You might remember Dr. Andrea DeMets.
Back in October 2024, I interviewed this Arizona pediatrician right after she moved to the Netherlands 🇳🇱 with her husband and three kids for a year-long sabbatical.
At the time, she was in the we actually did it phase.
Now? She’s back in Arizona. And I had questions.
Did the sabbatical live up to the dream?
What was the hardest part?
And what was it like coming home?
One thing that surprised me, this move wasn’t impulsive at all.
Andrea told me she and her husband had been talking about doing something like this for years. Since their twins were babies.
Before they left, they even made a list of what they hoped to get out of the year.
And when she found that list again while packing up to leave the Netherlands?
A lot of those boxes had actually been checked.Which honestly feels kind of rare with big life dreams.
Here’s a peek at what we talk about in the vlog:
✅ Why the most meaningful part of the year was family connection
✅ How each of her kids handled the move very differently
✅ Why she started an MBA during the sabbatical
✅ How living abroad changed the way she thinks about medicine and healthcare
✅ And the part no one talks about enough… re-entry
Because leaving is one thing. But coming back to the same house, same city, same life…and realizing you’re not quite the same person anymore?
That’s a different kind of adjustment.
We also talked about something a lot of physicians feel but don’t always say out loud: Who are you when you’re not just “the doctor”?
Andrea said stepping away from that identity was strange at first.
And then… surprisingly freeing.
When I asked her to sum up the year in one word, she said: Resilience.
Which felt pretty spot on.
Check out our first conversation here.
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Rooting for you,
PPS: Curious what it looked like at the very beginning? Here’s the video conversation we recorded with Dr. Andrea just after she arrived in the Netherlands.
