Yesterday was a hard clinic day. Everyone felt it, but no one said anything. Until we finally caught a brief moment of quiet and I murmured, almost to myself, “I have a migraine. I almost called in sick today.”

And then my team of women opened up.

Medical assistant (expecting mother): “Me too. I had appointments today and didn’t want to be running around on my lunch break.”

Nurse (new mother): “Same. My baby isn’t feeling well, and it was really hard to leave the house this morning.”

Then we talked about why we came in anyway.

Me (MD): I looked at my schedule of 30+ patients who had waited months to see me, and felt I had to show up.

MA: We had procedures scheduled. She didn’t think it was fair to ask someone unfamiliar with our workflow to step into an already overwhelming day.

RN: She saw she was the only charge nurse of the day. If she called out, clinicians would be left without RN support, and the clinic would descend into chaos.

So a team of responsible, self-sacrificing, deeply committed women showed up to work. We carried pain, worry, exhaustion, and kept the place running.

And why was the day so hard?

A male patient yelled at me and demanded to see someone who “knew what he was doing.” A male superior bypassed the nurse entirely, dismissing her expertise on an important decision. The medical assistant was asked to take on even more tasks, including training new staff, far more than her male colleagues. By the end of the day, we were more exhausted, in more pain, and sicker than when we started.

Sitting there together, we made an unspoken pact: next time, we’ll stay home.

Does a workplace function without women who deprive themselves to keep it together?

Does the world run without women who place everyone else first?

Does the sky fall if women stop breaking their backs to hold it up?

I think we all know the answers.

But here’s the question we haven’t allowed ourselves to ask:

What happens when women, collectively, decide to stop giving ourselves to systems that feel entitled to our sacrifice?

Perhaps it’s time the world finds out.