Field Notes on Witnessing

On this sunny Sunday in Seattle, I awake and find my essay, “Witness: On Telling” published in the Field Notes section of Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine. This is one of my most digging deep and making it real sorts of essays I have ever written. It is the second part of a two part bookended longer essay on the complicated role of witnessing to the traumas of others and of ourselves. The second essay is titled “Witness: On Seeing” and both are part of my forthcoming book collection of essays and poems, Soul Stories: Voices from the Margins.

In this essay I explore how and why and in what forms we tell (and listen to) stories of trauma and what Arthur Frank terms “deep illness.” I parse out the typology of illness stories as presented in his landmark book, The Wounded Storyteller. I challenge health care providers to increase our capacity to listen to—and to hear—different types of illness stories, including the more distressing (and closest to the reality of trauma) chaos stories.

And I look forward to being part of the upcoming (October 20-22) Northwest Narrative Medicine Conference in Portland, Oregon. I’ll be giving a Saturday keynote address titled “Endurance: The Limits of Resilience” and a Sunday writing workshop titled “Radical Self-Care for Social Justice and Health Equity.”