'Fairy Godmother' Memoir Delivers Invaluable Professional and Personal Wisdom for Women in the Work Force

Yahoo

05-04-2025

Denise S. Brown. MD has built an estimable career as a Stanford-trained physician, CEO, strategic adviser, and widely sought-after speaker. She's also a board member of seven companies drawing profits in the eight-figure range, a dedicated wife and the mother of two grown sons. She's presumptively done it all. But Brown's success came on the heels of struggle, sadness and heartache. 'After losing my mother at 25 and experiencing eight miscarriages while building my medical practice, I learned that success without satisfaction is meaningless,' says Brown. To that end, Brown is publishing her debut memoir The Fairy Godmother's Guide to a Good Life: A Prescription for the Working Woman (Legacy Launch Pad Publishing). A blend of personal and professional observations of women in the workforce and the collective burnout often experienced, The Fairy Godmother, drops today, April 5.
The book, as much as it charts Brown's career trajectory and lessons learned along the way, functions as a de facto manual for women carving out their places in the world while attempting to discover what gives them joy, meaning and purpose. Brown's book is also, at its core, a tribute to her mother, who died young at the age of 53 but left a remarkable legacy not only as a loving parent, but a renowned chemist who worked on top-secret projects at the Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico, where Brown was partially raised. 'My publisher said Saturday is not the greatest day to launch a book,' says Brown. 'But I was like, 'I don't care. It's my mom's birthday—and that's what we're doing.'' denisesbrownmd.com/book
Your memoir captivated me in a way that I think it will many readers. Maybe it's that we're all so drawn to doctors, because medicine affects us all. It's why TV series and movies about doctors do so well. In college, even those of us who weren't pre-med would all gather around to watch every show there was about doctors.
Oh, I've got a great story. The first season of ER, my wrist and hand were in the opening credits. There's a close-up shot of me carrying a cooler [with an organ] on the roof, because they shot that first reason at the University of Chicago. I was a third-year med student, just like the character Carter [Noah Wyle].
You're like Kevin Coster who played the corpse in . The rest of his scenes wound up on the cutting room floor.
Yes! It was my Big Chill moment.
Your childhood was an extraordinary one. It makes absolute sense that you grew up to become a doctor. Your parents were top-secret scientists who held prestigious positions at the Los Alamos National Lab. Their security clearances were so air-tight, they couldn't discuss what they did. My grandfather worked on the atomic bomb, so this part of your childhood is especially fascinating to me.
It's fascinating to me, too. It must have been after my first year if med school at University of Chicago, that summer, and I had a job at the lab. And I was hanging out with all these old guys and learning about what they did during the [Manhattan] Project and its immediate aftermath. And I was coming at it from the lens of medicine. And these men were the first ones to figure out, you know, nuclear medicine and iodine treatment for the thyroid—they were just shooting themselves up with all this stuff. They were a different breed.
It's a confusing welter of emotions I think, being related to scientists who worked on a bomb that could destroy the earth tenfold. And yet—these were genius people. And they didn't even understand the ways in which their work would forever change the course of the planet.
Exactly. I feel the same way. My dad was this poor Oregon farm buy who joined the Navy, and so he was very interested in nuclear power. And so, he went to Columbia University, which was where you went to study that, and he met my mom. And then he went to work for Con Edison. That was his thing. He was going to bring clean power to America. And then Three Mile Island happened and now this poor guy who wanted to do nothing but good by harnessing the power of the atom wound up doing something completely different. He wasn't a bomb designer—he did all the computer simulations for the Wargames at Los Alamos. But it was never what he wanted to do.
Like your parents, you are a high achiever. From going to UC Berkeley to U. of Chicago Medical School, becoming a prominent physician and a CEO, you've accomplished so much. And yet you say this memoir is your legacy. What do you mean by that?
I sold a company in fall of 2023, and I got interviewed for a magazine, and the interviewer asked me, what's your legacy? And I remember saying, 'I don't understand the question.' And she said, 'Well, you've sold this company, you've changed the way healthcare gets delivered. What's your legacy?' And that was the genesis of it. And I said, 'My two boys. That's my legacy.' And then we just started talking and she started asking me more questions—she was young, about 30. And so, I told her all about my philosophy and how, as a woman, you have to do so many things simultaneously, but you can't do them all—and you have to ask for help. And she was like, 'Holy shit. You have to write this down.'
What I found most compelling and relatable about your memoir is that with all your accomplishments, it still didn't feel like enough. You felt like that you needed to do more.
I did grow up in this very academic, high-powered family. And I was the oldest daughter, so I put a lot on pressure on myself, and, you know, I hit all the bells and whistles—the grades, I was the valedictorian. And then when my mom died unexpectedly at sadly, young age, it was kind of like, wdll this is all pretty meaningless. Like, who cares, really? It was a big kind of wake-up call. I realized what mattered was not all the external accolades, but how do I feel about myself today? It became about doing stuff that's deep in your heart and not focusing so much on what's on your resume.
You discovered your mom's autoimmune disease, from which she ultimately died. And while that diagnosis likely prolonged her life—you write in your book about how great a weight that was, how heavy a responsibility.
I never had time to properly grieve my mother—because I was so in the middle of it all. I would always say to everyone that when my sweet baby, my Jack Russell dog, Otis, dies, reserve me a room. I had a feeling that all the cumulative grief I've dealt with would come flooding over me. My mom died in 1996, but I had never really thought about it or spent any time with that grief, and then right after Otis died, I think it kind of gave me permission to unmask it all. I was 23 when my mother died. I was the one who turned all the drips off, who turned off the monitors. Because someone in the family has to do that. I bore the brunt of that. This is not something the average 23-year-old is thinking about. That was not fun, and it completely changed my entire life. Instead of me feeling like, oh, aren't I the bright shiny young thing, I was just like, wow, I'm just so lucky to be here. To be alive.
All we have is today.
It's true.
If I wanted to gift someone , who should I give it to? Who is the ideal audience for this book?
I would give it to your little fairy goddaughter or your friend's daughter who graduated from college last year—or maybe this year. Or maybe she's someone who is just finishing her MBA and she's thinking, now what? I think ideally, this is a book that is most helpful for someone who is maybe between 25 and 35 years old. Someone trying to make really big decisions and overwhelmed. The way our culture has evolved, we have too much information. There are too many options, and you've got to whittle it down. One of the things that being a doctor makes you really good at is making hard decisions, gathering all the information, and then thinking and then acting on that. I always tell my boys, you're not making the decision—you're making a decision. And that's a very important difference in your brain.