I have been thinking, lately, about all the times I knew something and said nothing.

I remember what those early years as a doctor felt like. The wards were loud with confident voices, and I was rarely one of them. I felt small, uncertain, anxious in ways I couldn’t quite articulate, like a spare part in a machine that everyone else seemed to know how to operate. The self-doubt was constant, a low hum beneath everything I did, and I carried it quietly because I assumed it meant something was wrong with me rather than with the world I had walked into.