Category Archives: gratitude

What Holds You Up?

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Back wall at a nail spa around 1500 N.Milwaukee in Chicago–no idea the name of the place!

How are you, my friends?

So many people struggle today. Whether it’s financial, medical, emotional, relational, or existential, life is just hard right now. It’s palpable; wellness can feel fragile and tenuous. Uncertainty, risk, agitation, and isolation loom heavily on more people’s consciousness than I have ever noticed in the past.

Even in my own bubble of prosperity and privilege, lately I notice stark and reactive vacillations in mood and serenity with smaller and smaller adversities. I think often of Strauss and Howe’s The Fourth Turning, and wonder when this individualist, revolutionary, destructive unraveling/crisis turning will finally end and we can enter the high that follows. Will it be in my lifetime? What do I do in the interim?

Connect, that’s what.

Recently TM and I picked up our friendship again after about 18 years. Our kids were friends in preschool and then our lives diverged, though we stayed very loosely connected via Facebook. Recently they commented on my post and now we’ve had two very long and deep conversations in the past month. I live for these connections! Today they helped me name an idea I have grappled with as the tension/tandem between reform and revolution. I prefer the former in general, and increasingly realize the need for and utility of the latter. In the end we agreed that both serve a purpose, and we wish for humans to be more thoughtful about how we do both. We have so much more to catch up on and discuss–our next date may be to a ‘silent book club’ at a lesbian speakeasy, woohoooooo!!

So much to attend to, everything that demands our attention, much of which we cannot even influence, let alone control. So what’s left? Our relationships, of course. Everything related to my direct connections with other humans holds me up. Find my short but mighty list below. What’s yours?

Finding, protecting, and strengthening what holds us up is not just about our own health and well-being. It’s about what we do with that well-being, when we have the bandwidth and wherewithal. Societal unravelling and crisis are inevitable, perhaps, at least according to some. But if the cycle persists, then highs and awakenings also come around, and I am convinced that these are driven strongly by those who value, practice, and lead us all in connection, who maintain our bridges across difference and conflict, who can always see our shared humanity and work to preserve it in all ways great and small. I strive to be this force of nature in this lifetime, and I thank my lucky stars every day for others I know who do the same.

Sorenettes
After our lovely discussion on the Crowns Trilogy by Nichola Tyche, my friends agreed to listen to Sierra Simon’s Priest Collection next. We met this past week and delved right in: Faith, religion, rigid social norms and the harm they do, desire, pleasure, carnality and spirituality, community, integrity, parenting, daughtering, and the future we wish and leave for our kids. I had just published my post on Never After by Alexis Hall, and now we will discuss this love story at our next meeting. Donna nailed it when she described the value of these books: They make us both feel and think deeply. They teach us more about ourselves than we knew before consuming them. They help us explore our beliefs, attitudes, assumptions, and world views. And they give us a great excuse to gather and commune.

Ethos
I lifted 195# with the trap bar this week, friends, and it felt strong and solid. I am confident I will break 200# and then some this year–whenever we do a straight 20X0 tempo again. My pull ups continue to improve also, though I am still sore for a few days after each workout. If I can get myself to practice at least once a week, I could likely get to one, good, unassisted pull up by Christmas. It’s all up to me.
But I could never do it without my people. The energy at Ethos simply makes us all better. We cheer and high five each other to our stronger, faster, healthier selves.
After class I head to the Den to write. I have made five months of steady progress on Book, and the final project continues to emerge and form in good time. I am so excited–after eleven years of blogging, my writing may yet get published in print.

Kids Home
I have adult children now, omg.
I told Daughter about the Sorenettes’ conversation, we ended up recording her response and sharing with my friends, who then responded with yet more connection and wonder. I love having an anthropologist kid! Every day we bond over esoteric sociopolitical theory and observation, as well as cat and cooking videos.
Son travels these few weeks, then comes home for a summer internship. It will be the first time he’s lived at home for more than two weeks at a time since starting college in 2022. That’s a mindbender. I cannot wait and will strive to self-regulate, to not smother him. I look forward to finding something to do that we both enjoy and brings us together.

Friends Coming to Town
Two people dear to me arrive in Chicago this week, and I will spend quality time with each. I would not miss the opportunity to gather and soak up their presence, light, and love. How did I get this lucky, to know so many amazing humans in one lifetime? And to have the chance to stay connected despite distance, stress, and all the trevails of life in our chaotic world? It’s just too good, and communion with them–just the anticipation of it–holds me up high.

Paper Projects
My desktop stationery stash has grown continually since National Card and Letter Writing Month started April 1. Every personal envelope I mail or deliver is now lined with pretty paper–so fancy! And this weekend I was reminded of the puffy paper stars origami I learned from our babysitter years ago–how did I not think to pour some into every Jar of Smiles from the beginning? I wrote a new jar for one of my friends coming this week and scattered some stars inside. It’s fun and aesthetically pleasing.
I spent last weekend also creating three sizes of origami booklets, some that fit inside smile jars, others meant to stash in pockets or bookbags. Slightly longer messages of encouragement, or places for friends to place their own thoughts and reflections.
I’ll continue to compose little love notes, cards and letters, and all forms of personal, handwritten messages to as many people as possible, for as long as I am able. I may never use all of the cardstock, stationery, tape, and paraphernalia I have accumulated over a lifetime of paper fetish, but I will die trying. And if I can bring some love, joy, beauty, and connection along the way, all the better.

Recipe for Friendship

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At Loba Pastry and Coffee in Chicago: “Honey ~Squiggle~ Things” and “Fancy (ask for flavor)” pastries. It doesn’t matter what you get here, friends. You simply cannot go wrong.

Happy 19th day of National Card and Letter Writing Month!
Happy 11th Anniversary to Healing Through Connection!
Happy 100K+ total views on this blog in these eleven years–and thank you to all the humans who have viewed, commented, and followed all this time!

Today’s NCLWM prompt is Recipe. What is your recipe for deep, meaningful friendship?

Last weekend I communed with Phara, Christine, Heather, and Grant.
This weekend it was Donna, Jacob, Amber, Kasey, Troy, and James.
Holy cow, I am the luckiest person in the world to know so many amazing people and have the privilege to call them friends.

Donna cut through months of circular rumination and clarified the core of my mental and emotional struggle with one particularly vexing patient relationship. She and Jacob both helped me solidify ideas, structure, and themes for Book. Amber taught me about her generation at work and what it means to be a software engineer. And Kasey, Troy, and James just filled my tank the way they always do–sitting at brunch with them today made me wonder about and attempt to articulate my own Recipe for Friendship:

Ingredients:
–1 frontal lobe for Openness – enough to be willing to meet someone new
–1 or more Shared Interests – things over which we bond, in which we can grow together
–Many scoops Attention – each to the other, for both verbal and nonverbal communication
–Open faucet Curiosity – consistent interest in learning more about each other
–Demonstrated Common Ethos – core values that hold up our integrity in relationship with self and one another
–Consistent and regular Effort – demonstration that the relationship is worth our energy to cultivate and maintain
–When possible, In Person Contact – can substitute phone and video when needed; best results when added regularly
–Measured, in-context Vulnerability – key for depth and meaning
–Heaps and loads and oodles Love; impossible to add too much
–Time – no substitute, the more the better
–Trust and Devotion- will develop with Time, the last ingredients that occur spontaneously and multiply themselves, like strong sourdough starter

Method:
–This recipe can be made in any setting or context, at any time.
–Carry the ingredients on your person–mind and heart–at all times, ready when the opportunity to cook up a new friendship arises.
–Ingredients above are listed in likely order of occurrence, though most can be added at any time and then repeatedly, ‘to taste,’ in cooking/cultivating process.
–Additional ingredients of your choice encouraged, to personalize and make your friendships special to you and your friends
–Keep multiple recipes going at all times, each at various stages of mixing, stirring, rising, preheating, shaping, baking, simmering, braising, aging, cooling, etc.
–Even projects that have been apparently inactive for long periods may be self-sustaining without loss of flavor or nutrients, depending on stage of cultivation.
–Once a recipe is well underway, however, it will likely require regular additions of at least Attention and Effort to succeed over Time, depending on proportions and mixtures of the other ingredients.

This is a staple recipe. I cook by feel; as this is my first attempt at articulating my method, it will likely evolve if I keep trying to capture it in words. Now that I think of it, I could use sourdough starter as the whole metaphor, no? Oh well, maybe another time.
Everybody should have their own favorite friendship recipe–or maybe multiple ones!–on hand, written or not, like figuratively sturdy, dog-eared index cards with evidence of repeated use–stains, wrinkles, folds, and tweaks written in small cursive, legible only to the owner.
The strongest and most successful recipes are likely to be shared, mixed, and matched for additional depth of essence, character, temper, etc.–we all know the best loved recipes last the longest–often for generations.

My deepest and brightest thanks too all the friends who brought this forth for me today.
Love you all.

Collegial Love And Then Some

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Audible Narrator Hall of Fame Class of 2018 and 2026 Inductees

Who are your colleagues?
What connects you?
What do you share with these people that others do not and cannot understand or relate to?

Last week Audible celebrated their second cohort of Hall of Fame narrators, including a couple of my favorites, Andrew Eiden/Teddy Hamilton, and Steve West/Shane East. Andi Arndt, Hall of Fame Class of 2018, gushed about her colleagues on Instagram the night before, reminding me of that deep collegial love that I feel every day in medicine. My impromptu comment on her post stuck with me all week.

The photos of celebration and connection, the joy and energy of the Audible event moved me, too. I haven’t been to an American College of Physicians national meeting since 2019 (it was next weekend in San Francisco, but I came to Portland, Oregon instead, to visit with friends–hence this delayed post), and I miss seeing my colleagues from all over the country, going to sessions and learning together, having coffee, sharing stories, catching up.
Voice acting can be very solitary work, so I imagine these artists relish opportunities to gather and commune, especially when it centers around celebrating their shared love of the work.

I wrote to a VA acquaintance once, “I hope (imagine) that you get enough positive feedback, validation, and reinforcement for your work! 😀 I also hope you get enough contact and connection with your colleagues. I can always walk down the hall and consult mine on challenging cases or difficult encounters. We are friends. My professional support network is at my elbow and fingertips; I hope yours is too!”

I spent time this weekend with Christine, my life coach and friend of 20+ years. She described her experience of ‘supervision,’ wherein she was required to debrief with elder colleagues during a segment of her training, exploring potential personal pitfalls and blind spots that client work may uncover, and how to beware of and manage it all. As coach and physician, our conversations weave in and out of mutual support and informal ‘supervision’ in organic and collegial ways. Our work overlaps with that of therapists, nurses, and probably any other helping profession. Walking along the Willamette River with Grant today, we reflected on how easily we can apply our professional training and skills in any domain where humans interact.

Back in 2017, the night before presenting at general surgery grand rounds (unusual for an internist), I wrote about tribal pride and tribalism:
“We all need our tribes. Belonging is an essential human need. To fit in, feel understood and accepted, secure—these are necessary for whole person health. And when our tribes have purpose beyond survival, provide meaning greater than simple self-preservation, our membership feels that much more valuable to us. But what happens when tribes pit themselves against one another? How are we all harmed when we veer from ‘We’re great!’ toward ‘They suck’?”

Nine years on, how do we assess the relationship between tribal pride and tribalism in any given domain on the current geopolitical landscape? Surgery vs. medicine, staff vs. leadership, conservatives vs. progressives, advocates for vs. against AI… How can we maintain our human connections above all, no matter what our divergence? I have often thought of myself as a ‘lumper’ as opposed to a ‘splitter’–always looking for connection, commonality, and relationship everywhere, among all people. In the same message to my VA acquaintance:

“Acting and medicine: What do you imagine are the overlapping aspects of our respective work?  I see it mostly in story—empathy for and holistic understanding of the full human experience, from the euphoric highs to the most sorrowful lows.  For both of us, to be truly excellent at our work, we must call forth real and sincere empathy from our own depths, which is vulnerable and courageous in a lot of ways, don’t you think?  For you, the stories are complete, and you get to interpret and bring them to life, to present them for our benefit.  I get to elicit the stories, coax them to emerge in real time, and interpret them along with my patients.  What stories do people tell about their health, their lives, their agency to influence it, and the outcomes they can/not achieve?  We get to dissect and discuss and then act on our shared interpretation.  We edit and revise together over time.”

So this weekend I communed with two of my coaching friends. I spent quality time with Phara who has a degree in psychology, and Heather, a fellow writer. We bonded over parenting–the unique mental load of moms, especially working moms. This theme has emerged powerfully in my medical practice, no matter the moms’ day jobs and no matter our kids’ ages.

Colleagues share language, training, experience, and perspective. We compare notes, tell stories, and connect. But we do this not just in professional circles. Our tribal memberships intersect and overlap, often in ways we could not predict or design. So really, we can find love in commonality anywhere, with anyone, if we just open up and ask, no?

What a fun exercise to come across an idea on social media, feel it in my heart, react in real time, then process it for days and see what arises in stream-of-consciousness blogging while stuck at the airport! Tomorrow I get to co-present on health and wellness to the Illinois Judiciary–another esteemed tribe of helpers, as I see them. What a privilege.

My tank is so full from a long weekend of deep and thick connection with my amazing friends here in the Pacific Northwest. I will miss this year’s chance to commune with my fellow internists nationally, but I’ll get back to the office this week and soak it all up locally. How lucky I am, truly. I hope whatever your profession, whomever you call colleagues and friends, that you get to enjoy this deep, collegial love born of shared humanity. And if you can recognize and strengthen it across domains, even better. That’s what will save us all, I am convinced.