Welcome to my blog! I’m a woman. I’m a Mom. I’m a wife. I’m a mixed animal practice owner in a rural town. As my business has grown, I’ve struggled to learn and implement business strategies, personal life time, family time and wife time. As the epidemic with depression and suicide in my profession has been revealed, dialogs have opened and I have contemplated what it means to me personally and professionally. I have decided that I have things to say! I am also seeking a community that enriches my life and supports me.
For many years, I have been putting one foot in front of the other, much like I did in school, with the blind faith that I will come to a moment of clarity and all of a sudden, I’ll just realize that my goal has materialized. It wasn’t all that long ago that I realized that I needed goals and projects to help maintain my enthusiasm in a job that can routinely work me 70 hours a week. These goals can be fluid, they can change, but they are the deadlines and the drive forward for me. Knowledge is the propulsion for me. If I don’t have purpose in these things, my life swells up to swallow me and I start worrying.
With the help of some consulting services, I have found a community of like-minded people whose shared experiences are grounding and freeing for me. I have experiences to share, things to say, places to go. I think there are others out there like me that are searching for intellectual stimulation and inspiration for their lives.
I started out like most of us did, enthralled and surrounded by animals. My grandfather enabled me. My aunt shaped me. My mother tolerated me. I grew up on a working farm in southwest Virginia. Idyllic setting. We had beef cattle, horses, sheep, pigs, chickens, a turkey or two, some stuck-up geese and some elusive guinea fowl. I ended up with the outdoor dog and bunch of farm cats. I had a pony. I adored the sheep barn and probably far more early than I should have been allowed, I sat on an upturned 55 gal drum and pulled shots up when we were working cattle. I suppose because they knew that they didn’t have to watch me as closely if I was stranded on a barrel in the middle of the action. During shearing, I was paid $8/day to pack wool. When I was old enough, I would take off on adventures with my pony.
Everyone knew my path before I did.
I loved school, the smell of pencils, the excitement of a well-organized new notebook. I liked math. I had one amazing Algerbra teacher and one kick-ass scary Calculus teacher. I had a riveting, encouraging Biology teacher. One that was a hell of a lot better than my college one. I have drive. I wouldn’t call it ambition necessarily. Just a bulldog tenacity not to give up. Even I knew by the time I applied for veterinary college. I knew that the smart thing was to have a Plan B, because so many people get rejected from vet school, but I just KNEW.
Twenty-one years of school later….
Going back to that no-ambition thing. I was happy to be a general practitioner, honest. I took my first job, with a go-get-‘em, all-for-one-one-for-all attitude. I loved being a large animal vet. I got married. I had my first kid. And then, bam. It’s darned hard to find non-family childcare for a 7:30 to 6:30 shift, it was time to go home.
My husband and I knew each other since high school. We didn’t date until the last weeks of vet school. I adore him. He’s BADASS. My greatest champion. My one-and-only. We’ve been together 11 years. We have two awesome boys. He has shaped me in more positive ways than I can count. I learned not to be serious. I learned to stand up for myself. I have someone who finally understands ALL of me (or at least accepts me!).
Post-moving home…. I expected to do what I had been doing, what our county had been missing- large animal work. Boy, was I wrong about the needs of the county, and my skill set. The community support was amazing. I re-learned a lot of small animal medicine. I referred a lot. I worked. A lot.
I loved being my own boss. I loved my employees. I loved my clients. By the time I was pregnant with my second child I was tired. I found an associate and I really became a boss. My little strip-mall site kept growing and growing. You couldn’t find a spot in the parking lot. I was crawling over people to see clients. I had to move. I built big. Ten years of Veterinary Economics magazine guided me. My gut guided me. I ended up with 6000 square feet of beauty! A big red barn. On my own terms… And I also ended up with 20 employees and NO prior training or professional support. And, remember that I was still Mom to two little boys and trying hard to be wife. And ANYONE else than just Dr. Anne.
Understandably, I went through a crisis, precipitated by a family issue. Imagine that. Big ole bad me was still haunted by some unresolved issues from when my Dad died of cancer twenty years before. I learned that I was right to be hurt, but that I was responsible for my own feelings and my reaction to them. Sounds intuitive right? Pretty tough cookies to swallow for a professional school educated woman.
The difference that saved me? A management company and a great office manager. Executives can only effectively manage 5 people. Five. Despite working in high school and college I had never held a management position. The eye was too much on the goal. It needed to be. I was paranoid with all of the stories about employees embezzling money. Of the stories of mismanaged money. Of paying $3K in credit card interest annually instead of that money being in my pocket. I simply couldn’t be an effective doctor, therefore making money, and do everything by myself too. But how was I supposed to monitor and KNOW if the business was thriving. Simple and intuitive answer you say? Probably, but implementation in the midst of chaos was more than intimidating. My husband was appalled when I spent the money on the management company. But they were breaking it down for me, into bite sized, personal pieces, and they were giving me tiny, doable baby deadlines. Also, they were telling me how awesome I was.
I am awesome. I don’t mean that in an insufferable way, I mean that if I don’t have a positive stream of consciousness then it’s easy to be sucked into the daily doubts, drama and sometimes overwhelming sense of responsibility of my job. It is my job as a leader, a business owner, a doctor, a mom and a wife to stay as healthy and positive as I can be. I have my dark days for sure. I have the crises that make me question why I torture myself with this heavy of a workload when someone’s neglect threatens to topple everything.
In short, I have felt moved, to share my experience. To create a sounding board. Welcome to my blog.