Leading From the Body You Live In
We all arrive in healthcare through different doors.
Some through calling.
Some through necessity.
Some, like me — through experiences that leave an imprint in every cell.
I entered healthcare as a patient’s daughter.
As a mother fighting for answers.
As a woman learning — again and again — that systems built for care often forget the body attached to the chart.
Over years of serving inside those systems — hospice, palliative care, home health — I learned the hard truth:
Presence is not baked into the process.
You have to fight for it.
And you have to choose it — every breath in-between.
For every chart, there is a child.
For every billing code, a mother.
For every authorization delay, a body waiting to heal.
And far too often — for every care provider — a nervous system stretched past capacity, serving from depletion.
I know the pattern well.
I lived it through late nights at my desk, pushing paperwork that should never have come between a patient and their care.
I lived it through leadership roles that rewarded overextension and punished pause.
I lived it through a body collapse that would eventually force me to lead differently — or not at all.
Here’s what I know now:
Presence is the promotion.
Your nervous system is your leadership asset — not your liability.
And leadership that honors the body first → serves others best.
When I re-entered healthcare after my own injuries, I brought a different seat:
→ I will not sacrifice my body for the sake of the system.
→ I will not serve from survival.
→ I will model leadership that allows space for both the first cry and the last call — and every breath in-between.
Presence-first leadership means holding the full arc of care — human to human.
It means building systems where providers can regulate — so patients can too.
And it means teaching the next wave of leaders to lead from body-alignment → not burnout.
This is not a theory for me.
It is the practice I live — every meeting, every project, every breath I take.
Because the bodies we serve — and the bodies we lead with — deserve no less.
This piece is part of The Edit — presence-first leadership narratives from The Co.
