“Hey friend, favor?
“When you think of me, what things do you hear me say all the time that signify to you who I am and what I’m about? 🤔
“…Collecting ‘Chengerisms’”

The compulsion overtook me Thursday evening, when I should have been finishing clinic notes and packing for LA. I texted a slew of people in a flurry with the question above, intending to assemble their answers into backbone for National Blog Posting Month in November. For those who don’t know, NaBloPoMo challenges bloggers to publish 30 posts in 30 days, all written in real time. It coincides with NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, a sprint to write a 50K word manuscript in the same time.

This will be my tenth consecutive NaBloPoMo challenge–BRING IT, I say!

My “Chengerisms” query, I see now, was actually me gathering validation and support for showing up all me, all in, BOOBS OUT at the Writers Rising retreat this weekend. My subconscious intuition knows what I need; I sense, trust, and follow better with age. Replies rolled in with speed, earnestness, and so much love it positively bowled me over. Highly recommend!

The strongest messages I perceived throughout the conference reinforced all of my highest writing and living values:
Let loose your curiosity
Take risks
Tell the truth
Honor your Central Self
Own Your Shit
You are enough
Assemble your pit crew
Connect, connect, connect!

How tightly these correlated with the Chengerisms my friends mirrored to me:
What is that about?
How fascinating!
Tell me more…
Hey friend
How did that feel?
Love you love you
Yaaaay!
One breath
Walk the talk
BOOBS OUT (apparently catching on in my small circles–yaaaayy!)
Tribe
Sooo human.

This spontaneous, subconscious-driven exercise shows me the profound importance of good, loving feedback and the absolute value of meaningful relationship. My response to almost every reply was a sincere and heartfelt, “I feel seen!”

While I continually noodle on content and structure of Book (I’m getting closer, really!), I feel a limbic and visceral certainty about how I want readers to feel throughout and especially at the end–seen, validated, inspired, empowered, and convicted. This NaBloPoMo, I aim to color in and sharpen that vision, saturate my thinking and writing brain with it.

At the end of an executive physical, I want my patient to feel thoroughly understood. I show that I know them, even if I only see them once a year, by reflecting their stories back to them, interpolating and extrapolating what’s not said, checking in, and providing what I know patients need from their doctors: personal connection in service of self-efficacy for health. So this year for NaBloPoMo, I commit to the theme:

What I Wish For You

Thirty things I want patients, readers, or anyone, really, to experience after encountering me in person or in print. Chengerisms in action. I will resist wallowing in guilt and shame when I notice how often I fall short of these aspirations. When I see perfectionist self-loathing approach I will divert it to the nearest off-ramp. All part of the process.

This could be both fun and enlightening! Let’s see what happens, eh? Ready, set, let’s go.