Origin Story
“What I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is hard to put into words,” said this palliative care physician.
At first she said this had to do with boundaries between herself as a physician and the patients and families she cared for – but she noted that this was perhaps not a precise enough word. She said that during training, physicians learn to have a separation between themselves and their patients. “We’re taught to enter a room with a specific goal... with assumptions... with a hypothesis about what may be going on with the patient.” The subsequent interaction with the patient, then, is meant to confirm or reject the initial assumptions and hypotheses. She explained that often patients and family members will want to tell stories that are meaningful to them. In the way that physicians are traditionally taught, much of what is told in these stories is not thought to be relevant to their care. In palliative care, however, the stories can be crucially important to the delivery of high-quality care.
She shared that in her work she sometimes experienced a “blurring of the lines” as well as experiencing the “full bouquet of emotions” from patients and families. Reflecting on this experience, she said she saw it as a gift. “I get to learn about myself and experience the sharing of humanity.” This was a gift she was focused on helping other healthcare providers learn to appreciate and make appropriate use of.
Yvette Perry, Listener Poet
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
July 2022
Presented at the National Council on Family Relations Annual Conference 2025
In the River You May Find Yourself
By Yvette Perry, Listener Poet
Within the caring-for
There is a gap
Emotions of every kind
Live together there
Grief and joy
Anguish and delight
And love–always love
You may plant yourself
Far from that deep gorge
Stable roots secured,
Prepared to proclaim from there
Your expert knowledge
But in that gap
There is a story
Even at life’s closing, a tale of
I remember that time when…
Revealing through its telling
The meaning of
Mother
Father
Grandparent
You may see yourself only
As ears for this story,
Tuned to hear
Important cues for your
Decisions and diagnoses
The story, though,
Is a river
Flowing for eons and eons,
It empties to a
Sea of memories of the
Whole of humanity
You may find yourself
Unmoored from your soil
Suddenly on the shore, then
Slipping into water and
Carried on currents of
Emotions of others
The river
Defines the caring-for
An often-improvised balance of
Listening and feeling, of
Being-present-in and
Bearing-witness-to
In the river
(In the caring)
You may find yourself
Sometimes swimming
Sometimes rowing
Sometimes drifting
But human–always human
