Enjoying the Journey

I can still hear her voice, and feel her smile as she tells the story of my first swim test as a 5 year old at the Huey P. Long pool that sat below the Indian Mounds on the LSU campus.  She watches a big group splash and lots of little hands and feet paddling across the pool.  But where is Billy?  She runs over to one of the instructors, “Where’s Billy?”, and the instructor answers, “There he is”, and points to a little shadowy image swimming underwater, “Billy prefers to swim underwater, and is the only child that can swim the whole width of the pool underwater.”  My mother smiles, “he always has to do everything a little different and make it just a little harder than it really needs to be.” But mom, I have so enjoyed the journey. 

Everyone Matters

Yesterday, I watched a youtube clip that Lee Coffee, a soldier soul mate at MD Anderson, had sent me from the group Everyone Matters.  It’s the kind of clip that digs deep within your soul.  This morning I found a new homeless person residing in my neighborhood.  These experiences became embedded in my feeling from two days of training a group of U.S. Army Resiliency Coordinators who care for the healthcare providers caring for our soldiers still at war.  Were these just coincidences or as Robert Johnson, popular Jungian author would suggest, a meaningful synchronicity experience unfolding the unique life of my soul.  Be open to the synchronicity in your life.

Everyone Matters

Team Resiliency

Resiliency, we think of it as an individual’s ability to “bounce back” from challenging times and to grow stronger in the process. But, a recent article in Academic Medicine by Epstein & Krasner (2013) suggests resilience interventions should also build community. Just like patient safety is the responsibility of the community of practice, so is the health and well-being of each individual on the medical team. Enhancing the resilience of team members increases the quality of care, reduces errors, burnout, and turnover. Teams need to be resilient together and that takes practice and a supportive environment. How is your team’s resiliency?

Healthcare Team Resiliency

Tears of Blue

Yesterday I received an email from an employee about a mother’s battle with cancer and how it shaped their life dream to become an employee at MD Anderson Cancer Center and the story stirred my dreams last night.  My sister’s bedroom was right off the living room and painted a sunny yellow, the trees that had provided shade were lost several hurricanes ago, so it always had sun.  It was my mother’s last bedroom in our house.  I had brought her a camellia and found her crying as she sat in the rocking chair by the window.  Today I opened my 50 year old poetry journal, and found what I had written that day.  // A vision I can’t erase / blue sky reflected in your eyes / caught in tears / rolling down your face // A flower / held against your cheek / soft petals, lick tears of blue // A vision I can’t erase

Greek to Me

I attended University High School on the LSU campus from 4^th – 12^th grade, so as a freshman at LSU it felt comfortable.  My sister had been a Tri Delta, so I thought I understood the Greek scene.  I pledged, but between ROTC, all morning classes, and work with the football team 6-8 hours after lunch, I didn’t have much time for pledge activities.  My fraternity big brother said, “That’s okay Billy, just bring some football players our way”.  Rush week things changed when he told me I needed to dress better, and they were embarrassed I rode a 10-speed bike and not to bring it to the house or leave it around the back.  When I saw my dad that week, he could tell something was bothering me.   After I told him he said, “Billy, you have to be the best of who you are, not what someone else thinks you should be.”   I dropped out of rush, I didn’t fit.  Today be the best of who you are!

Name Calling

Throughout our lives we get called all kinds of names. William was of course morphed to Billy, and then in the 4th grade riding my first school bus with kids of all ages, I was called “other” names for the first time. In Boy Scouts the adult leaders called me Sweet William and the scouts called me Trees for I was always climbing. It wasn’t till the Army that I heard Bill, “hey you cop”, and again “other names” by really ticked off drug dealers, drunks, and women of the night. Yesterday, I wasn’t ready when my grandson, who is just learning to talk, yelled out “GRANDPA”. For a man who has incurable metastatic prostate cancer, the cheerful tears came quickly and just as quickly disappeared as my grandson climbed into my lap. Call someone today a name – out of love! My Grandpa and I

Yesterday – Time Being Me

Yesterday, as I was sweeping out our garage a marble rolled across the floor, and immediately I was back in Highland Elementary playing marbles.  My favorite game was dropsies, where you dropped a marble from belt level into a hole in the top of a shoebox, hoping to win another marble.  The Hawkins lived across from the school, and Mrs. Hawkins always carried a small monkey on her shoulders. Behind the school was a baseball field, Nelson Drive, one row of houses, and open fields that at some point lead to more neighborhoods, and the Winn Dixie where I had my first job requiring a social security card. Time being me, images of past moments and reflections, as a marble slowly rolls across the garage floor.