A respected soul once asked me if I would have done anything differently in my life. While I don’t adhere to regrets, I responded: “I wouldn’t have listened to others’ loud whispers of fear, whose echoes soon became my words.” Such statements limited my potential: You aren’t good at math, so you can’t be a doctor, and certainly not a mother and a doctor.

Throughout my decades, I fought such voices, yet a few have survived at times, just with lower volumes. Today, I know for certain that these words held only the power I allowed them. My fear-based decisions were never the true north of my younger soul. With age and self-assurance, I refused to allow such emotional limitations from negative voices; rather, they propelled me into many accomplishments.

The first train carrying animals for the circus is traveling at 50 mph, and the second train carrying the circus performers is traveling at 65 mph. The first train leaves ten minutes before the second train. When will the two trains arrive, and which one will be first? Keep in mind they leave from the same location.

My father used pencils to visually demonstrate the two trains and how they ended up at the same location at the same time. He was proud of himself, a natural lover of numbers in any form, knowing that if he could animate this word problem, I, his math-dense daughter, a devotee of words and never numbers, would finally understand this seemingly straightforward (for him) math exercise. My passions lay in the circus animals and the performers in those trains, never the formula that helped them arrive simultaneously. My mind never held numbers and letters together; one or the other.........

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