Life and Work with Lillian Hathaway

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lillian Hathaway.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Lillian. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I’m a Physician Assistant and Creative working in Los Angeles. My identity is dual. I am an artist (writer, model, photographer) yet I also practice medicine. Every day, I walk into patient exam rooms and ask the same thing, “Tell me the story — tell me what brought you in today.” As a Physician Assistant practicing medicine here in Los Angeles, every day, I collect stories. And as a Creative, nothing brings me more joy than being part of the human experience, whatever that means. We’re messy creatures, as humans, and I find it fascinating and wonderful. We all have a story, and I’m here in Los Angeles writing mine.

I grew up on the East Coast, in Rhode Island, on a generational family farm that is surrounded by the ocean. I was a serious classical violinist in high school, and no one was more surprised than me when I choose to go to undergrad and grad school in Washington, D.C., to study medicine and become a Physician Assistant.

In DC, I experienced what it means to take account for your place in the world. I marched in The Women’s March, I rallied with Black Lives Matter. I learned this crucial thing: Your experience, as true as it is for you, is not universal. I learned what otherness meant, and I explored more of what does connect everyone — stories.

Nothing matters more to me than stories. Learning them, sharing them, most of all — stepping into them, by whatever means possible.

Every day, I am writing my own story, and I’m enjoying it.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
What if the struggle is part of the story? Joseph Campbell has a quote about The Path, and how if it’s really Your Path, you can’t see it in front of you because you are actually creating it as you go and that’s what makes it your path. In 2018, I moved out to Los Angeles by myself from the East Coast with $400 and four suitcases to begin my story here and each day has felt like a tragi-comedy of my own making, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’m twenty-five right now, but I’ve already seen enough of both life and death to know that a great STORY is truly the most rewarding thing to possess. I’ve experienced some amazing successes and some crushing failures already and all of it has just been part of a story.

I love how LA allows stories to be important, allows stories to MATTER and shift the needle and change history by changing the way people view other people and the world around us.

My heroes are the storytellers, the creators, the rule-breakers and the ones who use power, success, and every freaking thing they possess to create meaning in this world. Oprah, Witney Wolfe Herd, Frank Ocean, Sara Blakely, J.K. Rowling. Shonda Rhimes, Jesse Itzler, Jamie Beck, Virgil Abloh, Sophia Amoruso, Audrey Gelmen, Ann Lamott, Ava DuVernay, Paul Thomas Anderson, Dr. Aaliya Yaqub, Mindy Kaling, Ruthie Lindsey, Emily Weiss, Katrina Lake, Greta Gerwig, And here’s the thing, all of my heroes have the same thing in common — they had to overcome. They all had their own hero’s journey, and so do we. We’re here for a reason, each of us. Humanity really does create a fantastic story.

One story from my own life: I am a healthcare provider with a mental illness. I have a unique insider view of just what so many have to overcome in order to daily exist and be their own best self. About a year ago, after the suicide of a close friend, I opened up publicly to my friends and family about my own mental illness, and I began a project on my Instagram Stories called #ProjectStigma, where after each weekly therapy session I have, I share a bit of what happened in the session in order to decrease stigma and increase awareness about mental health resources like therapy. The response has meant the world to me. And as a creative who is writing her own story, I have found so much joy in sharing the journey through things like Instagram Stories. I have been changed by what others have shared through social media as a medium, and I want to bring good into the world through that tool also. It’s not about the medium for me, it’s always just about the story. From scrawling on the cave walls in pre-historic times to sharing latte art today, we find meaning thru sharing our experiences with others.

Please tell us about your work.
Again, that duality thing. My work is all over the spectrum. On one hand, I practice medicine. I diagnose, manage, and treat both acute and chronic disease, daily. It’s an important work that changes lives and requires a lot from me, and every day I am so grateful to be a Physician Assistant.

On the other hand, every day, I am creating. If it’s working on a collection of essays, or editing a recent photography session I recently shot (yes, I am a photographer, it’s just another medium of creation to me and for that reason I love it — I began shooting weddings internationally in my early twenties to help me get through PA school in an expensive city like DC, and since then I have done weddings, engagements, and portrait sessions in places like Bogota, Colombia, Positano, Italy, Miami, Florida, and Manhattan, New York).

Whatever my work is, it’s always about creation.

Are there any apps, books, podcasts or other resources that you’ve benefited from using?
I would recommend a few books:
A General Theory of Love by Thomas Lewis
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman
Mindset by Carol Dweck
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
The Defining Decade by Meg Jay
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Essentialism by Greg McKeown

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @lillianhathaway

Image Credit:
Elizabeth Sanders

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