From survival to sovereignty: What 35 years in the ER taught me about identity, mortality, and redemption

I’ve lived a full life. A hard one. A beautiful one. A complicated one. And now, at 61, I’m finally beginning to live an honest one.

I was built in survival mode. Growing up as a Korean American boy in Central Texas—often the only Asian face in the room—my earliest years taught me that difference could either be celebrated… or punished. At first, it was celebrated. I flourished. But a move to a new city taught me something else: Different can become dangerous. I was bullied. Ostracized. Thrown into dumpsters. Notes in my locker. Graffiti on my car. I learned to protect myself—not by shrinking, but by achieving. Straight A’s weren’t about pride. They were about safety. Valedictorian wasn’t status—it was armor.

But achievement couldn’t quiet the voices in my head:

Why do I have to fight this battle every day?
Why couldn’t I just be white?
No one will ever love you.

I didn’t just chase success. I hid behind it. Eventually, I became a doctor. An ER physician. Not because I craved prestige, but because it gave me a mission—and a mask. For 35 years, I ran toward what others ran from: trauma, chaos, death. I held dead babies. Told mothers their children were gone. Performed CPR on friends. Called time of death for strangers and colleagues alike.

I began my career in the midst of the AIDS epidemic, when so much was unknown. After a needle stick or scalpel cut, I’d wait—terrified—wondering if I had contracted HIV. Here today, gone tomorrow. I twilighted my ER career in the grip of another pandemic: COVID-19. This time, the uncertainty applied to all of us. We didn’t just treat the virus. We could die from it. I saw patients gasping in hallways on BiPAP because we were out of ventilators. Once again: Here today, gone tomorrow.

The body always keeps the score, as Dr. Bessel van der Kolk so powerfully described. I mastered compartmentalization. I had to. If I let every death in, I couldn’t function. But unprocessed emotions don’t disappear—they just find detours. For me, they emerged as addiction, sex, performance, anger. Two versions of me developed:

One who saved lives.
And one who sabotaged his own.

I wasn’t always the father, husband, or man I wanted to be. But I was always evolving. Because somewhere inside, curiosity survived. That curiosity became a spiritual awakening. It became what Dr. Brené Brown might call a reckoning with shame, and ultimately, a reclamation of love.

I’ve come to understand that the identity I built—crafted in pain, perfection, and protection—was never the whole story. It was just the first chapter. My old biography was not my destiny. So after 35 years I started writing again.

Don’t put a period where God placed a comma, as Gracie Allen so wisely said. I call this new chapter the Nova Oath™—my Hippocratic Oath 2.0. The old oath said: “Do no harm.” Now? I say: “Do more good,” my own evolved take on that original promise.

That means:

Showing up with integrity when no one is watching.
Treating myself with the same care I’ve given to thousands of patients.
Choosing peace over pressure, love over resentment, presence over performance.

My past gave me scars. But it also gave me scaffolding—to build something sacred. I’m no longer chasing excellence to prove I belong. I belong because I choose to.

This is my story. It’s not perfect. But it’s mine. And maybe, just maybe, it’s yours too. If you’re reading this and something inside you stirred—let that be your starting point. You are different. So go make a difference.™

If this resonates, subscribe or share. This is just the beginning of a conversation we all need to have—about trauma, identity, healing, and who we become when we choose to evolve consciously.

Kenneth Ro is a double board-certified emergency and internal medicine physician with more than 35 years of experience on the front lines of medicine. He is the author of PRIME: How to Win the Second Half of Life, a physician’s guide to reclaiming energy, identity, and purpose in midlife. His work now focuses on the deeper crises beneath modern health care, including burnout, loss of meaning, and quiet suffering among midlife men and physicians. He is the founder of Back in the Game Men™, the creator of the Nova Oath™, and the So Go Make a Difference™ movement. Connect with him on LinkedIn and learn more at KennethRoMD.com.