Episode 23: Post-Election Feels

Dr.Sophia:
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Dr. Sophia ObGyn podcast. I'm an ObGyn practicing for over 15 years in my native New York City, and I love to help women learn about their bodies, empower them, and embrace themselves. On this podcast, we talk openly and with heart about all things affecting women from pregnancy, menopause periods, sexual health, fertility, and so much more. Disclaimer, this is general medical information based on my professional opinion and experience. For specific medical advice, please refer to your physician.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Dr. Sophia ObGyn podcast. We are coming to you today, five days post-election, and we felt it was important to check in, see how we're all feeling, and to just talk a little bit more about how we will be embracing our bodies and embracing ourselves. As always, I am joined by my co-host and good friend Touseef Mirza.

Touseef Mirza:
Hi everyone. So we've been talking about this post-election in terms of feelings, in terms of results, in terms of impact, and we felt that instead of just talking to Dr. Sophia and me, we can also have this conversation with all of you. So this is going to be a little bit of a journey of wherever this conversation goes because I think-

Dr.Sophia:
Yeah, it's gonna land where it's gonna land.

Touseef Mirza:
Yeah, it's a little bit of a confusing time. We're all trying to figure out our own grounding, and so that's sort of the space that we want to also hold for anybody else that is going through this. So I think the first thing is just to acknowledge where we are. So Dr. Sophia, how are you feeling right now?

Dr.Sophia:
Well, I can say that I was very hopeful in the beginning. The concept of how the election campaigns really changed and the rise of Kamala Harris as a candidate-

Touseef Mirza:
Who is still the queen.

Dr.Sophia:
Certainly for us. You know, just a concept though, again, an opportunity or another opportunity to have a woman in the highest position in this country just made me feel, a greater opportunity to feel seen and heard and acknowledged, and the things that I feel are very core to me as a woman, being able to be more forefront in terms of issues. That was the connection that I had made specifically with the Harris administration as a potential. For sure, there was in me a sense of disappointment and grief. I feel like I've gone through many different emotions, and I know that I'm not alone in that. Don't get me wrong. I don't wanna fall short on the fact that women who may not have aligned with Kamala Harris in this election may be perhaps celebrating or having other emotions.

But certainly, for me, there's no question of where, you know, this landed for me as a gynecologist, as a woman who takes care of women, I really felt like a bit of a punch in the stomach. I'll tell you why. The reasons for me that are kind of clear is I feel like we've taken too many steps back where women, our sense of autonomy, our sense of being able to feel and have equal footing with our male counterparts, I just feel like that's just been kind of stripped away from me. I don't feel confident at all that the administration that's coming in is going to protect me in any way, is going to make life better for me in any way. If anything, I know, even just in these last few days of dealing with my patients and, you know, going to work and having to listen to my patients, there are fears on both sides. I think a lot of those may be warranted.

Touseef Mirza:
What do you mean by both sides?

Dr.Sophia:
When I say both sides, I think whether you're a woman and you were in full support of, you know, Kamala versus if you decided to vote a different way, I think you're still a bit fearful. I think we're just lucky we happen to be coming from New York, it's a lot easier to say, well, maybe this may not affect me. But the reality is, it's gonna affect us all. I think there is this kind of bravado now, the license for this sense of a real machismo kind of rhetoric and empowerment to that kind of rhetoric. So for that I certainly feel fearful, and I've had examples blatantly in front of me just with the conversations with some of my patients in this very week that have made that even more prominent. It's just a matter of now how am I going to hold space for not just myself, but certainly for those women that I care for?

Touseef Mirza:
Yeah. Because you have almost like a double whammy in the sense that you are dealing with your own emotions in terms of your reaction to what has happened. Then women are coming to you for care, and they're also probably looking up to you for reassurance, for care, for help. So you also have to almost like hold the line and have space for them to feel safe and cared for.

Dr.Sophia:
Yes. Also to feel like they can come to me no matter what. There's also that, right? I care for a myriad of women from very different backgrounds, from very different, not just any one specific, let's say, ethnic group or racial group. So given that fact, it's also being able to be open to hold space for everybody.

Touseef Mirza:
And that's always the case.

Dr.Sophia
Don't get me wrong, yeah, that's definitely always the case, but I feel it, I guess in a more poignant kind of a way. It's important for us to actually check in on how we are going to move forward. I get it, some women are actually very happy with the results. There are those women who are ambivalent about the results, but then there are those women who are very saddened by the results. At the end of the day, I feel strongly to hold space, let's say, for a woman who may be in one of the states where even if she has a miscarriage, may still not be able to get care because the care of that woman can be considered still an abortion.

Touseef Mirza:
Even if it wasn't her choice.

Dr.Sophia:
Even if it wasn't her choice, even if she were extremely happy about her pregnancy. But some medical indication, some medical reason made things take a turn for the worst or to be a physician in one of those states and be fearful that my license may be taken away, that I may be put in jail or held in some type of contempt for facilitating or for taking care of a woman who's in need of such procedures.

Touseef Mirza:
So let's just be clear, like what is the definition of abortion?

Dr.Sophia:
Abortion is any loss of pregnancy, quite frankly, can be an abortion. So when a woman has a miscarriage that is a form of abortion. It's whether or not your body naturally has an abortion or versus having to have what's called an induced abortion. Those are very similar in the fact that it's the loss of the pregnancy and the reasons are so far and wide in terms of why it happens in whichever circumstance.

Touseef Mirza:
And this is why it affects all women.

Dr.Sophia:
This is exactly why it affects all women no matter what your belief system is.

Touseef Mirza:
Exactly. It doesn't matter because it can happen naturally or by choice.

Dr.Sophia:
That is correct. Because the concept of having what's called an inevitable abortion is when you may still have a quote unquote fetus with a heartbeat, but it is not viable. It will not survive. Your body is trying to protect itself and has to expel the pregnancy naturally. But there's so many things that can go wrong in that process that require medical intervention.

Touseef Mirza:
So basically anybody, any woman that's pregnant is at risk?

Dr.Sophia:
Of an abortion.

Touseef Mirza:
Of an abortion.

Dr.Sophia:
And we need to be able to hold space for that to be safe.

Touseef Mirza:
I think this is such an important point. I find that just in the conversations, it's really since the past year, ever since the overturning of the Supreme Court that we really started to talk openly about abortion, but I still feel that we didn't go in depth of what that really means and the consequences and implications.

Dr.Sophia:
That it can affect every single solitary woman.

Touseef Mirza:
I think that part was, maybe it's not missed by everybody, but it's not something that's talked about readily. People always think about it from a perspective of pro-choice or not. But actually that is not the whole story.

Dr.Sophia:
Right.

Touseef Mirza:
So to be clear, it is anybody who is pregnant-?

Dr.Sophia:
-Can experience an abortion.

Touseef Mirza:
Which includes a miscarriage.

Dr.Sophia:
Which can be synonymous with a miscarriage. That's just one aspect, right? It's just the concept, my body, my choice, my right. No one else should have the right to tell me what to do with it. And okay, so we leave it up to the states. I live in America, and there are certain rights that should be for all Americans, especially when we make up 50% of the population. It's just that simple in terms of thinking for me. Then it just makes me feel like, well, what else is taken away from me as a woman?

I mean, it's already hard as a woman to climb the corporate ladder in point, within the election. You have to work so much harder as a woman under so many different circumstances. I don't see how we are making that better in this current climate. I don't want any woman to feel that her sense of self or a sense of self worth has changed or will change or should change because of the election's results. I think we all need to still stand firm in who we are and our identity as women and our true capabilities in this world, the things that we are able to accomplish, the way that we are able to take care of ourselves, each other, our families, our communities,

Touseef Mirza:
That it starts with us.

Dr.Sophia:
It always starts with us. The problem is that I feel like that doesn't always get translated. That we oftentimes will take care of everybody else and not take care of us. I just think that in this post-election time, we need to check in and remember to take care of ourselves first.

Touseef Mirza:
There are so many emotions. It's hard to be clear about things right now. Like as you're talking, I'm just like, what world are we in right now? You know? Like, it's still unbelievable that this is the conversation we're having for real. At the same time, I am a relentless optimist and I cannot let myself, I mean, I'm allowed to feel crappy. I'm allowed to feel down, but I refuse, whether it's because of the post-election or anything else in my life. I always try to then say, okay, so what are the things that are still working? What are the things that I'm grateful for? What can I do and how do I preserve my peace, and my joy as I walk through this difficult time? It's easier said than done.

For sure. I don't know if I'm ready to embark on that path, but there are certain things that are bubbling up that are forcing me to go in that direction, because that's just who I am. I'm trying to think how do we move from here? Is it just like crash and burn or is it moving forward? I refuse to believe that it's crash and burn. There's a part of me that feels that yes, we reverted back. But I also think at the same time that I was reading this somewhere on a social media post and the person said, I've never been so angry and clear-minded at the same time. Like there is a clarity among a lot of people that is extremely focused on one thing. We live in a time of information overload and there's so many people thinking about different things, but everything is aligned in one direction. I think now it's, you know, maybe interesting to see how people, now that they realize that this is the reality, we thought that it was a different reality, but now we realize, no, this is actually the reality. So how are we going to react to this?

Dr.Sophia:
Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, I think what kamala's campaign for both women on either side, I think what it really still brought to the table is that we can really do anything. We can be strong, we can support each other. We can take on even the hardest of the hard, I don't take it as a loss. I take it though, perhaps as a reality check that maybe just the rest of us are just not really ready. But it's not coming from a sense of, because women are not capable, it's not coming from a sense of we can't do it. It's not coming from a sense of we don't have the chops, the smarts, the strength, the ability, the heart, the grit. It's that everybody else around us isn't ready yet.

Touseef Mirza:
Well, when we say everybody, I think we also need to acknowledge that she still got 48% on a just over a hundred-day campaign.

Dr.Sophia:
That's correct.

Touseef Mirza:
And so that also speaks-

Dr.Sophia
Volumes

Touseef Mirza:
Yes. That needs to be commended. And for the people that showed up, they did show up.

Dr.Sophia:
Agreed.

Touseef Mirza:
Yes, the flip side is, you know, we can't believe that people did the flip side, but I think we also need to understand what was, what we were able to accomplish in terms of also how people have not necessarily viewed what leadership looks like. We were still able to get to this point. Obviously there's room for growth and improvement. I'm not saying that, but I also feel that it needs-

Dr.Sophia:
-It needs to be acknowledged.

Touseef Mirza:
We need to also recognize that part.

Dr.Sophia:
Yeah, agreed.

Touseef Mirza:
It's not just one or the other, it's not just black and white.

Dr.Sophia:
It's not black and white. It's not win or lose.

Touseef Mirza:
Yes.

Dr.Sophia:
Agreed. Actually, another reason why I wanted us to have this kind of check-in is because one of the things that I found challenging for myself even this week is if you have a woman in your life that you perhaps have a good relationship with, have a good rapport, and then realize that you were on opposite ends of the election and how do you move going forward? It's a reminder that we still have to hold onto the good of the person. Not because we're just trying to see the good in everybody, but to remember that in a democracy, we are in fact all entitled to our opinions.

I had to come back to that. I share that only because I also think it is very easy to click unfriend. And though for many of us, we expect that our friends share our same value system. I still have to acknowledge that if you have a friend, that person was a friend because of their good nature, their good heart, some other shared value systems that you may have, and that it may require a conversation, maybe it doesn't. But to also hold space for those who may think differently. I really bring this up because I did have enough women who came to me in true confidence with how do I manage that?

Touseef Mirza:
If they had a friend-

Dr.Sophia:
If they had someone in their lives that felt differently than they did. How do you move forward from that?

Touseef Mirza:
I mean, there's a reality check too, right? Number one. So that's the full story of where my friend is at.

Dr.Sophia:
That too. Perhaps they didn't know, perhaps they had no idea that that's where they were going to be, that where they landed, et cetera. There is still a need to remember that there's clearly a love that we have to still be open to. No, it doesn't mean that we have to accept everybody. Yes. This may mean that hey, actually we may not share the same values as I once thought. Maybe we don't keep each other in the same close and good graces potentially.

But certainly we don't need to make enemies. And I think that that was one thing that, again, at, in my position as a physician, I feel like sometimes people definitely come to me with a sense of, can you help me navigate these feelings or these issues or these problems, whether they are physical, emotional, mental.

Touseef Mirza:
So even if it doesn't have to do specifically with their body, but it's affecting them, they ask you these questions?

Dr.Sophia:
Yes.

Touseef Mirza:
Because a lot of stress can actually affect the body.

Dr.Sophia:
No, absolutely. Stress has an extremely strong effect on our bodies. I had to roll it back in terms of how I, for myself, decrease my sense of stress from this, and then how to help my patients decrease their stress.

Touseef Mirza:
This took me a while to understand, but you know, as human beings, we do have mechanisms of how to deal with stress. What the human body is not designed for is to be in constant stress, even if it's low level, constant stress. But what I mean by, you know, if I see something and I'm in shock, like, what happened on this

I'm like, what? So the stress went up. But if I maintain that height or if I stay stressed, that's a problem. But to actually express your emotions and, and let it go and talk about it, we're not saying you should never have stress, but the stress has to be released from your body. So you can come back to a state of homeostasis.

Dr.Sophia:
Yeah. We have to come back to a state of homeostasis. We have to come back to a state of balance. That's the reason why I acknowledge the concept of what it is to deal in a relationship with others who may not have the same viewpoints or the same, you know? But those are people that you had a relationship with.

Touseef Mirza:
So if anything, for your own sense of being able to release that sense of stress.

Dr.Sophia:
I mean, it's interesting. In this particular week, I also had women who came to me under circumstances where the men in their lives were not necessarily kind and not related at all to the election. However, it rang home the concept of how these women are protecting themselves, protecting who they are. And that all came back crashing to me after these results.

Touseef Mirza:
That you were able to identify the pattern, not necessarily related to the election, but in terms of the underlying potential ways of how males can feel more superior.

Dr.Sophia:
Yeah. Like there's a certain undertone of this kind of dominance that I saw in a handful of my patients this week. I could see where there was this, like, correlation almost. It made me worry when I said that earlier in that concept of that sense of maybe fear of bravado and the machismo and those women actually brought that home for me to think about it on a greater scale. Just as another cause or reason for us to actually have a open discussion on how we are going to have to be in better protection and understanding, digging deep and not even digging deep, just being in aware who we are, how we wanna be treated, who we are, being treated by, who we are in relationship with-

Touseef Mirza:
What we wanna do.

Dr.Sophia:
What we wanna do, how we wanna move forward in the world. I had one woman who said, well, my husband won't allow me to work. And I was like, what do you mean he doesn't allow you to work? It's one thing if it's a conversation because in the interest of the family, but it's a very different type of undertone when you say you, you're not allowed. So that concept of being not allowed again went from being in a singular one person that was affecting that one woman to now being so loud in the sense of where we are with these results.

Touseef Mirza:
But again, you said it doesn't necessarily mean that this happened because of the results, but now you have a higher sensitivity. You can see it.

Dr.Sophia:
I have a much more acute ear for when someone says something like that, there's nothing for her to necessarily turn to to feel a sense of real support looking from the government standpoint, let's say, and that was a little scary.
At the end of the day, we're just gonna have to be perhaps a little bit more vigilant, a little bit more engaged in how we perceive the possibility of mistreatment or abuse. Because I am afraid that those things may increase with this kind of almost bullying or kind of rhetoric that we've been hearing now that it's crossed over and it really is our new reality.

Touseef Mirza:
That it's more permissible.

Dr.Sophia:
It's gonna be more permissible. And if it's more permissible, how are we gonna be able to respond to it? So from that perspective, I think that is one of the fears.

Touseef Mirza:
So are you coming at it more from an obgyn perspective as you look at your patient? Or just in general when you say that?

Dr.Sophia:
No, I think I'm coming from this as an obgyn who takes care of women. I have to deal with women who come from domestic violence perhaps situations. Those things may increase just because now there's a sentiment of, well, I can do whatever I want. You know, that it's gonna be easier somehow.

Touseef Mirza:
An understanding that there is more tolerance for this now.

Dr.Sophia:
Yes. There may even be more tolerance or women may be more afraid. They may feel like they can't stand up because who's going to actually listen? They may feel in this state that somehow we have become less powerful. We've somehow lost our power. I think that is where some of those kinds of fears come from. And I don't think I'm alone in that thought.

Touseef Mirza:
Is it just about being a little bit more, like you said, vigilant?

Dr.Sophia:
I just think that we need to go ahead and remember to check in with ourselves. Where we come back to this concept of self-worth and remembering we are worthy of the absolute best and should not tolerate mistreatment or abuse no matter where it's coming from. No matter who thinks that they have the authority of which to do so.

Touseef Mirza:
That was always the case, obviously. Absolutely. Because God knows it's been around that that hasn't changed. It's just that there might be an uptick.

Dr.Sophia:
The uptick of power that's gonna go unchecked. So this is where again, we can talk about the concept of women being in community with each other in real support of each other, having each other's backs. So that way if for whatever reason you feel like you are being put down or being put in a situation that you can check in with yourself and seek help from your community, family, first community at large, that those measures are still in your forefront.

Touseef Mirza:
We have to like, keep almost like the rights that we have as women, keep them inside of us no matter what.

Dr.Sophia:
Absolutely.

Touseef Mirza:
At the end of the day, those are our human rights, our women's rights period. That actually is not even for us, it's for anywhere on the planet for that matter.

Dr.Sophia:
Yes.

Touseef Mirza:
So internally, we have to live by that.

Dr.Sophia:
We still have to hold on to who we are. Yes, this may have happened, but it doesn't make us lose sight of who we are. Lose sight of our power, lose sight of-

Touseef Mirza:
We are capable.

Dr.Sophia:
What we are capable of does not change. It doesn't change the fact that no one should be allowed to just dismiss us, mistreat us, or abuse us because of some type of bravado.

Touseef Mirza:
Yeah. That needs to be very clear because if we can keep ourselves intact, then we can pass through this storm. We have to just be really grounded in knowing that this is just who we are, our rights, like our ancestors, and move through this. One thing I think we cannot ever forget, we are powerful. The reason why they're doing all of this is because they know we are powerful. So we also have to recognize that. I think most of us do, but if we don't, we need to understand that we are-

Dr.Sophia:
Powerful as women. We as women.

Touseef Mirza:
Yeah. We as women are powerful beings. That's one of the reasons why there's the issue of control and superiority because they're scared. The reason why they're doing that is because they're scared of losing power. So they're putting the systems in place to regain power. You know, I've always believed that in order to address a problem or to solve a problem, it first has to be revealed. Now it's really being revealed in an ugly way, in a scary way. But we're seeing this reality. So now we can address that problem. And I also believe this is my optimistic side coming out right now. I also recognize from having read history that progress is not linear.

We take three steps forward, two steps back, and then we might take four steps forward, three steps back. If you look at the whole of history as a whole, we are progressing, but in finite timeframes, it's not obvious. So we can't let that completely deflate us. This is just one part of that timeframe. It will be a question of how we deal with this. Now we've been here before. Your ancestors, my ancestors, we've been here before and we've been able to surmount it and we'll surmount it again. It's just a question of how we're gonna do that and when we're going to do that.

Dr.Sophia:
Well, I think ultimately this is why we're here. It starts with our own sense of self. It starts with our own way in which we understand ourselves and our relationship with who we are in the world, beginning with our families, beginning with our communities, and how we show up, how we show up for our sense of self, and then how we show up for everybody else. This is not just a Doctor Sophia show on how we're gonna talk about some medical problem or issue or what have you. This is how we embrace our bodies and embrace ourselves. And I'm glad we had this check-in.

Touseef Mirza:
No matter what, embrace yourself.

Dr.Sophia:
It's no matter what, embrace yourself,

Touseef Mirza:
No matter the environment, or external, you have the right to always embrace yourself,

Dr.Sophia:
Embrace your body, embrace who you are, embrace your thoughts, embrace your emotions, embrace all of your womanness,

Touseef Mirza:
We'll be here every step of the way to have these types of conversations. The one thing I wanna say before we end is that I feel there are two parts. One is embracing yourself. The second part is to be in a community, to be with like-minded people, is to be around people you know that you can lean on and they can lean on you. The power of sisterhood is healing.

Dr.Sophia:
Yes. We all need a tribe.

Touseef Mirza:
We all need to feel connected. So as much as you wanna just sit there and scroll on social media and so forth, I think that's fine to a certain point, but I think that we're gonna recognize that the sense of community In the coming months and years is going to be really important.

Dr.Sophia:
I agree with you on that.

Touseef Mirza:
So we hope that we can also give you a sense of community.

Dr.Sophia:
Absolutely. Until next time, thank you so much for joining us. Bye

Touseef Mirza:
Bye.

Dr.Sophia:
This is General medical information based on my professional opinion and experience. For specific medical advice, please refer to your physician. Until next time, embrace your body. Embrace yourself.