322. Is It Too Late to Change Careers as a Doctor? How Retreats and Coaching Helped Dr. Karen Fromhold Start a Fellowship at 58

Dr. Jessie Mahoney talks with family medicine physician Dr. Karen Fromhold, ten days into her hospice and palliative medicine fellowship.
Karen had a good enough job. One she had loved and was a great fit for a while. She wasn't burned out. She simply had a dream she'd carried for over 20 years. 

Our conversation explores what it took to voice her dream, trust it, and finally move toward it and the role retreats and coaching played at each step along the way.

In This Episode:

• Why leaving a job you love can be harder than leaving one you don't

• How retreat spaces create room for clarity to surface

• The difference between moving away from something and moving toward something

• Why Karen waited for the right opportunity instead of rushing

• What it means to give yourself grace as a beginner again

How the Retreat Space Made Room for This Decision

Karen attended four retreats over four years, each one meeting her at a different point in the decision. At her first retreat, the dream was voiced out loud for the first time — in what Karen calls a "fragile, baby idea" state. Coaching conversations that followed helped the idea take shape. By her second retreat, she'd begun pursuing an alternate mid-career fellowship path.

Jessie offers a framework for why this kept happening in the retreat space specifically: stepping out of daily environment and into relaxation activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which is often why clarity that's been hidden or hard to access at home surfaces in that container of safety.

Karen also describes going back through her retreat journals before quitting her job and noticing the same themes recur and deepen each time she returned — what Jessie calls "peeling a different layer of the same onion."

Pearls of Wisdom

• Once you make the decision, you make it the right decision.

• We don't want to run away from something — we want to move towards something.

• A busy life makes it easy to leave a dream on the shelf.

• If not now, when?

Reflection Questions

• Where have you made do with "good" instead of pursuing "great"?

• What dream have you left on the shelf, telling yourself it's too late?

• What would it look like to move toward something instead of just away from what isn't working?

Ways to work with Jessie: 1:1 Coaching: www.jessiemahoneymd.com
CME Wellness Retreats: www.jessiemahoneymd.com/retreats
Free Live-Stream Mindful Yoga: www.jessiemahoneymd.com/yoga
Jessie's Blog: www.jessiemahoneymd.com/jessies-blog
Podcast Page: www.jessiemahoneymd.com/mindful-healers-podcast

Nothing shared in the Healing Medicine Podcast is medical advice. The Healing Medicine Podcast was formerly known as the Mindful Healers Podcast.