Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D. is Clinical Professor of Family and Community Medicine at UCSF School of Medicine and the Founder and Director of the Institute for the Study of Health and Illness at Commonweal. She is one of the pioneers of Relationship Centered Care and Integrative Medicine.
US News and World Report Best Graduate Schools has called The Healer’s Art, her groundbreaking curriculum for medical students “A profoundly innovative curriculum on reintegrating the heart and soul into contemporary medicine and restoring medicine to its integrity as a calling and a work of healing.” The Healer’s Art is now taught yearly in more than half of American medical schools and in medical schools in seven countries abroad. Dr. Remen has been awarded three honorary degrees in recognition of her contribution to medical education and has been the invited speaker at more than two dozen medical school graduations.
Dr. Remen was one of the first to recognize and document the psychological and spiritual impact of cancer on people and their families. She is a co-founder and medical director of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program, one of the first support groups for cancer patients in America, featured in the groundbreaking 1993 Bill Moyer’s PBS series Healing and the Mind. Through her television appearances and lectures, she has reminded many thousands of people of their power to grow beyond their current challenges and heal themselves.
The Institute for the Study of Health and Illness (ISHI), founded and directed by Dr. Remen, has award-winning post graduate education programs for health professionals that have enabled many thousands of doctors, nurses, psychologists and social workers nationwide to remember their common calling and reintegrate their deepest service values into their daily work.
Dr. Remen’s New York Times bestselling books, Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather’s Blessings have sold more than a million copies and been translated into 23 languages.
Dr. Remen has a 60-year personal history of Crohn’s disease. Her teaching and writing uniquely synthesize the wisdom and courage of physician and patient.
And now a piece from Rebecca Katz, a dear friend of Rachel’s …
When it comes to healing, our notion of time can behave very strangely. It might speed up or it might be infinitely slow, like molasses. When we are eager for a loved one to get better, as I am now, it can seem like forever. The body heals at the rate that it heals. I remember Rachel Naomi Remen saying disease is a weird thing; it reveals itself when it’s ready to reveal itself. It can be frustrating when all sorts of symptoms appear, but no prognosis is certain. You are left wondering … where am I?
Rachel Naomi Remen, one of the pioneers of the mind-body health movement and relationship-centered care, is my inspiration for how to think about these unfathomable mysteries. How many of you have read (and reread) her book Kitchen Table Wisdom? I read it when it first came out and I was in culinary school. My copy is a dog-eared treasure on my shelf.
Sustenance for uncertain times
Kitchen Table Wisdom is not about food! It’s about the unknowing, the mystery, the unanswered questions, the living in a state you can’t control. In other words, it’s about life!
But especially life on the edge, in a state where you’re trying to figure out things that are beyond your control, that affect your perception of time, that make time illusive. If you’re a caregiver, you know what I’m talking about. Or if you’ve been in that place yourself, or watched a dear friend or family member go through an illness. The hardest thing about the process is realizing that there are things that we can’t organize or control. We are not on terra firma. It’s a very uncomfortable feeling.
Just now I plucked my copy of Kitchen Table Wisdom from the shelf and it fell open to a chapter called Mystery and Awe and this underlined passage:
In some fairy tales, there is a magic word
which has the power to undo the spell
that has imprisoned someone and freed them.
When I was small,
I would wait anxiously
until the prince or the princess stumbled
on the formula and said the healing words
that would release them into life.
Usually the words were some sort of nonsense like ‘Shazam.’
My magic words have turned out to be ‘I don’t know.’
And on another page, underlined and starred, this:
I accept that I may never know
where truth lies in such matters.
The most important questions don’t seem to have ready answers.
But the questions themselves have a healing power
when they are shared.
An answer is an invitation to stop thinking about something,
to stop wondering.
Life has no such stopping places,
life is a process whose every event is connected
to the moment that just went by.
An unanswered question is a fine traveling companion.
It sharpens your eye for the road.
Ah! The beauty and wisdom of her words … nectar in uncertain times.
A stratospheric healer
Rachel Naomi Remen is a formidable, inspiring woman, doctor and teacher. In 1991, she founded a healing institute at Commonweal, renamed the Remen Institute for the Study of Health & Illness (RISHI) and moved to the Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine in 2016. The institute educates and supports health professionals practicing compassionate healing.
She developed a groundbreaking curriculum for medical students called The Healer’s Art, now taught in more than half of American medical schools and in seven countries abroad. US News and World Report Best Graduate Schools has called it, “A profoundly innovative curriculum on reintegrating the heart and soul into contemporary medicine and restoring medicine to its integrity as a calling and a work of healing.”
She coined the expression “wounded healer,” based on her own life as a doctor and educator, and someone who has lived with Crohn’s disease for umpteen years. It’s not meant as a negative term; on the contrary, it signifies a health professional who’s walked in the mystery of the unknowable, and been empowered by wisdom received during the experience of healing.
Wounding and healing are not opposites.
They’re part of the same thing.
It is our wounds that enable us to be compassionate
with the wounds of others.
It is our limitations that make us kind
to the limitations of other people.
It is our loneliness
that helps us to to find other people
or to even know they’re alone with an illness.
I think I have served people perfectly with parts of myself
I used to be ashamed of.
For me, Rachel Naomi Remen is where wisdom meets medicine on the healing path.
I’ve encountered her personally a number of times over the years, and been awestruck every time. I’ve heard her speak many times (she’s a phenomenally good speaker), cooked for her, and met with her regarding my work training doctors in the importance of food in their patients’ lives and their own. She encouraged me to pursue my passion, to forge ahead, and to step into the unknowable. She is extraordinary at telling stories, so I was deeply inspired when she said, You tell stories, too. You just do it with food.
Being in the not knowing
Maybe we all need to know a little less
and wonder a little more.
Right now, I’m a bystander in my situation and I just don’t know, I don’t have an answer, and I don’t know who has an answer. Food is not the answer, and here I am, the cook! I don’t have a magic wand. Time is moving at a snail’s pace while the rest of the world is whizzing by. I know I need to stay the course, and pay attention. Eventually the mystery will unravel itself. But I can’t see around the curve yet, and being able to stay with that is not easy.
So what can I do? I go to the things I have some semblance of control over. I paint and I cook! I’m not talking about major cooking—I don’t have the bandwidth for my most creative cooking right now, I’m in my “must sustain” frame of mind. It’s self care, minimal style, that one little thread that helps you nourish your soul and yourself. When you’re in the slow pace of the unknowable, and you can’t see the finish line, it’s a good thread to hold on to.
Yesterday I didn’t eat anything green except green tea. I didn’t manage the amount of vegetables I normally get in in a day. But I did the best I could do. Sometimes the best is a cup of tea.
California
Aliza says
Thank you thank you! for sharing your insightful, gentle, kind and remarkable wisdom with us.
Your trailblazing observations, teaching and writing have unlocked a previously invisible world of understanding for all people- and especially health care professionals and spiritual advisors.
May you be blessed in all the ways that are important to you!