The Book…

In Dissociative Effect, Jacqueline Redmer MD brings us into her poetry collection with a story - her own story - “I had never written a poem before in my life, until I was in my early 40s.  If you asked me to do so, I would have told you I was a left-brained person.” She goes on to explain, “I didn’t know it at the time but I was in need of some new stories.”

In the introduction, Jacqueline reminds us that humans are made of stories who have evolved to “think in stories, to talk in stories, to narrate an unfolding autobiography to ourselves in stories…”  She reminds us that the narrative process is a template for healing as our narrative lives can be rewritten, retold, restoried. The “dissociative effect” is a nod to the anesthetic ketamine and the distance one can sometimes feel from living an embodied, authentic life. It is also a reference to the perspective shifting which is a necessary part of healing and the wisdom which can come from aging.

Jacqueline uses Dissociative Effect as her own blueprint for healing - exposing lessons learned when one looks deeply at the difficulties encountered in living a life.  She writes, “I opened you up to me. And there/in the radiance of darkness/were the seeds for a deserving life.”

I am a physician, mother…poet.

I believe that humans are stories.  

Our need to communicate the human identity is deeply connected to the body and the soul of a person.  This affects the ways we fall ill and also our unique capacity to heal.  All human beings have the intrinsic need to be seen and heard.  Using our innate gifts of curiosity, creativity and language we have the ability to work with the content of our lives to fulfill this fundamental human need.  Let’s engage with the conversation that lies both inside and outside of ourselves and bring it to the greater world.

Welcome!

Endorsements

  • “Poetry is a dance between listening, learning and expressing. Jacqueline Redmer’s experiences as a physician, mother and life explorer has allowed her to beautifully express what it means to be human in all of its messiness. In doing so, she offers a way through. Here writing is a light that peaks from the openings that our difficult times gift us. 5 stars!”

    Dr. David Rakel author of Integrative Medicine, The Compassionate Connection

  • “In her poetry Jacqueline Redmer invites us into the vulnerable and painful moments in life in which our feelings of security and peace and all that we love are unraveling in ways over which we have no control.  She invites us to linger with her there in a delicate attentiveness so we can begin to discern a sacred presence that never passes away flowing on and on the hidden recesses all that is passing away.”

    Jim Finley PhD author of The Healing Heart, The Contemplative Path

  • “This debut poetry collection assembles a chorus of voices and narratives to sing of the evolving ways in which we inhabit—or attempt to escape—our bodies across a lifetime. Like the bird who dies throwing herself against her own reflection, the speaker risks 'the price of her own self-examination,' looking shame, depression, pain, and aging head-on. Any reader with a body will find themselves reflected here as Redmer explores how dissociation might ultimately reveal a deeper connection to ourselves, each other, and the world.”

    Cynthia Marie Hoffman MFA, author of Exploding Head

  • "In Dissociative Effect, Jacqueline Redmer merges her skills as a poet and a physician. In these poems, we find Mr. Rogers and prayer, Little Debbie Snack Cakes and shame, mid-life crisis and climate change, longing, reclamation, and so much more. “I share these words,” Redmer writes in the Introduction, “not to tell you about who I am but, rather, as a deeper invitation into your own story.” She has certainly succeeded in presenting readers with this invitation to be more present in our own bodies and stories. I know I’ll want to return to this book again." List Item

    Katie Manning, author of Hereverent and Tasty Other Goes Here

  • "Jacqueline Redmer writes with an exquisite precision that opens space for the reader to feel—not just think. Her voice is intimate, lucid, and brave. These are poems that do not flinch. She invites us to enter our own narratives—those threadbare and luminous strands that define a life—through her own deeply embodied reflections. I did just that. This is the kind of poetry collection I return to again and again, like an old friend, when I need language to meet the parts of me that feel far away or hard to reach. Her poems make visible what often goes unseen—shame, longing, memory, hunger, dissociation, resilience—and they do so with astonishing craft and grace. The language is muscular and tender at once, holding a fierce clarity that heals. Reading these poems, I felt more whole."

    Julie Tallard Johnson, MSW, LCSW, author of The Clue of The Red Thread