Art has been a healing force throughout human history. Shamans have always used it to evoke healing power for individuals and whole communities. Our forebears lived at the interface of visible and invisible, and used art to make sense of the universe that surrounded them. And art remains a vital human nutrient. Our world remains as boundless as our imagination. We can find the presence of art – visual, acoustic, tactile – in every modern hospital, within the high-tech world of biomedicine.
And there is a growing number of publications that speak to this through stories and images, and that are offered to the lay reader and viewer at least as much as to health professionals. The link below refers to one such – Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine – drawing attention to the need for us to listen to the voices of children beset with inexplicable illness.
My own memoir – “Journeys with 1000 Heroes: A Child Oncologist’s Story – attempts to capture these voices, too, while telling the story of my own life with children, who became not only my patients but my companions and my teachers. It’s due out from Wising Up Press this July – stay tuned!
Human creativity is ultimately our only resource for global healing – for transformation.
http://www.theintima.org/stories-from-kids-the-unheard-voices-of-pediatric-patients