Happy Valentine’s Day, friend!

Today, instead of writing about romantic love, I want to write a love letter to something that has held me for years.

Veterinary medicine.

To the profession that broke me open and built me stronger.
To the calling that asked more of me than I knew I had.
To the work that still makes my heart race when the ER doors swing open.

I love you. 

A Realistic Love Letter to Our Profession

I love the way you demand my presence.
I love the way you require my courage.
I love the way you remind me, again and again, that life is fragile and sacred and wildly unpredictable. To believe that "no news is good news"

I love the flow with the tech who anticipates my next move without a word.
I love the client who says, “Thank you for trying.”
I love the 3 a.m. surgeries where time dissolves and it’s just hands, breath, and focus.

Psychologists call that state “flow”, when skill meets challenge and the world falls away. Research shows that flow states are strongly linked to fulfillment and meaning (Csikszentmihalyi, Flow). Emergency medicine offers that experience more often than almost any other field.

And I love that.

But real love isn’t blind.

So here’s the honest part.

The nights you made me question my worth are tough.
I don’t love the way hustle culture creates an exhaustion was a badge of honor.
I don’t love how easy it was to equate productivity with value.

For years, I thought loving this profession meant sacrificing for it. Staying late. Pushing harder. Being everything to everyone.

But neuroscience tells a different story. Chronic stress without recovery rewires the brain toward vigilance and depletion (McEwen, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences). Burnout isn’t weakness. It’s a predictable biological response to sustained pressure without restoration.

And so I’ve learned something important.

Loving veterinary medicine does not mean abandoning myself for it.

It means choosing integrity.
It means setting boundaries.
It means building teams that regulate instead of react.
It means living in alignment so this career is sustainable.

Real love, the sustainable kind, requires reciprocity.

And I see that shift happening.

I see veterinarians talking about mental health without shame.
I see leaders learning emotional intelligence instead of defaulting to martyrdom.
I see women reclaiming their voices and their time.
I see doctors choosing aligned careers instead of proving their worth through suffering.

That is evolution.

So today, on Valentine’s Day, here’s my promise to this profession:

I will love you without losing myself in you.
I will lead with heart and science.
I will teach nervous system regulation as fiercely as I teach medicine.
I will honor the humans behind the scrubs.

Because when the nervous system is regulated, connected, and aligned, clinicians show up better. Studies consistently show that physicians who feel supported and emotionally healthy deliver higher-quality care and have fewer errors (West et al., The Lancet).

Taking care of ourselves is not selfish. It is clinical excellence.

Veterinary medicine, you have shaped me.
You have humbled me.
You have expanded me.

And I still choose you.

But I choose you differently now.
From clarity instead of chaos.
From abundance instead of depletion.
From self-devotion instead of self-abandonment.

To every veterinarian reading this, if you’ve ever felt both deep love and deep exhaustion in the same breath, you are not alone.

That tension doesn’t mean you chose wrong.
It means you care.

And caring is sacred.

Today, may you remember why you started.
May you forgive yourself for the days you felt not enough.
May you feel proud of the lives you’ve touched.
May you love this profession in a way that loves you back.

 🩵Happy Valentine’s Day 🩵