s complicated.
Pearls of Wisdom:
Medical advice and love are not the same and withholding advice can sometimes be the most loving choice.
Connection is medicine. Staying in a relationship often matters more than being “right.”
Your role in your family isn’t to be “the doctor,” AND it's hard for our minds to step out of being “a doctor.”
When your medical expertise isn't invited or followed, your role is to love, connect, and stay present simply.
Offering guidance is not always loving and sometimes withholding advice is the greater gift of compassion and trust.
Mindfulness allows us to notice our urges to control, advise, or correct and choose connection instead.
Letting go of being "right" opens space for peace, gratitude, and trust in both the medical process and our loved ones’ autonomy.
Cultural, generational, and spiritual influences often shape health decisions and awareness of these differences can invite compassion and curiosity.
Practicing mindful boundaries in families allows for more ease, trust, and authenticity.
Reflection Questions:
Where do you feel the urge to protect, control, or advise and what is that urge trying to offer you?
What might shift when you ask yourself: What would love do?
What would trusting your loved one, or yourself, look like in this moment?
If this episode speaks to you, and/or you find yourself exhausted from being the expert in your family or navigating strained medical dynamics with those you love, I invite you to explore coaching or join me on retreat. Together, we can untangle the emotional weight of “doctoring” your loved ones and find a more easeful way forward:
www.jessiemahoneymd.com/coaching
www.jessiemahoneymd.com/retreats
If you’d like to bring this conversation to your institution, team, or medical conference, I offer speaking and workshop opportunities that bring the themes of this episode—mindful connection, autonomy, and healing—into the workplace:
www.jessiemahoneymd.com/speaking
To invite Dr. Ni-Cheng Liang to speak or lead mindfulness offerings, visit:
www.awakenbreath.org
Nothing shared in the Healing Medicine Podcast is medical advice.