“Secretum meum mihi,” (“my secret is mine.”) was St. Edith's Stein's cryptic response when her best friend asked why she converted. We serve up interviews, historical sketches, Bible studies, book reviews and essays for Catholic women. MY SECRET IS MINE is for women with an audacious hope: that the Messiah makes all things new.
Interview: Dr. Cindy Jones-Nosacek - 2025 edition
Published 6 days ago • 5 min read
Dr. Cindy: Mother, Grandmother, Prolife Doctor, Bioethicist, Medical Missionary & Wife of a Deacon!
by Genevieve Kineke
(SHORT BIO: Dr. Cynthia Jones-Nosacek is a retired family practice physician in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She is a respected pro-life bioethicist in addition to doing medical mission work in Uganda with her husband, Deacon Gary Nosacek of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. She and her husband have five children, and live in a multigenerational household. This interview was completed in early 2025 and is available on the My Secret is Mine podcast.)
Caption: Dr. Cindy among the members of the Acholi tribe in Uganda, where she visits twice a year to a sister parish and provides medical care. For more information on the mission, visit her parish website Three Holy Women in Milwaukee.
To learn more about her medical work in Uganda, please listen to the podcast!
Genevieve: Tell me a little bit about your time at medical school. Were there a lot of women in your class at that time?
Dr. Cindy: I started medical school in 1977, graduated in 1980. And my class and even the class maybe just before me were the first ones that had more women in it than previous years.
Genevieve: And how was that experience for you, being one of the pioneers?
Dr. Cindy: Well, there was a lot of anger from the male students. I kept hearing about how I was taking up the place of a man who would work harder and work longer hours. My children were all going to be emotionally dysfunctional because I was going to be working. That I wasn't a real doctor.
Genevieve: So was this animus face to face?
Dr. Cindy: Oh, it was face to face. They were not shy about telling me those things. And I got my revenge, because when I was in practice, I was one of the highest billers in our group for my specialty.
Genevieve: But from what I understand, you thrived in your specialty and your husband helped a lot in the years of raising children.
Cindy: Yes. In the beginning, my husband had a children's radio show for 20 plus years. Until I got home from work, my mother would help watch the children. But when the time came for my mom to retire, my husband gave up his job. And he just stayed with the kids.
Genevieve: Isn't that amazing? And that's the beauty of a good marriage. You just assessed the needs of everyone in the family and said, “all right, how are we going to go about doing this?”
Dr. Cindy: It’s also about the ability and the willingness to make sacrifices. Whoever stays home has sacrificed something. Then the one who works has sacrificed something. So it's just a shared project for the good of all.
Genevieve: I love that. And, I’d like to lead into another beautiful fact about your life – you and your husband Gary live in a multi-generational home. How did this come about?
Dr. Cindy: Well, we have a 125 year old Victorian home. And so the third floor was the servants’ quarters. So there's two bedrooms, and a living area. And when my daughter finished a masters degree and got married, she and her husband decided to stay with us for a while.
Well, then COVID came, and the babies came. She has four children, one of whom has special needs. And so my daughter had to quit her job to stay home for the special needs child. And it looks like it's going to be a more long-term situation.
Genevieve: Did you go into it with any apprehension?
Dr. Cindy: Not really. When I was between jobs early in my career, my husband and I lived with my parents. And we had two children at the time. And so I kind of knew what to expect, and how to help them feel more like this is their home.
Genevieve: So you already knew what it was like to have this older person looking over your shoulder. Now you're that older person looking over your daughter's shoulder. What did your early experience teach you about how to be a good, gentle, non-obtrusive grandmother?
Dr. Cindy: I have to bite my tongue. And sometimes, I have to tell my daughter, “tell me if you just want to vent, or if you want advice.”
You know, just as a physician, I tried as much as possible to let the parents decide what was best for their kids. There's so many experts around nowadays, that people just don't trust themselves. And I think parents need to trust themselves. It's not always the same thing for each kid, either.
Genevieve: So, what is it like having the grandchildren in the same house?
Dr. Cindy: Well, they do know who mom and dad is, and there are times when only mom or dad will do, which is good.
The way the house is set up, the parents and one or two of the babies sleep on the third floor, but the others sleep in a bedroom on our floor. And so sometimes we'll hear them during the night and one of us will get up instead of the parents. Or occasionally they'll get up in the morning and the parents aren't up, so they'll climb into bed with us.
Genevieve: Right. I love it. And do you and your husband share your faith with them?
Dr. Cindy: We do pray together, before meals, that sort of thing. And they go to a later Mass than we do, but sometimes with us. My husband Gary is a deacon, and the two oldest go to the Catholic school where he serves. And so they see grandpa at the altar.
Genevieve: That's wonderful. Christ is very much a part of your household. As you say, there’s four adults and four children. That's some one-on-one time that's fully available to each of them. What about alone time as a couple?
Dr. Cindy: My daughter and her husband occasionally will have a date night. Or after we put the kids to bed, I might make my husband and myself a fancier meal than I normally would. So we try that way. Or go stay somewhere overnight. We get our time because of my work, with the Catholic Medical Association and missionary trips to Uganda. (To hear the full podcast on their work in Uganda, click here.)
Genevieve: I think generosity is the prevailing spirit in your household and it's very edifying.
Dr. Cindy: There's one thing I always tell my parents, and my kids, especially when they're having problems in their relationships. You know, love is a choice, not a feeling. A verb, not a noun. And that's kind of how we've tried to live.
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“Secretum meum mihi,” (“my secret is mine.”) was St. Edith's Stein's cryptic response when her best friend asked why she converted. We serve up interviews, historical sketches, Bible studies, book reviews and essays for Catholic women. MY SECRET IS MINE is for women with an audacious hope: that the Messiah makes all things new.
