The Slow Unraveling of a Dream
There are moments in life when everything slows down, not because the world gets quieter, but because your heart is processing more than you expected. That’s where I am right now.
My first quarter at the University of Washington has just ended. And for the first time in a long time, I’m moving slowly enough to feel everything. The excitement of being here. The grief of letting go. The quiet ache of dreams I thought I would chase forever.
I’m grieving the passing of my mentor. I’m grieving leaving TCC, a place that helped me grow and made me feel seen. I’m grieving a version of myself I thought I would become, a medical doctor.
That last one hit harder than I expected. I thought I’d made peace with it. But letting go of something you know you’d be good at… that’s a different kind of grief. It’s not just about the title or the degree. It’s about the patients I won’t meet. The lives I won’t get to help in that specific way. The childhood version of me who dreamed in white coats and healing hands.
But life shifts. And so do we.
Finding New Purpose in Finance
I think what’s making this easier to process is something deeper I’ve come to understand: there’s more than one way to help people. There’s more than one path to healing. And maybe, just maybe, I’ve found one that’s better suited for the world we live in now, and the version of me I’ve grown into.
Because while I won’t be treating patients with a stethoscope, I will be helping them build safety. I’ll be guiding them through financial storms. I’ll be sitting with them in their fear and confusion and helping them make a plan. That’s healing, too.
That’s why I’m on the path to becoming a Certified Financial Planner (CFP).
Finance is deeply emotional, especially for people with trauma. I’ve written about this on my blog before. Many of us weren’t taught how money works. We were taught to survive, to make do, to keep going. But no one explained long-term savings, retirement, or how Social Security was never meant to be your only income. And when you grow up without safety nets, financial planning can feel like trying to build a parachute mid-fall.
But this grief, it’s still real. Even as I step into a new purpose, I mourn the old one. And I think that’s okay. Grief isn’t always about death. Sometimes it’s about releasing a dream you once loved to make space for one that loves you back in a different way.
Letting Go of Western Ideals and Choosing Wholeness
It’s also made me reflect more broadly on the world we live in. On the culture I’m stepping away from by not pursuing Western medicine. The truth is, I’ve become disillusioned with the way the Western world thinks it has all the answers. The way we treat our environment, our food sources, our health, it doesn’t always reflect wisdom.
In other countries, sacredness still exists. Mountains are sacred. Animals are sacred. Life is sacred. Here, we consume. We treat symptoms instead of causes. We hand out pills without addressing pain at the root. I’m not against science. I’m a psychology major, trained in scientific methods. I love research. I love logic. But I also believe in intuition, in the mysteries we haven’t yet explained.
We can’t treat science as the only valid truth. Because there are things science can’t touch, like meaning, like spirituality, like why certain people feel better when they listen to sound frequencies or drink herbal teas passed down through generations. I would have been the kind of doctor who listened to that. Who honored the sacred with the scientific. Probably a DO instead of an MD. But even that path no longer feels sustainable, not for my energy, not for my trauma, not for the life I want to build.
I’m tired. And I’m choosing a path that brings me life instead of draining it.
And the more people I talk to, the more I realize: this path might be even more needed. Because money is terrifying for so many people. Not because they don’t care, but because they care so much they feel paralyzed by it. And for some reason, this comes easily to me. Not in a bragging way, but in a way that tells me it’s a calling.
I want to help people breathe. I want them to feel what it’s like to not be afraid every time they open their bank account. I want them to know they have options, that they’re not doomed, that there are paths forward. That’s what financial planning can do when done with empathy.
Still, I grieve. Still, I reflect. And as the seasons change, I know I’m growing into someone who can hold two truths at once: that I would have been a good doctor, and that I will be a great planner. That I’ve lost something, and I’ve gained something even deeper.
Maybe that’s what life is. Not a single dream come true, but many evolving dreams that teach you how to hold space for both sorrow and hope.
The Broke College Student 
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