05/01/2026
Join me at 2026 National Symposium for Palliative Care Research and Education June 4 - 5, 2026 at CSUSM, San Marcos - check out the agenda at https://csupalliativecare.org/symposium/, engage with Expressive Arts Therapy at Garden of Compassion or more deeply at my workshop Stories that Heal: Narrative Medicine and Narrative Therapy through Expressive Arts Therapy invite participants to explore how story, images, movement, and metaphor foster meaning-making and healing in palliative care. Narrative medicine integrates patients’ lived experiences into clinical practice to deepen empathy, presence, and understanding of illness. Rooted in the work of White and Epston, narrative therapy separates people from problems and honors lived experience as knowledge. Through collaborative arts-based practices, participants engage in storying and re-storying illness, caregiving, loss, resilience. This experiential presentation demonstrates how externalizing and re-authoring narratives can cultivate agency, dignity, compassion, trust, and holistic, person-centered care for patients, families, clinicians.
