Who Am I? Who Do I Want To Be?
In these polarized and trying times, it can be hard to listen to our better angels and easy to
fall into angry, vindictive thoughts. But is that who we want to be? How do we remain
compassionate toward people who are doing horrible things? How do we remember the
common humanity we share, even with our enemies? How can we resist being dragged
down by the world, and remain true to who we are?
Patricia (Kim) Palmer serves the Emory University Woodruff Health Sciences Center as the Manager of Research Projects in Spiritual Health. She is a board-certified chaplain with over five years of clinical experience and earned an M.S.P.H. in Epidemiology from Emory University as a Transforming Chaplaincy Research Fellow. She is ordained in the Unitarian Universalist tradition and serves as an affiliated community minister for a congregation in Roswell, Georgia. She is currently engaged in a multi-year, multi-study research effort to investigate the effect of Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT) on chaplains and the effect of CBCT-adapted interventions on patient and provider outcomes, and she is exploring the possibility of a part-time return to clinical work as a chaplain.