I was recently asked by an interviewer, “Why did you write this book?”
Now, this is a really common and reasonable question to be asked, and an author is supposed to know the answer before they write a book. Right?
Any sane writer would’ve had already come up with some “sound bytes” to have handy in front of them when being interviewed, ready to roll out some “triples,” which are three bite-size book themes in one, neat sentence, and the specific reasons they wrote their book. It’s basic Book Writing 101.
But what happened next I can only describe as an out-of-body experience. Upon hearing the question, I had at the tip of my tongue… nothing. Nope, nada. Total freeze. It was so embarrassing, maybe even more for the interviewer than for me.
At the time I blamed it on a lack of caffeine or maybe a minor stroke. Are you kidding me, Mary Ellen… this was an interview, an important event for my book, I scolded myself.
But in my usual fashion of acting first and looking back later (you will see this in the book), I realized that now would be the right time to reflect.
I knew the reasons for writing my book were many. Reasons that had always run in the background of my day-to-day life… but now, I needed to really get that answer down clearly and concisely.
Why did I write this book?
First and foremost, I wanted the world to see the incredible Athabascan village of Tanana. Not as an outsider sees it, but the way I did the first day I arrived. To really see and feel the spiritual energy that moves through you when you’re a part of that. My world view changed as I lived and worked among the elders, the kids, the beautiful patients who came in the door of that old clinic. As you will see in the book, Tanana tipped my world on its head, and inspired almost everything I have done since.
In our culture, when we write, it gives us a voice. That voice can be for ourselves only. Or… we can use that voice to speak of those ideas, of those solutions that have been existing in silence but that have so much to offer to someone who might be looking for answers.
When I first went to the Alaska bush, I encountered magical, wonderful places that had poor or non-existent healthcare. Through years of working in these remote areas, I’ve found solutions that brought excellent care to one of the most remote places on earth. I wondered, if these answers to bringing good healing and health worked here, could that system be brought to rural healthcare everywhere?
After 15 years of seeing these healthcare solutions work over and over again in hundreds of locations, I thought it was time to tell the story of how it all started. And let the good work we have been doing in the background meet the light of day.
In this book, I give voice to rural healthcare, and how very much it has to offer.
In its hidden offerings, rural healthcare is one of the last best places to work, offering medical professionals many gifts.
One is the gift of being needed. Any medical provider worth his/her salt went into medicine as a calling, as a way to serve humanity, a way to find meaning in their lives. On these points, rural and remote sites deliver in spades. Medical professionals will find meaning here… and will be needed. They will feel respected, have a sense of belonging, and will find that their lives have a deeper purpose. I wrote this book to speak for rural healthcare sites everywhere.
I wrote this book for healthcare providers who went into medicine to be of service to humanity and their fellows but found themselves stuck in American corporate medicine seeing one patient every 10 to 15 minutes. They know that this is not even enough time to get to know a patient’s name let alone how to truly help them. Now they feel there’s seemingly no way out and they are ready to quit.
Almost no one goes into medicine for the money, but corporate America keeps trying to fix our healthcare shortages by throwing more money at it.
I can tell you that there are way better ways to make a dollar in our culture than in corporate medicine with its production incentives and hourly wages.
I found a way out, a way to give these medical providers back their freedom and a chance to fulfill that pull, that draw to meaningful medicine that has been embedded in their souls for as long as they can remember.
I’ve seen hundreds of medical professionals renewed in their spirit, ones who were ready to quit medicine altogether, taking their knowledge and their acumen for healing with them, but were now able to turn their lives around, and once again find meaning in medicine.
Literally dozens of these providers have testified that by taking a chance, quitting corporate medicine with its mandates and micro-managing, and joining rural and remote medicine, they found purpose in their lives again.
Cody Rodman, a physician assistant from Michigan now working in remote Alaska outside of Nome, recently told me, “Since working in remote medicine, my dream is fulfilled. I feel like I know why I was put on this planet. And my wife tells me she’s never seen me so happy at my work.”
Next, I wrote this book to give hope to rural healthcare administrators who stay awake nights, knowing that their staff is stretched too thin, stressed with the community’s sickest patients, and working with very little to no sleep. That administrator that has been trying to recruit an excellent, “all in,” committed, medical practitioner for six months, and well, nothing has come to show of it. I wrote this book for them because we have found a solution.
There are literally thousands of dedicated medical professionals hungry to come work for you… excited, crying-in-gratitude medical personnel, longing for a chance to work where you are. I wrote this book for you.
I also wrote this book for every entrepreneur who has a solution to a big problem or an issue in our country. My message to you is keep going. Don’t think it will be easy, it won’t be. It is hard damn work, day after day, but if an idea has found you and won’t let you go, honor it, give it life, and it will return the favor.
I’m not talking about entrepreneurship for the sole purpose of making money. That will leave you colder than an Alaskan night in December. I’m talking about ideas that make a difference, ideas that relieve suffering or enhance lives.
You know, we all get them. We see a need, have an idea, then ignore it, or starve it with inattention, and it finally bids us goodbye and looks for another channel to give it life.
So, if you are someone who has an idea, and it has been talking to you in the middle of the night or especially when you first wake up in the morning, I wrote this book for you.
If you do not fit any of the above categories, but still want to read a darned good story with some depth, some twists and turns, something that will bring you back to who you are in the end, I wrote this book for you, too.
Finally, and most importantly, I wrote this book because I was supposed to, because that was God’s will for me. I don’t know why we get “called” for projects bigger than ourselves, but I do know I had to write this book before my years ended or before I became unable to do it.
Now I need to let it go, and let it speak to whomever God wants it to reach.