Earlier this week I was sitting with a dozen very smart and well-trained physicians – all women – and listening to them talk about how they take care of themselves so they can continue to endure the stress and pressure of medical practice. One by one they shared thoughtful methods of self-care: asking their husbands for appreciation and tenderness, sharing their feelings with friends who listened, getting massages, going on mini-vacations with their loved ones, yet no one said that they looked to Medicine itself for inspiration, fulfillment and renewal. No one had even considered it. Yet why not??
No question that the medical system is seriously broken, but Medicine itself is not. Even on the most stressful and pressured of days there are moments in which we can experience something else, moments in which we connect to people on a very intimate level and make a difference to them and they to us. Times when, despite everything, we experience compassion, give and receive love, ease suffering and fear and are profoundly trusted. Instances when the greatness and courage of an ordinary person is suddenly revealed and we know ourselves to be in the presence of a hero. Or we recognize that we ourselves are heroes. No question that these experiences are brief, but they happen daily. And often they are life giving – like taking single breathes of pure oxygen in the middle of a deep-water dive.
There is a deep river of meaning that runs through the work of every health professional. It can sustain us in difficult times. Tapping into it usually requires the capacity to see familiar things in new ways. I like to think it has something to do with bringing your heart into it. The way I was trained John Wayne could have been the Father of Medicine, but there are older wiser ways of being. Perhaps the heart and not the mind is the strongest place from which to live a life and especially a health professional’s life. Several hundred years ago, Maimonides, seeking the strength to live a physician’s life, wrote the following:
“Inspire me with love for all of Thy Creatures. May I see in all who suffer only the fellow human being. “
I think the heart is an organ of vision, a way of seeing. Only the heart can read the deep meaning hidden in the smallest and most ordinary of gestures and events. And only the heart can recognize a fellow human being.
Contemporary Healthcare tends to regard the perspective of the heart as suspect or soft, far too individual to be “evidence based” or even measureable. But the things that we cannot measure are often the very things that sustain our lives. So easy to become blinded by routine, numbed by mindless paperwork and let something meaningful and inspiring pass us by unnoticed. So look for those moments when you catch a glimpse of something that has been present in this work and its relationships for thousands of years, something that connects you to every person and every health professional that has ever lived. Honor these moments of clarity and hold them close. Fill yourself from them. Notice the next time that you and a fellow human being meet in an environment that can only be described as “toxic” and transcend it all in the blink of an eye simply by seeing each other whole and mattering deeply to one another. This work is
We are out here! Having just written you a hand-written letter, I came to your website to find your physical address and found a Remen World that I did not know existed! (I am no so technical, as you can guess!). I am an oncologist in Littleton, Colorado, and always marvel how a day can leave one so fulfilled yet so exhasuted!
What I marvel at as well are the millions of way we can give blessings (and get them, of course!) in our professional and personal lives. As a mom, too, I try to SAY OUT LOUD when I am present to a blessing. It is in this way that we teach our little ones as Rachel’s grandfather taught her.
Last night, after driving home in the rain from a 24-hour work day with my 12 year-old, the traffic lights made such beautiful streaks on the hill that rose to it. I pointed out that blessing, and (though I thought he’d audibly roll his eyes), by son said, “Ohh! How pretty! I am glad you noticed that!”
I think it’s easy to forget that our work (including parenthood!) can be a HUGE source of strengh for us. Thanks for egging us on!!
Thank you Rachel. I have loved your books for years. Your recognition of the self care that comes from our work really touched me. I have been nursing for many years, largely in Oncology and Palliative Care and reading the above passage put into words what I have felt deeply through my nursing – that the reward that comes from those very precious moments when we touch someone, make a difference to someone, is so fulfilling, that if we take time to remember it and appreciate it, we gain so much energy and love back that nothing is insurmountable. I love my job and the privilege of sharing a very precious time and feel blessed that I have found such rewarding work. Thank you for putting into words, what I have felt for so long.
Dear Rachel, I am a traditional, professional Celtic storyteller and harper, and when I sometimes combine the two, I call myself a “harpteller.” While there is a growing interest in the healing aspects of both telling stories and harp music in clinical settings, I have never felt called to either. For one thing, I don’t play well enough (I’m an intermediate-level harper). However, last year I retired from a six-months’ career as a non-medical caregiver for the elderly to become my severely physically handicapped husband’s full-time caregiver. In the past 14 months, he has grown stronger, and I have grown in many ways. We have two cats. The younger, a rescued Norwegian Forest cat named Lucy, aka my shadow, troubled us because shortly after she came to us, she began obsessively licking off her own fur, first from her abdomen (recently being fixed), then her flanks and legs, even part of her tail! We took her to the vet, who found no disease or parasites, but suggested some medication. After a week, we stopped giving it to her, because it changed her from a playful imp to a zombie. We concluded that she suffered from some kind of trauma. Lately, though, we realized that the fur is filling in on her flanks. Thinking about it, I saw that when we got her, I was unemployed and tense for 2 1/2 years, then anxious about leaving my husband while working an erratic schedule with clients, and then worrying about not taking good care of him. That last has eased as we have found processes and routines, easing into a rhythm that for me includes many joys: continuing to tell and play at whatever gigs I can get, needle arts, writing, and now that we are almost to stage #3 of a long-overdue kitchen renovation, a surprising ambition to master baking Scottish pastries, I think that Lucy is reflecting the change in atmosphere in our home. When i was working last year, I discovered the usefulness of story in working with my clients one day when I was escorting a dementia patient to the dentist. Afterwards, I called the Access van to come get us, only to be told we’d be waiting for up to an our or more in a dim, chilly, dreary lobby. As we did, she began to get agitated in her wheelchair. I asked her what she was feeling. “I just need to DO something, but I don’t know what!” she said. I’d been warned that she could not get out of the chair because of balance problems, and she was much bigger and heavier than I am. I asked, “Do you think you could listen while I tell you a story? I’m a storyteller.” She thought she could. I told her “King Solomon’s Ring,” then “Feathers” and a few other Jewish folktales (she was Jewish). By the time the van came, almost 90 minutes later, she’d told me a Chelm story new to me, and an African-American woman, also waiting for a ride, had talked with us about Old Testament stories–she was fascinated to learn that there are so many legends about Solomon.
I found your *Kitchen Table Wisdom* book a few years ago, and greatly enjoyed it. Now i am reading it again. You are an “onion” author; like my second (and subsequent readings) of Jane Austen novels at intervals, I gain new lessons from it. Now I’m going to get a copy of your other book. Thank you!