Takeaway
By engaging in creative reflection—through reading, writing, and responding to art—clinicians may deepen their capacity for empathy, as well as their ability to process grief.
Passion in the medical profession | April 24, 2026 | 4 min read
By Carolyn Roy-Bornstein, MD, author, writer, speaker www.carolynroybornstein.com
As a narrative medicine facilitator, I use literature to help doctors excavate the unspoken meaning of their clinical experiences, to connect to their deepest values, and to each other as a care-giving community. I choose poems or essays to explore different themes. In July we might look at transitions. After a beloved patient dies, we might focus on grief.
As we read and discuss the literary work, we connect our own personal and clinical experience with the art we examine. As we write reflectively, we deepen that connection, sometimes making new or surprising correlations. When we share our words, we extend those affiliations to each other—narrative medicine’s most vital goal.
We can do the same with visual arts. In anticipation of broadening my horizons—and those of my workshop participants—by bringing a different type of art into our narrative sessions, I recently visited the Essex Arts Center in Lawrence, Massachusetts, right down the road from where I teach. I had a long and meaningful conversation with its executive director Monica Lynne Manoski.
The title of the current exhibition is “In a Time of Many Suns.” Manoski sees the show as a counternarrative to the chaos, misinformation, and oppression of voices in the world right now. A narrative of hope, beauty, and joy. A counter message about what belonging looks like. About where we are from, collectively, and how that informs our choices, our art. About what we believe in and stand for.
These are the questions we ask ourselves in narrative medicine. What am I all about? What values do I bring into the world? This art asks something of us as well. It asks us to share our own suns, our own light, and send our positive messages into the world.
Some of the pieces were born of grief, isolation, and loss. Textiles of deep purples and pale yellow—the colors of bruises healing over time—the color of trauma. Sculpted ladders and handrails cast us a lifeline, offer support, a way out of the darkness, externally seeming fragile and frayed, yet at their core, sturdy and strong.
There’s a phrase in Hebrew, L’dor Va’dor, which means “from generation to generation.” Some of the works echo this sentiment, like the papel picado dyed in rich Aztec hues and cut in shapes that evoke the whispered messages of our ancestors. These works shift gently with the breezes we create as we walk by or move through the installation. Pieces waft and wave, urging us forward, settling back into place as we pass, like a watchful grandmother keeping us safe while urging us on.
And there are words.
Adrienne Maree Brown’s words undulate across a wall painted ocean blue. “Together we must move like waves” calls to mind the Greek philosopher Heraticlus’s words “No (one) can stand in the same river twice.” Each wave is “both continuous and a one-time occurrence” each “critically connected” to one another.
We, too, are critically connected. To each other. To this art. To something larger than ourselves if we just give ourselves the time to respond. Art centers and museums give us that time. In a “creation space,” visitors are invited to write, draw, or sew in response to the exhibit. The prompt “Write the world you want to live into existence” guides them.
In narrative medicine, writing reflectively confers agency. Shaping our stories, owning the narrative, allows us to craft something positive from adversity, deriving meaning from trauma and loss. We consider others’ perspectives. We see how far we have come. We clarify our priorities.
Rather than letting the sadness and chaos of the world overwhelm or silence us, art invites us to respond. The writer Suleika Jaouad talks about collaborating with upheaval, with grief. She was a young woman when she was diagnosed with cancer. Journaling gave her a place to process her experiences, creating meaning from malady.
The writer Octavia Butler told us, “There’s nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.” Adrienne Maree Brown takes this idea further saying, “We’re in a time of new suns. We have no idea what we could be, but everything that we have been is falling apart. So, it’s time to change.”
Being in this creative space, looking forward to bringing visual arts to my practice of narrative medicine and to learners, I feel that change. That shift. That lifting of hope and voice. We’re in the time of many suns. And we are those suns.
This piece expresses the views solely of the author. It does not necessarily represent the views of any organization, including Johns Hopkins Medicine.