Things I Also Meant to Say...

Besides Thank you again. What a delight to be with you and have your attention, support, love, comments, questions...

Sorry I had to take off right after my presentation:
I flew to San Francisco for a timely "Healing Power of Storytelling: Opening to a Deeper Human Connection" Workshop in Mill Valley, California, with Rachel Naomi Remen. Here, sitting in the workshop only a couple hours, I am already hearing so many words to match my internal experience and values. It also helps me realize more how important what I am doing, and have done in this last year and with the conference, is for me. What a wonderful treat. Thanks especially to Mike and Lesley for supporting me and convincing me to do this conference (among other things).

I LOVED the questions/comments at my presentation:
And have been really excited about addressing them more fully and facilitating more discussion around them. So, thank you thank you. And, stay tuned. (For video too, will get Mike to it soon).

One thing in particular about "what now?", which holds a lot of ideas and even more questions, is a hope I have to support residents finding a way to design their own training experience, as I have been able to do for myself. I believe one great aspect of our program is the autonomy we have. If this is used to create space and support for trainees to create a personalized, individualized learning experience, if only in their final year, I think this could be an even more powerful training experience and I would love to be a part of that.

Another seed of an idea I have is more personal. Many of my family members have opened up with me, and each other, lately, with their family & personal stories, and I would love to start documenting these stories and questions we ask each other. Lucky me, I have a world-class studio in my backyard and also a husband interested in filming. Beware family members, I hope to soon be scheduling you in "the Pod" as I continue to develop my Keeper of the Tribal Stories project.

I have also had some great wonderings come up generated by Ben's question about humanities connection to humanism, if any. I have been thinking about how the connection to our individual humanity is different for each person - for me some of it was random, like figure-drawing, pilates (?!) that provided opportunity for risk-taking and vulnerability. And the conduit to connection between people is unique in each relationship, and ever-changing. So I doubt there will ever be a one-size fits all approach to "teaching humanism in medicine" but lots of really compelling, interesting questions to explore. Which makes me wonder if the asking of questions and engaging in story-telling/-listening might at least help us access the humanity in ourselves and each other, whether colleagues or patients or students. Just left with more questions. Could be a compelling conversation.

Thanks again. I will keep you posted. I invite comments, more questions, criticisms, etc. Enjoy!