Power From Identity, Leading Through Story
A podcast on diversity and amplifying underrepresented stories and voices in medicine. It takes time to grow into our true, authentic selves, and the lessons we learn along the way add to our identities. Medical residents Harjit Kaur, Margaux Miller, and Leen Samha, together with medical students Lina Ghabayen, Hạ Lê, and Mariam Asadian, discuss the challenges of studying and practicing medicine, and how their diverse backgrounds influence their everyday lives in medical school and beyond. Through honest and thought-provoking conversations and narratives, BUNDLE OF HERS continues to grow and learn from their diverse experiences, and each other.
Advocacy work can sometimes be conflated with identity. When you have placed so much time and energy into something, it can be easy for it to consume all of who you are. But you are more than your advocacy work, and your continued drive to create change does not have to be all that you are. In S6E5, Hạ talks to Karishma Shah, MD/PhD candidate at University of Utah School of Medicine, and Victoria Ngo, MS4 at Virginia Commonwealth University, about how their advocacy work within the confines of medical education has both been defined by and impacted their identities.
Shame is an emotional experience when our social bonds are threatened—it is a feeling of distress, even humiliation, and is often caused by the consciousness of wrong. Shame exists in all communities, even medicine, and usually, involves someone else's point of view. In S6E4, Leen, Harjit, and Lina share experiences of shame in their personal and professional lives, and discuss how to process shame in the field of medicine.
Conforming to the system and society's expectations to achieve success and respect is not a new concept. As medical students and residents, there are certain boxes and identities we are expected to fit into. But more often than not, conforming to the status quo further separates us from the communities we hope to take care of. In S6E3, Lina, Hạ, and Leen discuss finding strength and empowerment in their authentic selves, and share stories of restricted identities and how the experiences affect their work in medicine and patient care.
The topic of women's beauty standards has been talked about for centuries. And as women entered the workforce, gendered social control increased regulations on what a woman should wear, how she should do her makeup, and even the hair on her body. For women, hairless and smooth skin has long been a social standard that signifies beauty—more than 99% of US women voluntarily remove some form of body hair. But body hair removal goes much deeper than the surface. In S6E2, Margaux, Leen, and Lina discuss the origins of societal beauty standards, why body hair—or lack of it—has been a symbol of racial progress and superiority, and share their own personal experiences with the expectations of beauty for a woman.
BUNDLE OF HERS returns with conversations and stories of identity. Not what people want you to be, and not what you are supposed to do—what does it mean, and how does it look to be you on your terms and by your identities as you define them? In the season six premiere, we further expand the discussions of what it means to be your true authentic self.
