Owning Pink Bloggers
Kitchen Table Wisdom
What Does Every Woman Want?
Bernie Siegel MD, July 18, 2011
I don’t know what I’ve been doing for the past 25 years. I must have had my head up my arse to have missed reading Dr. Bernie Siegel’s, Love, Medicine & Miracles: Lessons Learned About Self-Healing From A Surgeon’s Experience With Exceptional Patients. But I’m reading it now as research for my next book The Prescripton: 5 Spiritual Steps To Healing Yourself From Illness, Trauma, Or Loss. And holy AWESOME SAUCE, Batman!
By page 3, I was madly in love with Dr. Bernie Siegel (who doesn’t wear a white coat and prefers to be called Bernie). By page 27, I was crying my eyes out. By page 61, I decided I must have read this book in a past life because so much of it mirrors what I have already written (so much so that some will surely think I’m knocking off Bernie). And by page 76, when I read, “The simple truth is, happy people generally don’t get sick. Ones attitude towards oneself is the single most important factor in healing or staying well,” I knew I had to meet this remarkable doctor.
So I wrote to him after my friend and mentor Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, author of Kitchen Table Wisdom and a long time friend of Bernie’s, gave me his email address.
Turns out he’s even more awesome than I imagined. Not only has he been guiding me in helping a patient who really needs love and support; he’s also a Yale surgeon who believes love heals, hugs his patients, employs the use of art therapy, and thinks we need to revolutionize the way we deliver health care. He’s also a Renaissance man - a poet, an artist, the author of many books, and a genuine, authentic man who really cares, as well as a role model for doctors like me and an inspiration for millions of patients around the world.
I could keep gushing, but instead, let me introduce you to my new friend and Owning Pink’s newest blogger - Dr. Bernie Siegel (cue wild applause!) Take it away, Bernie!
- Lissa
What Does Every Woman Want
By Bernie Siegel, MD
Many years ago a childhood friend of mine, due to a gambling addiction, got into a difficult situation involving some very significant debts. One day he shared with me that the organized crime group involved had threatened to break every bone in his body or worse if he did not pay up. He said when he told them he had no funds available and asked if he could repay the debt in some other way he was told that if he married the crime lord’s daughter they would let him off.
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The Narrow Place: Expanding Through Transitions
Lissa Rankin, March 21, 2011
When you’re in transition, you may feel very, very uncomfortable. Whether you’ve lost or left a job, become a new mother, buried a loved one, divorced a spouse, found yourself with an empty nest, or been diagnosed with an illness, you’re likely to find yourself feeling constricted, at least at first.
You gut feels tight. Your heart hurts. You curl into a ball. You shrink. It’s like a mini-death.
Read More...A Love Letter To Doctors
Lissa Rankin, June 15, 2010
I have a confession to make. Four years ago, I was calling you the “Pod People,” because I felt so traumatized by the behavior of other doctors. When I quit practicing medicine around that time, I wanted to have nothing to do with doctors. I called myself a “recovering physician” and pretty much avoided doctors like the plague. I came to think of you as a bunch of arrogant, mean-spirited, grumpy, soulless people bent on keeping me in a box and clipping my wings.
My Owning Pink Manifesta
Lissa Rankin, November 10, 2008What does it mean to be Owning Pink? Owning Pink is a perpetual state of being in which women embrace their femaleness, open themselves to creative expression, optimize their health and well-being, grow through communion with other women, and commit themselves to living authentically, never forgetting that, girls, after all, do want to have fun. As an OB/GYN, artist, writer, and teacher, Owning Pink evolved as a way for me to integrate all of my passions in service to others. It took me a long time to figure out how to do that, given that my skills are seemingly disparate.
Read More...Live, Love, Heal
Lissa Rankin, November 9, 2008Who’d have thunk that I’d have to study more, after twelve years of medical education? Don’t get me wrong. I knew I’d have to put in my CME hours (continuing medical education). I’d like to say I read all of my journals, but truth be told, I only read some of them, cherry picked for the articles that tickle my fancy of the day. (We do get LOTS of journals).
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