Healing
We’ve come to think of healing in mechanical terms, as repairing something broken, like fixing a flat tire. But for most of human history healing has meant more than repairing the body. Healing has meant restoring a sense of wholeness to a person—or even a relationship or community. In today’s show we’ll hear two stories that explore this older sense of healing. First, a Bay Area woman diagnosed with breast cancer finds healing through a complementary medicine modality at Stanford Hospital called Healing Touch. Second, a Stanford student living with an incurable disease finds healing in an encounter with the ocean and one of its creatures. How do we heal when our bodies are irrevocably changed?
Host: Preet Kaur
Producers: Bonnie Swift, Christy Hartman, Taylor Shoolery, Preet Kaur, Alka Nath, Will Rogers, Julie Morrison, Mallory Smith, Natacha Ruck, Claire Schoen, Jonah Willihnganz
Featuring: Preet Kaur, Carolyn Helmke, Catherine Palter, Melissa Anderson, Rosa Fuerte, Marilyn Getas-Byrne, Anne Proctor, Laura Pexton, Margot Baker, David Wolf, Maggie Burgett, Maria Cacho, Katie Talamantez, Elizabeth Helms, Diane Wardell, Sue Kegal, Jim Batterson, Margaret Schink, and Mallory Smith
Release Date: 22 April 2015
Image via The Archeological Museum of Piraeus
Story 1: It Slows Way Down
When two of Carolyn Helmke’s friends got cancer, she knew she had to get a mammogram. We follow Carolyn’s journey through cancer treatment and her experience of Healing Touch at Stanford Hospital’s Center for Cancer Supportive Care Services. How does Carolyn find healing, not just from cancer, but from the trauma of fighting it?
Producers: Christy Hartman, Bonnie Swift, Taylor Shoolery, Preet Kaur, Alka Nath, Will Rogers, Julie Morrison, Claire Schoen, Jonah Willihnganz
Featuring: Carolyn Helmke, Catherine Palter, Melissa Anderson, Rosa Fuerte, Marilyn Getas-Bryne, Anne Proctor, Laura Pexton, Margot Baker, David Wolf, Maggie Burgett, Maria Cacho, Katie Talamantez, Elizabeth Helms, Diane Wardell, Sue Kegal, Jim Batterson, Margaret Schink
Special Thanks: Nina Weil, Nina Foushee, Josh Hoyt, Rachel Hamburg, Mallory Smith, Natacha Ruck, Eileen Williams, Rosie La Puma
Original Music: Man of Suit
image via flickr
Story 2: Salted Wounds
Mallory Smith was born with cystic fibrosis, an incurable disease with a median life expectancy in the late 30’s. The most serious complication of the disease is a vicious cycle of chronic infection, inflammation and scarring in the lungs that often leads to respiratory failure. As Mallory battles her illness through college, she comes to realize that, metaphorically speaking, the planet is diseased too. But nature speaks out through its own set of symptoms, unsettling signs that grow louder and clearer by the year.
Producer: Mallory Smith
Music: The Album Leaf (Blank Pages, A Day in the Life, Perro, Summer Fog, Shine), The American Dollar (Anything You Synthesize), This Will Destroy You (I Believe in Your Victory), Maneli Jamal (Us Against Them), Antoine Dufour & Tommy Gauthier (Solitude), and Josh Woodward (Together on Our Own)
Image via One Love
An earlier version of this piece aired on Green Grid Radio