A Dream About Narrative Medicine

"What happens to a dream deferred" asked poet Langston Hughes in a poem titled "Harlem" in 1951. 

"I have a dream today," Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. told us all about his dream in one of the most significant speeches of the 20th century in 1963.  

Have you ever had a dream so real that when you woke up, you thought you were in an alternate reality because "this" -- the real world -- couldn't be it for you... That dream was just too good... 

Where did it go? Why did it go? Most importantly, how do I get it back?

Narrative Medicine has always been that dream for me. 

My path towards it was anything but cohesive and I hit every single obstacle along the way. I documented just about every single one of them, too.

From my earliest memory I wanted to be a Writer. 

I wanted to Write about the things I Love and the things that make my Brain smile and the things that make my Heart soar. And I wanted everybody to read what I wrote and feel a similar sense of "yeah, I get that". 

And who doesn't understand a dream like that?

The one you just can't let go.

Again, Narrative Medicine has always been that dream for me -- it just didn't exist in the real world until I was well into my 20's. 

And by then, as I saw everything I dreamt of happening in real life but in nightmare form, I decided enough was enough.

How do I fix this? How do I get back to that dream?

So I did what I always do -- I wrote.

Everything. Songs, poems, articles, blogs, essays, and notes. I wrote it all out. 

Like Solange Knowles sang in "Cranes in the Sky" -- after spending the large majority of my twenties doing everything to get it all out of me, I finally had to get back to my roots and start from scratch. That song was vital to healing the brutality of the year 2016 on my young soul. 

(Literally. Scratch. My penmanship has always been chicken scratch, but no more so then when I'm rushing my hand to keep up with my brain. Thank the stars for computers.)

Instead of just writing though, I decided to move across the country away from everybody and everything I knew and loved.

Like Billy Joel sang in "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)", I was moving out.

And I grabbed my "backpack, backpack", like my Mama likes to sing thanks to the viral meme by Nick Trawick.

So, I got it all out. I got out and I took my most important things with me (car, clothes, and computer) so I could keep pursuing my dream.

And now, I've finally gotten most of it figured out so I thought I'd share with you Why Narrative Medicine is My Dream. 

A very long story short, my father died when I was 12. 

Every day for those first twelve years spent being Daddy's "Sugar", I was also constantly reminded that I was Daddy's Dream. 

Ever the Daddy's girl in a close-knit family in an even closer-knit community, the devastation of his sudden death was total. 

It took 18 years and turning 30 for me to really gain perspective on how the loss of my father changed the trajectory of my family's every dream and wish for ourselves and for each other. 

Nearly two decades later, I finally see the potential that I had and where I was headed with new clarity. 

I could have had my doctorate degree at a very young age had everything gone "according to plan", but that's the really shitty thing about plans. 

Plans rarely go right the first time or the first hundred times. 

You can make a contingency plan for your contingency plan. 

You can design five hundred escape routes. You can account for every single blessed thing, but life is going to force you to dance around every obstacle. 

I've been a proverbial ballerina for 30 years now and I'm exhausted.

So, for the first time since my Classical Mythology professor asked us who we wanted to be, I'm finally headed in that direction. 

Finally. 

Thank the heavens. Thank the stars. Thanks the sun. Thank the moon. Thank the ancestors.

Thank you every blessed person that made me pivot along the way.

But mostly, I just want to especially thank those who carried me from ages 12-22. 

Those first ten years after Daddy's Death were precarious. 

I cannot overestimate how deeply I did not want to be on this planet for those first ten years After Daddy. 

I had 12 years with the most amazing man the world had ever seen and he died and my soul went with him for a while there. 

Just as I was his Dreamgirl, he was my Dream Guy. 

(Note: This Dave Matthews album "Stand Up" is the last record my father and I ever drove and sang along together to and to this day it inspires the most immense warmth in my soul).

Narrative Medicine will put the pieces of my soul back together. It has already begun that healing process. 

And so, my project from here on out is sharing my eighteen-year healing journey as I continue onwards to the Dream my Daddy helped me design when I was only eleven years old.