Women’s History Month 2023

March 3, 2023 | By: Bridget McCandless MD, Council Member At-Large

I’m so lucky to have fantastic women in my life. I hope you are too.

My dad was hugely influential on my science brain, but my mom grounded my heart. She was so good to people. She knew what was important and what wasn’t. We always joked that mom was the “close enough” kind of mom. When we heard “close enough” when she was making dinner, it was time to crash a friend’s house for dinner. Now that I’m an adult, I get it. What she was saying was do your best, do what you can, and people will recognize your efforts and your heart. Maybe the polish was never that important. That “close enough” philosophy also came to mean self-forgiveness. Something we don’t teach and something we may not practice enough.

At the beginning of women’s history month, I want to celebrate the women who lift up others. Those changemakers who go about making their own path, as crooked and circuitous and unpredictable as it always is. As a kid, I thought I would live a straight-line life because I had it all planned out. Thank goodness the universe did not adhere to my plan.  I was lucky enough to know that I wanted to practice medicine. But what I didn’t know was what kind of colleagues, what kind of medicine, and most importantly the people that I wanted to work for and with—my patients. I also didn’t know that to serve my patients well, would take more skills and experiences than I could imagine.

I am fortunate that my patients were kind enough to teach me what I needed to know. They taught me to suspend my idea of the right way to do things, my snap judgements, my rush to problem solving. They and others have helped me see my blind spots and prejudices but I have so much more to learn. I learned to listen more with my heart, to appreciate strengths not just deficits, and to understand that we are so deeply shaped by those who hurt us and those who believe in us. My patients believed in me. They gave me permission to change my path to incorporate Public Policy work. They knew it would make the “rules” better in the long run even though I had to leave direct patient care to do it.

As Mr. Rogers says, focus on the helpers. Those helpers who get kids ready for school, do the grocery shopping, feed their families, earn paychecks, lead organizations, cheer for others and set bright pathways. Those who challenge us to think about who might be left on the sidelines, less frequently invited or purposely excluded. Look for the helpers. Learn from them.

The women whom I celebrate this month are willing to do things that make them afraid and that may have no certain outcome. They support each other, come to the table for hard conversations and believe in each other. Women are poised to lead the change for the better. Find those women. Be those women. Raise those women.