From Botox to Breakthrough : A Surgeon's Journey Home

plastic surgeon to soul surgeon

Hello lovelies, welcome!

I’m Soul Surgeon, Dr. Tamy, inviting you into the journey of self-discovery. Permission Slips is a weekly newsletter blending personal stories, ancient wisdom teachings, and tangible tools. Whether you’re deep in the spiritual path or just beginning, I’d love you to join me!

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Sending you ALL lots of love✨

Today’s Permission Slip : I give myself permission to walk back home✨

Photo : Typical day in the Operating Theater — present and focused

From Plastic Surgeon to Soul Surgeon: A Journey Home

Many of you have asked me how I became a Soul Surgeon. And what it even means?

Today, I’ll share with you how I shifted from plastic surgeon to Soul Surgeon, and how I found my way to where I was always meant to be. In next week’s publication I’ll dive into the foundations of Soul Surgery.

The Heart of an Eight-Year-Old

At eight years old, I decided I would be a heart surgeon. I don’t know why or where the idea came from. Maybe it’s an unspoken contract in a past life? But while other girls played with barbie dolls and nailpolish, I devoured chapters on the Circulatory System of the Heart in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Remember those? I used a number two pencil to trace anatomical hearts onto translucent tracing paper. Followed by red and blue colored pencils to carefully outline the arteries and veins. This was my favorite after school activity. Not your typical child, you might notice.

I knew what I had to do to achieve my goal. There weren’t many creative ways to become a surgeon! Get good grades. Complete pre-med. Get into medical school. Match into a surgical residency. And work your butt off throughout these arduous years. And then some.

So I did.

Things were moving as planned. Until they weren’t.

The First Crisis—A Dream Shattered

During my first cardiothoracic surgery rotation in residency, I was electric with anticipation. It felt like stepping onto the track at the Olympic trials — one race away from the dream I had nurtured since childhood. I felt my pulse pounding with possibility, my mind alive with the weight of what was about to happen. I had imagined my steady hands mending fragile hearts, breathing life back into those on the brink.

I felt my mouth salivating on my way to the operating room. The idea that I was about to hold the heart in my hands felt wondrous. To reach inside a patient’s chest cavity and touch the very core of life itself felt surreal. What had once been a distant fantasy was now unfolding before me, real and beating. As a resident, I spent many hours in those operating rooms, shoulder to shoulder with the cardiothoracic surgeons that I emulated.

The dream had always been so vivid — precise and full of purpose.

But reality had other plans.

The surgeons I worked with weren’t the untouchable gods of medicine I had once envisioned — they were exhausted. Hollow-eyed, caffeine-fueled, their hands skilled but their spirits worn thin. Their lives revolved around the hospital and were consumed by stress. Their patients were the sickest in the hospital and so the stakes were astronomical. They carried the weight of life and death on their shoulders daily. The victories were fleeting. The losses? Too many to count.

I had my first existential crisis.

The little girl who had once dreamt of saving hearts now felt her own breaking under the weight of it all. The clarity that had propelled me forward for so many years had vanished, leaving me stranded in a fog of doubt. At 26, I was lost.

Everything I had worked so hard for felt like a house of mirrors—distorted, confusing, endless.

Finding a New Path—The Art of Healing

I stumbled through the rest of my internship like a series of bad blind dates — orthopedics, pediatric surgery, ophthalmology, neurosurgery — none of them spoke to me.

Then came plastic and reconstructive surgery.

Here, art and medicine intertwined. I found poetic artistry in aligning a toddler’s cleft lip — requiring millimeter precision. Reattaching an amputated finger meant suturing together vessels finer than a human hair. Even cosmetic procedures felt like magic—shaving down a dorsal nasal hump to reveal a new profile and reshaping the body felt like sculpting. Precision and purpose. There was an undeniable artful eloquence to knowing my hands could transform what once seemed unchangeable.

I found my surgery love. My home.

I proceeded to train in plastic and reconstructive surgery and pursued an additional fellowship in Microsurgery. For years, I worked tirelessly—rebuilding breasts after mastectomies and salvaging hands after trauma. It was meaningful, yet demanding, work.

Then life pulled me in another direction.

Five Pregnancies and a Turning Point

By the time I was pregnant with my fifth child, I knew I couldn’t keep running to the emergency room in the middle of the night and still be the present mother I wanted to be. Microsurgery and reconstructions carried with them a relentless toll. I had a choice to make.

So, at five months pregnant, I pivoted.

I dropped emergency cases. Stopped taking insurances. And shifted my work to purely elective cosmetic surgery—breast augmentations, tummy tucks, and Botox. A 9-to-5 schedule meant breakfast with my children, after-school homework, and nightly baths and storytime. My heart was full and my schedule ever slightly more balanced.

But I was never one to do things the usual way.

Photo by Jay Castor on Unsplash

Beyond Skin-Deep—The Birth of Holistic Beauty

I quickly realized the limitations of cosmetic surgery. I knew that changing the physical body alone didn’t necessarily change one’s life.

Yes, my patients were thrilled with their results. But something deeper was missing. Enhancing breast size or sculpting a waistline could not fill a void within. So I expanded my practice into a full-spectrum wellness center. I encountered a newfound passion - incorporating well-being for the mind, body, and soul.

My motto was : Beauty Redefined—Inner and Outer Beauty & Wellness.

It was revolutionary. At a time when plastic surgery focused solely on the surface, I was diving beneath. In addition to offering my patients deep dive mentoring and coaching sessions to support their psycho-emotional inner worlds, my wellness center also housed:

• Acupuncturists

• Reiki healers and massage therapists

• Lymphatic drainage specialists

• IV Hydration Infusions

• An Ayurvedic Practitioner

• A gorgeous Meditation Room

• Yoga Nidra, chakra alignment, and meditation workshops

• Even Ayurvedic cooking classes in the lobby—turmeric and coconut mingling with the scent of antiseptic

Some patients embraced it. Others? Not so much.

Some sat through my wellness talks with curiosity. Others checked their watches, waiting for their next injection. I could almost hear them thinking, Just give me my Botox, lady.

Still, before they left, I’d slip a copy of The Four Agreements into their hands. Those who got it, got it.

The Pandemic Pause—A Moment of Reckoning

Then came COVID.

For three months, I was home, deemed a non-essential worker (though my patients argued otherwise). No surgeries. No office. No patients. I dove into my long-lost loves of poetry, art, and music - engaging whole-heartedly with haikus, acrylic paints, and my college guitar. I found myself again, as someone other than just surgeon.

How I Learned to Shine During Covid.

When I returned to work, everything had changed. My practice had been stripped down to its barest form—scalpel in hand, injecting, cutting, suturing. We couldn’t gather. The wellness center was silent.

And suddenly, for the first time in my long career, I wasn’t excited to be back at work.

What finally helped me drop the scalpel was a single, simple question :

What do I want?

Not what I should want. Not what others expected of me (trust me, there was a lot of that!) Not what had made sense for the last three decades of my life.

But what do I want — now, in this moment in my life?

Asking from that fresh, untethered space changed everything. The answer didn’t come from old stories, obligations, or the weight of my past identity. It came from now. And in that stillness, I could finally hear : It’s time to let go. It’s time to step into my newfound truth as Soul Surgeon.

One of my patients put it perfectly : "I come for the Botox, but I stay for the therapy. You’re not just a plastic surgeon. You’re a Soul Surgeon."

And so was born the next part of my journey.

Coming Home — The Soul Surgeon I Was Meant To Be

It took another year to break free. A year of deep soul-searching. Of sitting in the quiet with my doubts, fears, and the endless chorus of shoulds and shouldn’ts that echoed in my mind. Shapeshifting from plastic surgeon to Soul Surgeon meant walking away from everything I had built. It felt like standing at the edge of a cliff, staring into the unknown, wondering whether I would fall or fly. It was terrifying — I was standing at the funeral of my former self.

I knew that I was a healer and my first step was to redefine and expand my definition of what it meant to heal.

I found that words can stitch wounds that no surgeon’s hands can touch. The deepest healing I had ever done for my patients was through words, presence, and connection—not through incisions. The truth of the words themselves were the remedy.

I understood that you don’t have to cut someone open to help them transform. I found that oftentimes, the deepest wounds are internal — limiting beliefs, unprocessed grief, unresolved trauma. A scalpel can remove a tumor, but awareness can remove self-doubt, fear, and old conditioning. Healing isn’t always seen, but it is always felt.

I realized that true healing happens when we come back to our wholeness. This is when transformation takes place - in the spaces where people feel seen, understood, and safe enough to let go. This does not require a scalpel. It requires holding space for others as they awaken to their own wholeness.

I made my decision.

Put down my scalpel.

Closed my surgical practice and wellness center.

And stepped fully into my new calling.

I had come home — as a Soul Surgeon.

Photo by Alex Shute on Unsplash

AHA Moment

Amazingly — and with startling clarity, I realized — my eight-year-old self had been right all along. I always wanted to be a heart surgeon. I just didn’t understand back then that healing hearts had nothing to do with opening a chest.

The path home is often clearer in hindsight. It took three decades of reconstructing faces and reshaping bodies to finally understand :

Real transformation happens within.

What’s Next?

In my next piece, I’ll share the foundations of Soul Surgery.

No scalpel, no anesthesia—just truth, transformation, and the courage to meet your truth.

Photo : Typical day in the Operating Theater of Life during a Soul Surgery session — decaf oat milk latte (no foam) in hand, presence embodied, no scalpel, no anesthesia.

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Journaling Prompts✨

1. Tracing Your Childhood Calling – Think back to your earliest dreams. What did your younger self imagine for your future? Does any part of that dream still live within you today?

2. Moments of Crisis and Clarity – Recall a time when you felt lost, like everything you had worked for no longer fit. What did that moment teach you? How did it shape your next steps?

3. Beyond the Surface – In what areas of your life have you focused on external changes while longing for something deeper? What might true transformation look like for you?

4. Listening to the Inner Voice – If you quiet the noise of expectations—societal, familial, personal—what is your soul truly calling you to do? How can you take a small step toward it today?

5. Letting Go and Coming Home – What identity, role, or path have you held onto out of habit or fear? What would it feel like to release it and trust where life is leading you?

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