My Vocation Wasn’t Up for Negotiation

A job can be lost. A vocation cannot be erased. I am still a doctor.

When I was a teenager, I went to a church service with my mom. Pastor Smedley preached about the difference between a job and a vocation. A job, he said, is where you go to make a dollar. A vocation is where God places you — a calling, a purpose you’re meant to exercise. He told the young people in the congregation to approach their jobs like a vocation: work with integrity, treat it as something bigger than a paycheck.

I didn’t know then how much that sermon would echo in my life.

I’ve been working in some form since I was twelve — raking leaves, odd jobs, hustling through school. I’ve never not been in school or working. Becoming a neurologist felt as natural to me as my height, my skin color, my brown eyes. It wasn’t something I did. It was who I was.

It was never just a job.

It was my vocation.

Losing More Than a Job

That’s why what happened later cut so deeply.

It’s one thing to experience retaliation or a near workplace-violence incident. It’s another to have your entire identity ripped away — not just being barred from returning to work, but being locked out of systems, denied pay, and then bound by a contract so broad it kept you from working anywhere else.

At first, I didn’t even process it. My clinic had patients who needed procedures only I was credentialed to perform. I was training a new nurse practitioner. I was building systems. I kept telling myself, they can’t really not let me come back.

But they did.

And then they doubled down — expanding a non-compete even further. It felt like they were trying to erase me.

In my lowest moments, it truly felt like that was the goal — that they would rather read a memorial post than deal with a living physician who refused to disappear. That is how many physicians are lost to burnout and suicide every year. That is how serious this is.

Holding Onto My Calling

But I remembered that sermon.

A vocation is where God places you.

A vocation is not negotiable.

God put me here not just to practice neurology, but to walk through this — so I could speak for others. For the physicians who didn’t make it. For the patients who were erased. For the workers silenced by retaliation.

That belief carried me through intensive outpatient treatment, legal battles, and nights when I didn’t think I could go on. It’s why, when a disability carrier wouldn’t pay and my employer wouldn’t let me work, I refused to starve or disappear. I picked up 1099 work. I built the Phoenix Advocacy Network. I kept my voice.

Back at Work, Still a Doctor

Today, I can even laugh about some of it.

According to a non-compete I never signed, I’m apparently barred from working in half the country. And yet — here I am. Practicing medicine. Advocating for patients. Still a doctor.

Just like I told their administrator:

You do not get to take my identity as a physician.

And you do not get to silence me speaking as one.

Mic drop.

The Lesson

A job can be taken.

A contract can be rewritten.

A portal can be locked.

But a vocation — your calling, your purpose — cannot be erased.

Even when everything else was stripped away, I was still a doctor. And that’s how I know I’m living my vocation.

Call to Action

If you’re a clinician who’s been retaliated against, silenced, or pushed out for doing the right thing — you are not alone.

If you’re a patient who lost access to care without explanation — ask why.

And if you’re a leader, regulator, or policymaker reading this — understand this:

When systems try to erase a vocation, they don’t just harm a worker. They harm an entire community.

👉 Follow and support Phoenix Advocacy Network

👉 Share this story with someone who needs to hear it

👉 Speak up when you see retaliation — because silence is how good doctors are lost

A job can be taken.

A vocation cannot.