About

I'm Tamika. I'm a doctor — but that was never the whole story.

For a long time I let it become most of the story anyway.

I'm a family medicine physician. A professor at Indiana University School of Medicine. I run the program that helps students get into medical school, and I'm proud of that work in a way I don't apologize for.

I love my patients. They are genuinely a part of who I am.

And still — I burned out.

Not because of them. Since COVID, the message volume for primary care physicians has gone up about 75%. I get roughly a hundred messages a week. That's on top of the visits, the charting, the family, the life. It became a mental load I'm honestly still figuring out how to carry.

So I'm not leaving medicine. I'm just done pretending the current version of it is sustainable, and I'm building something alongside it.

What I'm building

I started an Etsy shop and a blog because I needed a creative outlet that had nothing to do with anyone's chart. It turned into three shops and a whole second life.

I'm writing a book about burnout — the real kind, not the tired kind.

I'm helping a pastor bring a leadership book into the world, and helping build a women's retreat around the same question: how do you win at work without losing yourself?

What I write about here

Travel — New Orleans, Charleston, Atlanta, Sarasota where we had a second home. The South is where I come back to myself.

Food, because I cook for my family and I plan the meals, and because figuring out what actually feeds a body in its forties is its own project.

Style, lifestyle, and the parts of women's health nobody says out loud. I'm 49, about to be 50, perimenopausal, and I've learned that having an MD doesn't spare you from having to figure this out yourself.

And the boys — ninth grade and seventh grade, football and basketball. If you can't find me, check a court or a field.

A few things I've learned the hard way

That not everyone is your friend. That not everyone is meant to be there for you. That was a hard, valuable lesson and I don't regret learning it.

That being a mom, a physician, and a wife are things I do — and somewhere in the middle of all of it, I lost track of just being Tamika. I've been deliberately getting her back.

Spelman College, Class of '99. HBCU advocate to my bones. That's where a lot of this started.

Who I'm here for

Women between 30 and 50 who are raising children, managing careers, and trying to stay whole. Women who want to be positive and peaceful in a world that doesn't hand out either one.

I'm not fully on the other side of this. But I'm far enough along to be useful, and I'm not quiet about how.