When people learn that I am a writer, they say, “I could never write, I have nothing to write about.” But that’s not true. Stories and narratives are everywhere, even in the narrowest cracks and folds of one’s life. If you can listen, you can write.

When I worked as a wellness nurse, I visited with more than a dozen residents, eighty or older, at independent living facilities. After checking their vital signs, I asked them if there had been any changes in their medications and health I should know about. Mostly, I listened to them share stories about their grandchildren and great grandchildren. Of course, I also listened to their woes. On my pad, I scribbled phrases such as “I wish God would take me already” or “Oh my achin’ legs. I got no legs anymore.” Those captured words were as essential to my work as the blood pressure cuff and stethoscope I used to check the residents’ vital signs, because behind those woes were hidden gems. For example, I remember the day eighty-seven-year-old *Sharon said, “The leaves are quiet.” Sadness oozed its way into my limbs, turning them limp, for what I heard Sharon saying was, “I long for my younger years.” I heard that longing when the lilt in her voice fell on the word “quiet.”

Virginia Woolf said, “Behind the cotton wool is a hidden pattern; that we—I mean that all human beings—are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art.” In other words, the stories the residents shared made up the hidden pattern behind Woolf’s “cotton wool.” Their stories were an integral part of my writing, thus my own work of art. Their words were an art in and of themselves; they were metaphors for, say, loneliness, hope, fear, all the stuff that comes with aging, and dying.

Let’s take a look at ninety-six-year-old *Martha. During one of my visits with her, she told me she had written her own obituary.“I want to make sure I have as much set before I go so my family isn’t burdened with too much. Would you like to read it?” She pushed it across the table toward me. I couldn’t say no.

I don’t recall the details of what she wrote, other than her list of achievements: a college graduate, a teacher and volunteer, and an active member of her church. Martha told me she knew her time would end soon, that she was ready and had no complaints about the life she had lived. Understandably, talk of death isn’t easy; most people avoid it as if it were a highly contagious virus. But I made a point to listen to her because she needed listening to. What I heard behind the “cotton wool” of Martha’s words was a woman who not only pined to share her acceptance of death, but her anxieties, fears, and curiosities about death itself.

If we allow ourselves to hear the real story behind the “cotton wool,” surely we can weave a tapestry together.

I’ll end this post with a writing exercise for you (not mandatory, but highly recommended). While in a café or restaurant, or in any public venue, listen closely to the conversations taking place nearby. Note what is being said. Think about it for a while and see what kind of tapestry you come up with.

Good luck!

 *To protect privacy, all names are false.

Are you in need of a service dog?

It is well known that people with physical disabilities benefit from service dogs, but emotional support dogs have yet to be scientifically proven to help those with post-traumatic stress disorder. Service dogs are trained to carry out specific tasks like guiding people with vision difficulties across the street, or picking up dropped items. Emotional support dogs provide companionship for those with mental health conditions. They are pets and not trained to do the tasks that service dogs are trained to do.

After previous studies were suspended, due to inadequately trained dogs, this past April the Human Animal Bond Research Initiative (HABRI) granted funds to Purdue University to measure the outcomes of utilizing service dogs for post 9/11 war veterans suffering from PTSD. Researchers will be working with K9’s for Warriors, a non-profit that follows a “Gold Standard” when training rescue animals to be service dogs. The study will assess for changes in stress level, medication, and relationships among veterans.

Though some private organizations provide service-dog training for individuals with mental health conditions such as PTSD, the Veterans Administration currently does not; they offer information on how to contact places that provide service animals. But they do offer veterinarian services. If the Purdue research proves that service dogs can help those with PTSD, the VA will also provide veterinarian care to those dogs.

The study will take several years to complete, but, who knows, maybe it will lead to more studies, ones involving service dogs for those with PTSD in the civilian community. Though such dogs are not to be relied on as a panacea for PTSD, if they are recognized as a legitimate adjunct to traditional treatments, thousands of people may benefit. In the United States alone, more than 24 million people are estimated to have PTSD at any given time.

Are you among the 24 million?

Are you a personal essay writer, or an aspiring personal essay writer who is reluctant to write the truth about yourself because you fear others will judge you for your flaws?

This past May, I attended the Muse and Marketplace, an annual writing conference held by the Boston based writing center, Grubstreet. The details of many of the workshops are worthy of sharing with you, but, since I’m a personal essay writer and memoirist, one in particular resonated with me: “Writing a Risky Personal Essay.” A poet, journalist, critic, writing instructor, award winning memoirist, and more, Ethan Gilsdorf opened the session with this quote by  Cheryl Strayed: “When people are honest and vulnerable, we usually respond with our own honesty and our own vulnerability, and with kindness.”

How do you begin writing a risky personal essay? Gilsdorf advises to first explore a “burning question about your life,” something “messy,” human. Write a list of topics: a crisis, an unresolved conflict with family or yourself, questions from your past that have yet to be answered, a particular obsession of yours, or something considered taboo.

Don’t go searching for a topic. “Let the topic select you,” Gilsdorf encourages. I think of what Ann Hood said in a workshop I attended at Grub Street: “Write about what keeps you up at night.” Once the topic “finds you,” and you’re ready to wrestle with your past on the page, Gilsdorf reminds us to focus on the “building blocks” of a personal essay: employ scene, or dramatic moments, and reflection, where you step back and make sense of the events that have occurred. The essay should reveal how you, as a character, have changed. Who are you now versus then? How you have grown as a result of the conflict? To reveal character, include your quirks, and your voice. To better understand this ambiguous term, Gisldorf quotes Julie Wildhaber: “Voice is the personality of the story.” You want to create a distinct persona on the page, one the reader can trust. For instance, How you write about your experience growing up with a single mother will be very different than someone else’s experience. Voice is influenced by tone, or the attitude of the character. Are you angry, somber, anxious?

It’s worth noting that the essay doesn’t have to conclude with resolution, but it should end with what you have learned. Readers are not interested in reportage of events, or being left unsatisfied. It’s helpful to think of the essay as having two layers: the context, or plot – this happened then that happened – versus the deeper, emotional layer, the stuff we often find difficult to write about. Sue Silverman refers to theses layers as the “voice of innocence versus the voice of experience.” Vivian Gornick calls them “The “Situation and the Story.”

As a writing exercise, here’s what Gilsdorf suggested in the workshop: Choose a risky topic and go back to a key, dramatic moment in time. To recreate it on the page, employ dialogue, scene, and action. For me, it helps to use the five senses. Be careful of over-explaining. Doing so runs the risk of booting readers out of scene. Then write a section that reflects on that scene. Examine what happened, why it happened, what you now know about yourself that you didn’t know then. Explain how and why you’ve changed. Is there a question you are still unable to answer? Explain why.

When writing about an experience emotionally close to us, it’s difficult to see prose that smacks of self-indulgence. Gilsdorf cautions us to be aware of this pitfall. When revising the essay, examine places that sound over-sentimental.

To help you get a better sense of what the risky personal essay looks like, I encourage you to read Gilsdorf’s essay, “The Day My Mother Became a Stranger,” published this past May in Boston Magazine.

Here are some other resources Gilsdorf suggested:

The Source of All Things, a memoir by Tracey Ross

“All Aboard,” an essay by Dave Demerjian.

“Cubby, Skinny, Accepting,” and essay by Cole Kazdin

Good-luck with your risky essay!

Are you interested in entering the nursing profession? If so, you could not have chosen a better time to do so. The fastest growing field in the United States is healthcare, with more than 3.5 million jobs projected to be added to the economy by 2020. One-third of that number will be registered nurses. If you are planning to go to nursing school, you may be interested in one of the more popular specialties: neonatal nursing, midwifery, or critical care. Or maybe you’re interested in military nursing. Nursing School Hub, a website dedicated to providing resources for those interested in the nursing profession, recently posted an info-graphic article, “The Military Nurse’s Toolkit.”

The benefits of being a military nurse may tempt you: loan repayment, world travel, and the opportunity to help a broad population. It goes without saying that military nurses face risks: physical injury by enemy combatants, and psychological stress from exposure to injured and deceased soldiers. If you have not read my post about PTSD and nurses, I encourage you to read it here.

If you are not interested in military nursing, but are eager to learn about nursing-related topics, such as scholarships, must read books for nurses, top nursing schools and jobs, and where to find a job, I recommend taking a good look at Nursing School Hub’s website.

With a family history of heart disease, I decided to err on the side of caution and started taking omega 3 supplements years ago. I had read that they are good for your heart, and help regulate cholesterol. But I did not know about the greater benefits packed within the glycerin coating.

The brain, consisting of more than sixty percent fat, is the fattiest organ in the body.  Twenty percent of that number is comprised of an omega 3 fatty acid called DHA, or docosahexanoic adic. DHA is found in the central nervous system and is believed to help maintain optimal brain function, reduce inflammation, and increase fluidity within cell membranes. Recent research shows that omega 3, primarily DHA and EPA (another fatty acid that helps reduce inflammation) are both beneficial in the treatment of traumatic brain injuries. Since the pathology of a TBI involves cellular destruction and death, researchers have concluded that omega 3 can help mitigate that process. But, as research tends to go, more studies are needed to look closely at the benefits and risks of treating TBIs with omega 3.

Of course, it’s always better to choose foods rich in omega 3 rather than taking supplements, because those foods contain other nutritional benefits such as protein. EPA and DHA are mostly found in fatty fishes like salmon. ALA, or alpha-linoleic acid, is another omega 3 found in plant sources such as nuts and seeds.

Here’s the disclaimer: Though the FDA has approved medications with omega 3 to treat high levels of triglycerides, they do not approve the use of nutritional supplements to treat TBIs. Because there are not enough scientific studies to prove the effectiveness and safety of omega 3, the FDA explicitly warns  consumers to avoid supplements that have been marketed to prevent, treat, or cure TBIs, including concussions. Of greatest concern is that athletes who have sustained a concussion will take omega 3, believing the supplement will hasten their recovery, then return to the field sooner than they should. Over the past few years, sports guidelines related to concussions have been updated, and clearly note that the first ten days after injury is the period of time posing the greatest risk for sustaining another concussion.

I am not a physician, nutritionist, or pharmacist, and don’t pretend to be an expert on nutritional supplements, so if you are considering taking omega 3 for a TBI, I encourage you to do your research, and, of course, speak with your doctor (please accept my apologies if I sound like a pharmaceutical commercial). But, if you are curious by nature and must know where to learn about omega 3 dosing for a TBI, click here.

Cheers to a healthy brain!