Let’s Take Action: Finding Strength in our Struggle with Illness
This is a digital event. You should receive information in your ticket or from the host about how to join online.
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Join Jeannie Blaustein, PhD., D. Ministry, and Wendy Videlock – two remarkable individuals living with a range of chronic and serious illnesses – as part of this conversation in the series Every Body. Jeannie and Wendy will reflect on poetry and writing as wayfinders in their health journeys and their creative paths. How can finding and generating words and language help us to take small, sweet steps towards growth, transformation, and learning?
The event culminates in peer-led breakout sessions, offering a space for shared reflection through the following guided prompts:
- Your body has a wisdom of its own. It seeks to be expressed and witnessed. What does it want to say today?
- What is one thing you’ve been avoiding and what is one small, sweet step you can take to gently approach it?
- Think of an aspect of your health that feels particularly heavy. What’s one tiny act of self-compassion you can offer yourself around that?
- Grief and loss often shift our priorities. Is there something new you’ve been curious about exploring or learning? What’s one small way you can start? (prompts courtesy of Nina Rodriguez, Grief and Light)
Dr. Jeannie Blaustein is a graduate of Brown University, a licensed clinical psychologist and pastoral counselor, with additional training and experience in hospital chaplaincy, hospice, and palliative care. She is the co-founder of Reimagine, a national non-profit which leverages the power of the arts, spirituality, and community to help us transform our experiences of mortality, loss and adversity so that we may all live fully until the end.
A strong believer in the power of the arts to open hearts and minds, Jeannie is an executive producer of an Off Broadway drama and six films, including The Chaplain and the Doctor (2025, Jessica Zitter), There is Another Way (2024, Steve Apkon), The Last Ecstatic Days (2022, Adithi Sethi), Caregiver: A Love Story (2020, Jessica Zitter), Defining Hope (2017, Caroline Jones), and Wrestling Jerusalem (2016, Aaron Davidman).
Diagnosed with ovarian cancer, Jeannie has herself found writing and painting to be extremely helpful as she’s been adjusting to living with serious chronic illness. She said recently that making art is “both meditative and intellectually stimulating, bringing [her] right into the present moment and reminding [her] that this moment is the only thing we truly know.”
Wendy Videlock lives at the foot of Thunder Mountain in Western Colorado. She believes language is the invisible influence informing our thoughts, our perceptions and our relationships. Wendy is the author of five critically acclaimed books of poetry, a children's book and a collection of essays. Wendy is also a visual artist whose works appear in galleries across Colorado. Her poems and essays appear most notably in Poetry, Best American Poetry, the New York Times and O Magazine. Wendy teaches for THINK360 and directs several literary programs across the region, advocating for the arts in public spaces. Wendy serves as poet laureate of Western Colorado. In response to the question, “Would you say you are a writer living with chronic illness?” her response is, “Yes, several.”
https://wendy-videlock.constantcontactsites.com/
About the Series
Every Body: Finding Strength in our Struggle with Illness
Our worlds and belief systems shatter when faced with chronic or serious illness. Our bodies were supposed to function a certain way, but a disease forces us to navigate transitions, to acknowledge our lack of agency, and confront mortality. How do we move forward in the world with purpose? What are strategies to live with pain or affliction, but not allow it to foreground our day-to-day? Join this three-part series in which we lean into grief associated with illness and disease, but at the same time recognize opportunities to learn, transform, or grow. Guest speakers—authors, artists, therapists, spiritual leaders, and activists—will share their stories and practical tools and support. In a time when many feel the threat of a fracturing health care system, it’s important to come together in community and strengthen our resources. What roles do creativity, spirituality and acts of service have in everyone's journey in this struggle?
Who is this for?
- We're honoring those who are directly experiencing the fear and transitions that accompany a diagnosis or the ambiguous grief of not having a diagnosis.
- We're creating space for those who want to increase their grief literacy and show up for friends and family dealing with health challenges.
About Reimagine
Reimagine is a nonprofit organization catalyzing a uniquely powerful community–people of different backgrounds, ages, races, and faiths (and no faith) coming together to create a more compassionate world. We support each other in facing adversity, loss, and mortality and channeling life's biggest challenges into meaningful action and growth.
