“I Contain Multitudes”: Perspectives from the Interiority of Medicine

Event description

Medicine is complicated: we navigate suffering and tragedy, deep human moments of love and connection, and even absurdity and hilarity. How do we hold these dialectics? Our workshop offers a space for reflection, contemplation, and also generation of stories about the many facets of health and illness that we might not otherwise make time to experience or explore.  

This workshop is for all humans who have a story to tell (or an embryo or inclination of something to share) in the realm of health/healthcare/illness/disease/caregiving. Stories can be in the form of poems, prose, spoken word, or even songs or plays. They can be about loss, grief, bewilderment, or trying to make sense of things that don’t add up. Essentially, our workshop is an invitation to reflect and make art from your lived experience.  

As health care providers ourselves, we grapple with how to make meaning of our experiences and how to tell our stories: tragicomedy, horror, romance? What are we editing? How do we navigate the absurd? What keeps us laughing or crying? What are we not saying but desperately want to voice? What feels alive in the midst of a corporate system of health care production? These are some of the lenses we may explore. 

Workshop Format: 

This will be a 2-part workshop held from 6pm-9pm on Nov 11 and Nov 18th at the Hugo House, Seattle. The workshop will be in-person only. 

First session: Nov 11, 6-9pm: This will be a generative workshop utilizing various writing prompts, readings, art and other forms of creative expression to locate and build stories, poems, or other works in your own authentic voice.

Second session: Nov 18, 6-9pm: Further honing and also sharing of stories in the small group (confidential and not recorded). 

In this workshop, you can expect:

-Two fun facilitators who welcome varied voices and perspectives. 

-Love for and dedication to the creative process

-Encouragement and feedback

-Space to bring your voice to the unspoken aspects of health/illness and beyond

Come prepared to:

-write (or paint/create) in class

-share your piece out loud to the group

-provide thoughtful and kind feedback 

Registration Cost: $100 (scholarships available)

Workshop fees allow NWNMC to pay for facilitators, meeting technology, and event space. However, NWNMC never wants cost to be a barrier to participation. If cost is an issue, please reach out to info@nwnmcollaborative.org.

Click here to register!

Facilitators

Steph Cooper and Elizabeth Dorn have run the “The Interstitium: A Space for Stories of Health, Wellness, and Beyond” since January 2019. In this live Narrative Medicine Storytelling Show, they bring together healthcare workers, students, patient and families to share their stories of illness, wellness, experience in the system and beyond. Through this workshop series, they hope to create a space to explore and build stories that lurk inside.

Elizabeth Dorn, is a teacher of Emergency Medicine at the University of Washington and the current President of Northwest Narrative Medicine Collaborative. Elizabeth believes in the fundamental role of art to keep us connected to ourselves and others, and to bridge the gap of communication not expressed through normal channels of daily human discourse. A lifelong poetry writer and actor, she wrote and performed 3 plays about her journey through the medical world. With ambitions to expand Seattle NM development, integrate NM activities into teaching, and bring art, depth and fun into medicine more actively, she and her colleagues curate and facilitate NM workshops and host quarterly medical storytelling events open to the greater community.

Stephanie Cooper is an Emergency Medicine Physician, mom of twin boys, and avid supporter of Narrative Medicine in Seattle. She co-curates the ongoing Interstitium live storytelling and serves on the board of the Northwest Narrative Medicine Collaborative. She teaches narrative medicine to University of Washington resident physicians and helps bring storytelling to physicians at Kaiser Permanente in Seattle by virtue of their wellness program. She is trying to write “ER the Musical” in her non-existent free time.