Holistic Healing Through a Life Full of Love and Vulnerability with Dr. Red Hoffman, Episode #012 Voices Unheard

Red Hoffman is an acute care surgeon in Asheville, North Carolina who is board certified in general surgery, surgical critical care and hospice and palliative medicine.  She serves as the surgical clerkship director for the University of North Carolina Asheville campus and also works as an associate hospice medical director for CarePartners Hospice.  She is a writer whose work has been featured in JAMA, General Surgery News, KevinMD and Doximity.  She is the creator and host of the Surgical Palliative Care Podcast and the co-founder of the recently formed Surgical Palliative Care Society. 
In this episode we discuss the unfortunate death of her father by a Islamic fundamentalist when she was 19 years old and how this pivotal event and grief journey shaped her.  She has a disposition where she sees the glass as half full and did not turn to anger.  She somaticized her grief and a naturopath helped in her healing process.  Through processing her emotions she became interested in mental and physical health, which eventually lead her to trauma/critical care and eventually to hospice and palliative medicine.  Then, her long term partner fell off a ladder and had a traumatic brain injury which made her question everything she knew.  Unlike sudden death, this ongoing process of suffering has pushed her limits of resiliency.  Her openness and candidness will engage you in her journey and the lessons she has learned along the way.  You will not want to miss this heart felt episode.