I have worked closely with Health Story Collaborative (HSC), a Cambridge-based non-profit organization, since 2012. HSC seeks to elevate the role of personal storytelling in the medical ecosystem. In this role I translate the scientific literature on narrative identity into applied tools for many of our programs.
Along with our Founder and Executive Director, Annie Brewster, I Co-Direct the Healing Story Sessions Program, which creates opportunities for patients and providers to tell their stories of illness and healing. This is a fundamentally therapeutic endeavor, one that is healing for both the storyteller and their audience. We have hosted Healing Story Sessions in a huge variety of venues, from private living rooms, to medical school classrooms, to large public spaces like WBUR’s CitySpace. We have also held events for Boston’s HUB Week, and Massachusetts General Hospital’s Nurses Appreciation Week and Palliative Care Department’s 25th Anniversary. No matter the context, I work closely with our partners on shaping their experiences into powerful written narratives and then rehearsing for equally powerful performances of those narratives. HSC was honored with the 2022 Dean’s Community Service Award at Harvard Medical School.