130. Why Women Need Boundaries Now More Than Ever With Dr. Sasha Shillcutt

Letting women know you don't have to ask permission if you want to change or pivot your career, your fte, the way you show up in medicine, no one can take from you what you've done. I hope I'm rewriting the rules by helping women be brave enough to live the life that is best for them.

Are you a woman in medicine feeling overwhelmed and disconnected from the personal fulfillment that you desire? You're in the right place. Join doctors Joanne and Erin as they rewrite the rules for women in medicine. Let's begin. I have been waiting for today for a long time. We have a very special guest and when Erin and I started creating this podcast, she was at the top of my list of the people I wanted to interview. So help me welcome Dr. Sasha Shilcutt. She's a physician, entrepreneur, career keynote speaker, two time bestselling author, and she's the founder and CEO of Brave Enough, a company that leads courses and conferences for women by teaching them boundaries and how to take control of their time. And she's one of my dearest friends and I've been to many of her events, done her programs. She's been my coach and I can say out loud, I love you, Sasha. Welcome.

Thank you for having me. I love you too. You are very, very special to me. And you're kind of one of those people that like I always say you're like a charger. Like you know those people you're around, you just that recharge you. You are definitely that person. Not just to me, but I know to so many women that you recharge. So thank you for having me.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I've heard so much about Sasha over the years that I've known Joanne and it's a pleasure for me to be able to get to meet you via Internet and get to know you better because I think you're going to have so many amazing, inspirational things for our listeners. So thanks so much for being here with us.

Well, thanks. I've heard wonderful things about you. So it's nice to finally get to hear your voice and see your face.

Yes, I am so happy here that two of my important people were all in the same screen. So very excited. And Sasha, I know that there's so many things that we can talk about and we might need to schedule part two and part three, but because of what we've been talking about and everything that's going on, I would like for us to focus on, on things of kind of self agency and wanted to ask you why do you believe so many women invest in others, particularly women physicians, but hesitate to invest in themselves?

I think it's pretty simple that our society really promotes women and it's exemplifies women who become martyrs and who take on the livelihood of other people and who are servant leaders, who are givers, who are community minded women. We really elevate those women and we look up to those women. And there's nothing wrong with being a servant to others and there's nothing wrong with acts of service. But when it comes at the expense of our own health and well being, then we start feeling either like we're too weak to keep going and something must be wrong with us or we have shame or guilt when we start to say no. And having this whole thought of self agency is very black and white to many women. Like they see themselves as either being in this camp of a woman who I'm here to serve others and I love building community and I just want to give, give, give, give. And I'm just the mom that does everything for my kids and I'm the spouse that does everything for my partner. I'm the doctor who does everything for my patients. Or I have to be in this camp over here of self agency where I'm selfish, where I'm unapproachable, where I put myself first. And the truth of the matter is that self agency is very selfless if we think about it. But it's so counterintuitive and we tend to put ourselves in black and white because we can understand that. And so what I mean by that is when we say, you know, I'm actually really tired and I'm going to set boundaries this weekend around where I spend my energy and time because I do want to be a better doctor on Monday because I do want to be a mom that shows up this weekend for my family or I do want to have a great date with my spouse on Saturday night. So I'm going to peel back these commitments and focus on self care. That's really selfless. Like that is a very selfless thing to do. But I don't think most women understand or get the messaging that putting yourself first is vital to actually being able to help others.

That's a really important distinction of self agency is not binary. It's not, you're either all in serving, that's it. Or the extreme of. And it's sad that sometimes we see other women advocating for themselves and, and, and we have to pay attention to what are some of our first Thoughts of, oh, they must be this and this and that, and us saying, no, I love what you're saying. It's actually selfless is how we, we give back. It's not either or. And I want to ask you a follow up question. What do you believe is the cost of not doing this, of not having that self agency and not investing in yourself?

I think I see so many women that come to me for coaching or come to my programs and they've kind of fall apart because they are, there's an unraveling and it's just because they're, they've actually given themselves a little space to breathe. And when they do a little self reflection and they start looking inward, they realize that at some point in the last decade or 15 years or 5 years or whatever span, I've lost who I am. You know, we hear women say that a lot, like, I don't know who I am anymore. If you gave me a day off and told me I had to do something for myself, I wouldn't know how to spend that time. I would finally, I would feel more comfortable cleaning out the pantry or, you know, going through my closet or doing something for someone else because I don't want to spend time by myself. And all it is, is a, is a red flag that the cost of continually serving others, doing others, doing everything that everyone expects of us is a loss of self and a loss of identity. And we wake up someday and we go, I'm totally unhappy or I'm totally burned out, or I'm completely frazzled, or we have a life event that may wake us up. You know, we may lose someone close to us, we may go through a divorce, we may lose our job. Something wakes us up and we go, who am I? Like, what happened to her? What happened to the person who enjoyed a hobby or used to go and enjoy time with friends or like to exercise or like to be outside in nature? I don't even know who that person is anymore. So I think there's a huge cost.

And I want to point out I loved how you added a why when you say, I want to be the best for my patients on Monday, therefore I need to rest because I was on call last night. Or I want to be fully present for my kids, therefore I need to say no to this other obligation. And maybe that's just a reminder. Look for those whys that can start to give you some of that agency. Beautifully said. And with that, I would love to know, because you're talking about awareness. So first, people need to have awareness. And then once they become aware, oh, I'm lost, who am I? How did I end up in this life that I'm not super happy with? What are some of the steps a woman can take today? To stop waiting for permission and, and start owning her, her decisions?

It's interesting because I think most of us are, you know, we are taught as young girls to be polite, to follow the rules, wait and raise our hands and to ask for permission. We literally are taught that as young girls to wait until someone gives you permission. You know, you can't get up in elementary school and go to the bathroom without asking permission to leave. And we win our gold stars by being obedient. And then we kind of just end up in this, on this treadmill where we're doing all the things the next thing and the next thing we're climbing the ladder, we're doing all the, we're having kids, you know, because someone told us we should be having kids. Now we're doing the next thing and all of a sudden we're like, wait, I don't really like where I am, but I guess I just need to keep going until someone tells me I do something else. And we don't recognize that at some point men have, are never asked for permission. They don't ask for permission to. I mean, very rarely do men wait for someone to point them in a direction of change or growth or pivot, but we do. And we then can go through a grieving problem, a grief process. That's what I went through when I realized that I wasted years of my life, literally years waiting for someone to give me permission from, to do what I really wanted to do. And I thought, oh my gosh, I've just been sitting here waiting for someone to take notice of me, waiting for someone to say, oh yeah, go do this. And I could have done it this whole time. And so the cost is huge if we are waiting for that permission. And many times that's why I love that what you two are doing. I love the coaching programs. I love women getting coached because often it's a coach or it's a colleague or another woman that maybe we don't even know, but we follow them on social media and we hear for the first time, you don't need permission. You are your own, you have self agency. A lot of times I'm sure you get clients like this too, where women are stuck in a toxic environment and they're miserable. And I say, can you leave? And they look at me like, well, I Guess I could leave. Like they don't even realize that they have the agency to leave a toxic environment relationship or toxic environment, toxic boss. So often it's just a little coaching question or someone else telling them, well, you can walk out the door or you can go get another job or you can do this. And then we go, oh, I guess I can. Like I, I realize like, oh. But then often it's followed by a process of grief for, for realizing that maybe there was some time that was wasted.

That makes me think of the way I talk about it is that we're programmed to be in one lane and stay in that lane and you cannot even bear to think of anything else. And I remember when I started wanting to be a coach that I was asked why you're already a physician, why would you want to do anything else?

And a psychiatrist who has all the answers, why would you need to be a coach?

Right? And, and then, and my answer was because there's so much more to do. I can help so many more people from, from a standpoint of even though I love what I do as a psychiatrist, as a coach, but I remember being in, in your groups and the conversations, many conversations that we've had and how we shared with each other and in the groups too, of people going part time, even if it's just a little bit, and then how that gives us permission. And I remember that some of my big decisions in the institution at four for a few more weeks, in hearing you saying, I'm making this big decision and hearing what you're saying, hearing your grief and hearing the fear and still taking action to move forward and then be like, I can try that. Or my commitment to you of I am not going to check my email after hours and I still sometimes kind of click on the icon automatically. I'm like, no, it's after hours. I have it wired. I still do every now and then, but it's super rare. And it's those decisions that we're such a good way to put it. The way Erin asked you of the giving ourselves permission to get out of our lane to still do amazing things. It's not that. And even if it's that you want to retire early, like, that's beautiful as well and doing other things. And again, thank you. Because it's. I know that you've been an example for, for many women in, in, you know, in, in your voice has given us permission as well.

And I would love to point out sometimes, even when you're your own boss, one of my Clients who owns their own practice. Her schedule wasn't working out for her because she didn't have the right length of appointments and she was running behind. And I said, who do you need to ask to change your schedule? And it was this big aha. Like, oh, me? Can I change my schedule? Yeah, I'm the boss. Of course I can. And so even though she owned her own practice, she was still basing her schedule on practices that, you know, didn't match what. How she did her work. And so sometimes that aha is like, oh, I do have agency. I only need to ask myself for that permission. And yet sometimes it takes that outside perspective from. From a mentor, from a coach to sometimes point out the obvious. And they're like, oh, that was easy. Of course I can do that. I can do that tomorrow. So anyway, it's been fun to. To help other women recognize that they sometimes are keeping themselves trapped in that cage, even though the door is wide open and they can walk out at any time.

You know, I made a big decision this last July 1st to stop taking call. I still work clinically and I do cardiac anesthesia and cardiac call. And we've never had an anesthesiologist at the university that I work at where you don't take call. If you are on the cardiac team, you take call. It's kind of an unwritten rule. You know how every environment, every culture has unwritten rules. Right. And for the last probably two years, I've been really focusing a lot on my work. And most, a lot of times I'm doing evening webinars, weekend things. I just want to be with my family. And I've just had this huge, like, wait, I just don't want to do call anymore. But I wasn't sure, like, is this. Am I going to have to give up doing any cardiac anesthesia and just do general anesthesia if I don't take call? And also knowing the. That I was going to be the first one. And were people going to judge me? Were people going to shame me? Were other my colleagues and partners going to be upset with me? And were they going to think I wasn't a good enough anesthesiologist? You know, all the things. And the reality is we have it. We have great compensation for taking call. So it's. There's a lot of people that want to take more call because you get paid more. And so when I first proposed this to the group, I was so tachycardic. Ladies, like, here I am. I am someone who writes books on Having self agency. And I was stressed, tachycardic, sweating, because I felt like I was going to disappoint everyone in that room. And when I said I would like all of your permission, like I would like to not take call and I would like permission not to take call and if the group says no, then I'll take call, but obviously we'll take a pay cut and I won't be taking call, just work during the day hours. And it was like a blip. It was like nothing. It was like, oh yeah, sure, like, like it was like all this narrative I had in my head about being judged and disappointing people. I mean maybe there were one or two people who probably thought it wasn't a great idea, but the vast majority of people were like, yeah, I'll take your call. I want to make more money, you make less money. Sure. And I, I say that because like even now, even being a full professor, even having done call for 25 years, like it was still a hard decision for me because I did not want to disappoint people and be judged for being less than. And one of the things that really pushed me to do this, take this role and change my role was one of my good friends as a trauma surgeon. And she said, how long have you been taking call? And I said, I don't know, 20 or 25 years or something. And she said, so is there going to be a reward for you if you do it for like 22, 27 years or like what's enough? Like what's the rule for you? And I realized how silly I had created all these expectations of myself. And I am so happy not taking call now. I actually love what I'm doing now and I love this role and I love how I'm working clinically. So I think that even if we are someone who knows this language, we have to give ourselves grace that it is still hard to act with self agency as a woman Even in 2025.

I just had a coaching call with somebody that I've known for decades earlier this week and she said her, one of her bosses said, we need you to stay in your job. Like basically you are so, so helpful to our organization. We need you to stay, take your vacation time. And she's like, I have this other time I want to take and I haven't put in for it because I already just finished vacation and I have these other vacations coming up. And I said to her, your boss just said schedule the vacation. We want you to be sustainable. And it was so Hard for her. I said, you need to write the day, the time and the location when you're going to put that request in for this other vacation you're taking in the future. And even with permission from her organization encouraging her to take the time off, they're like, other people take time off. You can do it too. It's so uncomfortable. And you're like. And she thought the same thing. I have to put it in this request. What are they going to think of me? I just came back and you've.

You.

It's part of your contract that you get your vacation time. Use it. And this is coming from somebody who maxed out when I had 200 hours of vacation time and still wouldn't take my vacation time before, I was working with a coach regularly. Those were in the years past. So I get. Was so painful to watch. And so I'm going to have her watch this recording when it comes out. Because so many messages have come. We the line in the book from the white coats courageous hearts. We interviewed Michael HIRSCH in episode 131. And one of the lines that I circled in his book was about that taking time off without the guilt. And isn't that asking for what we need without worrying about what people think? So powerful.

And I want to point out, because, Sasha, you gave us like a success formula in this big decision of having the awareness. Because I know this, knowing you, I know that this wasn't an overnight thing, that you were like, oh, I don't want to take call anymore. Let me tell them. That would have been nice. But having the awareness of, wait, where am I in my life right now? What's important? And, you know, with everything that's happened and all this changes and transitions, and then asking ourselves the question, what do I want and what do I need? And then having that courage. I know that you talk about this a lot of saying it out loud and then it's like, we drop it. And then we're like, okay, hold. See what. What happens? And how beautiful that the outcome was positive for you. And now you can say, wow, this is opening. What are my possibilities in my life now? And because again, we're programmed, like you said earlier, you just have to do it the way we've always done it. And just because no one has done it before doesn't mean that it's not possible. All those. These are all important things in this success formula of advocating again for ourselves and for what we need. And then knowing you, what a beautiful example. I know that. Right. Like you and I, we, like, we talk a lot about this, of the, one of the values of being a role model in, for other women physicians and other physicians in general. And then the younger population love it. And congratulations.

Well, thank you. And you know, it's interesting because I was even afraid to talk about it publicly like this because I don't want women to think like, oh, she's talking to us on a podcast, but she doesn't know what it's really like to work hard and like, she gets to set her own hours or she never is at the hospital at three in the morning. I mean, I realized I was not doing something, not following what I really wanted based on what some random person was going to think about me. And yet when I did it and I shared, and I've shared on a couple public spaces, I can't tell you how many women have come up to me and said, oh my gosh, you've just given me permission to ask for this thing. I want Thursday afternoons in my clinic to be blocked off. Or I have always wanted to do this, but I've been too afraid to ask because nobody's ever done it in my department. And you just gave me permission. And so I think it's really important that we're vulnerable enough to share when we cut back doing things or when we give ourselves permission to do things differently so that we can show others that a different way. Because most people in medicine would rather have you working 80% or taking or working during the day and not working at night than not working at all. You know, and it would be very different if I had gone to my group and said, I don't want to take call, but I still want to make the same amount of money. Like, that's not at all what I said. That would have been totally unfair. But when you realize, like, okay, not everybody is. Most people are not even gonna. They're not even thinking about what you want. They're so consumed with their own life and just trying to get through the day. But we need people to stay in medicine. We. We need people to stay in healthcare, and we need to have flexible work for them and for people to do that, because we're far better accommodating the people's schedules than we are saying, no, no, no, you can't go part time, you can't go 80% or you can't have Monday afternoons off. And then they leave medicine or they go somewhere else and they just leave our institution. So we know from a lot of data that's coming out that the most flexible work environments and the institutions that are able to be flexible and say, oh, you want, you're young, you just graduated, you have medical school debt and loans and you want to make a bunch of money and take a bunch of call. We're going to let you take this person's call who is 30 years out or 20 years, doesn't want to take call. We're going to figure out a way to pay you for taking that call and make it equitable and be flexible.

That makes me think of when I went part time a couple of years ago and I had one of, I don't remember, someone in leadership scheduled a meeting with me to explain to me how my salary was going to go down and if I was okay with that. And I was like, thank you so much for doing math for me. Yes, these are the decisions that we make of at this time of our lives based on what's important, based on our priorities. We make decisions on what's important. And in this stage of my life, which I imagine it sounds like you're thinking about it the same way of well being balance, family time, rest time becomes more important than the amount in our paycheck. Not to say that that's not important, but we are willing to make those decisions and maybe 10 years ago it would have been different. Right. Like you said, when, when we're younger we're building our names and we want to do more things, we get busier and then later on we that's not as important or maybe it is and it's again another distinction of think of what's important for you right now. I always talk about that of what are you prioritizing based on your values in this season of your life. And again, so I do want to ask you something that we've all mentioned, but I want to point it out of the guilt that can come from these decisions or investing in ourselves from your experience and the all the women that you've coached along the years.

So we know that a lot of most women, the vast majority learn how to take care of themselves. So learn self care from watching our maternal figure. And if you had a maternal figure that had really good boundaries and was and she was able to kind of model that for you, then you're more likely to have good boundaries and take care of yourself. If you maybe had a mother who or maternal figure that was very selfless, did everything for everyone, she may have been an amazing mom to have, but how she modeled that for you could be a limiting factor on how much guilt you have when you find yourself doing it. And that was definitely me. My mom is a stay at home, was a stay at home mom. She was the only stay at home mom on our block, which meant she was everyone's mom. So, so she taught everybody how to swim, she babysat everyone. She, you know, she was like the mom on the block because she was home during the day and everyone loved my mom. My friends, our, you know, the neighbor kids were always, everybody congregated at our house and she kind of just was like the super mom. So while it was amazing to grow up with a mom like that, the one thing I rarely saw my mom do was prioritize her own self care or do things for herself. And in fact I share this often. I talk about it in my books. I remember my mom almost every day saying, I just want to take a walk, I just want to go take a walk. Can you guys just be good so I can take a walk? Can you watch your little sister so I can take a walk? Will you do this so I can take a walk? Because she loves walking. And which is funny because that's one of the things I love to do now. But I remember even as a child being like, just take a walk. Like just stop doing the dishes and go take a walk or why are you not doing what you want to do every day? And yet I found myself, you know, having four kids in seven years and being a full time physician and being completely unhealthy, overweight, you know, not fit, not exercising, eating terrible eat, not going days without eating and then, you know, eating fast food on my way home from a 24 hour call, not sleeping. I mean, I can't even imagine what my cortisol levels were back then. And thinking like I'm failing as a mom because my mom did everything and I can barely even make it till dinner time and I'm not at the school events and it took me a long time. I remember when I learned that you learned self care and how to care for yourself from your maternal figure. I just started crying because I thought, oh my gosh, I have become my mom. Like I'm the mom that never exercises or takes time for herself or puts boundaries or says no to my kids. I have to go take a nap. Or says I'm going to actually hire someone to come in and watch my kids so I can take a nap. Post call. I never did that for years. And then when I started realizing how unhealthy it was because my mom wasn't a Cardiac anesthesiologist, you know, so I had all these really unrealistic expectations, but I did not have it modeled for me how to take care of myself. And so now I'm very aware for my daughter that I need to set those examples. Like, I need to have my. My daughter seeing me say, I've been up for 24 hours. I'm not going to make it to your cheer event tonight. I'm going to rest so that this weekend I can actually be a mom. And having. Or having her hear me say, you guys are gonna be on your own for dinner because I'm going for a walk. Like, you know, and just really modeling that for her.

That. That's so. And I have met your mom, and she's a sweetheart. And I can imagine, right. Like, when that's what's wired in your brain from such a young age, it's impossible to not feel that we're not doing enough or that we're not. We're not a good enough mom, we're not a good enough doctor, we're not a good enough wife, and all the things that we start beating ourselves with. And I'm glad that at some point you had that awareness of, wait a minute again, what do I want? What do I need? And can I ask for it? And I know we've had conversations of, let me hire a neighborhood kid to come wrap presents and. Or clean or do the dishes so that I can have that walk or time with my husband. And, you know, and jokes about the cricket and stuff like that, that you're like, yeah, not me. I'm not. I'll be present for my kids in many ways. But we will. We will not be doing the crafts. Simple things like that, that. We're joking now, but in the moment. Sometimes we feel guilty. Like, I remember when my kids were younger of me wanting to volunteer and I'm there, like, at 10pm Cutting stars and pumpkins for their Halloween party at school. Cool. And you had the option to pay. You could either pay, like, to contribute to the crafts, or you could do the crafts. And I be, no, no, no. I am going to do the crafts. And I'm there like, I'm a physician. And it was, I don't know, like, 25 bucks. It wasn't like. It was $500. I'm like, and I'm here. Nothing wrong if you love that. But. And actually, I do like it, but not at 10pm when I'm already so tired and I just put the kids to. To bed. But we beat ourselves up. And it's again, these are the conversations to have because guilt is in the driver's seat with us. So many places that we go, right? And, and, and we have to remind ourselves of, yes, guilt, I hear you, but I don't want to listen. I don't want to believe all those things that you're telling me. And that the reframing that we learn of saying I am a good mom because of X, Y and Z, I am a good doctor because ABC and really have these conversations to, you know, and it's okay to make fun of ourselves every now and then as long as we're moving forward and doing all the things well.

And I want to as I listen to this. And I had not heard that about the role modeling that you have from your mom or your maternal figure. And yet I came to this realization several years ago after I'd been working with my coach, me and my sisters. There's three of us girls were all cut of the same cloth. Even though I'm the only physician, we all work hard. We're the last ones at our work. We're always volunteering. We're always involved in so many activities. And we always criticized our brother. You know, he was single for a long time, then he got married. They have no kids. And every weekend he's off mountain biking and skiing and doing, you know, water skiing, doing all these activities. And you know, we, we chalked it up to he was the lazy one or, oh, he's, you know, his way is, is broken. And then as I analyzed it, I thought, wait a minute, he knows if he burns out of all this activity and gets his physical energy out and does things he loves on the weekend, then he can go back and be a great attorney during the work week, whereas we're just working, you know, till the wee hours of the night, taking on way too many responsibilities. And I was like, oh, he's the one that's got it figured out. But we were like our mom, she, you know, was a very hard worker and role modeled that self sacrifice and not doing any self care. And so now I'm like, okay, what is my brother doing? How can I take a page out of his book and say, how can we infuse that into more of my lives instead of judging and criticizing because I didn't even understand what would that even be like to go on a bike ride, let alone spend the entire weekend, mountain bike, mountain biking? You know, it was just a foreign concept. And again, who are your role models? And maybe if you're. If that's all you have is your role models, then finding other women who are doing things differently. And I love that all three of us are role modeling different to say it doesn't have to keep being that way. And so to start, for people who might not be as far down the road as we are all being physician coaches, what's one boundary most women in medicine need to set but they avoid?

You know, there's. It's hard for me to pick one, but the. I would say if I had to pick one, it would be routine, solitude with yourself every day, Even if it's 15 minutes and no phone, like no, no distractions, no interruptions. I think having a self assessment every day is so important. It's like taking your vitals. It takes 30 seconds, but it can save your life. And I tell women all the time, if I could give you one boundary, it's find a time every day that you can escape the noise, escape the chaos, put down your phone, leave your phone in the other room and spend it with yourself. And just ask yourself, how are you feeling? How are you doing? Are you nervous? Are you anxious? Are you tachycardic? Are you exhausted? Are you emotional? Are you on the verge of tears? Are you tired? Are you stressed about something tomorrow or still ruminating about something from yesterday? I cannot really go a day or two without doing that. And I used to just be afraid to do that because I didn't want to uncover what was kind of going on inside when I was just burning them in night oil and just trying to survive motherhood and being a physician. And now I crave it like I crave being alone for even 15, 30 minutes with my notebook just jotting down some thoughts, jotting down what's bothering me, thinking about things. Sometimes I'll just get a glass of hot tea and listen to some music for 15 minutes. Sometimes a lot of times I'm outside walking. It is something I teach all my clients. And if you come to anything, Joanne will tell you I. I'm. It's like on repeat, because I really think it could. It's such preventative care. Like it's the basis of prevention, of burning out or developing a substance abuse habit or developing really negative self talk. It just lets you be aware of how you're doing and giving yourself just space to breathe and think for a few minutes. So that's one boundary that if I could give to every woman on the planet, I would, I would teach her that.

And I have to say that I have that in my routine that I've wired because of. Right. Like what I've learned from you as well, and something that I have been able to then also remind other women physicians the importance and that it's okay if it's. If you're unsteady in the silence, it's okay. Just don't fill it up with work. Just make sure maybe, like you said, use the time to read a little bit or even journal. There's so many things to. To that can help us get grounded that it's not just meditating under the tree. Right. So. And talking about that, and I'm like, so excited because I'm going to see you in the. At the time of this recording when it gets published. Brave Enough conference is around the corner and it happens every year. So this is good information all year long. So please, please tell us a little bit about it.

So the Brave Enough Conference, we're having our ninth annual one this September, the last weekend in September, and we have it every year. This year it's in Scottsdale at the Omni Monte Lucia, which is a beautiful resort, gorgeous spa, right at the base of Camelback. And the conference is really unique. It's really about the whole person. I want you as a woman just to show up. I don't want you to think you have to be anything or be at a certain level or dress a certain way, or you can come in sweatpants and messy bun and a hot mess like, and your life falling apart, or you can come and feel like, you know, everything's going good, but I just want a girls weekend. And then what happens at this conference is really magical because all. Every year I love reading the evaluations because I'll think, oh, I'm going to get this really good speaker and she's going to just blow it out of the water. But what I find every year is these women say this, this speaker, she spoke right to my heart. And then the next speaker evaluation say, this speaker, she said this thing that changed the trajectory of my career. And then the next speaker's evaluation say, oh, my gosh, this speaker talked about this thing. And I'm forever changed, you know, and so there's something for everyone. And then in the afternoons, I have you be off because I want you to enjoy the resort. It's not one of these CME events that you go home more tired. I honestly want you to rest, connect with other women, laugh at the pool, order a drink, have a cabana, go to the spa, hike Camelback, whatever brings you joy. Take a Nap in your room, you know, So I want women to rest and connect and grow. And that's kind of the whole mantra of the weekend. It's an amazing weekend. And if you've never come, it's not too late. You can go to brave enough.com and find become brave enough.com. it's everywhere. The conference is kind of all over Google if you just search for it.

And I am so looking forward to it. And I have to add, because I've been to it a few years and I have the opportunity to be in a panel and read some discussion tables, and I will this year as well. So looking forward to that as well. But I want to say that there's something also in the energy of the women who attend. Like, it's, again, I almost have goosebumps right now because it's. Everyone is in this positive attitude and the, the, you know, the hanging out is super fun as well. And it's community, and we have super serious conversations. And then the next conversation, if it's about shoes and let's go shopping, and it's just like, it's so neat. Erin and I talk so much about the power of community and right in, in medicine, that's difficult. And we have to take advantage of these opportunities because it's not impossible to make friends at any age in life. And it's in with other physicians and we share stories and our vulnerabilities and just, you know, really good quality time. So I, I have to say I'm looking forward to all of it and to give you a big hug.

I cannot wait to see you. And, and I know it is intimidating to go to an all women's conference. I, I've learned this after putting on so many events. If you were going to go to a psychiatry conference, you wouldn't think, oh, I can't go to this conference. I don't know anybody. Right? You would just say, oh, this really looks interesting. Or like, Aaron, you're going to this trauma conference because you want to hear the speakers. It's not like you're going because you only are going because you're going to meet people there. But women's conferences are a little different. And I hear all the time women will say, I want to come to your conference so bad, but I don't know anybody. And I want to encourage you. Just come. If you don't know anybody, you will leave with a lot of new friends. And if you're an introvert, there's lots of extroverts that will take you in. But if you also are like, I'm an introvert, I just want to sit over here and listen and watch. We will also let you do that. So there's something for everyone. And I want to make sure people.

Know that they will be.

It's an inclusive environment. I don't want people to think that they can't only come if they know somebody that's going to.

And I can't wait to go. I'll have to go maybe in 2026, because I will be out of the country this year. Otherwise I would be sure to be there. We like to hear from our guests, Sasha, about how you're rewriting the rules for women physicians.

I think I want to be. I want to leave my mark in this, in our community by being a woman who practices what she preaches and being someone who shares when I mess up and shares maybe when I have over committed and I'm lacking boundaries or when I'm struggling with burnout. I just want to be a woman who is very honest and real and changing the rules by, you know, letting women know. You don't have to ask permission if you want to change or pivot your career, your fte, the way you show up in medicine, if you it, no one can take from you what you've done. So if you're at a position where you're like, gosh, I've always done this thing. I'm really good at it. But now I look over here and I think, I want to do this. No one's going to take from you what you've accomplished. And I hope I'm rewriting the rules by helping women be brave enough to live the life that is best for them.

I love that. And you talked about how individuals can find your brave enough conference. And how about if they just want to follow you on social media or find your website, where else can they find you?

You can find me@becembraveenough.com everywhere.

Excellent. Okay, well, I've learned so much, taken so many notes. And with that, we would love for you to stay tuned because our next episode is coming right up.

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