“Who am I?” I think this question plagues us all at one point or another. It certainly does me; if I laid out across the floor all the poems I’ve written, a theme that would occur over and again is that of identity. Within the theme of identity, I’ve written about topics such as race, ambitions, yearnings, language, and more. However, these topics don’t pertain to just me. Even though a lot of my writings are my personal and lived experiences, these topics touch all of us. Perhaps, that’s why I keep encountering that people, especially those navigating the healthcare system, have a desire to be heard and understood regarding who they are. 

I’m a speech-language pathologist (SLP) who works with middle-aged and older adults in healthcare. Patients will sometimes talk to me about things unrelated to the disorder I am there in my SLP capacity to treat. I try not to dismiss these conversations because I see the passion with which they talk about these non-SLP issues, and I understand that the topic matters enough to them that they need to express it. Healthcare is an environment in which patients and loved ones often feel they are not being heard. Instead, they often feel reduced to diagnoses and numbers and medications and operations. Because of this, patients and families are yearning for opportunities to talk about who they really are–their dreams, frustrations, past lives, all of it–beyond what the medical record states.

I find that writing, particularly poetry, is the perfect medium to meditate on the question of “who am I”? One category of patients I typically work with is people who have language, memory, or thinking difficulties through injuries and conditions like stroke, car accident, and dementia. With this population I facilitate writing activities, such as journal entries, medication info and instructions, and lists of errands. This helps them exercise the portions of the brain that help with expression and cognition. For added mileage, I’ll sometimes add a creative writing element to the task. Not only does this help patients maximize their therapy potential from a speech therapy stand point, it also allows them to dig beneath the surface and unearth their inner self, their lived experiences, and their creativity–essentially, it allows them to meditate on the questions “who am I?” and “what do I want to tell the world?”

A prompt I sometimes use to facilitate this is home. Home is most people’s centering place, thus it is easy for patients to generate content for the task. The poem “Where I’m From” by George Ella Lyon is the perfect model for this. I’ll ask the patient to read it (I’ll also read it to them as necessary) and ask them to write their own version of it, writing their life’s details in place of the original poem. For example, there is a section of the poem that reads “I am from the forsythia bush / the Dutch elm / whose long-gone limbs I remember / as if they were my own.” If I were to write my own version of “Where I’m From” that section would read ““I am from the eucalyptus tree / the mahogany / whose long and broad leaves provided shade / for my head and my grandmother’s roof.” I first encountered the home/”Where I’m From” prompt during my university studies for my SLP degree. Two of my program’s faculty members–Rebecca Epperly and Terri Shelor–ran a brain injury support group for survivors and loved ones. I was one of the student volunteers and we were tasked with leading one meeting. My contribution to the meeting involved asking all the members to volunteer details to form the group’s own “Where I’m From” poem. Afterwards, some commented that the activity caused them to reflect and relive many fond memories. A few nostalgic tears were shed. Everyone learned a little more about each other through the activity. That was the moment I realized creative writing can help facilitate health.

Ever since that day me and my fellow student volunteers led that brain injury support group meeting, I have found ways to bring the worlds of creative writing and health together. I have written a couple of health/therapy/medical poems and short stories. I have also been fortunate to be an editor for a literary journal, for which some of the pieces we’ve published have been health-related. Recently, I discovered that all these experiences I’ve been engaging in fall under arts-in-health, which has led to even more discoveries, one being Hearts Need Art’s very own podcast Arts for The Health Of It. This podcast, too, was a vehicle for discovery; on one of the episodes I discovered Tidewater Arts Outreach, an organization that partners with adult communities (nursing care facilities, shelters, etc.) to deliver arts programming to their community members. As of this writing, I happen to be one of the newest additions to the Tidewater artist roster to facilitate creative writing! 

I have also discovered university programs that specialize in teaching arts-in-health, a very exciting door I’d like to open so I can learn even more about this field. Throughout this journey I have come across other organizations and people who practice arts-in-health in one form or another (whether they use that exact term or not). Kim Byrd-Rider (physical therapist, yoga teacher, Firm Water Road company), Nancy Houser-Bluhm (speech-language pathologist, author, Whispers for Terra novel), Sarah Sasson (physician, writer, Signs of life anthology), Te Palani (musician, arts-in-health university degree candidate), Terri Bailey (poet, writer, Bailey Learning and Arts Collective nonprofit). These people currently make up my personal arts-in-health network, I love the way in which they service humanity and am excited about the possibilities for collaboration. 

“Who am I?” Dear reader, I’m honored you have given me the opportunity to discuss this topic with you and I hope you have many opportunities to tell the world about yourself and your journey.