I’m a student again!  Blogging 101 is the first class I have taken in maybe decades.  This is my first assignment–Introduce Yourself to the World.

I’m a writer! Since I can remember, I’ve written. I learned about mail in second grade and cheerily wrote letters to our student teacher, Miss Bruce, all summer. I think postage was about $0.05 back then. I passed notes to friends in middle school. I looked forward to writing essays in high school, and always felt a rush as I typed them late at night. I submitted a paper on the contribution of Chinese workers to the Transcontinental Railroad to The Concord Review after graduation—ya gotta love writing to spend summer vacation doing that! Intermediate Composition, which I took in my junior year at Northwestern, taught by Charles Yarnoff, was a turning point for me. I learned that quarter the true great potential of words, and that I could wield them. That was 21 years ago, and this past winter, when I received the brochure for a writing conference for healthcare professionals at Harvard, my soul leapt for joy and I knew I stood at the threshold of something big. Thursday morning, before for the conference started, I had no intention of blogging. By Saturday afternoon I was scrambling to secure a domain name from my phone on the cab ride to the airport. It is time.

I’m a physician, wife, mom, daughter of immigrants, almost native Coloradoan, and lover of nature and Brad Paisley! Turns out, as I reflect, I’m also a connector. Growing up I merged Chinese and American culture into my own expression of self, which has served me well. At work I became interested in integrative medicine, and today I stand confidently with one foot each in the conventional and complementary medicine hemispheres. I can sit in a room with people from different backgrounds and with divergent interests, and find common goals.

I’m here on WordPress to connect patients and physicians again! Technology, pharmaceuticals, and large medical organizations all contribute greatly to the fight against disease and disability, but they often get in the way of the patient-physician relationship. And it is only our relationships that truly heal. I have a specific point of view on this (see my first post), and blogging allows me to express it freely, in hopes of connecting with others to share and discuss.

When I go home to Colorado, I like to visit Red Rocks, the renowned natural amphitheater. The great iron-laden land formations inspire and soothe me. Once I happened upon a Native American drumming circle on stage. It was the middle of a typically sunny Colorado day, with tourists milling about, and local athletes taking advantage of the seating steps for interval training. The timbre of the drumbeats impressed me, and vibrated to my core. This is how I see my blogging. I beat my drum to my own authentic rhythm. The blogosphere is my amphitheater, which I share with other drummers from around the world. When those striking resonant sound waves find me, we drum in coherence. Our collective rhythms synergize and create a movement of communication and mutual respect, toward the health and well-being of patients and physicians alike. Wouldn’t that be great?

If I keep it up, by one year from now, I hope my style and content will have matured a little.  I look forward to making more friends in the blogosphere, and learning about people’s experiences in our healthcare system.  I want to contribute to productive dialogue and mindfulness of the common humanity that, in my opinion, should lie at the heart of all healthcare.