Barbara Loeb MD

Barbara Loeb is a physician, poet, mentor, and facilitator, who is committed to promoting healing, especially for those who care for others and often lose sight of their own need for nurturing. She was born and raised in an inner-city neighborhood on Chicago's Northside. She worked her way through Northwestern University and Rush Medical College. For over 40 years, Barbara worked in numerous healthcare roles. First, as a primary care physician within her own Internal Medicine practice, and later, as a consultant sharing strategies to enhance physician-patient communication and connection. Finally, she served as a Chief Medical Officer navigating healthcare strategies within a variety of health organizations. She both observed and experienced the same challenges as her physician colleagues: fatigue, lack of self-care, and burnout. To provide herself with a greater measure of healing, she developed her own restorative ritual, which combines mindfulness, writing, and building deeper connections between patients and colleagues.?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, for Barbara (as for so many others), the need for self-care became more urgent. In her first book "How to Save a Life: Healing Power of Poetry" written in 2020-2021, she utilizes the principles of presence, reflection, self-awareness, and compassion to create poetry that takes us along on her healer's journey.

Her goal is to inspire her readers to reflect on their own path to well-being through self-expression. By sharing her poems and inner travels, she reveals the great strength that her readers can build through opening themselves and letting out their creative energy. She sends a message to future generations to connect to the grounding energy of the past. The volume is brilliantly illustrated with the artwork of her late mother Judy "Salsa" Loeb. Barbara now spends her time writing and sharing what she has learned with clinician, caregivers, and others as they travel on their life journeys.