Shootings in Chicago make national news. Snow kindness does not. It rarely even makes local news, except for the occasional gratitude letter to the editor about someone returning home to find his or her walkway shoveled. But my friend and I experienced a heartwarming degree of snow kindness last week, the day we had six …
Tidbits for Writers from the 10th Annual Creative Chicago Expo
Creative. I love the sound of this word. As a child in the forties and fifties, I don't think I ever heard it. In fact, the first emphasis on being creative that I encountered was in the late nineties when I read, then taught, Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. Reading Cameron opened my eyes to …
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What do nurses do? Let me count the ways…
Once upon a time, two women in their late sixties met at church and soon became friends. Letty is now 76 and Martha 74. Martha is a widow and moved to Letty’s small town after her retirement and the death of her husband to be near her children. Last week, Letty sent me this email, …
Patient Activation – Nostalgia for Dorothea Orem!
Last week I read an article about “patient activation” with some amusement. Activation sounded like batteries. Did patients need a couple of Triple As inserted into the soles of their feet to get involved in their own health care? The article defined patient activation as “understanding one’s own role in the care process and having …
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Why don't we as nurses stand up for ourselves in the public sphere? I'm proud of the action of my friend, Marianna Crane, nurse practitioner and writer. Read her story and be inspired to act yourself.
Unwelcome Itchy Visitors
I wish I had something more soothing to write for you today. But last Monday, after a three-day hissy fit of prickly-burning body-wide itching, a dermatologist looked at the tan line on my back and asked, "Where's this tan from? And how long ago did you get it?" “Aruba. Three weeks ago,” I said. "Then …
Nurse Shares Her Experience of Dying
As she lay dying from pancreatic cancer, Nurse Martha Keochareon wanted to do more than plan her funeral. So she called her alma mater and offered to become a “case study” for nursing students. She reasoned she could help students learn about the dying process while, at the same time, it would be a way …
Finding My Identity in a Dutch Cemetery – Part 3
Even though I didn’t feel Dutch on a 2001 trip to the Netherlands, finding my maiden name, Hoitenga, on tombstones in a Witmarsum cemetery brought me to tears and made my Dutch roots feel real for the first time. Fast forward to a few weeks ago in Aruba. My husband and I briefly met a …
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Finding My Identity in a Dutch Cemetery – Part 2
In Part 1 of this "identity" story, I wrote about finding a cemetery surrounding a church in Witmarsum, the town where my great grandparents lived in Friesland, The Netherlands. I'd taken along a photo of a distant relative taken outside the church in 1947. I posed for a picture in the same spot. Exciting! Note …
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Finding My Identity in a Dutch Cemetery
I'm off to Aruba this week (see my header, the palm trees beckon), but come along with me on a story I wrote in 2001 about a trip we made to the Netherlands. I've been noticing on my WordPress stats page lately that I've had a steady flow of readers from there (welcome!), and I'm …
Write Along with Me 