We were chatting over coffee in the Adams-Morgan Neighborhood on a sunny afternoon toward the end of our clinical immersion. The topic of conversation was this blog. Since the immersion has ended, we are left with myriad perceptions. How can we best share our thoughts with you? As with many graduate level discussions, we didn't reach consensus, though we all are in agreement that each nurse will share one or more separate reflections from Day 1 through Day 5.
We could fill volumes just contemplating the question: What is Homelessness? Each of us has our own unique view point, and each of us will share something about the experience and how it will influence future practice.
I am reminded of the 'golden key' award that my step-granddaughter, Elizabeth, won for excellence in creative writing. Although she wasn't asked to describe homelessness, she was asked to describe the concept of beauty. In shaping her thoughts, she created a series of eight different characters with diverse opinions about beauty. In her essay "Letters to Ms. Meadows", the characters conveyed their unique perspective through written missives. Elizabeth took the notion "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" to a new level with a writing style that imaginatively captured eight different points of view about a single concept.
In a similar way, we are all unique personalities, and every one of us has found meaning in different aspects of this immersion into the culture of homelessness. In the parable of the blind men and the elephant~ where ten different persons described the elephant by what they knew best ~ depending upon the part of the elephant that they touched, we will endeavor to share the large and complex phenomena of homelessness in our own voices and filtered through a graduate nursing lens.
We hope you find our observations and reflections "post immersion" interesting and enlightening.
In reflecting post-immersion, a particularly insightful experience~ one that will be indelibly pressed between the crisp tissues of memory~ was a book of poetry written by homeless women from N Street Village.
We were all engaged in a post-clinical conference of sorts, and the N Street Village Wellness Director shared it with us. Far from the raw-edged style reminiscent of the writing of Langston Hughes, this poetry was rather tame, had a tone of gentleness, and was themed around rather ordinary experiences in the life of women.
Although one female poet (who preferred to remain anonymous) shared a little of the experience of feeling "out of control," gone were the graphic and detailed descriptions of oppression, drugs, sex, and other of the misadventures that I (privately) was anticipating would fill the pages as poetry from a homeless population.
You can tell that I am a child of the 60s.
It caused me to ponder about whether the women were tamer in their tone because they were 'clean and sober' ~ a requirement of living at N Street. Or, were they coached to write about certain topics, such as celebrations, to satisfy the target audience who would purchase their poetry book (probably white folks)? Or, were the homeless women simply more interested in "ordinary things"~ just like everyone else in the world? Perhaps we'll never know...
We wanted to replicate some of the poetry for this blog; however, since the N Street Village Book of Poetry is used as a fundraiser, we were advised against it. Guess you all will need to make a purchase and read it yourselves!
Stay tuned for more post-immersion reflections.
We could fill volumes just contemplating the question: What is Homelessness? Each of us has our own unique view point, and each of us will share something about the experience and how it will influence future practice.
I am reminded of the 'golden key' award that my step-granddaughter, Elizabeth, won for excellence in creative writing. Although she wasn't asked to describe homelessness, she was asked to describe the concept of beauty. In shaping her thoughts, she created a series of eight different characters with diverse opinions about beauty. In her essay "Letters to Ms. Meadows", the characters conveyed their unique perspective through written missives. Elizabeth took the notion "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" to a new level with a writing style that imaginatively captured eight different points of view about a single concept.
In a similar way, we are all unique personalities, and every one of us has found meaning in different aspects of this immersion into the culture of homelessness. In the parable of the blind men and the elephant~ where ten different persons described the elephant by what they knew best ~ depending upon the part of the elephant that they touched, we will endeavor to share the large and complex phenomena of homelessness in our own voices and filtered through a graduate nursing lens.
We hope you find our observations and reflections "post immersion" interesting and enlightening.
In reflecting post-immersion, a particularly insightful experience~ one that will be indelibly pressed between the crisp tissues of memory~ was a book of poetry written by homeless women from N Street Village.
We were all engaged in a post-clinical conference of sorts, and the N Street Village Wellness Director shared it with us. Far from the raw-edged style reminiscent of the writing of Langston Hughes, this poetry was rather tame, had a tone of gentleness, and was themed around rather ordinary experiences in the life of women.
Although one female poet (who preferred to remain anonymous) shared a little of the experience of feeling "out of control," gone were the graphic and detailed descriptions of oppression, drugs, sex, and other of the misadventures that I (privately) was anticipating would fill the pages as poetry from a homeless population.
You can tell that I am a child of the 60s.
It caused me to ponder about whether the women were tamer in their tone because they were 'clean and sober' ~ a requirement of living at N Street. Or, were they coached to write about certain topics, such as celebrations, to satisfy the target audience who would purchase their poetry book (probably white folks)? Or, were the homeless women simply more interested in "ordinary things"~ just like everyone else in the world? Perhaps we'll never know...
We wanted to replicate some of the poetry for this blog; however, since the N Street Village Book of Poetry is used as a fundraiser, we were advised against it. Guess you all will need to make a purchase and read it yourselves!
Stay tuned for more post-immersion reflections.
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