It was a magical day in Northern California. I drove out on a Saturday in mid-December toward Half Moon Bay and found parking along the road to Redondo Beach. I sat calm and refreshed by the sound of the waves as I came to the end of a beautiful novel called Covenant of Water, came to the end of the year 2023, and began to relish on another new year’s beginning.
It was such a delight to read some good books on my many Locums work travels. “Fiction is the great lie that tells the truth,” writes Abraham Verghese, in this epic story of love, faith, and medicine following three generations of a family, set in South India from 1900 to 1977. I was deeply moved by the care with which those who suffered various afflictions were presented, and in a time when medical evaluations and treatments could rarely be accessed. The matriarch’s deep wish for medical doctors to see all with love… for it is not the “Condition,” but rather the stigma, that leaves so many “faceless” and lonely in the depths of suffering.
This resonates even today. While we have more diagnoses and more explanations and more tests available, we now have less time, and the truth is that we can only develop and express understanding when there is time.
It is February now (Alas…this post did not make it out in December, and not even in January!), but now is even more appropriate. February is a month of Love, rediscovering self-love and the love we practice toward others. For love is a verb, an action that takes nothing short of intention, attention, and practice at every encounter.
My deepest gratitude is for the Modern Mind practice setting that I return refreshed to, time and time again. I launch to various Locums Ob/Gyn Office assignments where there is a need, and I land in Boulder, CO as my home base. At Joy Collective, there is space for what is baffling, what is difficult, what is chronic, and it is also a space for gathering strength, making connections and finding fresh outlooks.
By acknowledging the person as a whole- their biology, their environment, their social milieu, their constraints and their resources, we co-orchestrate a plan for healing. By connecting the mind and body, the “conditions” causing distress, pain, hormonal and neurotransmitter imbalance may be reaffirmed and rewired for well-being.
My current endeavor is to complete a comprehensive curriculum on sexual health. Working on intimacy (and what exactly is intimacy anyway?) is at the core of our being, our being fulfilled and our being free. It allows for us to Launch and to Land and feel secure whether we are at home or away.
