By the Sea: A Conversation on Change, Love, and Medicine

Plymouth. Two birds watching the sea — just a few steps from where I spoke with a young father about change, love, and what it means to listen to life. This moment stayed with me. It’s where attentive medicine begins: in presence, in rhythm, in letting go of fear.

I want to share something I’ve been thinking about deeply — about change, love, and how medicine relates to both.

Recently, I had a beautiful conversation by the sea with a young father, a thoughtful man who invited me into a profound discussion about change. We sat near the water, watching the waves shift and flow — always moving, never fixed.

I listened attentively as he said, “All men want is for everything to stay the same. Women are the ones always asking us to change, to embrace change, to see it.” I wondered if this had something to do with the cycles we experience — the changes in sensitivity around our periods, or around the time they stop during perimenopause. To me, there was something beyond his words.

I shared my experience of pregnancy — how my body changed because of the man who made it change via the union of our bodies. Those little feet pushing inside me were part of “us.” I was no longer “the woman” I had identified myself with before. Pregnancy challenged my belief in identity and invited a different kind of relationship with myself and others — one built on tenderness, vulnerability, and a new kind of love that wasn’t about pleasure or pleasing, but about caring deeply.

This tenderness, this softness, this vulnerability — this, it seems to me, is love’s energy. It is gentle, yet powerful. It is strong, yet without fear.

And this led me to think about medicine.

In conventional medicine, there is often a fear of change — a desire to fix the body, to return it to a previous state. Fixing is often equated with keeping alive, staying pain-free, maintaining performance. But this “fixing” is rooted in fear — the fear of death, of pain, of not being as we once were.

Is there wisdom in a medicine that is afraid? Can medicine truly be wise if it normalizes fear and fixity?

What if medicine could be different — what if it could be attentive to change, curious about it, present to it?

Naturopathy provided me with the most accurate definition of illness I have ever come across: it is seen as a loss or diminution of vital energy, a loss of vitality. Vitality is the life force that sustains health and balance. What if, instead of fearing change, we asked, “Where has my vitality gone? What took it away?”

I wonder if vital energy and love aren’t really the same thing. Loving what I do in medicine — now that I have crafted attentive medicine as a practice a practice that arises from the most honest part of me — has given me a different kind of energy, a different kind of vitality. It is at once gentle and strong, calm and powerful, wise and playful. There is no fear in it. It has been a long journey for me to allow myself to love who I truly am — a journey where so many played an immense role: my children, my old and new friends, and the many little conversations held with strangers and non-strangers — like this one, by the sea.

Change is not the enemy — it is life itself.

So I invite you to reflect: Where in your life, your health, your relationships are you longing for something to stay fixed? And where might you instead welcome change with curiosity and love? And also: How could medicine embrace change enough to be coherent in exploring the very change patients wish to see?

By the sea, watching the waves, we were reminded that life is always moving — always changing — and in that movement is a profound kind of vitality and love waiting to be embraced.

I share more about this on my website — including how attentive medicine came to be, and why I believe healing cannot always be imposed from the outside.
→ attentivemedicine.org