Ep. 105 - Why Healthcare Leaders Must Do the "Heart" Work with Lindse Murphy

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I am Meredith Hirsch, and this is Working Healthcare. This episode is really special for me. I got to interview a friend of mine. Her name is Lindsay Murphy, and she is the ultimate girls girl.

I'm a girls girl, but I wasn't always a girls girl. Changed for me about 10 years ago. And Lindsay talks about how her upbringing, which was definitely tumultuous, impacted how she lives her life, what she does, her career choices. And she talks about how she is creating a difference for executive women and leadership.

Stay tuned. Lindsay Murphy, welcome to Working Healthcare. Hi, Meredith. Thank you for having me.

I am I am thrilled to be here. I love South Florida. When you asked any chance to come to South Florida, I was like, absolutely so proud, happy to be here. I love that so many people are coming into the studio for in-person podcast interviews now.

And I know that we have to schedule it far out, but I'm really glad to have you here. You are really a new entrant into my life this year. Yes. Because we did a presentation together, and I was so honored to be able to do that in the previous episode with Anna Sobkiv.

She is at JP Morgan. And between you and her, I have the opportunity to speak of JP Morgan. So thank you. It was a delight.

You for me, I think that day at that event, right? You know, I was vulnerable and I reached out to you and said, hey, I don't know you, but your name has come up in my world. I'm a believer of, you know, who's supposed to be here. You said yes.

Even during difficult times for you, you showed up. There was no reason for you to, you know, you just reminded me of the good in the world, somebody who's a lifter, somebody who I aspire to be. And I was just so grateful. And then for you to offer this opportunity for me to share my story, um, it's why would I say no to anything this amazing?

So let's talk about your story because you were really involved in the world of mental health. And so what got you involved in that aspect of healthcare? Why healthcare, Lindsay? Yes.

You know, when I was a little girl, I'm I'm I was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. And when I was growing up, there was a lot of dysfunction. I would at the time I called it, I didn't know even what dysfunction was, but it just was chaos. It was a lot of turmoil, it was a lot of moving and just, you know, just a lot of stressful kind of situations.

And I was raised by a single mother who had her share of just what what mothers who are single mothers, I'm a, you know, my father was never in my life. The first thing that I remember about when my, you know, you always want to hear like, how was I born? How was I planned? Was I, and the thing that came up that, you know, I I still remember to this day was, you know, the first thing your your dad said to your mom when she said, I'm pregnant at 23, you know, and they were, they had met and they were not in a real serious relationship was, I don't want to be a father.

And, you know, it took him five or six years for him to meet his wife, who, you know, is now his wife today. And he has two beautiful children who are probably eight to 10 years younger than me. But that stuck with me, right? And that kind of set a precedence for at the time I didn't appreciate what my mom was going through.

I didn't have respect for it and have grace for it because I was in the chaos. So my life, my central nervous system was always in fight or flight mode. And I'll just say that, you know, for the first part of my story, it was not until I was a teenager that I recognized that what my mother was experiencing was a severe mental illness. I moved around a lot growing up.

I moved from state to state to state. Yeah. You sort of stayed in the same area in Kentucky. Why were you forced to move all of the time?

Very good question. And I know later in life, I have moved now. Well, in three years, I moved four times. So we'll cut, we can come back to that.

But you know what it was? It was my grandparents who became this pillar, even though they also had their own version of dysfunction. You know, nobody at the time, I'm 40 now, and nobody at the time was really calling out mental health. It's stigmatized as it is still today.

So you can imagine. So none of us were going around, you know, actively seeking medication and treatment and calling out what was happening. We were arguing amongst ourselves in kind of this world of just survival mode in different ways. And, but we never were not there for each other.

We could have this big kind of dramatic thing happening, and, you know, we were all there. But my grandparents became, in my life, the solid foundation where I lived with them the most out of all the places we lived. And, you know, my mom would try really hard. She wanted to be independent, she had a career, and um we would live independently, but certain things would just cause internal chaos.

And I uh can I elaborate on that? I would really like you to because uh that is very vague terminology. And I know that we moved all of the time. People are like, oh, are you military?

I'm like, no, I had a crazy mom. That was sort of my joke. Oh, yeah. It it is.

My mother, and then my mother took it as I don't like to spring clean, so we just move. I'm like, in third grade, I lived in three states, Lindsay. Three states. So, like you, you're very outgoing.

I'm outgoing. I had to be. I was forced to because I would go to a new school and I had to make friends, and who knew when I was leaving to go to the next place? And my mother remarried a man much older than her.

I at least had a brother. You were an only child because you didn't know your half siblings. Correct. And you didn't have your father in his your life.

Correct. So elaborate a little bit and let us know like, what are those crises that were those pivotal moments in your childhood where you looked at it and you're like, this is not normal. Yes. So a couple really good examples.

When I said there was internal chaos, I meant I was the girl who everything looked good on the outside. The car, you know, my mom was the type of person, and I love my mom so much, and she's in my life, and I'm so proud of where she's at today. But if I talk a little bit about, you know, and that's why I'm who I am, some of the things I experienced were the, you know, it was all about perfectionism on the outside without doing the heart work or working on healing. And what that caused was, you know, I was living in houses that would eventually become uninhabitable, whether it was through, you know, hoarding or the fear of or the chaos of not even my mom being able to set up the appointment in a way that could bring someone in.

It was like she didn't want someone to see the inside of what we were living. Um, and so, you know, if a washer would break down and it wouldn't get fixed, that would lead to flooding. And then that would lead to, you know, our plumbing backing up. And so here I was all my life taught by my mother, who's beautiful, who's smart, you know, go out there and it's about, you know, the right job, the right university, the right way you look, how you speak, who you marry.

It was that world, you know, what you put in your mouth. Don't, you know, you have to look a certain way. It was it was um inauthentic. It was very inauthentic, but it was what she strived and wanted for me.

She wanted for you the opposite of what she saw herself as. Yes. And unfortunately, through my teen childhood and teen years, what it caused was, you know, a lot of just those those moments where I had to perform. So here I was, you know, I'll give you a couple examples.

Here I would be the captain of the dance team. I was, you know, you know, high achiever in school. I had a lot of friends, had a really big heart. I was named best dressed, like throughout my whole every school, you know, from elementary to middle school and on.

And but the reality was is nobody saw that right before that, I would be in the bathroom and the the tub would have, you know, overflown with sewage. And I'd be taking buckets and dumping out that to get my feet in a clean shower, to then go into my room that uh, you know, I would do my hair and my makeup and put on the right outfit and be ready to say the right things. But I would get there and nobody would have realized not only the physical stress, but my mom's emotional outrage that would happen because those big events took a lot of effort for her to make sure things went smoothly in front of people.

When did you realize that you couldn't fix her? That's a, you know, so when I got a little bit older and I was in college, at first I was working in healthcare, but I thought I wanted to be a nurse. And while I was working, I started to get to have some terminology to what was happening. I started to be able to recognize that my mom was experiencing what one in five Americans do today, known as a mental illness.

And more than one. And while I was not there to diagnose her, label her, or judge her, what I was able to do was take and be empowered and inspired. And I knew, because, you know, any of us who have relationships, our loved ones are the people that don't take our advice. That's for sure.

And so what I did is I recognized while I was in nursing school, I decided the last year I was going to change to psychiatry. And I was gonna focus on my undergrad in psychology. And I switched from working in med surge and open heart surgery as like a CNA to the psychiatric units, the inpatient units. And I started to realize that I absolutely loved the broken because of my mom.

And I had two things that happened. One, I called my mom one day. I remember calling her, and I was like all hyped up because I was working on a med surge floor. And I had a patient who had been basically vomiting out of every orifice.

I had doctors complaining and screaming, and I heard how the nurses were treated. And I was in nursing school in my last semester, and I remember calling my mom, and I said something like I don't want to be a nurse because I don't want to be yelled at and told what to do by doctors every day. I think the system on that side is broken, and I want to help patients from their heart, their their stomachs to their minds on the inside. And you know what?

I just realized this. I actually had a conversation yesterday, and I put two and two together. I said that because I knew it was my mother I was trying to fix subconsciously, and I've just realized now, realized that now in my life. So my inspiration was she was the patient I would never save, but I could I could try to save a whole lot of mothers and sisters and and daughters, and that that was why.

Where are we failing? Not to our patients, but as leaders. So something like this doesn't happen for students like you. We don't lose nurses.

Obviously, you stayed in healthcare, you're in the mental health care field, now you're working to empower women. But where are we failing as leaders to not fix that at the ground level? Yeah. And just to just to go back to nurses who I've had years in my career, you know, where they I got to work with them and, you know, lead them and be inspired and learn.

They're the backbone of healthcare in every setting. It doesn't matter where it is, CNAs as well. You know, they're the heroes without the capes. That for me was my greatest strength that I've gained in my childhood, which was resiliency.

In that moment, when I made that call to my mom, it was about what I felt my calling was and me making a critical life decision to pivot because I didn't let it scare me. I allowed it to move me closer to what you know I was called for. So, to your question about healthcare, where I think leaders in healthcare get it wrong, is they forget why they're there. And I just got off, I told you I was sharing with you, I had the privilege of leading a public speaking for behavioral health professionals in a large company across Florida today.

And I said, if you take away anything from this training, it's not about how you stand. It's not about, you know, what you say, it's about what you don't say. And so I said, I want to remind you that your voice, your voice, saves lives. It is the greatest gift we are ever given.

But if we let our bureaucracy, our policies, our egos, our traumas, our insecurities, and even just our lack of feeling like we're being lifted to cause us to lead in a way that causes hurt or doesn't provide the greatest opportunity to change the outcome, you know, or be the example. I call that the heart work. I think it starts with the heartwork because healthcare is really hard. I shared with you, we are victims of secondary trauma in healthcare.

How do you describe that? It is an experience where we are working in a setting where other people are in crisis and they're experiencing a firsthand traumatic event. They have all the physiological things going on. It's life-changing for them.

You know, um, there's negative experiences. And after repeat exposure to your trauma, your elevated nervous system, your crisis becomes our crisis. And our central nervous system is elevated. And so then basically what happens is we're in survival mode at work.

And I heard, I heard that specifically during COVID, those who had to work on COVID wards, especially the fellows and the residents who were pulled off of their area of specialty and were put on to the COVID ward, and they were in it and they were doing fine. And we did not see this burnout at that particular time. But two years later, when the world started normalizing again, that is when the burnout happened. Oh, can I just share with you a real life example?

I can give you. So one of my one of my jobs, I was going in, um, and I'll protect the, you know, the privacy of the company and the place, but it was a one of the largest healthcare systems out in the world, and or at least in in North America. And I was three months in, I came in in January of 2020, and I was so excited. You know, I had this crisis hospital of 28 beds that was a freestanding, you know, on a level one trauma, huge med surge, 750-bed facility.

And my responsibility, I was the executive director of all of behavioral health. So I had the hospital, which was inpatient for psychiatric. I had to build the first four outpatient programs. And none of that was, though, that responsibility was not lifted because COVID came.

And then I was, I had the privilege to oversee the behavioral health triage center of the ER, which was level one trauma, the highest acuity you can have. So three months in, COVID hits. I want you to just take a moment and feel what it would have been like to be on the front lines and to not have vaccines and masks. Masks were not mandated right away.

So we, all of us, were on the front lines in some capacity, even the leaders, the leaders in heels and suits were running into the danger zone because we were all so scared that we were going to take something home and kill our loved ones or we were going to die or hurt someone. And what ended up happening very quickly was our psychiatric team and myself were not only asked to treat the patients who were across the whole hospital because if they tested positive, they would go to ICU or the unit.

And I am not kidding you. I got a call one day from the executive C-suite who said, Can you go to the ICU? And I said, Yeah, which social worker do you need to come see that patient? And they go, It's not for a patient.

It's for our doctors and our nurses who are actively suicidal because they just lost 10 patients in the last two days. Doctors have an higher suicide rate than the normal population. And I don't think people realize that. And you putting this into words makes it much more impactful.

Yes. I look at us as leaders and us managing teams. You are managing a different type of team now, but you've managed at the clinic and hospital level. What separates effective leadership from the performative leadership that we often see in healthcare?

Yes. So just to uh so I was a clinician before I went into leadership executive roles. And I'm a board-certified behavior analyst, which is, you know, a unique field, but I specialized, I said I knew I wanted to be in mental health crisis, trauma, obviously, because of my story. But I then when I was in that, I had different exposure to leadership.

I didn't just become executive overnight. I had I had a lot of training. I had, and where it started for me, and this is where I think effective leadership comes in, is first off, not only knowing what you're good at, but knowing where you're not strong, knowing where you should show up because you can be the brightest version of yourself. You can be bold, you can be in your zone of genius, right?

The second thing for me was I always said yes to the hardest challenges because I knew I was built with grit, grace, and gratitude and resilience. And that allowed me to, in the moment, when I got the phone call from the chief nurse executive who said, it's not for patients, it's for our staff. And those calls happened multiple times live in the moment. I had 300 employees, 30 departments, active caseloads, all these things happening.

I was scared to death every day that I was gonna go home and harm my. Husband or infect a patient who would cause a breakout, right? Like just all those things. But in the moment, I said yes because it was yes to helping and serving.

And I think it starts with some leader servant leadership. And I think it starts with taking those risks. Even when you're scared, even when you're overwhelmed. And to have that opportunity, now that I look back, to walk onto that unit, it makes me emotional.

And you left as a clinician and you stepped away from that role. What risk did you take stepping away and altering your entire life, knowing that there was so much stability, instability rather, going on post-COVID. Oh my gosh. And you pretty much walked away and formed something new.

Yes. You know, it was so I went from clinician to C-suite. And there was this moment where you cannot forget where you come from as a healthcare leader. All of us are in it because we either have a loved one who's inspired us, or we have had our own health issues, or we've trained, we're credible science-based clinicians, providers, managers, leaders.

And there was this pivotal moment in my career where I was like, I want to make a bigger impact. And that impact went from clinician, patient to patient, clinical team to clinical team, to, you know, teams where I got to lead people to then leading hospitals to then leading states in this system, you know, in systems. And I had this moment where I was sitting in my office. I had just gotten off a board call.

And on this call, it was still COVID. And I had kind of three, let me just paint the picture. I had like three scenarios happening, which at the time was very realistic. There was the typical day-to-day, you have a profit margin, you have measure, you have goals, you have your growing.

So you have the C-suite in your ear, and you have expectations to perform, right? You have safety concerns every day, right? You're dealing with safety concerns, risk, compliance, families, and patients. You then have your staff who one day looked at me and said, Is this just about the money?

And I stopped and I had to swallow my pride. And I had a real moment with myself, and I looked at that, she was a new physician. And I went, No, but why? But because you just said that I'm failing.

Because I am a clinician first. And what I realized was I wasn't failing because my heart never stopped wanting it to be patient first. I was getting so frustrated with having to please the CFO while also pleasing my medical team. Well, all I really wanted to do was change my patients' lives because they were in the most vulnerable state and we had the opportunity and the resources to heal them and remove their suffering.

So she made the comment like that. Simultaneously, I was having calls with my bosses who were back to the numbers and the boardroom, right? All the optics. And I had this moment in my office.

It was just a moment of peace. I was buying my dream home in the place that we lived. We just got the offer on our house. And I got off the phone with him, and he said something like, It's so great that you've launched Blank's program and you X amount of you know extra revenue this quarter.

No great job. Just what are you gonna do next? He skipped over my safety concerns, my exhaustion, my vulnerability. And I thought to myself, oh, I we got off the call and I had this moment, and I think women have this discernment that men don't have this level of discernment.

We get that feeling, it takes over us. And I I thought to myself, you are a childhood trauma survivor who chased a career to go to the top where every day you are exposed to secondary trauma. No wonder you can't heal. I know what I'm gonna do about it.

I literally put in a 30-day notice, then told my husband, because I knew I had to do it. I called my realtor at my desk and I said, You know what? We can't buy this house because I won't have this job in 30 days. They said, Well, you're gonna have to move.

We lived in the house, we were renting it. And my boss, when I called him, he goes, Well, what are you gonna do next? And I just said, You know what? I don't know.

But it's not gonna be here. And I I exited gracefully, did my 30 days, and um really never looked back because all along the impact spreads beyond the four walls. And when you're privileged to get to do that, everything in your life, for you to do the heartwork to help someone else do that is I think my purpose. And you uh chose to specifically work with women and women in health care and women executives.

Yes. And you spoke up, and what you said is some people don't say it out loud. And I was listening to a recent podcast interview with Judy Faulkner, yeah, and she is the CEO of Epic Health, which is a huge EHR company. Yes, yes.

And we used Epic. Yeah, most hospitals do, yeah. I actually at one point had a dream. I was like, I'm gonna build this app for behavioral health, and it's gonna, Epic's gonna buy it.

Oh yeah. Well, and Epic is still private, which to me is mind-boggling. Judy was asked by the interviewer, how has being a female impacted your decisions or your leadership running this mammoth company now? And she said something to the effect: I don't really consider the fact that I'm a woman.

I'm a programmer first. And yeah, that actually made me step away because I never say that it's an excuse to be a woman. I am so excited I'm a female. But it is an explanation for certain experiences that we have, especially in healthcare and in the C-suite and as executives.

Yes. Where do you see being a female is different? Well, lots of ways. Um, I think, you know, first, I feel like women, we carry the invisible load.

I call it the hidden load. We carry it because we are all things to all people. We are nurturers. Meredith, do you know?

I I learned this statistic this year or the end of last year. 80% of women will say yes to helping somebody else improve their well-being before their own. 80% of us. That must not be me this morning.

That's great. So you're the 20% I need in my life. You know what my son said to me? He said, Mom, I'm really glad that you raised me like a tiger mom.

Like, what are you talking about? He said, You're like a Chinese mother, and I think it helped me. Now, by the way, I have no Asian blood in me. Yeah, yeah, no, I know what you mean now.

I said, What are you talking about? He said, Well, you didn't let me grab on and hold on to you like you had parameters. And you said, you can give me two hugs in the morning and two hugs in the afternoon. I said, I don't know if you remember that accurately.

Yeah. He said, Mom, I'm trying to give you a compliment. I said, okay, fine. So I do feel like I am to a degree a nurturer, but not to the extent that I think my female counterparts are nurturers.

Yes. And then we can talk about childhood trauma too. I mean, my mom didn't even like to give hugs. So I I've moved beyond that.

Yeah. But besides even the nurturing aspect, because I never wanted to say, well, I'm a woman, and even make that a topic of conversation. But I changed my mind about 10 years ago. Why do you think it needs to be a topic of conversation?

Yeah. Well, first, I can tell you changed your mind 10 years ago. Because the day I met you, before I met you, the day I met you, you couldn't be more of a woman's woman. You are what you call the girl's girl.

The girl's girl, and what all women need. What was the thing you kept, you know, saying? It's not about a mentor, it's a sponsor. Yes.

Right. You live that, you breathe that. And it takes recognizing where there's some opportunity, right? But you put up some, some, you know, safeguards that allowed you to kind of create a life for your son where you could be present, but you could also give yourself the space to pour into him to right, which he deserves.

I try to do that with all of my kids. It's interesting looking at it now because my oldest is engaged. Okay. And his fiance is very type A.

Okay. Very independent, very strong. And my youngest. She's a high D.

Oh my goodness. My youngest is dating a girl who is the same way. Okay. She is Are they like you?

Totally. So you're like, they married their mother. They don't know it yet. But I can't say that.

I don't know it yet. I can't say that yet. But yes, it is. It's you either marry the opposite of your mother or you marry your mother, and that happens to be what it is.

But I am just like my mother-in-law. I adore her. I love her. She is, I will not say her age, but she's my mother-in-law.

So anybody could make a reference. She still works just as many hours as I do in a day. It is insane. And she loves it.

She goes in every day. She works when she's remote. She works when she's at home. She works when she's on vacation.

But she loves it and it's what drives her. Yeah. I'm the one telling her you need to find a happy medium. Yeah.

But it is that drive, and we do learn from other people. But looking at it from afar, 74% of the C-suite in America are men. And if you look globally, isn't that crazy? It's crazy to me.

If you look at it globally, only 5% of CEOs globally are women. In America, we're at a whopping 10%. And there is a huge disparity. And I'm like, where are the people like Samantha, who's my future daughter-in-law, Ava, me, you, like, where are we?

Why? Is this a self-inflicted issue, or is this something that society set us up for? It's both. It's both.

So, you know, it's it's that nature nurture kind of thing. I think, you know, we're predispositioned biologically to take on stress and different things. And all of our experiences shape who we become, right? It's that repetitive experience is well shape us, it reinforces our future behavior.

The past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior unless there are things to take you out of it. So I'd like to share an analogy about what the hidden load feels like. What I like to describe it. I've had my own struggles with mental health.

You know, I have anxiety. I've had, you know, struggles with, you know, being addicted to sugar and it being what I turn to versus drugs. You know, I had loved ones who turned to drugs and I am terrified. So I turn to like the comfort foods and the things, you know, I'm from the South.

So it's biscuits, it's cupcakes, it's butter, it's mayonnaise, it's all those things. But I would, you know, I would say when I describe what it feels like to be in a place, there's there's kind of two things. Um, there's and I don't there's two sides of the spectrum. There's the hidden load that women carry because we are overwhelmed and everything's out of alignment because we're pouring out, but we're not being poured back into.

We're not doing self-care. We don't even know how to access what self-care is for us, right? Um, and so we're exhausted. But do you think men have that too?

Men don't seem to be in touch with their emotions. I think today, because of the digital overload, younger men are experiencing this. They're not, they may not be as uh vocal about it, but it is absolutely something they're experiencing. And I think as the stigma kind of goes down, and what we're doing is we're just renaming stuff, right?

It's like instead of calling it what it is, you know, we're like, well, they're depressed, they go, they're burnt out, right? There's levels of that. Or instead of saying, you know, that person has anxiety, we say that person's like always keyed up. Like what's with their energy?

It's off. Or, you know, so we we just call it something else to feel better, right? We we have this word out there now that's well-being. Well, in my I've I've come up with my own definition of well-being.

Well-being is the true absence of any suffering. You think about that. Does that exist? It could, it can, and it doesn't because we are everything to everyone because we want to quiet what we're telling ourselves, what our mind is telling us what we need, where our heart and all those things, they're so the the invisible load, I feel like feels like carrying the weight of the world and getting up and trying to perform.

We still put on the makeup, we still make time to get our nails done, we do the external things, kind of like what my mom, you know, was trying to tell me was the most important. We still need to get up and look our best and feel our best and try. But if things on the inside feel like we're carrying five, five suitcases that are 50 pounds each, they're invisible, but we feel that. To the highest degree, what that feels like to us is we get in a car, and this is the opportunity car, right?

Maybe we have the opportunity. We get in the car and the car's full of gas. The key's in the ignition, and the ignition is started. And you're about to put your foot on the ignition, but you look up and your window, this is great.

The window is splattered with these love bugs that we're dealing with here in Florida. I had just washed my car and I drove not even 30 miles on my way down. Uh, you know, and I was coming from Orlando to Fort Lauderdale. I had to stop twice to clean these love bugs off the window.

Oh, yeah. I would have told you you can't drive during this time. Well, I'm getting a refund on this car wash before that I came down. But I, the way I can describe what this feels like, whether you call it depression or you, you know, a precursor to depression or whatever it's gonna become for you, the load, is you're you are supposed to put your foot on the gas and you have a destination to get to.

But your mirror, your, your front window is smeared with dirt and bugs. You can barely see any sunshine coming through. And you're supposed to get somewhere. Imagine how you are gonna walk through life.

And if you don't get to the car wash, right, you don't get what you need. You're not replenished, you don't have people checking on you, you don't take the time to just breathe or to just go, I'm not okay. You eventually can't drive because you can't see, right? We're clouded.

I look at my husband and I feel like he struggles in a lot of the similar ways that I do. And he and I are Gen Xers, we're not of the youngest generation. I was just on another podcast. I was as I was interviewed, I was a guest, and I realized that I answered the intro question differently than all of the men.

Because by the way, I think the 10 episodes prior to me were all men. It was called, it's called a founder's life, and they were all men. I'm like, really? There are female founders.

Oh, yeah. But the men say, Hi, my name is so-and-so, and first and foremost, I'm a husband and a father. And I didn't say that. And I feel like I can't say that because I have fought so hard to differentiate myself from not being the mother or the wife that I need to be Meredith Hirsch.

And these are the attributes that I have aside. I said this to my accountant when we were talking earlier this week. And he said, Meredith, how do you do it all? How do you do it?

You're a wife and a mother. I said, wait, wait, stop right there. And he's like, What? I said, No, I want to hear what you think I do, but why did you start out that I'm a wife and a mother first?

He said, Well, family's so important to me. I said, family is so important to me too, but it is, but is it all that defines me? Is that it? And it's interesting because I see myself as this type A woman who feels like she has to prove herself.

And we talk about the emotional load, and maybe that is where women feel the burden differently than men. I mean, literally in 1974 was the first time that we as women could actually own a house, own, have credit. I think voting rights were even later than that. No, this is 1974.

We voted before then. Yeah, yeah, way before then. But it was like, oh my God, you know what it was? It was going into a bank and getting a business, buying a house.

You couldn't do it without the mail on the state. That was like 1988. Something like 1988. It ain't been that long.

I was 14 years old. I was born in 85. I'm the millennial of the side of here. But I get it.

But Meredith, can I come back to something you said, which I think is so important to take it back to why women perform or or start with their accolades, right? The credibility, worthiness. It's worthiness. Yes.

When you feel worthy, you don't have to prove anything. You've already made it. I feel like there's a lot of like the, there's a little bit of the worthiness. I also think it comes down to um, you know, we are, we are still trying to kind of stack, you know, here's what we've done, here's what we're doing now, here's who we are.

Because maybe we're also trying to shield a little bit of what we don't want people to know. Like, I take that back to my mother, right? I think about how she was like, you, it's the job, it's the car, it's the it's this, it's the that. And if I've learned anything in my journey, it's all of that stuff only matters, is if when you go home at night, you feel really good about what you put into the world that day.

So let's talk about why you chose to build influential executive women. Yeah. Why? You know what?

First off, it I working in healthcare and working in the C level, you are so lonely. You're very busy, but I was never lonelier in my life. And when I made the call, you know, to kind of walk out, kind of through the matches I left, walked to my car and said, I'm out of here in that one job. I didn't really throw the match, but I was envisioning myself walking to my car like, mic drop, you know, no.

And um, I I spent, you know, I my husband and I then kind of had to move because I couldn't find a job where we were living. And um we ended up moving to Orlando. Never would have thought. And at that time, I took this like three-year breather out of healthcare.

And what that did for me is it put me in a position where I got to have a fun job for the first time ever. And the fun job was like, you know, in tech as an ambassador for our community, business development, like going out and dinner and drinks and parties and being invited to Gala's was my job. That's fun. I literally was like, I never knew this existed.

Why did I go into healthcare? I think I would have social anxiety, to be honest. I'm like, oh my God, I have to pull together this gala. I have to go to all of these events.

Well, just imagine being the one who had the job where you were getting invited to those things. You know, you were just going, but you were, you know, all the different things were happening. But I still, so there were two things that happened. One, by day, I was talking about technology and innovation because I was, you know, I was working as a senior director of innovation and technology, which I didn't know anything about, but I quickly became coined as this woman in technology.

And you know what I did wrong? Is I didn't walk into rooms and do the hi, I'm Lindsay Murphy. I have 20 years in healthcare and I have X, Y, and Z credentials. It was the first time in my life I didn't do that.

And you made a good point. So let's, you know. So what ended up happening is I started being asked to like, will you co-chair this inaugural women in technology initiative? And, you know, let's, you know, and I just kept going, I'm not an engineer.

I have a microphone in my hand. And that's all it took to be asked to go do these things. And so what I recognize was when I'm at these women's events, I feel more like myself because I'm with my girls. I get to strip off the CEO title, the hair, the makeup, all of it.

We get to talk about my feet are killing me. Or I'm starving to death, but this girl girl is not going to let me eat. Or, you know what? I had to take the biggest leap in my life and I quit my job.

And now here I am, but I feel lost more than I ever did. And I'm I feel like I'm going backwards. My title, my pay, I've made all these sacrifices. Here I am at the bar, but I'm lonely still.

Like the loneliness doesn't go away. And so what that did is it allowed me to then get an opportunity that came to me by a friend at the time who said, there's this organization, and they're a nonprofit, and their mission is to advance women in leadership. You would be the perfect executive director. And I thought, let me do my homework.

And I looked into it. And honestly, for the first time, I felt giddy on the inside about getting up every day. I felt so grateful that I got to be kind of around what became a tribe. But I realized that the reason I kept getting the microphone, not only was it to share my story, and also, you know, I have this evidence-based side where I can be, I can talk from a clinician lens.

It was more about me handing the microphone. It was elevating and celebrating the meritus of the world. And, you know, the women who were the wizard behind the curtain who had incredible stories of grace, gratitude, and resilience and survival. And I had the opportunity this year to be the founding CEO of a new nonprofit that's independent, new across the state of Florida for now.

And um, because women in Florida have very special and unique needs, as well as kind of the lifestyle we we have the privilege to live. And um, yeah, it's um here I am, seven weeks in. Every day, my mission is to elevate and celebrate every woman any way I can. And I I couldn't be more grateful.

It's amazing what you're doing, and it's amazing the leap that you made really young. I'm such a softy. But in the middle of this career, to like help other people, you know, like, and that comes from being that servant leader. Yes, and going in the emotion.

You can, you know what's funny? I don't have children. That was by, you know, but I still am this caretaker. It never goes away if those are the things we are.

And you know what? It's like we don't have to hide. One, excuse me, I'm so sorry. I'm crying.

This is the podcast that doesn't have tissues sitting on the table. Come on, Janine. Come on, Janine. You know, it's like, Janine, thank you so much.

Oh my gosh. No, this is a happy tear. It's like it's when you get to a place in life where you know you can lead, leading doesn't stop, it can shift and change. And it's really all about ceasing the opportunities that allow you that allow you to create joy and unsuffering of yourself and everybody around you.

What advice would you give somebody who feels stuck right now? Oh, if you feel stuck, there's so many versions of stuck. I think there's you're stuck because you don't have access to the people and the resources who help you figure out a plan to become unstuck, unstuck, unstuck, like that's a word. Um, you also could be in a dangerous situation.

You know, you could be in uh, you know, a domestic violence or financial, where if you were to leave, you know, something could be catastrophic. What advice would you give to somebody listening to the podcast, somebody in healthcare, whether they're the CEO, whether they're a physician, whether they're on the ground floor. Yeah. What advice would you give somebody who feels just stuck in their career?

Yeah. So I think that's a point where you reevaluate what was your dream. And one way I actually got to hear Kendra Scott, you know, the jewelry designer yesterday speak live. And she said something that stuck with me is you should take an opportunity to look forward only three years at a time.

Because could you imagine with the speed of technology, 10-year plans don't work anymore? No more than like two to three years. And if you're in that moment where you're stuck, you're gonna, you're gonna look at everything in your current life that physically is in the way, but then mentally in the way, right? Financially in the way.

But you're also gonna envision where do you want to be? And she said you have to be as detailed as who's at my table? What are we eating? What are the colors?

Where are we? What am I in that moment? You know, am I have I decided to go back and, you know, maybe be, you know, be the mother that I didn't get to be because I was in my career for, you know, I focus on the career. Or do I now take that leap to launch a business?

Or do I have to have the difficult conversation with myself? And we know we've all done that. Where we have to have the heart to heart with ourselves and with our people to figure out where if you're no longer leading from a place of joy, you are failing in some way every day. Um, and something one of the chief nurse officers of the big company I said I worked for said.

She was on a live virtual, like trying to pep us all up one day, and I joined, I had my five minutes and I joined. She said something. And she was a beautiful leader. She was the chief nurse officer, one of the biggest companies.

And she had done it all. And she said, you know, the chair you sit in should always feel just a little bit too big. And I thought, wow. And I took that as humility.

So you are true with your truthful with yourself, you are honest about where you have barriers, and then you always check your ego. We always are constantly checking our ego. And then you're gonna you're gonna make a decision for the right reasons, and you should make it for yourself first. And that's where the boldness comes in.

Looking at this invisible load that we're holding, mental health, leadership, and the courage to build something like you that didn't exist. If you could create one change within our American healthcare system, what would it be? You know, I would, oh gosh, there's so many things. Just one thing I can't even, I could talk about insurance and access in one breath.

I wanted you to focus on mental health. Yes, yes. I would say, and I believe this with all everything I live and breathe, it is the well-being of the employees. 1,000%.

What I mean by that is you have to take care of the people who take care of everybody else first. They're your greatest asset. If they become unwell because of the burnout, the exhaustion, the trauma they're experiencing, who takes care of the sick? If your people are unwell, who takes care of the unwell, right?

Lindsay Murphy, thank you for joining me on Working Healthcare. If this conversation hit home or made you think a little differently, don't keep it to yourself. Share the episode, tag a friend, or post about it on social media. Connect with me on LinkedIn to keep the conversation going in between episodes.

If you've got a question, an episode idea, or someone you think I should feature, send me a note at MeredithHirsch.com. Thank you all for the five-star reviews. They help more listeners find the show.

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