This week, as I cleaned out a desk and packed away its contents, I found something I had written years ago that I had hoped would go into my book. In it, I shared my personal experiences as an immigrant growing up in Utah and my journey as a holistic psychiatrist, where I explored the tension between living authentically and the desire to belong and fit in. My story reminded me of the poem by Robert Frost:
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
by Robert Frost
Read on for my story. Have a great week!
A Fitting End: My Journey as a Social Enigma
Don't feel that you fit in? Join the club!
I haven't taken a poll of the earth's population, but I believe that it's safe to say that I am the only female, ex-Mormon, Chinese, holistic psychiatrist walking on this planet today. Although I have been associated with many groups—each with its rules and expectations—my journey has been a solitary one, in which I've walked my own path out of necessity. For me, being different has been as natural as breathing, and for much of my life, I've held my breath in an attempt to fit in.
At seven years old I emigrated from Taipei, Taiwan to Salt Lake City, Utah. Overnight, my world of Asian faces, smells, sights, and sounds disappeared, and I found myself in an almost entirely Caucasian, Mormon setting with its own blend of smells, sights, and sounds. Salt Lake City was, and still is, the center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, nicknamed the "Mormon" church.
The Church had a pronounced influence on the social milieu. One bias that affected me at the time was its frequent emphasis on a woman's primary role as a homemaker. Education for women was seen as a vehicle for being better mothers and employment reserved for emergencies when women had to support the family. This perspective, meant to reinforce the happiness and harmony in a home and family, effectively squashed many girls' ambitions other than to marry and raise a family.
In Bountiful, Utah, where I spent my teenage years as one of two minorities in the entire high school (the other was my brother), discussions among the girls during lunch focused on dieting and dating. Since I wasn't dieting, dating, or even Caucasian, I didn't fit it. What was cool was being a cheerleader with a "hunk" holding your pom-poms. What was not cool was being a bookworm and not being invited to Junior Prom—even when one was Junior Class Secretary. Lunchtime became such a painful experience that I began to spend it in the English teacher's classroom.
Mr. England, my English teacher, looked like Elton John and had a wonderful collection of books. I enjoyed reading them. One day, he finally looked up from eating his bag lunch and asked why I was spending my lunch hour in his room. My initial excuses led to honest tears over not fitting in with the girls during lunch. My sadness and embarrassment felt bottomless. Mr. England, in turn, opened up about his disdain for the girls whom I envied, calling them a bunch of airheads who minced around in their high heeled shoes. In fact, he began mimicking them teetering and swaying as they walked. I laughed and felt better.
Outside of school, I struggled with my Chinese parents' culturally biased and carefully cultivated path for me. Having survived a couple of wars, they valued personal security, social respectability, and financial stability. Their worthy goals conflicted with my creative nature and independent streak. My interest in creative writing was indulged by my parents as a hobby, not a career path. When they didn't support my attendance at U.C. Berkeley after I was accepted because of my achievements in creative writing, my parents were surprised by my abrupt decision to be a psychiatrist. I imagine "doctor" to them was synonymous with personal security, social respectability, and financial stability. From then on, they had a persistent and perverse enthusiasm toward my decision to go into medicine and discouraged me from quitting.
My ambition to be a doctor, however ambivalent, was a wart—not a beauty mark—as I went through college as a marriageable Mormon woman. The Church's stance on working mothers was clear. For two years, I had dated a handsome, young return-missionary whom most women would drool over. Wearing his Stetson hat, he looked like the Marlboro man. He mentioned on the phone one day that he would marry me if I wasn't going to be a doctor. He wanted a family with twelve kids and a stay-at-home wife. I prayed about dropping out of college and becoming a beautician to support his career goals. God immediately answered my prayer with a dream that enlightened me and let me know my plans weren't very good. Eventually, we broke up, and I went on to medical school.
In medicine, where I spent the next ten years training to be a child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist, my eventual interest in integrative medicine led me away from the use of pharmaceutical interventions that formed the mainstay of modern psychiatry. By choosing integrative approaches, I became an outcast from mainstream psychiatry. A year later, when I chose to integrate energy medicine and testing into my practice, I became an outcast of "mainstream" integrative medicine, which relied on laboratory testing. During this transitional phase of my practice, I lost all of my conventional practice referrals, but I felt committed to the holistic approach.
My parents' aspirations of personal security, social respectability, and financial stability for me as a doctor was all but negated by my choice to have a solo private practice as a holistic psychiatrist—a singularly unpredictable and unorthodox way to make a living. Any way you look at it, I had failed to fit in, again.
Like Jonathan Livingston Seagull, fitting in remained elusive, but over time, I have found some ways to make my experience useful, if not entirely tolerable. For example, I am able to empathize with people who don't fit in. I connect with and care about them and want to help them to have a chance at happiness. Ironically, not fitting in is such a common experience that my experiences allow me to understand and relate to more people at a deeper level than otherwise possible.
Over time, my holistic practice thrived as patients began to contact me from all over the United States and from other countries to ask for advice. I began earning more than many other mainstream psychiatrists while working fewer hours. Most importantly, my work became a creative outlet that provided enormous, soul-fulfilling satisfaction.
The truth is, I've come to the conclusion that as much as I have yearned to fit in, I must not have really wanted it. If I really wanted to fit in while in high school, I would have stopped reading and worn those high heeled shoes along with the popular girls. If I wanted to fit in as a Mormon homemaker, I would have married Mr. Marlboro and stayed at home with my twelve kids. If I wanted to fit in with other psychiatrists, I would have ignored the information on functional/ orthomolecular and energy medicine. If I wanted to fit in with my Chinese parents' world view and social values, I would have taken a job working for a large company. Finally, if I wanted to fit in, I wouldn't have left the Mormon church and my entire social network in 2017.
Ultimately, I suppose I have needs that go beyond fitting in, and they have to do with being authentic, expressing my creativity, living in integrity, and remaining true to my highest values and potential. Ironically, as I chose paths that led away from personal security, social respectability, and financial stability, life blessed me with these and so much more, far beyond what my parents' could have ever imagined.