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We Are All Perfectly Fine by Jillian Horton book cover
2022: Jillian Horton, We Are All Perfectly Fine

2022: Jillian Horton, We Are All Perfectly Fine

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Description

Jillian Horton, a general internist, has no idea what to expect during her five-day retreat at Chapin Mill, a Zen centre in upstate New York. She just knows she desperately needs a break. At first she is deeply uncomfortable with the spartan accommodations, silent meals and scheduled bonding sessions. But as the group struggles through awkward first encounters and guided meditations, something remarkable happens: world-class surgeons, psychiatrists, pediatricians and general practitioners open up and share stories about their secret guilt and grief, as well as their deep-seated fear of falling short of the expectations that define them. Jillian realizes that her struggle with burnout is not so much personal as it is the result of a larger system failure, and that compartmentalizing your most difficult emotions—a coping strategy that is drilled into doctors—is not useful unless you face these emotions too.

Jillian Horton throws open a window onto the flawed system that shapes medical professionals, revealing the rarely acknowledged stresses that lead doctors to depression and suicide, and emphasizing the crucial role of compassion not only in treating others, but also in taking care of ourselves.

Judges' Comments

Even before the pandemic, Canada’s healthcare system and the professionals who make it function were staggering beneath the burden of societal expectations. Jillian Horton, a gifted general internist driven to reverse her family’s experience of medical ineptitude, is physically and psychologically exhausted by her responsibilities as a doctor, teacher and mother. Her participation in a meditation retreat for medical practitioners gives her, quite literally, the breathing room she needs to assess herself and her profession, shedding the cloak of the all-knowing physician to reveal the human being within and challenging readers to develop a more humane, balanced vision of healing. 

Listen

Listen to the talk that Dr. Horton delivered at her award ceremony, which was recorded and broadcast by CBC Radio’s Ideas in an episode entitled “Healing and the Healer.”

Learn More

Explore the works of our previous Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction winners.

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