How Poetry Saved Me

During a week-long meditation retreat in 1999, ten years after graduating from medical school, I unlocked a box in my chest that held ten years’ worth of grief and anger. Tears and heat poured out of that box. I had survived medical school, postgraduate training, and my first five years as a full-fledged doctor, but not without leaving some pieces of myself behind. I’d left behind reading for pleasure, singing in choirs, and writing to heal.

Lacking external support in the hierarchical medical culture, I also lost my internal support. I endured and learned from some bad career decisions. And in time, I found my way to my first writing retreat in 2004. I found my tribe there, and I rediscovered the healing power of pen and paper. Poetry sustained me for years.

When I became president of the medical staff at my hospital in 2011, I was given a tiny office. There was just enough room for a desk, a chair, and a computer. But the office had a door, and when I was in there, no one could bother me. It was my retreat when things became overwhelming. Here, there were no interruptions.

I have two types of memories of working in my tiny office. After a day of seeing patients, I retreated to that space to type up my notes and dictate my consultations. It wasn’t good energy for the most part. I had to push through; I couldn’t stop until I was done. But I could focus.

In the other type of memory, my office was my space for doing poetry class homework. There was no other time in my schedule to write the poems, to do the close readings, except for moments stolen in that office. In those moments, I was able to see the natural light that entered the room from beneath the shade.

What I Saw in Poetry Mode

The office was on the front wall of the hospital, so I couldn’t pull the shade up without feeling exposed to foot traffic moving in and out, but I kept the shades raised just enough that I could see the little gray birds picking up straws and hopping on the sidewalk. They would come right up to the building.

I saw them when I was in poetry mode, but not when I was in progress note mode. (I’ve written about little birds at my window before.) I had to be in poetry mode not to be pulled into the funk of spitting out dictations, and filling in typed progress notes, one after the other, so much so that my right shoulder began to ache with having to bear the weight of the world.

That office helped me develop my craft as a poet; it was an important setting for my development as a writer. I have that office to look back to as an unexpected silver lining of my administrative duties. Having a poetry mode saved my life. It put me into mindful observation. I was able to take things in as they were, not as I wanted them to be. I didn’t flinch away out of fear or embarrassment. Jon Kabat Zinn told me to “Let go of that tendency we all have to want things to be different than they are.”

Many others in clinical and clinical-support jobs struggle the way I once did. I dream of having those friends join me in my online writing groups. I want them to feel the writing process support and the writing community magic.