photo credit: fffranz

In September 2021, just three weeks before I stopped seeing patients in the clinic, I wrote in response to a poem titled “Things That Can Be Lost.” I wasn’t consciously thinking about the imminent loss of relationships with my patients. At first, I wrote about my feelings.

“I thought I had lost my anxiety until it returned this week, anxiety about nothing, about everything, free-floating anxiety. I’m mirroring the emotion that’s ratcheting up in the world, in social media. Bubbles have been created by politics and by social isolation during the pandemic. The bridges of kindness are worn down like our infrastructure. They are at risk of being washed away.”

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About five years ago, I attended a Professional Training for AWA facilitators. We were an energetic group, and we all had a vital thing in common. We wanted to help people write and heal through their writing.

photo by Unsplash/Jlupco

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Miccosukee Land Co-op, Tallahassee FL, photo by Deborah Bayer

The members of the writing group I facilitate have been together for six months. And the safety of the group is up to me. I no longer consider myself a freshman facilitator. I am a sophomore, or as my father called them, wise morons. The word sophomore derives from the Greek, sophos meaning wise and moros meaning foolish, as in moron.

Some aspects of facilitation have become easier, like time management. Some are getting harder because I failed to set and maintain expectations from the very beginning. To be honest, I didn’t fully understand what it meant to mix two different models. I’m struggling now. My group has strayed from strict adherence to the AWA method. The feedback is supposed to be about the writing, not about how it affects the reader, nor about the person who wrote it. (more…)

v_rybakov/123RF Stock Photo

In this week, seven years ago, I posted an entry called Happiness: Finding the Way. Yesterday, I wrote in an offering from Write Around the World for Amherst Writers & Artists. There are sessions going on until May 31. I was given a writing prompt that caused me to revisit my earlier blog post. The prompt: Imagine walking through a door that leads to your heart. Describe what you experience there. I was given fifteen minutes to respond. Here is what I wrote. (more…)

During a week-long meditation retreat in 1999, ten years after graduating from medical school, I unlocked a box in my chest that held ten years’ worth of grief and anger. Tears and heat poured out of that box. I had survived medical school, postgraduate training, and my first five years as a full-fledged doctor, but not without leaving some pieces of myself behind. I’d left behind reading for pleasure, singing in choirs, and writing to heal.

Lacking external support in the hierarchical medical culture, I also lost my internal support. I endured and learned from some bad career decisions. And in time, I found my way to my first writing retreat in 2004. I found my tribe there, and I rediscovered the healing power of pen and paper. Poetry sustained me for years.

photo by a.lavine, licensed-under-CC-BY-NC-ND

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