We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Erica Howe. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Erica below.

Alright, Erica thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Was there a moment in your career that meaningfully altered your trajectory? If so, we’d love to hear the backstory.

One day, in the thick of a full-time clinical practice with three toddlers at home and all the exhaustion and mom guilt that comes with that, I was packing up to leave for the day and a colleague walked by and asked me how I was doing. I responded with “Great!” and he went on his way.

I immediately thought, “Why did I say that? I’m not great. I’m the furthest thing from great.”

I rode the elevator down to the hallway that lead to the parking garage–a hallway I referred to as the Hallway of Shame because it was so often the place where I chided myself about all the ways I wasn’t living up to expectations that day. As I stepped off, I ran into another woman physician and, wouldn’t you know it, she asked me how I was doing.

In that moment, I swore to myself that I would put aside the facade of being cool and collected all the time and start being vulnerable. This time I answered honestly about being late to pick up the kids, being unsure how I was going to get dinner on the table, and that I would likely spend much of the evening working on the computer to catch up on the day’s to-do list.

My friend said two life-changing words to me in that moment.

“Me too.”

With those words, for the first time in a very long time, I didn’t feel like I was the only woman in the world that couldn’t figure out this impossible balancing act.

This was the moment I truly began to understand the power of sisterhood and how much a community of women can change your life.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

From that day forward (see “defining moment” question), I really started looking forward to that hallway, never knowing who I might run into or what advice they might share with me in that two minute walk to the car. Very quickly, the Hallway of Shame transformed into a Hallway of Strategy for me.

After months of these impromptu strategy sessions, I ran into an old friend there I’d chatted with many times before. We started sharing our latest challenges and strategizing ways to conquer them as we typically did in that two minute walk to the car and as we approached our cars, my friend said “I always walk away from these conversations with so many great ideas. I just wish we had more protected time and space away from our busy clinical and home lives to brainstorm together. I feel like we could solve all the world’s problems if we did!”

I thought to myself, “Well, I’ve planned a wedding before…how hard could a conference be?” And that’s how the Women Physicians Wellness Conference–and later the Women Professionals Wellness Conference–was born.

In creating WPW, I had a LOT of unpleasant conference experiences to pull from. Boring speakers, stale food, 14-hour days of lectures, freezing-cold conference rooms, networking events that were misery for my extroverted introvert soul. The list goes on.

I wanted to create a professional development and wellness conference that brought the nation’s top women speakers on leadership, career development, and self-care together to share their stories and strategies on building and sustaining wellness as women advance in their career.

But then I wanted to go a step further.

I wanted to actually build wellness INTO the conference too so when our attendees got home, they were rested, recharged, re-energized. We did this with a relaxing, tropical location to unplug and recharge (nothing prevents email pile up like an out-of-country email autoreply), half-day sessions to allow you to afternoons to reflect on what you learn and make a plan to apply those strategies (that’s right, we end by 1pm each day!),and activities like morning mind-body workouts, guided meditations, reflection questions, and table discussions built into each session.

Ultimately, the goal is to give these hard-working women the skills, space, and time to apply what they learn at WPW so they go back to their hectic lives a more rested, centered version of themselves.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

One lesson I’ve had to learn (and keep re-learning) is that I don’t have to earn my rest. I can rest simply because my body wants to.

After so many years of medical training, our brains become hard-wired to set aside all our needs and wants to care for our patients. This is critically important in life-and-death scenarios, but it can also be a bad habit among highly successful women professionals.

In the short-term, all that “doing” all the time makes us very productive and we rise the ranks of our profession because of it.

But it also exhausts us.

In the long-term, that exhaustion leads to less creativity, less clarity, less critical thinking and brainstorming. I’ve learned that when I listen to my body and just rest for the sake of rest, what often follows is a boost of brain power in the days after.

But first, I have to give myself permission to take that time I need to recharge.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

One of the scariest moments I’ve had was when I decided to leave medicine to grow WPW. Being a physician was a big part of my identity and I was afraid to let it go, but I also wanted to grow WPW and be able to offer the conference to more women. I remember posting my decision to leave in our closed facebook group for women physicians. I honestly thought this group of wonderful women would say horrible things to me in the comments (it’s incredible how distorted our thinking can be sometimes). Of course looking back, I laugh at this thought because these ind women did just the opposite. Nothing but congratulations and words of encouragement! It left me in tears.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.womenprofessionalswellness.com
• Instagram: @womenprofessionalswellness
• Linkedin: Women Professionals Wellness Conference,