Meet Marisa!
Marisa Olsen is a primary care physician assistant, storyteller, and friend living in Dallas, Texas by way of Minneapolis, Washington DC, and Chicago. She has always loved to write, and finds it is one of her favorite ways to remain curious about the world and further understand how she interacts with this beautiful terrible life.
She completed her bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of Notre Dame, her master’s in physician assistant studies from Northwestern University, and a certificate in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University.
She believes medicine is best practiced when the humanities inform it— Narrative Medicine does just that. By studying storytelling, the discipline of Narrative Medicine allows for clinicians and students to gain narrative competence and better comprehend the stories of patients. She allows this to inform her writing, and her clinical practice working at a community clinic with uninsured patients.
Marisa regularly contributes to various Narrative Medicine outlets and publishes a weekly newsletter, Stay Close, on Substack.
While Working In Healthcare and Her Early Thirties are the main contexts from which she writes, the major themes of kinship, relationships, personal identity, vocation, and personhood can be related to many different people working and living in many different spaces.
If you want more writing from Marisa, please visit her most popular posts, or sign up for her newsletter.
FAQs
Where are you from?
1
Born and raised in Minnesota outside of the Twin Cities, but somehow found my way to Texas which was not on my life’s bingo card. I moved to Indiana for college, then Washington DC for a service year, Chicago for PA school, and landed in Dallas. My husband and I always say we have another move in us;)
Tell us about your voice
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I have a paralyzed vocal cord which makes my voice permanently raspy and hoarse. This happened during a surgery when I was an infant, due to being born prematurely at 26 weeks gestation. It’s colored a lot of how I view the world and I’m immensely grateful for experiencing what I call this “disability-ish”.
Tell us about your writing voice
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I’m constantly honing my writing skills, and find that half of my writing is about working at the margins in healthcare, and half of my writing is simply navigating life as a 30-something regular human being. All of this is explored primarily in my newsletter— my favorite space to write.
I’ve written about the trauma that we see as providers and people, patient stories (always edited for privacy), working at the margins, and the humanity in healthcare.
I’ve also written about friendship breakups, reality testing being childfree, my yearly habit tracking, and wellness hacks that are lies.
In all my writing, I hope to share an authentic, open, warm voice with my readers. I attempt to approach most topics with curiosity and empathy. I am a firm believer that this life is incredible but equally awful. The good and the bad inform each other, and I hope I capture that in my writing.
Any other fun facts?
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I’m a huge basketball fan and played competitively through high school then club teams in college and post-grad.
I love reality TV (Survivor, The Bachelor, SLOMW, etc)
I have a 2 year old cavapoo pup who is the light of my life.
My friendships and relationships are the single most important thing in the world to me.
My hero is Father Gregory Boyle.
I’m an enneagram 2w3, Scorpio, ENFJ, and recovering perfectionist.
