Part 2: What it means to scramble —
When you can't make a decision, life makes one for you!
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If you didn’t read my last post on 🍤 Shrimp Chips, go back and check it out! It’s part of how I grew to know and understand myself.

As I was talking about before, it’s often hard to hear your own voice through all the noise.

From middle school onward through a lot of my 20s, I had trouble hearing my own voice.

- I was indecisive.

- I would delay until the last moment.

- I’d over-analyze and do way too much research (there is a balance.)

- I’d poll people for their opinions.

- I’d buy things and return them.

Gosh, it’s exhausting to think about now.

I was so afraid of making the wrong choice, a not-good-enough one.

But when you can’t make a decision, life has a way of making one for you.

That’s what happened to me when I was graduating from medical school. There’s a weird contract medical students sign called “the match.” You apply for different programs, you don’t know which one you’ll get into, but whatever one it is, you’re obligated to go. It’s sorted out based on some archaic algorithm with input from the student and residency program preferences or rankings.

So, the thing is, I didn’t apply to many places. I didn’t know where I wanted to go. I didn’t even know the places I applied to very well. And, apparently, they didn’t know me either.

Because, I ended up being one of the handful of medical students to enter “the scramble.” And, yes, that is exactly what it feels like.

If you don’t “match,” you “scramble” for whatever spots are leftover.
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😭 I cried and cried and cried.
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I was about to get married and now we had no idea where we were going to live.

It was kind of exciting, too.

I was given a list of residency programs available. And then I had minutes — 😲 minutes! — to decide which three-year program to go to before they were all taken up.

There was no time for indecision and over-thinking things. I had to listen to my soul 💜. To be honest with you, I think the crying helped, because I was breathing, not the little kind but really big sobbing breaths.

My fiancé was with me. My heart ❤️ said to go to NYC because I’d always wanted to live there. He was up for it because as a bonus, it would be easy for him to transfer for his job.

And so that’s how I ended up going to an amazing pediatrics program with a well-known Level 1 trauma ER at 🏥 Albert Einstein in the Bronx.

I would never have guessed that the Bronx would be such a place of 🦋 transformation for me.

I stumbled upon a 🧘 yoga center down the street from the hospital. There, I learned to breathe and hear myself.

The breath is that intersection of the mind, body, and spirit. It’s so hard for your mind to hear your spirit unless you let it into your body with your breath.

We are born with the breath, inhaling; and we move on from this life with the breath, exhaling.

💞 Whenever you need to hear your voice, make sure you’re breathing, gently, filling your body with that nourishing air and spirit.

And that’s just the start. So you to go from there?

How do you learn to TRUST your voice and EXPRESS it?

I’ll tell you more tomorrow. I'm jumping up and down because I've got a BIG announcement to make. (No, I'm not pregnant again.)

Lots of love,
Dr. Dijamco

P.S. – You’re a special crowd to me because this is the first time I’ve ever shared about the scramble!!!