Writer's Contest

November 25, 2016

"You just never think people like that can have normal children.” And then I I think of when I was 14 years old and answered a late-night phone call at home.

November 14, 2016

November 11, 2016

To this day, I fiercely debate whether I would want to remember such an experience if it had happened to me. How tortured would I feel?

November 10, 2016

Now, when I think back O.P's plight and isolation, I marvel that he could remain standing. He reminds me of many other courageous young men-the writer, the newly graduated physician, and all the others whom I treated and who died of AIDS. He also reminds me of the vibrant gay community that was destroyed by a microscopic retrovirus.

November 10, 2016

Jewell’s answer taught me that successful diagnosis and treatment of an illness weren’t everything. They were not the most important things.

November 09, 2016

Being an outpatient psychiatrist is a lot like being married. Things go along, the same-old, for long periods. But then there's a moment. Today, with Leslie, I remember why I love my work.

November 08, 2016

When even listening fails, presence is all that’s left.

November 05, 2016

This is the story of Peter. I feel chosen to have gotten to know him and to have the memory of what such an experience has carved into me.

August 05, 2016

Even though I’ve read these stories a number of times, I still have an intense emotional response to each of them. They remind me that our work is of incredible personal importance to our patients and of such emotional meaning to us too.

August 05, 2016

"You don’t have the hands of a surgeon, or the demeanor. It’s a good thing you are a psychiatrist.”