Skip to main content

Main menu

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Published Ahead of Print
    • Archive
    • Supplemental Issues
    • Collections - French
    • Collections - English
  • Info for
    • Authors & Reviewers
    • Submit a Manuscript
    • Advertisers
    • Careers & Locums
    • Subscribers
    • Permissions
  • About CFP
    • About CFP
    • About the CFPC
    • Editorial Advisory Board
    • Terms of Use
    • Contact Us
  • Feedback
    • Feedback
    • Rapid Responses
    • Most Read
    • Most Cited
    • Email Alerts
  • Blogs
    • Latest Blogs
    • Blog Guidelines
    • Directives pour les blogues
  • Mainpro+ Credits
    • About Mainpro+
    • Member Login
    • Instructions
  • Other Publications
    • http://www.cfpc.ca/Canadianfamilyphysician/
    • https://www.cfpc.ca/Login/
    • Careers and Locums

User menu

  • My alerts

Search

  • Advanced search
The College of Family Physicians of Canada
  • Other Publications
    • http://www.cfpc.ca/Canadianfamilyphysician/
    • https://www.cfpc.ca/Login/
    • Careers and Locums
  • My alerts
The College of Family Physicians of Canada

Advanced Search

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Published Ahead of Print
    • Archive
    • Supplemental Issues
    • Collections - French
    • Collections - English
  • Info for
    • Authors & Reviewers
    • Submit a Manuscript
    • Advertisers
    • Careers & Locums
    • Subscribers
    • Permissions
  • About CFP
    • About CFP
    • About the CFPC
    • Editorial Advisory Board
    • Terms of Use
    • Contact Us
  • Feedback
    • Feedback
    • Rapid Responses
    • Most Read
    • Most Cited
    • Email Alerts
  • Blogs
    • Latest Blogs
    • Blog Guidelines
    • Directives pour les blogues
  • Mainpro+ Credits
    • About Mainpro+
    • Member Login
    • Instructions
  • RSS feeds
  • Follow cfp Template on Twitter
OtherArt of Family Medicine

Care inside

Ruth Elwood Martin
Canadian Family Physician February 2017, 63 (2) 150;
Ruth Elwood Martin
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Article
  • eLetters
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF
Loading

As physicians, we are invited to bear witness to our patients’ lives. About 2 decades ago, I started sessional work in the health care clinic of a women’s correctional centre. The complex health profiles of incarcerated women, and their traumatic life stories, made the work both deeply rewarding and unsettling. I started journaling and writing poetry because I discovered that writing helped me to process the stories and traumas that the women shared with me. By writing poems, I found that I was giving voice to the moment of the clinical encounter, but I felt that I was viewing the moment through a different lens, as if compelled by an iridescent painting. I had not read the poems for many years, and re-reading them stirred up vivid memories of the clinical encounters that prompted my writing. Perhaps what we do in such settings is attend, bear witness, affirm, and allow healing to happen. Engaging with reflective writing, and the art of poetry, better prepared me as a physician to listen, to understand, and to learn from the women who shared their lives with me.

Schizophrenia in prison

pounce after crawling,

cat-walker postures her whim:

heavy steel slams shut

ebony cascade,

lush hair veiling haunted eyes:

laughter; pause; wail, scream

concrete walls encase:

a silver castle rises,

dancing from those eyes

cat in the castle

shuns all winter’s red capsules:

beckons injection

Recovery

Scars

white sinewy

tram-lines, criss-crossing

lumpy and gnarled

Ugly

arms: I can’t look at

them. Wasted

years, all gone, my

children shamed.

missed

veins, abscesses open

oozing, gaping;

pain, tearing her apart

marred for

life, scarred for

life, never able to

forget.

Footnotes

  • Dr Martin is Clinical Professor in the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. She is engaged in prison health teaching and research, including participatory health research with men and women with incarceration experience. For more on Dr Martin’s story, see the Cover Story on page 146.

  • Copyright© the College of Family Physicians of Canada
PreviousNext
Back to top

In this issue

Canadian Family Physician: 63 (2)
Canadian Family Physician
Vol. 63, Issue 2
1 Feb 2017
  • Table of Contents
  • About the Cover
  • Index by author
Print
Download PDF
Article Alerts
Sign In to Email Alerts with your Email Address
Email Article

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on The College of Family Physicians of Canada.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Care inside
(Your Name) has sent you a message from The College of Family Physicians of Canada
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the The College of Family Physicians of Canada web site.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
Care inside
Ruth Elwood Martin
Canadian Family Physician Feb 2017, 63 (2) 150;

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Respond to this article
Share
Care inside
Ruth Elwood Martin
Canadian Family Physician Feb 2017, 63 (2) 150;
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Jump to section

  • Article
    • Footnotes
  • Info & Metrics
  • eLetters
  • PDF

Related Articles

  • Medicine inside
  • PubMed
  • Google Scholar

Cited By...

  • No citing articles found.
  • Google Scholar

More in this TOC Section

  • Light as a feather
  • Creation and discovery
  • Decompression
Show more Art of Family Medicine

Similar Articles

Navigate

  • Home
  • Current Issue
  • Archive
  • Collections - English
  • Collections - Française

For Authors

  • Authors and Reviewers
  • Submit a Manuscript
  • Permissions
  • Terms of Use

General Information

  • About CFP
  • About the CFPC
  • Advertisers
  • Careers & Locums
  • Editorial Advisory Board
  • Subscribers

Journal Services

  • Email Alerts
  • Twitter
  • RSS Feeds

Copyright © 2022 by The College of Family Physicians of Canada

Powered by HighWire