September 9th, 2014

I wanted to share with you a letter that meant a great deal to me that was posted to my website in response to my last blog. Carol addresses it to physicians but it is true of us all; everyone who goes to work every day in this broken healthcare system in the hopes of helping others, despite everything. It has never been harder to be a health professional and I have never been prouder to be counted among the people who choose this work. We are what is right with the system. Perhaps some day we can build a system truly worthy of our patients and of us all.

Love,

RACHEL

Dear Rachel and all other Physicians,

It makes my heart ache to read about how you caring, intelligent, physicians have gotten sideswiped by the system and the honey in your hearts hardened by the protocol of the Establishment. And yet you show up, you care for us and you give us all you have in hopes of our healing. How much greater a gift this is considering what you personally in your hearts have to endure to pursue your calling. I have found that truly caring physicians light up patients, with hope just by their touch and their caring. The scared sick person has someone who will hear them and they trust them. I have read wonderful stories about doctors praying for their patients, not because they didn’t want to be sued or lose a friend, but because they believed in their connection with a higher power vested in them and that which also is in the patient.

In some earlier work Rachel mentioned something a young med student had written and I believe this is in all your hearts and that you will find a way to keep it there and not let the conventional ways harm you:

“May you find in me the Mother of the World.
May my heart be a mother’s heart, my hands be a mother’s hands.
May my response to your suffering be a mother’s response to your suffering.
May I sit with you in the dark, like a mother sits in the dark.
May you know through our relationship that there is something in this world that can be trusted.”

Thank you for your splendid gifts. I would not be alive today if it were not for you and your training and your caring and your spirit as you listen to me and examine me and help me to go forward. Thank you for all the lives you have saved and for all the tears you have cried for those you could not save. For still being there when the call comes. May you be richly blessed.

From CAROL