As a child, the excitement of family movie nights is a vivid and cherished memory. Rummaging through aisles of VHS tapes with my brother, choosing the weekend’s entertainment, was a ritual that punctuated my childhood. Whether it was weekly or monthly, these movie nights were a comforting constant, a welcome anchor during a time when my parents, both dedicated doctors, were often caught in the demanding currents of establishing a new life in America after relocating from England. The intensive requirements of U.S. medical licensure and training meant their presence at home was often limited.
Our living room transformed into a cozy haven for these cinematic escapes. The sofa bed unfolded, blankets piled high, as we snuggled together, lost in the worlds of “Peter Pan,” “A Little Princess,” or the comedic genius of “Mrs. Doubtfire.” Often, the movie would lull us to sleep, a family cocooned in shared stories and quiet togetherness.
Recently, my mother’s question sparked a poignant reflection: “Do you remember those movie nights?” She explained that these evenings were their way of intentionally creating and reclaiming time with us, a precious counterpoint to the hours demanded by their careers and immigrant journey. Now, celebrating my own journey through motherhood, marking my fourth Mother’s Day, I find myself contemplating how to gift myself and my children that same invaluable time, a space carved out amidst the complexities of life.
My profession as a psychiatrist, spanning both East and West coasts, involves frequent travel. Waiting in an airport security line recently, the TSA agent’s announcement of a machine malfunction rerouting all of us to a new queue led to an unexpected moment of clarity. The man behind me sighed, “I’m glad I got here early. It’s always easier to kill time than resuscitate it.”
His words resonated deeply, echoing my own constant struggle. As both a physician and a mother, “resuscitating time” feels like a perpetual, exhausting endeavor. Like CPR for the clock, it’s physically, mentally, and spiritually draining.
While research indicates that optimal happiness correlates with having two to three hours of daily free time, the reality of life at the intersection of medicine and motherhood often feels like an acute shortage. Across medical fields, as previously noted, physicians routinely dedicate an average of two hours of personal time each night to essential patient care tasks, unpaid and unseen.
Layer onto this the invisible yet weighty mental load of motherhood – the constant orchestration of groceries, ensuring rapidly growing children have appropriately sized shoes, packing nutritious school lunches, managing a calendar overflowing with pediatric appointments, and the frantic pharmacy runs for elusive fever reducers – and the discretionary time outside of direct caregiving evaporates.
This state of perpetual rush and scarcity is defined by sociologists as “time poverty.” Living in this deficit is detrimental to health, increasing vulnerability to stress-related conditions like anxiety and cardiovascular disease. Black women and shift workers, professions I straddle as an emergency psychiatrist, disproportionately bear the burden of “time poverty.”
My coping mechanism has often been leaning into hyper-productivity, attempting to maximize every minute. Juggling patient care and parenting demands a constant mental switch, multitasking at every turn. However, the lesson learned, often the hard way, is that this approach is counterproductive. This desperate attempt to reclaim lost time paradoxically intensifies stress and deprives my brain of essential rest and respite from constant problem-solving.
A more sustainable and nurturing approach lies in intentionally doing less with the time available. Daisy Dowling’s book, “Workparent: The Complete Guide to Succeeding on the Job, Staying True to Yourself, and Raising Happy Kids,” read a few years ago, provided the encouragement to embrace a non-traditional career path involving cross-country travel while nurturing a family life.
Revisiting Dowling’s insights recently, seeking strategies to optimize work-life balance as a physician-mother, her analysis of daily transitions resonated deeply. Dowling highlights that working mothers navigate over 500 transitions annually between home and work, transitions that significantly impact well-being.
“These could be 500 chances to feel torn in two, to appear harried and gruff to your child and colleagues, to run late, to forget your phone at work, to misplace your notes from that VC, and to be left anguished wondering if this working-parent thing is inherently painful or just plain impossible,” she writes. The antidote lies in building in mindful transitions – brief pauses filled with music or meditation – to mentally prepare for engagement in these distinct yet intertwined spheres of life. For me, this translates to intentionally gifting myself moments of quiet transition between my last patient and dedicated playtime with my daughters.
These transition moments have become deeply valued as a form of mental replenishment. These pauses are crucial for refilling my own cup, mitigating physician and motherhood burnout. By reclaiming small pockets of discretionary time, these mindful moments enhance my overall sense of well-being. In my role as a reproductive and perinatal psychiatrist in private practice, I actively encourage my patients, many of whom are mothers themselves, to adopt similar self-care strategies.
Working from home allows for an afternoon and evening clinic schedule punctuated by a precious break to prepare my daughters for bed. After bath time rituals, my husband and I gather with the girls, nestled together, reading their favorite bedtime stories. These moments, the four of us intertwined in cozy closeness, evoke echoes of my own childhood, those magical movie nights with my parents. As my daughters grow, I wonder if this tradition, these moments of intentionally reclaimed time, will become cherished memories for them as well.
Mother’s Day is a dedicated opportunity to express gratitude for the maternal figures in our lives. It’s a holiday that encourages us to acknowledge the profound sacrifices mothers make in nurturing their families. My hope for physician-mothers, particularly those navigating the challenges of time poverty, is to prioritize small acts of self-investment. These moments of self-care are not selfish indulgences but essential investments, enabling us to sustain our dedication to our patients and our devotion to our children. This Mother’s Day, perhaps the most meaningful gift we, as mothers, can give ourselves – and that loved ones can offer – is the gift of time: time for rest, time for reflection, and time for those cherished moments that weave the fabric of family memories. Let’s embrace doing less, and in turn, gain so much more.
About the Author
Jennifer Adaeze Okwerekwu
Former Columnist
Jennifer Adaeze Okwerekwu is a psychiatrist and was a columnist for STAT.
Tags
Mental Health
Physicians
