In this conversation, Ni-Cheng and I name the moment without bypassing it: collective fear, grief, exhaustion, and moral distress. We also name minority stress and racial trauma as real, lived experiences that shape safety in the body.

When we are activated, our wise brain is harder to access. 

Practicing peace is an intentional choice. It is not something we wait for once circumstances improve. It is something we practice in our breath, our bodies, and our awareness, even while uncertainty and grief remain present.

This conversation offers a reminder that peace begins with you. Peace is not denial or bypassing. 

This solocast reflects on what giving a TEDx talk taught me about nervous system regulation, self-trust, and choosing love over control. In a medical culture that rewards certainty and discourages vulnerability, visibility is a nervous system challenge. Standing on a red circle requires staying present when every instinct says to hide.

This episode is a real-time, honest exploration of how high-achieving women—especially physicians, leaders, and caregivers—respond to emotionally charged moments of disapproval, and how to begin unwinding the nervous system patterns that often get activated.

I share a recent, raw experience with receiving unexpected criticism that sent my nervous system into full activation, despite all my mindfulness tools, coaching experience, and good intentions. Alongside Dr. Ni-Cheng Liang, we unpack how medical culture, leadership visibility, and deeply ingrained perfectionism contribute to why these moments can feel so threatening and how to meet them with compassion and presence instead of shame and overreaction.

Not believing in ourselves can feel protective, yet it frequently keeps us confined to versions of life that no longer fit. Belief is not naïve optimism. It is a skill and a gift that can be practiced and borrowed when our own feels unsteady.

Medical culture rewards certainty while sidelining imagination, hope, and belief. Imagining what is possible, even without a clear path, is essential for healing, leadership, and sustainable change. Practicing belief does not abandon logic or science. It creates the spaciousness and courage to move toward alignment.

Have you ever considered how a few carefully chosen words could shape your year, your energy, your decisions, and the way you experience life?

In this annual tradition, we share our personal practice of choosing intention words for the year ahead. This isn't about goals or resolutions. It's about choosing how you want to be, move through, and live your life.

In this solo episode, I invite you to step into a new understanding of your patterns without judgment or shame.

Explore the "overs" and the "toxics" - the subtle (and not so subtle) ways our best traits become burdens when they’re overdone.

If you’ve ever felt depleted by the traits that once helped you succeed, or wondered why awareness alone isn’t shifting your patterns, this episode is for you.

As we celebrate FIVE years of the Healing Medicine podcast next week, we reflect on what has sustained us —intention, alignment, and choosing with awareness. 

Consistency rooted in love, not obligation, leads to energy, creativity, and sustainability. Sustainability isn’t about willpower; it’s about choosing with presence and letting alignment lead.

Whether you’re a parent, teacher, or someone passionate about helping children regulate emotions, this conversation offers a fresh, creative way to connect. It’s a powerful reminder that when we pause to breathe, we open the door to presence, empathy, and resilience for children and ourselves.

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.

This episode offers a strengths-based perspective on holiday dynamics while focusing less on what goes wrong and more on the mindful choices that cultivate ease, joy, and connection, even amidst grief, change, and complexity.

This week, Jessie is joined by Helena Rosenthal, MBA, MPH, and Nikki Macdonald, CFP®, financial advisors from Northwestern Mutual who specialize in supporting women and women-led households. 

Money is emotional, relational, and often a mirror of what matters most in life. Awareness of your money “story” creates spaciousness for something more compassionate.

Brilliantly bad ideas aren’t about you. They're structural, impersonal, and often just disconnected from the day-to-day reality of clinical life.

We invite you to laugh with us, reflect, and most importantly, not to take them personally.

What if there isn’t one right way to do things, but many?

Letting go of being “right” opens the door to creativity, flexibility, and even liberation.

Today’s episode offers a mindful and compassionate reframe: seeing our approaches as preferences—shaped by our experiences, values, and identities. 

Peace and joy await when you allow others to make their own decisions, even if you think they are bad decisions. 

It is deeply freeing and surprisingly energizing when you stop trying to fix other people.

Your originality and uniqueness are not liabilities. They are your greatest offering.

This episode is an invitation to uncover and embrace the most radiant, wholehearted version of you.

Why? Conformity has a significant cost.

Your originality and uniqueness are not liabilities. They are your greatest offering.

We invite you to stop waiting for permission or for the system to fix itself, and instead to lead with integrity, clarity, and love.
While we can’t fix the entire system, we can always choose how we show up within it.  

That is where true healing begins.

A mindful, honest, and hopeful exploration of victimhood in medicine—what it is, how it shows up, and why so many of us feel trapped, powerless, and unseen within a deeply flawed system.

Today's episode shares the story of what becomes possible when we choose peace over control. 

Whether you're in perimenopause, menopause, or postmenopause—or supporting someone who is—this episode is full of gentle truths and nourishing permission to live this season with intention, softness, and spaciousness.

Dr. Susan Baumgaertel is our special guest. She is a profoundly thoughtful and creative physician who passionately reframes menopause around nourishment, pleasure, and presence at its center. With decades of experience in internal medicine and a unique blend of architectural and artistic insight, Susan offers a menu of supportive, holistic, and empowering approaches for midlife and beyond.

Susan shares her own personal and professional pivots, the birth of her book The Menopause Menu, and how she is using her voice and wisdom to help women navigate midlife on their own terms—without overwhelm, shame, or shoulds.

Pearls of Wisdom:

• Menopause can be a time of pleasure, choice, and curiosity—not just a list of things to fix. Think of it as a nourishing multi-course "menu", not a checklist.

• Small, thoughtful shifts, what Susan calls “micro-pivots,” can lead to meaningful transformation. You don’t have to throw it all out to create a new path.

• Rather than immediately reaching for a solution, take time to pause, reflect, and listen to your body. Sustainable nourishment comes from alignment, not urgency.

• Food, body image, and health can all be approached with compassion and joy. Sugar can be healing. A walk can be creative. Your body can be art.

• The system may be broken, but your experience doesn’t have to be. Personal time, presence, and honest conversations with yourself can make a profound difference.