Articles By: Sarah Thebarge

I grew up as a pastor's kid in Pennsylvania. I completed my undergrad studies at The Master's College in Santa Clarita, CA. I studied medicine at Yale, and Journalism at Columbia. And just when I was hitting my stride as a health care provider, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and I learned the hard way what it's like to be a health care recipient. I got through seven months of treatment by God's grace, and moved across the country to start over. I currently live and practice medicine in Portland, OR. In my free time I research and edit book projects, worship with the Imago Dei community, cook for my friends, read a random assortment of books, and travel. You can contact me at sarahthebarge@gmail.com

On Eating and Praying and Loving

In the early twentieth century, Sigmund Freud became famous for asking the question, “What does a woman want?” He concluded the problem with women was they were hysterical, and what they wanted most was to be manually stimulated to orgasm. It was an innovative solution to women’s quandaries,...

August 20th, 2010 | Essays, Featured, Film | Read More

In Remembrance of Me

In April 2010, The New York Times published a story about Desiree Pardi, a 41-year-old breast cancer patient who refused hospice and insisted on the most aggressive treatments even after her doctor told her she’d exhausted all of her options. She pursued active treatment of her disease until the...

July 22nd, 2010 | Essays, Featured | Read More

i…

I am wake. I am tired. I am freed. I am mired. I fall as I rise. No, I fall more. I am here. I am yonder. I am stay. I am wander. Finish is start. I’ve been here before. I am blank. I am bolded. I am in. I am folded. Yes is a whisper. A thunder is no. I am nod. I am shaken. I am free. ...

July 13th, 2010 | Poetry | Read More

Fruit of the Womb

One of the benefits of working in medicine is knowing a lot of random facts that I can pull out at cocktail parties, wedding receptions, baby showers and other social gatherings when there’s a lull in the conversation. For example, it’s impossible to keep your eyes open when you sneeze. If you wreck...

May 14th, 2010 | Essays, Featured | Read More

The Remedy: It’s All In Your Head

In 1692, three adolescent girls who lived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony began acting strangely. They had inexplicable episodes of screaming, twitching, babbling incoherently and even convulsing. When they were asked by the town elders to account for their unusual behavior, the frightened girls identified...

April 5th, 2010 | Featured, The Remedy | Read More

On Health Care Reform (The Ayes Have It)

Webster? In the fall of 2009, Burnside Writers Collective published an article I wrote on health care reform called Who Would Jesus Heal? The piece was a lightning rod, drawing more comments than any other piece in the history of the website. This online community became a microcosm for the debate that...

March 24th, 2010 | Featured, The Remedy | Read More

Will Jesus Buy Me A Double Wide? (and other questions for author Karen Spears Zacharias)

Karen Spears Zacharias has a thing for trailers. She grew up, found Jesus, fell in love, and even delivered her first child in a trailer. She recently published her fourth book, Will Jesus Buy Me A Double Wide?, and took time out of her busy book tour schedule to answer that question and share her...

March 11th, 2010 | Burnside Sells Out, Featured | Read More

The Cheese Stands Alone

This summer I heard about a book called “100 First Dates,” and I was interested in reading more about it because as it turns out I, too, am a first date connoisseur. I went online and read the premise of the book: a single, twenty-something-year-old girl in New York named Laura Esteves dated every...

February 13th, 2010 | Essays, Featured | Read More

You’re Just Not That Into You

Every January my clinic schedule fills up with patients who, in keeping with their New Year’s resolutions, want to lose weight, drink less alcohol, and stop smoking. In my first few years of practice, I felt obligated to give each of these patients a 20 minute lecture on their vice of choice, replete...

February 1st, 2010 | Featured, The Remedy | Read More

Where The Wild Things Aren’t

“Peninnah had children, but Hannah had none.” – I Samuel 1:2 My friend just turned 28. When we went out to celebrate her birthday, she informed me that her biological clock is now ticking, and all she can think about is having a baby. So she’s been making plans to get more serious with...

January 28th, 2010 | Essays, Featured | Read More