Choosing Aliveness: A Year of Medicine, Mindfulness, and Red — The Story of Dr. Bridget Godwin

If you met Dr. Bridget Godwin today—pediatric gastroenterologist, researcher, life coach, writer, and mother of three—you might never guess that her earliest dream was to become an actress. Years before she became a clinician at one of the world’s most renowned children’s hospitals, long before she began coaching women in nutrition and life transitions, she mailed her one and only college application to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, hoping to study theater.

When the rejection letter arrived, she was heartbroken. It wasn’t simply the loss of a program—it was the loss of the narrative she thought she was meant to live. But as life often does, it unfolded in ways she could not yet imagine. NYU’s College of Arts and Sciences became her new home instead, where she majored in English and minored in Mathematics and Psychology.

It turns out she was not losing a story—she was beginning a much bigger one.

Three Careers, One Calling

Today, Dr. Godwin’s professional life is a vibrant blend of medicine, research, and coaching. She often says she has “three careers,” but in practice they feel like three interconnected expressions of the same purpose: caring for others with both scientific precision and deep humanity.

The Clinician

At the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), Dr. Godwin cares for children facing complex gastrointestinal conditions. Her work requires an ability to steady families through uncertainty, to offer clarity in moments of fear, and to meet each child with the kind of empathy that honors their resilience. Pediatrics may be about tiny patients, but the courage she witnesses is anything but small.

The Researcher

Dr. Godwin extends her clinical expertise into scientific discovery through her research in pediatric inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) at Johnson & Johnson. Here, she investigates ways to improve outcomes for children with chronic conditions that impact their entire lives. Research teaches her to hold questions gently, to persist with curiosity, and to see the long arc of change—qualities that mirror the work she does with families every day.

The Coach

Her third role, and perhaps the one that blends most seamlessly with her personality, is that of life coach. As the lead nutrition coach for the Transform program and one of the featured faculty in Dr. Ali Novitsky’s Nutrition Training Program, she guides women—especially fellow physicians—through challenges around nourishment, identity, burnout, transitions, and aligning daily life with deeper priorities.

What makes her coaching unique is her grounding in mindfulness and present awareness. She helps women ask the most important questions: What do I want? What do I need? What makes me feel alive?

A Year of Balancing Growth and Home

This year, Dr. Godwin has set an intention that is at once simple and profound: to continue building a life of meaning at home while navigating her multiple professional paths. With her husband and their three young children, she is shaping a family rhythm rooted in curiosity, communication, and presence.

Balancing clinic duties, research work, coaching sessions, writing projects, and parenting is not an exercise in perfection—it is an exercise in alignment. She often shares that what keeps her grounded isn’t productivity, but mindfulness: drinking a cup of tea before opening her laptop, taking a breath between tasks, or reminding herself that she doesn’t need to be exceptional in every domain all at once.

Her life is less about “balance” and more about deliberate, compassionate choosing.

Writing: The Creative Thread That Never Left

The actress she once dreamed of becoming never fully disappeared. She simply evolved.

Today, Dr. Godwin channels her creative voice into writing. Her Substack, Tsundoku and Strawberries, is a space where she explores books, motherhood, identity, nourishment, grief, beauty, and the small joys that fill life’s corners. Her essays are reflective and lyrical, rooted in curiosity and honesty—a continuation of the storytelling she has always loved.

Writing gives her a place where titles fall away. She doesn’t have to be Doctor, or Coach, or Researcher. She gets to be Bridget—thoughtful, playful, earnest, and fully herself.

The Color Red: A Symbol of Aliveness

Ask Dr. Godwin her favorite color right now, and she’ll say red—with no hesitation.

Red, to her, symbolizes aliveness. It’s bold, energizing, and impossible to ignore. In a season of life where she is raising children, supporting families, guiding women physicians, and nurturing her own creative practice, red serves as a reminder of the desire at the center of it all:
to feel awake and alive in her life, moment by moment.

A Family Dream: Japan Awaits

On the family bucket list is a long-awaited trip to Japan. Dr. Godwin and her husband share a love of Haruki Murakami’s dreamlike storytelling, and their children adore the enchanted worlds of Hayao Miyazaki. Japan represents beauty, whimsy, introspection, and cultural richness—qualities that resonate deeply with her.

It is a trip they are certain they will take, a promise tucked into the future like a beloved chapter waiting to be read.

Mindfulness as the Thread That Weaves It All Together

In every arena of her life, mindfulness is the thread that holds the tapestry together. She teaches presence not as a perfect meditation practice, but as a way of living with awareness, curiosity, and choice. Whether she is helping a woman clarify her priorities, supporting a new diagnosis in a family, or navigating the complexity of a research initiative, she returns to the same guiding question:

Does this help me feel alive in my life?

Mindfulness allows her to build a life that is not reactive, but intentional. One that does not rely on achievement to feel meaningful. One that celebrates small joys, honest conversations, quiet moments, and the courage to make choices aligned with one’s deepest values.

IMPACT

Dr. Bridget Godwin’s life is a testament to the beauty of nonlinear paths. What began as a dream of acting grew into a career that blends science, compassion, teaching, creativity, and personal growth.

Her story is not about becoming one thing—it is about becoming herself.

And as she cares for children, advances research, coaches women, raises a family, writes her monthly essays, and embraces the color red, she continues to embody her guiding philosophy:
Choose aliveness.

Not perfection.
Not productivity.
Just presence, connection, meaning, and joy—moment by moment, breath by breath, in the life she is intentionally creating.