What have I been up to lately? Well, my lunchtime walks from my office to Cabot Tower are now much less freezing-rain-y than they have been, and they’re about to get much more people-y and tour-bus-y as we approach tourist season. From December through March I have the road and parking lot pretty much to myself most days. But soon, the motorcycles will return, and the giant buses with their hissing brakes and clouds of exhaust will just be idling their little hearts out all over the place. Right now is a sweet spot of almost warm (but, often, with ferocious winds) and relatively quiet, and I intend to enjoy it while it lasts.
What else? I’m halfway through my Foundational Certificate in Narrative-Based Medicine, through the Narrative-Based Medicine Lab (Temerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto), and so far it’s been just wonderful. It is very nice to be on the student side of the classroom again! I’ve done some writing that I think will be the start of something, and I’ve broadened my reading list a lot, too. I’ll be doing some reflecting when it’s over (maybe here? maybe somewhere else) on what I take away from the whole experience, but one thing I’ll say now is that it’s been a real privilege to be in a room with clinicians and professionals from so many areas of the health/medicine/wellbeing landscape: there are people in the room from social work, nursing, genetics, oncology, nutrition, pediatrics, midwifery, as well a med student or two, and a handful of literary scholars working at the intersections of literature and disability/mental health/neurodiversity. We have such rich discussions, and everyone in the class has been so generous and open with their stories. It’s been a really rewarding time.
Sort of half-related to that: I’ve been listening to a podcast out of Australia called Social Work Stories, and it’s brilliant! Each episode features a story from a practicing social worker, and the stories discuss a particular experience or set of experiences they’ve encountered in their practice (all anonymized, of course). Many of the stories are written up as narratives and read by the social worker, so there’s a really nice level of craft and thought that’s gone into them. [EDIT: Now that I’ve listened to some earlier episodes, I’ve realized that the stories weren’t always scripted; it appears that in the early seasons, the stories were taken from recorded interviews.] The stories aren’t case notes — they’re written as narratives, with quite descriptive language and no concerted pretense of objectivity. So far the stories I’ve listened to have involved ethical dilemmas for the social worker, or times when the social worker had to assert themselves against the system (hospitals, police, etc.) to advocate for their client. The stories are great in and of themselves, and do a lot to demonstrate the breadth of what social work is in different contexts and settings, as well as to highlight some of the trickier parts of the profession. But what really elevates the podcast as an instructional tool is that the hosts, Dr. Mim Fox and Lis Murphy, then discuss the story and point out what has really wowed them about the social worker’s actions in each particular case. So, not only is it instructive, but it’s also very affirming to have two experts enthusing over what a good job someone has done — it’s a beautiful antidote to the relentless negativity of these difficult times we’re all trying to live through. It’s a great example of the usefulness of narrative in the caring space, and what’s very cool is that sometimes the stories are themselves about the power of storying; I’m thinking in particular about an episode called “Don’t just believe what you read on my file”: Re-authoring patient stories. Well worth a listen if you’re interested in the use of narrative tools in advocacy work.
Anything else? I’m having some family members over for lunch tomorrow, and one of them can’t eat gluten so I’m going to try my hand at this focaccia recipe, which may be awesome or may be a dud. Who knows? I feel that maybe a flatter bread like focaccia might be an easier gluten-free task than a taller sandwich bread would be. My thought is: more height = more likelihood of everything collapsing and turning into a dense weird gluey brick if you don’t have any gluten there to provide structural integrity. This may be a wild exaggeration of my understanding of physics, though. I’m also making a flourless almond ricotta cake, which is a sure bet, so even if there’s no bread, there will be something.
Andreae Callanan 