Have Your Cake and Live It Too

Ever have a deconstructed cupcake? It was our favorite dessert in QSine, the specialty restaurant aboard our cruise on the Celebrity Eclipse. Plain cupcakes were served with chocolate, vanilla, and caramel icing along with four types of sprinkles. While we all had the same ingredients, we each created our own (almost) perfect concoction.

And, during a long and relaxing sea day, I started reading “The 5 People You Meet in Heaven,” Mitch Albom’s fictional story about Eddie, an amusement park maintenance man who dies and goes to heaven.  When Eddie arrives in the afterlife, he encounters five strangers, but then he realizes how each one of them had significantly influenced his life on earth as they taught him about sacrifice, forgiveness, love, and interconnectedness.

Who knows what happens when we transcend from this existence to the next. But, why wait for heaven? There are individuals who have stepped into your life and forever shaped who you are and how you think. They are the heavenly people you have met on earth.  

Rich

Prom (1979)

At 16, I left home for the first time to attend an 8-week summer camp. During the day, I was part of a small group of students selected to work in a biological warfare laboratory in Fort Detrick, Maryland. At night, we integrated with a larger group of kids enjoying traditional summer camp activities. Too shy to participate,  I sat by myself writing letters to my parents. Tired of coaxing me to get involved, all the counselors decided to leave me alone---- except Rich who thought I needed some individual attention. During his time off, he took me swimming and running and taught me to dance—all firsts for me and the first time I realized that love exists.  While Rich and I may have had a different future had our lives intersected at another time, he is still my dear friend 33 years later.

Stephen

Dr. Kopits with his Little People

My first surgery rotation in med school was with Dr. Stephen Kopits,  a pediatric orthopedic surgeon specializing in the treatment of dwarfs.  Voted “Baltimore’s Best Doctor” I was most excited about scrubbing in with him during his famous 12-hour surgeries where he untwisted, de-coiled and re-built the skeletons of his very small patients. But, it wasn’t his technical excellence in the operating room that made an indelible mark on my career. It was the relationship he had with his patients.

Most of his “little people,” as they prefer to be called, ranged in height from 24 to 36 inches. At 6’2”, Kopits towered over them, even while sitting in a chair. So, in clinic, he’d sit on the floor, legs crossed Indian style,  and made direct eye contact with his patients as he spent hours answering questions, drying their tears, and reassuring them that they could live a full and productive life.  “Archondoula, always remember” he said in his thick Hungarian accent, “you have to love your patients.”  I never saw Dr. Kopits after my rotation but when I learned that he died of a brain tumor in 2002, I sobbed.  He taught me what it really means to be physician.

Jeannine

Jeannine holding one of her many awards

For the last 14 years, Jeannine has been a boss, a colleague, a friend, and a boss again—and, through it all….a  coach. As a senior executive in UnitedHealth Group, she’s was in the position to lobby for opportunities on my behalf and helped advance my career.  But, more importantly, she continually gave me constructive feedback. She expected data when I took a strong stand on issues and she demanded facts when I whined.  She has made me aware of passive-aggressive body-language, counselled me on event-appropriate clothing,  and helped me soften some edges –all with love and objectivity and without fear of consequence. Jeannine taught me how to demand accountability from myself and to inspire it in others. 

David

David, is the man I married and continue to love dearly. Among his many qualities, the true gift he’s given me is his encouragement to take calculated risks and pursue my dreams. He hasn’t painted me into a traditional role as a wife, a mother, or a doctor. Even when he has pushed too hard…it’s been because he believes that I have the potential to reach a bit farther. David believed in me before I believed in myself.

There are others. Without them, I may have never recognized that I didn’t have to be “one of the boys” to be a successful woman in corporate America.  I may have never figured out how to have happy, well-adjusted kids while being a working mother.  And, I may have never learned that true friendship requires brutal honesty.

Love, compassion, self-confidence, accountability, sexuality, balance, friendship.

This is my story. But, how did you get there? The themes are universal---but the details matter and are uniquely yours.

Take the time to plot your own emotional growth on a graph. Who are the people responsible for the inflection points? What were the defining moments? We all learn  and grow at different times, from different people, under different circumstances.

Just like the cupcake, reconstructing your life--piece by piece--helps you appreciate the whole. And, one last thing...it’s also an opportunity to identify what might be missing. In the future,  I think I’ll order cream cheese frosting….along with a heaping tablespoon of patience.

Create Health, 

Archelle