Live Virtual Group Session: 6PM EDT May 5th 2025

16 Comments

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at the painting “Touch” by Rembrandt, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about pain anticipated.”

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Take the Survey!

Please join us for our next session Monday May 12th at 6pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Touch by Rembrandt

Libby, Alexandra, Ilona van Tuinen, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. “Allegory of Hearing, Allegory of Smell, Allegory of Touch, from The Series of the Five Senses” (2017). . In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 4th ed. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. and Elizabeth Nogrady with Caroline Van Cauwenberge. New York, 2023–. https://theleidencollection.com/artwork/stone-operation/ (accessed May 05, 2025).

16 thoughts on “Live Virtual Group Session: 6PM EDT May 5th 2025”

  1. Trevor Hebert's avatar vibrantfreelyb4ce26f285

    The yearning, the longing, the churning in my stomach…

    The anxiety inside of me trying to work it’s way out as the pain drains from it.

    A brustled brow, another how… how will this work?

    A series of unfortunate events or is it memory playing tricks in past tense?

    The sweat drips bit by bit but from a furrowed forehead, my mind racing, the time, it’s pacing, life becoming more and more difficult erasing the space it takes up.

    Sprinting, racing, faster and faster and faster as one thing after another seems to rush faster than every blink, I can’t feel, I can’t touch, I can’t smell, I can’t think.

    I open my mouth to free the blood curdling screams but there’s not a peep of sound…

    Until I remember… I can breathe.

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    • antoinette56's avatar antoinette56

      Thank you for your very vivid writing! (sorry to not use your name, but your user name is cryptic!)

      One thing I notice is the internal rhymes, which work to reinforce the pain and/or the anticipation (“yearning” and “churning”, “brow” and “how” (which both rhyme with “Ow!”), “racing” and “pacing” and “erasing” etc.) like the narrator is running down a steeper and steeper slope, until the breath is like a relief from that, a plateau.

      Antoinette

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  2. michele348's avatar michele348

    About pain anticipated~~~

    I knew I was in for it.
    I had a toothache for a while,
    and I finally decided to have it checked out,
    since none of the over-the-counter remedies
    seemed to work.

    Now, this was back in the days
    when Novocaine wasn’t commonly available,
    especially in the area where I lived.
    You either dealt with the pain
    or were put under with gas,
    and I definitely didn’t want to go through that again
    after a previous experience.

    I still remember that feeling of falling into a dark tunnel,
    spinning around and around.

    No, thank you!

    So, fast forward, I went without any pain relief
    and the dentist’s assistant could tell just
    how much pain I was in.

    But the show must go on, and so it did!

    That was the last time I went without any
    pain numbing assistance.
    Lesson learned!

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    • antoinette56's avatar antoinette56

      Dear Michele,

      I think it is so funny (yet it makes sense) that we both wrote about the dentist! It is kind of a unique situation, in that one has an appointment on the calendar, to experience pain! I especially appreciated the description of getting “gas” – of falling into a dark tunnel and spinning, and of that being something the narrator never wanted to experience again. Like a little death, is what it made me think of.

      Thank you, Antoinette

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      • michele348's avatar michele348

        Antoinette, you summed it up excellently…” signing up for an appt. to experience a little bit of death”. I laugh now, but not back then. I’m not surprised you referenced a dental appt. also… that can leave us with an everlasting memory from an early childhood experience gone not as planned. 🙂

        Liked by 1 person

  3. Elizabeth's avatar Elizabeth

    Michele-tough it through pain or drugs with consequences?—often a tough choice.

    Love the capitalizations—it emphasizes your points.

    Isn’t it tough that we have to learn lessons the hard way! Very often, such is life.🤷‍♀️

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    • michele348's avatar michele348

      Elizabeth… I guess that’s why some lessons “stick”…they were learned the hard way! If it were easy, they probably wouldn’t be memorable.

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    • antoinette56's avatar antoinette56

      Dear Elizabeth,

      To the point! (further pun intended!)

      That is exactly what I was thinking, when I chose the prompt for this session. And yet, in typical Medicine, we don’t really address that, which is “a pain!”

      Thank you, Antoinette

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      Reply
      • Elizabeth's avatar Elizabeth

        I am a to the point, kind of gal. To me this seemed so obvious— Nice to hear you were like-minded about it. Last night was a very enjoyable 400th session. I’ve been pretty much coming since the beginning and, wow, what a gift. Thank you for your facilitation.

        Liked by 1 person

    • michele348's avatar michele348

      I agree, Elizabeth, sometimes our anticipation of what is to come is somewhat exaggerated. But then again, sometimes we get more than we bargained for. As you said…such is life!

      Like

      Reply
  5. antoinette56's avatar antoinette56

    There was a time when dental work no longer scared me.

    It needed to happen. I love my dental hygienist. She is calm and kind, and spends so much time doing what she can to head off the pain.

    But the nerves are there.

    There came one visit when I let myself feel the pain as it was, not as I had feared it. It was like a flowering of pain, with limits, the petals self-contained, opening, lagging and lolling but not exploding. My fists in my lap relaxed, my hands opening like flowers, flat on my things. I felt “I can do this,” and I felt and said the same words to myself over and over, nerve after nerve, tooth after tooth. I tried to explain at the end, but the same calm demeanor meant she didn’t really understand. And that didn’t matter.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  6. Elizabeth's avatar Elizabeth

    I like the idea of pain with limits. I also like the agency and empowerment of the patient and not being dependent on the hygienist’s understanding of the situation. I also appreciated the use of the word nerves, which is associated with physical and emotional pain. Thank you for sharing.

    Liked by 1 person

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