About
The year was 2012.
Until we moved to Hawaii in 2017, Friday nights was the time my family of four would sleep together in our king sized bed. My girls loved this to no end. I would gather books I had picked up from the library and they would choose which ones I would read to them.
One night, after we were done reading the books, my little one asked:
Mom, can we be the kings or queens of our own story?
I said, of course we can.
She looked around and said: I am the queen of swimming. Looking at her older sister, she said: She is the queen of reading. Looking at my husband, she said: Daddy is the king of windsurfing. Then, she looked at me and said: Mommy is the queen of…
Long pause. She looked at her sister and they said together:
“Mom is the queen of working!”
They were not kidding. I mean, that is all I was doing. At work, and when I got home, I brought work home. I was working all the time. There was one thing for sure. I sure did not want to be the queen of working. I was a hospitalist working all hours. Days, nights, weekends. I remember working 12 Christmas Eves in a row.
That can’t be right.
My name is Faryal Michaud. I am a board certified hospital and palliative care physician with 20 years experience in clinical medicine. I have loved practicing medicine, but I don’t want to be known as the queen of working.
Who was going to change that narrative for me? As an adult, the person that would tell me to be a different queen is the one looking at me in the mirror.
No one will tell us we should live a different life. So, I made myself that person. To tell me I want to live a different life. I decided to pursue my passion and talk about what really mattered to people during serious illness.
I decided to become a palliative care physician and have never looked back.
My husband finished his training as a radiation oncologist and when no one was hiring locally, we decided to go where we would love to spend our days. He saw a job offer in Hawaii and we came for an interview. He asked me: Could you picture yourself living here?
“I said, I can picture myself dying here.”
There is value in looking at your life that way. Not how would you live, but if you were to be given a short time to live and you were getting close to dying, how would you picture yourself living then?
Not being the queen of working, that is for sure.
We moved to Hawaii in 2017. I have never looked back. I decided to practice medicine part time. I can promise you that I am no longer the queen of working.
I am the queen of cooking, running, practicing yoga, paddle boarding, writing, podcasting, creating art in the world. I also happen to practice medicine, but that is no longer ALL I do.
I live my life intentionally. I don’t say yes to anything I don’t want to do. I want the same for you.
In the pandemic, I wanted to make a larger impact. I decided to work with Empowering Women Physician which was a life coaching program. I wanted to learn the tools to create a larger impact on everyone’s end of life. Whether or not you were practicing medicine or pondering how to live your best life. I wanted to reach out to tell the world that you can always pivot to start living your best life today.
“Live Your Bucket List Now.”
Life is not perfect. As romantic as living in Hawaii sounds, we are far away from friends and family. There is always good mixed up with the bad. In the story of your life, I want you to know that:
“You get to decide.”
This was a very powerful message that changed my life. I wanted to create the ripple effect of the fact that understanding you get to choose to be happy or not with your situation. If you are not happy, you get to decide.
I created this podcast, the blog, and aside from my own years of mindfulness and meditative practice, I completed my own training to become a certified life coach to help change people’s lives.
I continue to be coached myself, as well as advance my skills in Advanced Certification training. The self improvement never ends. I am happy that it doesn’t. I want to keep making my own story a better one.
I want you to be the queen of your own story, too. Hoping that it is something that brings you joy and purpose. Whatever that means to you.
I want that for you.