Dr. Li Ern Chen was training as a surgical resident at Washington University in St. Louis when she saw a peer humiliated in the operating room. It wasn't the first time.

A well-known surgeon was the teaching physician in the room. He would interrupt a resident's work if he or she made the slightest move he didn't like. The surgeon would instruct the doctor to stop working and go stand in the corner.

"Put your instruments down and step away from the table," Chen recalls him saying to his trainees in the middle of a surgery. If the doctor being reprimanded was engrossed in treating the patient, the surgeon would rap his or her knuckles with a metal instrument before sending the doctor to the corner, she said.

"It was awful," Chen said. "People would come out of the OR crying."

The doctor's behavior was legendary and tolerated for years, she said. Hundreds of people had witnessed it, but no one ever spoke up or challenged him. He has since left the institution. Even though Chen was never personally targeted by him, it made a lasting impression on her.

"In academic medicine, there is very much a hierarchy," she said. "The people at the top have the power. They also have the ability to abuse the power."

Chen made it her mission to flatten that hierarchy.

Chen said she didn't feel she could make a difference by speaking up as a resident, because she was in a culture that tolerated that doctor's abusive behavior. She has now made it part of her life's work to create a different culture -- on a much larger scale.

She now oversees surgery departments in 19 hospitals in Texas. She has instituted a standard of mutual respect among surgeons, nurses, residents and students in the operating rooms.

"They will treat all people with respect," she said. Otherwise, she takes corrective action. "People are not allowed to get away with it."

Challenging highly trained colleagues is not without personal risk. The norms and routines of a clinical practice, like any ingrained or habitual behaviors, are difficult to alter, according to a commentary by Dr. David Shearn in the Western Journal of Medicine. That would appear to be especially true for the high-pressure stakes of an operating room, where the surgeon literally holds a patient's life in her hands. Attempting to change years of tradition on top of years of training could cause a revolt by those invested in an older system.

It was for this stand that Chen was honored recently, along with four other groups and individuals at the HateBraker Hero Awards in St. Louis.

Susan Balk, the founding director of HateBrakers, said the goal of the nonprofit is to encourage ordinary people to "hit the brakes" on bullying and hatred. At this year's awards, the organization honored individuals and groups from around the country, including a group of students from Old Bonhomme Elementary School near St. Louis. The kids demonstrated outside of their school after learning that a driver had shouted racial slurs at an African-American crossing guard at the school.

"I believe we learn from role models," Balk said. She described the honorees, including Chen, as heroes who showed moral courage. They disrupted a cycle of abusive behavior or violence by educating and leading.

"We should be celebrating that kind of triumph publicly," Balk said. The awards program noted that Chen confronted bullying and hazing, and these reforms have reduced errors and benefited patients, as well as the health professionals.

As a pediatric specialist, Chen has worked with hundreds of children and their families. She hopes parents also impart the same idea to their kids as she pushes in the OR: Everyone is different, and everyone brings something valuable to the table.

"It's not about how old you are or how smart you are or who your parents are," she said. There are some individuals who cannot feel good about themselves unless they are putting people down, she explained.

Along with repairing broken bodies, she set out to fix a broken system.

She had taken an oath to heal, and is keeping that promise in more ways than one.

It's impossible to escape Mother's Day.

While the intent is to show some love for the first person with whom we are wired to bond, it can be a painful day for many. It's an occasion touched with grief for anyone who lost a mother too young, and for women who struggle with infertility or who have lost a child.

But there's another group rarely discussed around the commercial celebration of motherhood: those who were raised by unloving, abusive or narcissistic mothers.

Across cultures, a mother is considered synonymous with selfless love: a child's natural protector. In the wild, a mama bear is the ultimate fierce guardian. For those who grew up with this kind of loving, protective mother, it's hard to imagine what it's like being raised by someone so broken she leaves lasting scars.

Rayne Wolfe, author of "Toxic Mom Toolkit: Discovering a Happy Life Despite Toxic Parenting," is familiar with dreading Mother's Day. The run-up to the holiday can be crushing for those who grew up in an abusive family, she said.

"I was neglected. I was literally not fed. I was exposed to sexual abuse and abused by my mother's second husband," she said. Wolfe remembers trying to wake up her mother, passed out from drinking, as a child when she was hungry.

Her mother would ask to see her hands.

"If my hands weren't shaking, she wouldn't feed me," she said.

Making things worse, young victims tend to be ashamed of what they have experienced, and often hide their parent's abuse or neglect.

Mother's Day isn't the only holiday that can be a trigger point for emotional wreckage -- Valentine's Day is rough after a breakup, as is Christmas without a loved one.

But there's an added terribleness when even the premise of the holiday taunts you.

Mother's Day is a major commercial event, with total spending projected to reach $21.4 billion this year -- outpacing Valentine's Day by nearly a couple billion. The bombardment in store displays and advertisements is matched by the outpouring of social media tributes. Public adoration flows through our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram timelines all weekend. I enjoy publicly celebrating my own phenomenal mother, but the day is fraught for those who had to seek refuge from a mother, rather than turn to her for protection and support.

Wolfe, who said she went through a lot of therapy to understand what happened to her as a child, advocates self-protection: In some cases, it makes sense to limit, or even end, contact. Emotional abuse is just as traumatic as physical abuse.

When her mother was dying, a social worker from the hospital called Wolfe and suggested it might be time for her to "bury the hatchet."

Wolfe asked the social worker if she had ever met Wolfe's mother. She suggested spending some time with her, and then calling Wolfe back if she still believed she needed to be there.

"I never heard from her again," she said.

As an adult, she has nurtured an online community of those who have suffered from toxic relationships with their mothers. She asks them to start planning, six weeks out, what they will do on Mother's Day. She gives her readers permission to skip family events that leave them feeling worthless or sad. She encourages them to see their parent with adult eyes.

"It's disheartening when you are a good person, and you don't have a loving mother figure in your life," she said. Those who were not mothered can feel very isolated.

Fortunately for Wolfe, her father remarried when she was 16. She describes her stepmother, whom Wolfe cared for as she aged, as a beautiful and lovely person.

"There was a part of me that could never trust an older woman," she said. Her stepmother helped heal that part.

Proving that it takes a lot more than biology to be a mother.

Recently, I found myself with some extra time before a flight at the Detroit Metro Airport. I passed by one of those mini spa boutiques that offer chair massages and overpriced nail services. I paused to look around inside and gauge how indulgent I felt on this mini vacation.

Was I really going to spend twice as much to get a manicure than I would pay at home?

It was a quick mental calculation. Nah, I wouldn't.

While I was having this minor internal debate, I noticed the toes of a woman standing next to me. More specifically, the warm beige-pink color of her pedicure caught my eye.

"I love that color," I said, looking up and realizing I was probably talking to a model. She towered over me, was super-thin and had perfect skin and hair.

"Thanks," she said, adding that it was her favorite shade and she wore it all the time. She started looking through the display of polishes in front of us to see if she could find it for me.

Alas, they didn't stock OPI's Samoan Sand. Before I had a chance to make a note of the color in my phone, this stranger says to me, "You know, I have a bottle in my bag. Just take it."

What.

Did she really just offer me her favorite nail polish? I weakly objected, but I didn't walk away, or stop her from rummaging in her makeup bag. When she couldn't find it in her purse, she opened her carry-on luggage and looked through her clear bag of products.

Eureka. She held it out like a precious gift.

Humbled and a little embarrassed by her generosity, I opened my own cache of traveling essentials.

"Let's make it a trade," I said. "Take this blush. It's my favorite." (For those playing at home: MAC's Warm Soul.)

"Sure," she said. "I'll try it tonight."

We swapped cosmetics and walked out of the airport spa, each in opposite directions. We didn't exchange names or Twitter handles. Maybe we recognized a kindred spirit in one another that travelers sometimes stumble upon.

It reminded me of an incident on a flight 20 years ago.

I was flying from Houston to London, and was seated next to a British man also in his early 20s. We were in the last row and struck up a conversation. He was hilarious in that dry British way, and I was boisterously friendly in that Texas way. We laughed for much of that transatlantic flight, even after they dimmed the lights and the other passengers fell asleep.

He was launching a new product line in an elite hair salon in Los Angeles. I asked for recommendations for my hair, although as a graduate student I was too poor to afford such things. We parted ways, and I marveled at my good luck for having traveled with such an enjoyable seatmate.

A month later, back in the bitter winter of Chicago, a package arrived at my door. It was filled with dozens of hair products and a note from that stranger thanking me for the great conversation.

I probably sent a thank-you note or email, but we never communicated again after that exchange.

For years, I held onto those bottles of hair gel, styling cream and volumizer, probably worth a few hundred dollars. It was a tangible reminder of the kindness of strangers, of meaningful exchanges that might only last minutes or hours, of bonds forged in that limbo space of going from one place to the next.

When I told my children about this latest unexpected airport interaction, my daughter said it sounded like the kind of thing you see happen in movies.

It kind of felt that way, too.

I'll treasure this bottle of polish as much as that hair gel.

Cosmetic products that remind me of what's truly beautiful in life -- who you encounter on the journey.