WHY I WRITE THE “ESSENTIAL STORIES”
by Patricia Wynn Brown

I met a good friend on the street today whose husband endures severe chronic pain. They are both suffering. She needed to share her story.  The telling began to relax her face, her posture. She pulled the rubber band off her pony tail and released her curly blond hair to fall over her shoulders. She exhaled deeply. We stood in a sacred place of trust.

Then I told her a story about my dressing for my second covid shot outing with more care for hair, makeup, and outfit than I had for my wedding day.  My telling became a humorous saga of outrageous exaggerations with my rare grand escape from a year of confinement. We laughed as the tiny white snowdrop flowers and emerging forsythia seemed to come alive around us and fresh spring air filled our lungs. My friend was now smiling ear to ear and her face had brightened. She lassoed her pony tail, we bid goodbyes, and she stepped sprightly down the sidewalk.

In Anne Lamott’s new book, DUSK, NIGHT, DAWN, she writes, “Stories can be our most reliable medicine.” It is this that always guides my professional writing and humor memoir performances.

As a member of the Ohio State Medicine and Arts board, as I heard the stories in our zoom meetings about what the hospital staff faced in their fight for lives during the pandemic, I wanted to serve. I decided my best skills for the job were writing the stories of the heroes themselves. This ESSENTIAL STORIES series originated with the help of Dr. Linda Stone, her husband Larry Stone, and Kristin Rodgers of the Medical Heritage Center at OSU.

It is important for these stories to be recorded for history at the Center and shared, but another tremendous benefit has occurred. When the interviewees read their finished draft, the results for them are an elevated spirit, a new sense of purpose in their profession, an affirmation of their endurance, and a blessing for the miracles they perform.

Patricia Wynn Brown is the writer of ESSENTIAL STORIES: Medicine during Covid-19 and the Practitioners at the OSU Medical Center. These stories are featured on this blog.