Exploring Identity Through Trauma, Failure, and Disability
Our identities are shaped by countless experiences throughout our lives—our accomplishments, relationships, communities, passions, failures, health conditions, and unexpected challenges.
Some experiences fit neatly into the story we imagined for ourselves.
Others completely disrupt it.
For me, some of the most significant changes in how I understood my identity occurred after failing USMLE Step 1, taking a Leave of Absence from medical school, confronting previously undiagnosed health conditions, and questioning whether I would ever become a physician.
These experiences forced me to confront an uncomfortable question:
Who am I when the identities I have worked so hard to build suddenly feel uncertain?
The Emotional Impact of Failure
One of the most significant failures in my life was failing USMLE Step 1.
For anyone outside of medicine, Step 1 is one of the major board examinations medical students take as part of their progression through medical training.
When I received my failing score, it felt like my life crumbled.
I remember going to the beach along Lake Michigan in Chicago with my husband and collapsing onto the ground.
Until that point, I hadn't really cried.
I felt almost dissociated from what had happened.
Then suddenly, everything came out.
I felt like my life was over.
I felt as though all of the years I had spent working toward becoming a physician had suddenly been ripped away from me because of one examination.
And eventually, I would fail Step 1 a second time.
That experience forced me to confront something I had never really considered before:
Q: Does Failure Have to Become Part of Your Identity?
At first, failure felt inseparable from who I was.
I didn't simply think:
"I failed an exam."
I thought:
"I am a failure."
Those are two VERY different statements.
Over time, I began learning how important it was to separate something that happened to me from the entirety of who I was.
Yes, I failed.
Yes, that failure had consequences.
Yes, it changed the trajectory of my medical education.
But it did not have to determine the rest of my life.
I could try again.
I could learn.
I could ask for help.
And I could still become a physician.
Your Life Story Includes Both Accomplishments and Failures
Our life stories are made up of both accomplishments and disappointments.
Yet we often build our identities primarily around the things we are proud of.
Medical student.
Graduate.
Physician.
Researcher.
Leader.
Partner.
Parent.
Athlete.
Artist.
But what happens when something disrupts one of those identities?
What happens when you fail a class?
Don't get the job?
Receive a difficult diagnosis?
Need to take time away from school?
Experience financial instability?
Develop a disability?
Our path may change, but a changed path does not automatically make us less valuable.
Sometimes the experiences we never planned become the ones that change us the most.
Why Do We Hide Our Struggles?
Failure is incredibly stigmatized.
People often hide their struggles not only because they feel ashamed, but because they fear that telling the truth will change how other people see them.
And the reality is:
It might.
Sharing your struggles may change how people see you.
It may even change how YOU see yourself.
But that change does not necessarily have to be negative.
Opening up about my failures ultimately connected me with people I never would have known were struggling with the exact same things.
Taking a Leave of Absence From Medical School
Between my second and third years of medical school, I took a Leave of Absence.
That year became one of the most transformative periods of my life.
I was trying to separate my pain, mistakes, diagnoses, and academic failures from my identity.
And almost immediately, new challenges continued to appear.
At times, I felt like I was running down a mountain while a giant boulder chased me.
I would trip over one obstacle, get back up, and then immediately face another.
During that period, I experienced:
Financial instability
Physical health challenges
Mental health challenges
Academic difficulties
Loss of student loan funding
Employment challenges
Housing insecurity
The possibility that I might not be able to continue medical school
And the need to prepare for Step 1 again
At times, I genuinely wondered whether the life I had spent years building was disappearing.
Discovering That I Was Not Alone
When I began sharing that I had taken a Leave of Absence, something unexpected happened.
Other medical students started telling me:
"Me too."
Initially, I learned that approximately five classmates were also taking time away from medical school.
Then that number continued to grow.
Eventually, we created a group chat for students who were currently taking or had previously taken an LOA.
We had different reasons for stepping away from school.
Some struggled academically.
Some had health problems.
Some needed additional time for board examinations.
Some were dealing with personal or family circumstances.
But we all shared something important:
We had each believed we were struggling alone.
The early conversations contained enormous amounts of shame, sadness, anger, anxiety, and fear.
But over time, that group became a community of support and hope.
The experience taught me that sometimes the stigma surrounding a struggle can feel almost as isolating as the struggle itself.
Medical Culture and the Pressure to Appear Strong
Medicine does not always make it easy to talk openly about vulnerability.
Medical training has historically emphasized objectivity, endurance, and emotional control.
We are frequently taught—directly or indirectly—that the "good doctor" remains calm, stoic, and unaffected.
There is certainly value in being able to remain composed during difficult clinical situations.
But that does not mean physicians stop being human.
Doctors experience:
Pain
Anxiety
Depression
Chronic illness
Disability
Grief
Trauma
Burnout
Failure
Fear
Yet we rarely hear physicians openly discussing these experiences.
For a long time, I worried that talking about my own health conditions would make people question whether I was capable of becoming a physician.
Discovering My Own Disabilities and Health Conditions
During medical school, I received diagnoses that helped explain symptoms I had experienced for years.
Instead of immediately feeling relieved, part of me worried about what those diagnoses meant for my identity.
Could I simultaneously be:
A physician AND a patient?
A medical student AND someone with a disability?
A healthcare professional AND someone who sometimes needed accommodations?
Initially, those identities felt contradictory.
Then I began finding physicians and other healthcare professionals who openly advocated around conditions they themselves experienced.
Seeing those people changed something for me.
Once again, I realized:
I was not alone.
I began to understand disability and chronic illness differently.
Instead of seeing them solely as weaknesses or limitations, I began recognizing how living with these experiences shaped my compassion, advocacy, understanding of healthcare, and connection with patients.
Your Diagnosis Is Not Your Entire Identity
Accepting a condition as part of your identity does NOT mean allowing it to become your entire identity.
I am not just a physician.
I am not just a patient.
I am not just someone with chronic health conditions.
I am not just someone who failed Step 1.
And I am also not simply the collection of my accomplishments.
Our identities are made up of many different pieces.
Our experiences are parts of our story.
They are not the entire story.
Q: Who Are You When Your Main Identity Disappears?
During my Leave of Absence, I struggled enormously with this question.
For years, one of my strongest identities had been:
Medical student.
Suddenly, I wasn't attending medical school every day.
I wasn't rotating through hospitals.
I wasn't sitting in lectures with my classmates.
Instead, I was trying to find employment and determine how I was going to financially survive my time away from school.
I applied to more than 50 jobs.
I applied for positions in:
Tutoring
Nannying
Caregiving
Fitness instruction
Social work
Medical assisting
Community programs
And other jobs similar to work I had done before medical school.
Some employers never responded.
Some rejected me.
Some told me I was overqualified.
Others could not pay enough for me to cover the expenses I had suddenly lost when my student loans disappeared.
Repeated rejection began affecting the way I saw myself.
I started questioning whether the skills I had spent years developing were actually valuable.
Rebuilding My Identity Through Work and Service
Eventually, I found opportunities that allowed me to reconnect with parts of myself outside of medicine.
I became a fitness instructor.
I earned my Zumba certification.
I taught dance and movement classes.
At first, I even offered Zoom classes and hoped people might Venmo me a few dollars that I could use toward groceries or dinner.
Eventually, I also worked with organizations bringing fitness and wellness programming to communities that might not otherwise be able to afford expensive gym memberships.
We worked with:
Schools
Community organizations
YMCA programs
Older adult communities
And other local organizations
Suddenly, different parts of my identity began coming together.
I wasn't JUST someone taking time off from medical school.
I was also:
A teacher
A fitness instructor
A mentor
A community advocate
A dancer
A healthcare professional
A student of trauma
And someone learning how to turn difficult experiences into something meaningful.
Turning My Interest in Trauma Into Advocacy
During my Leave of Absence, I spent a significant amount of time reading about trauma.
I became fascinated by how trauma affects both physical and mental health.
Eventually, I began incorporating trauma-informed concepts into movement and wellness programs.
One of the programs I taught involved high school students through After School Matters in Chicago.
During one activity, I asked a group of teenage girls to write different parts of their identities on a large whiteboard.
Initially, they listed the categories people often think about first:
Gender.
Race.
Grade level.
But as the conversation continued, they began adding:
Sexuality
Mental health
Family roles
Hobbies
Relationships
Interests
Responsibilities
And other pieces of themselves
Watching them explore their identities reminded me how much more complicated identity really is.
We are rarely just one thing.
The Boxes We Put Ourselves Into
At that point, I started questioning my own identity again.
Was I a fitness instructor?
A mentor?
A medical student?
A social media advocate?
A patient?
A researcher?
A future psychiatrist?
Trying to force myself into one box suddenly felt incredibly restrictive.
Those boxes began falling apart.
And eventually, I realized:
Maybe they were supposed to.
We often want a simple answer to the question:
"Who are you?"
But perhaps a healthy identity is not one perfectly defined box.
Perhaps it is the ability to recognize that many different experiences and roles can exist within us simultaneously.
Writing Became Part of My Resilience
During my Leave of Absence, writing and journaling became important coping strategies.
Sometimes I kept those thoughts private.
Other times I shared them publicly through blog posts and social media.
Slowly, my identity began shifting.
Instead of seeing myself only as:
A washout.
A failure.
Someone who had fallen behind.
I began seeing myself as:
An advocate.
A writer.
A mentor.
And eventually, even an activist.
I realized that my words had power.
My experience as a medical student gave me a platform, and I could use that platform to talk about things medical trainees were often afraid to discuss.
Failure Became Something I Could Talk About
Eventually, residency interviewers asked me about my Step 1 failures.
That was expected.
One program director asked me a particularly important question:
How did you go from failing Step 1 twice to later performing well on Step 2?
The answer was not simply:
"I studied harder."
During my Leave of Absence, I had been dealing with enormous social, financial, physical, emotional, and academic challenges.
Eventually, I addressed those barriers one by one.
When I returned to medical school:
My tuition was covered again.
My living expenses were more stable.
I had reliable access to food.
I better understood my health conditions.
I knew how much sleep I needed.
I understood how I learned.
I better understood what support I needed.
I knew that I needed accommodations.
And I had developed more effective strategies for studying.
Once those barriers were addressed, my academic performance improved.
That realization fundamentally changed how I understood my previous failures.
Q: What Does Failure Actually Tell Us?
Failure can mean many things.
Sometimes we were not prepared.
Sometimes our strategy did not work.
Sometimes circumstances outside of academics made success significantly harder.
Sometimes our health was suffering.
Sometimes we needed support that we did not know existed.
And sometimes life simply did not go according to plan.
Failure does not mean we should ignore responsibility or create excuses.
Reflection requires acknowledging what happened honestly.
But honesty also means acknowledging the entire context.
The goal is not to pretend failure never happened.
It is to understand it.
Learn from it.
Adapt.
And keep moving.
Failure Exists Outside of Academics
Failure is not limited to grades.
It can look like:
Not getting accepted into a program
Not getting the job
Losing a relationship
Receiving a difficult diagnosis
Having a business fail
Needing to change careers
Taking longer than expected to reach a goal
Realizing that something you worked toward is no longer what you want
Life will contain painful experiences.
Those experiences WILL affect us.
And that is OK.
The goal is not to move through life completely untouched by adversity.
The goal is to learn how to incorporate these experiences into our story without allowing them to completely define us.
Turning Failure Into Resilience
I used to think resilience meant being strong enough that difficult experiences didn't affect you.
I no longer believe that.
Resilience is not pretending something didn't hurt.
It is not forcing yourself to be positive.
And it is not immediately "bouncing back."
Sometimes resilience looks like:
Crying.
Taking time away.
Asking for help.
Going to therapy.
Changing your plan.
Trying again.
Acknowledging that something hurt you.
Finding community.
Learning something about yourself.
And continuing forward anyway.
My Identity Changed
During my Leave of Absence, I experienced a significant identity crisis.
Was I still a medical student?
Was I a fitness instructor?
A mentor?
An advocate?
Someone with disabilities?
Someone who failed?
Eventually, I realized that I was all of those things—and many more.
Over time, my identity shifted from someone who felt like a failure to someone who could openly say:
Yes, I failed.
And I kept going.
That failure is part of my story.
It is not the ending.
Sharing Struggles Can Build Community
One of the most meaningful lessons I have learned is that sharing our struggles can help other people feel less alone.
Social media often shows us everyone's highlight reel.
Graduations.
Weddings.
New jobs.
Publications.
Awards.
Vacations.
Perfect scores.
Matches.
Promotions.
But real life also includes:
Failure.
Illness.
Debt.
Fear.
Relationship difficulties.
Academic challenges.
Mental health struggles.
Career uncertainty.
Grief.
And unexpected changes.
I want to share both.
Not because every personal struggle needs to become public.
Everyone deserves privacy.
But because when people DO choose to share difficult experiences, it can create communities where others finally realize:
I am not the only one.
Q: How Can Trauma and Failure Shape Your Identity?
Trauma, illness, and failure inevitably affect how we understand ourselves.
But we still have agency in how we integrate those experiences into our identity.
We can allow failure to become:
"I am a failure."
Or eventually learn to say:
"I experienced failure."
We can allow illness to become:
"I am broken."
Or understand:
"My health condition is one part of my life."
We can allow a changed path to mean:
"My future is ruined."
Or recognize:
"My future may look different than I originally imagined."
That distinction matters.
Final Thoughts
There is a quote I love that asks:
How can we understand light if we have never experienced darkness?
I don't believe we need suffering in order to become better people.
And I would never romanticize trauma or failure.
Some experiences are simply painful.
But when those experiences happen, we can choose what we do with them afterward.
For me, sharing my struggles helped develop an identity rooted in resilience, advocacy, and connection.
Failure did not disappear from my story.
Neither did my health conditions.
Neither did the difficult parts of my Leave of Absence.
Instead, I learned how to make room for those experiences alongside everything else that makes me who I am.
Life will rarely go exactly according to plan.
That does not mean the story is over.
Sometimes it simply means the story changed.
And sometimes, looking back, we realize that the person we became while navigating that unexpected path is someone we never could have imagined at the beginning.
If anything in this post resonated with you, I would love to hear about your experience.
What challenges, failures, illnesses, or unexpected changes have shaped your identity?
I blog and podcast about life as both a patient and a physician, including the parts of medicine and life that don't always make it into the highlight reel.
Follow the "Life as a Patient-Doctor" Podcast for more conversations about disability, medicine, mental health, failure, resilience, and identity.
Related Resources
Taking a Leave of Absence From Medical School
Overcoming USMLE Step 1 Failures
Lessons Learned From Failing USMLE Step 1
Guide to Applying for Testing Accommodations
Disability Disclosure in Medical School and Residency Applications