healer, mystic, beloved friend
We lost a great soul on August 8. Rachel Naomi Remen was one of the most beloved voices in our Commonweal community, and she will be greatly missed.
Rachel was a pioneer and influential leader in the field of healing and integrative medicine. She was founder and director of the Remen Institute for the Study of Health and Illness, and creator of The Healer’s Art, a curriculum that has reached tens of thousands of medical students at schools around the world and reshaped how generations of physicians understand their calling.
She was co-founder and medical director of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program, which she helped build alongside Commonweal co-founder Michael Lerner, and which was featured in Bill Moyers’ landmark PBS series Healing and the Mind.
A Clinical Professor of Family and Community Medicine at UCSF, she wrote two national bestsellers, Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather’s Blessings, published in more than 20 languages, in which she shared the stories of healing, loss, and meaning that she gathered over a lifetime of practice. More recently, she wrote a children’s book, a retelling of a kabbalistic story about the divine light hidden in everyone.
Rachel’s lifelong engagement with the meaning of healing stems in part from her own experience of illness. At age 15, she was diagnosed with severe Crohn’s Disease and was given a prognosis of 10 years. Her experience living with Crohn’s and over a dozen major surgeries shaped her life and her depth as a healer and wisdom teacher.
“We have lost a great soul,” said Commonweal founder Michael Lerner. “She always wanted each of us to remember and honor our dignity as human beings in the fullest sense. We often quote her saying, ‘Perhaps the purpose of life is to grow in wisdom and learn to love better.’”
Rachel’s influence extended across medicine, spirituality, and public life. She was among the earliest to recognize the role of spirit and mystery in health and recovery, and her work helped legitimize the integration of the human spirit into contemporary medical care and education. She received numerous honorary degrees and was invited to teach at medical schools and hospitals throughout the country.
Among her many influential students was Dr. Vivek Murthy, 19th and 21st Surgeon General of the United States under Presidents Obama and Biden. “Rachel was a force of love and hope,” he said. “I would call her when I was happy, when I was lost, and when I just wanted to say hi. Every conversation with her felt like coming home. Rachel changed my life multiple times.”
“Rachel taught all of us at Commonweal, and so many thousands beyond it, that healing and curing are not the same thing—that even in illness, even in dying, there is room for wholeness,” said Oren Slozberg, Executive Director of Commonweal. “She brought a master storyteller’s gift and a physician’s rigor to the deepest questions of what it means to be human. We will feel the loss of her friendship for a very long time, even as her work and her wisdom continue through the countless people she touched.”
A memorial gathering will take place at Commonweal October 3 from 2:00-4:00pm. Find out more and register (required) here.
To leave a message of love or blessing or memory about Rachel, please go to her Legacy page. To leave a donation at Commonweal in her memory, see the form, below. To explore Rachel’s worldview through her interviews and conversations at Commonweal New School, visit the self-paced course we have set up in her memory.
