Hope for COVID Long Haulers ...

 

No winter lasts forever,

no spring skips its return. 

Hal Borman 

 

 

Hello, Everyone,

A belated Happy New Year to you all! 

A new year always fills me with hope, even in these grim and trying times. (When I say hope, I just mean the belief that tomorrow could be better.) One of the things that gives me hope, this year, is the rolling out, however bumpily, of the new COVID vaccines. I also find hope in the email updates I've been receiving from an American-based organization called  Survivor Corps.

Survivor Corps connects, advocates for and provides information to people suffering from longterm COVID effects (the "COVID long haulers") and their families, colleagues and friends. They have a have a strong medical advisory board, over 150,000 members in their Facebook Group and members from around the world all working to overcome the impacts of COVID-19.

In their own words, this grassroots organization:

• continually connects, supports, educates and motivates those affected by COVID-19,
• mobilizes as many as possible to support ongoing scientific, medical and academic research,
• donates plasma,
• works to find a cure and
• supports the development of vaccines.

They add that they hope to "get people back into their communities and back to work, all the while fostering the spirit of unity and solidarity that is urgently needed during this time of crisis".

The organization offers services including an archive of webinars related to long COVID, a list of COVID-friendly physicians and an evolving list of Post COVID Care Centers including three in BC at St Paul's Hospital, Vancouver; Vancouver General Hospital, Vancouver; and Jim Pattison Outpatient Care and Surgery Centre, Surrey. (These clinics require a referral from your physician.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGlkz-l0ZCw&feature=youtu.be 

I'm hopeful that initiatives like Survivor Corps, the vaccine programs and the post-COVID clinics will go a long way toward making the next year safer and more tolerable for all of us. (As will our own continued patience and cooperation with all the COVID public health guidelines.) 

While I don't believe that normal life is "just around the corner", I am hopeful that by late August I will be sending out brochures for Chronic Sorrow workshops for the new carepartners of COVID long haulers (amongst other caregivers) and Caring On Empty workshops for the helping professionals who have risked their health and their lives to keep us safe and well.

Let me close this "hopeful post" by sharing a poem of hope by Jan Richardson, one of my favourite writers of blessings:

Blessing of Hope

So may we know

the hope

that is not just

for someday

but for this day -

here, now,

in this moment

that opens to us:

hope not made

of wishes

but of substance,

hope made of sinew

and muscle

and bone,

hope that has breath

and a beating heart,

hope that will not

keep quiet

and be polite,

hope that knows

how to holler

when it is called for,

hope that knows

how to sing

when there seems

little cause,

hope that raises us

from the dead -

not someday

but this day,

everyday,

again and

again and

again.

From "The Cure for Sorrow"

Let there be light ...

 

There is always a glimmer in those

who have been through the dark.

Atticus

Hello everyone - greetings of light-in-the-darkness to you all!

I would not have believed Atticus' ancient words in the dark, depleted days following years of family caregiving, the death of my husband, my mother's death 3 months later and all the mind-numbing tasks that inevitably follow the death of loved ones. I had given more than I had to give and was utterly spent. For months after the first rounds of bereavement tasks were complete, I did little more than sit in a chair by the window and breathe. And even that was an effort some days.

It was close to a year and a half before I regained sufficient physical strength to engage my grief in a meaningful way. And, to be quite honest, there were many days when I wished I had died, too, I felt so bereft and had so little life force left to fuel my living.

Some would have said I was depressed but, in fact, I was exhausted, grieving and traumatized. But, deep within me, invisible to the naked eye, healing was already beginning to take place. First came the s-l-o-w restoration of physical strength wrought by weeks and months of simple rest, good nutrition and short daily walks. (Though those initial "walks" comprised nothing more than a few steps to the front door where I stood on the porch with my face to the rain.)

Then, in the long silent hours of sitting by the livingroom window, staring at the garden, came quiet opportunities to re-connect with my Self, my memories, my feelings and the many sources of strength greater than my own - the healing rhythms of nature, the beauty outside my window, the wisdom gleaned from poetry and prose and a deep spiritual connection with Mystery. As my energy rose sufficiently to reconnect with people, the love of cherished relationships, old and new, sustained me through new choices in life and vocation. The glimmer that had desperately endured the darkness was fanned to a new brightness by my willingness to let healing take as long as it took and to accept the loving support of family and friends.

For some of you, 2020, (this strange, COVID, "year-out-of-time"), is ending in a similar state of grief, trauma and depletion.  You are full of unexpressed pain and sorrow and have not an ounce of strength left to give.  It feels like there is nothing left of you or in you. But please don't allow that to be your truth for long. Choose, instead, to gently and persistently fan the flame of your own life force.  Seek the things that have renewed you in the past and allow them to do it once more - even in the smallest "doses" and most unusual ways, given COVID's limitations.

As Atticus knew, way back in second century Rome, there is a tiny glimmer left in all of us who have been through the darkness, be that darkness the countering of COVID's grim effects, the fearfulness of not being able to work, the anxiety of becoming ill yourself or the exhaustion of caring for loved ones at home who were already ill or injured before the pandemic. This remaining glimmer can be buried so deeply that it seems all but lost - but it IS still there. And, with gentle fanning and exquisitely tender nurturing, it can break into flame and give light once more - first to yourself and then to the world around you.

When you do choose to heal, you may find you have sufficient energy to fan your own flame but, more likely, you will need some help. So, please do ask for that help. Even if it's hard at first. (You may have noticed that we nurturers are not always great at asking for nurturing, ourselves.) There will always be others who have walked the healing path before you who are willing and able to help you find your way.  Keep looking until you find the right ones for you - supportive friends, somatic therapists, spiritual advisors, meditation leaders, support groups and others. This care and support will make all the difference.

Festivals of light across cultures - Diwahli, Winter Solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah and others - remind us that there IS light in and after the darkness and that it can be fanned to a new intensity with time, care and exquisite attention. 

So, at this particularly dark moment in time, for each of us individually, and as a wider community, "Let there be light ...".

Living With COVID Grief ...

Grief is itself a medicine.

William Cowper

Hello, Everyone,

The COVID season of 2020 has been a season loss and grief - and it's not over yet. Loved ones have become ill and died. Jobs have been lost. Professional aspirations have disappeared at least temporarily. Human connections have been disrupted. Life plans have been altered. And even as society reopens, COVID-related change and loss continue.

As we cautiously begin to leave isolation behind, more losses accumulate. Those few hard-found gifts of COVID - a slower pace, more time with loved ones, reduced commute time, free parking at work, chances to pursue neglected hobbies and activities, giving and receiving more focused and intentional emotional support, opportunities for reflection, the surfacing of deeper values - threaten to drop away as life changes pace once again. 

Grief is also tied up in our imaginings about the future and the possibility of losses to come. We face the distinct possibility of a "second wave" as fall and flu season approach.  Will a loved one become ill as we open further and return to school? Will we become ill ourselves? Will we lose our jobs? This is called anticipatory grief and it adds yet another layer to our sadness, anger, anxiety, fear, guilt and envy.

With all these COVID losses compounded by contextual losses such as economic insecurity and systemic racism around the world, there's more than enough grief to go around. So, the trick is to find the right conditions in which to grieve our losses well. Because grief is so individual, "the right conditions" will differ for each of us but here are a few general practices that might help:

1.  Acknowledge that you've had, and will have, many losses during this COVID season of life.  Every change - positive or negative - brings loss, and grief is our healing response to loss. We grieve automatically, provided nothing gets in the way. Becoming aware of our losses and accepting their presence makes space for our grief, direction and focus to our mourning and provides opportunities for others to support us.

 2.  Pace your grief when you have multiple losses. It can be overwhelming to try to grieve everything at once. Take baby steps. Make space for grief, one small piece at a time. (And know that you may return to the same loss over and over again before it feels integrated.)

If grief begins to feel overwhelming to you, try self-regulation skills like breathing practices, grounding exercises or physical shaking to calm you when you're  "amped up" and anxious or enlivening practices like engaging your five senses, walking meditation, squeezing  your forearms with the opposite hands when you start to feel "shut down" or numb. 

2.  Find a sanctuary where you feel safe and comfortable expressing your grief emotions. If you're able to do it, give your grief feelings freedom to arise spontaneously. But, if you can't because it seems neither safe nor possible, try identifying a sanctuary where you can retreat intentionally to take down your guard and let your inside and outside match. This creates intentional space for your hardwired grief response to do its healing work. 

For some, this sanctuary will be in the arms of a loved one who lives inside your bubble; for others it will be found alone in the car, the shower or in bed at night; and for others still, it will be within a formal ritual or ceremony (in person or online) or out in the beauty of the natural world. What matters is that you feel safe enough to allow your grief to surface for a while.

3. Express your feelings in ways that feel natural and comfortable to you. There is no "right way" to grieve.  And you don't have to cry to prove you've grieved. The fine arts provide many possibilities for expressing grief - story-telling, journalling, writing poetry or letters, listening to or playing evocative music, drumming, dancing, singing, collage, drawing, painting, sculpture, pottery, photography, fibre arts or woodwork. Use avenues of expression that feel natural for you. You don't have to squeeze yourself into someone else's idea of "proper" grief expression.

If your body feels tight with emotion that you want to release but can't, you might try listening to music, watching movies or reading poems that have triggered your tears in the past. They will likely do the same thing again.  (Repeated cycles of Truly Madly Deeply, Shadowlands and A Rumour of Angels helped release my frozen tears through seven years of chronic sorrow and more years of bereavement grief following my husband's death.)

Physical motion can also do much to diffuse pent-up emotion. Walking or running in nature, dancing or engaging in individual sports can all help.

If you are yearning to share your grief with another human being but feel constrained by the  COVID restrictions, try reaching out to loved ones, a therapist, a spiritual advisor or a support group through appropriately secure video meetings like Zoom or Skype, phone calls, texting or social media. Handwritten letters, though seemingly old-fashioned these days, can offer a particularly personal and connected way of sharing your grief.

4.  Create rituals that support and facilitate your grief.  Grief specialist, Alan Wolfelt describes grief rituals as "symbolic activities that help us, together with our families and friends, to express our deepest thoughts and feelings about life's most important events". A ritual doesn't have to be fancy or complicated and it can be experienced individually or in a supportive group.

Examples of grief rituals might be to: 

a.  Have a physically-distanced or Zoom meal where each person brings an item that symbolizes their life before COVID and another that symbolizes life since COVID. Focus discussion on the meaning and feelings attached to each item. Listen respectfully to each person's reality.

b.  Create art in memory of life before COVID and share it and your feelings with others.

c.   Light a candle to hold space for your grief and write a letter to your old life, expressing how much you miss it.

d.   Use ceremonies with sage, incense or fragrant essential oil to cleanse or let go of the old life and open you to the new.

There are as many rituals as there are people - let your imagination go and create what will work best for you. 

However you decide to deal with the changes and loss of COVID-19, try to honour yourself and your losses by making space for the "good medicine" of your grief.

The Paradox of Grief and Gratitude ...

Wherever there's change, there's loss

and wherever there's loss, there's grief.

Bill Bridges

Hello, Everyone,

I have used the quotation above often in workshops and writings and here it is once again. Appropriate for the times, I think ... 

So much has changed in recent months and these changes have brought with them loss and grief in abundance, especially for family caregivers already coping with chronic sorrow and helping professionals carrying years of cumulative grief.

Since the pandemic has taken hold,  family caregivers have lost already-scarce freedoms, resources and supports -  the coffee shops that once provided a brief haven at the end of a morning's respite, the familiar care aides who knew the needs of an ill loved one and didn't require training each time they arrived, the day programs that offered respite as well as support and advice, the volunteers who helped with transportation or yard work or exercise regimes or meals, the warmth and encouragement of a simple hug. Some caregivers have had the worst of anticipatory griefs - standing by as loved ones with worsening COVID symptoms were transferred to acute care facilities, perhaps never to be seen again.

Healthcare professionals have also carried the weight of grief. They've grieved the loss of patients they had hoped to save, relinquished long-held standards of care and infection control, worked without essential equipment, given up contact with their own families, forsaken any semblance of a balanced personal life and mourned the loss of cherished co-workers and friends.

And then, together, we've felt the collective grief of watching as our systems of work, healthcare, education, transportation and economics wavered under the weight of the virus. The tangible losses of unemployment, closed churches and mosques and food insecurity have been multiplied by the broader intangible losses of predictability, control, justice and our assumptions that we could protect the weak and the vulnerable.

This COVID-19 grief is natural and expectable and it will come in waves for a long time after the losses cease. Grief is the way we heal from broken attachments - and it happens automatically provided nothing gets in its way. Grief is a turning inward to reflect, to feel, to recalibrate. There are resources to support this highly individual healing process and we will explore some of them next time.

Paradoxically, the losses stemming from the COVID virus, and their attendant grief, are often accompanied by a sense of deep gratitude. There is something about walking at the edge of life that brings authentic blessings into sharp relief - spring blossoms in a time of death, the kindness of nurses holding phones to unite families in their last goodbyes, messages of support and encouragement painted by children on apartment windows, meals left on doorsteps, 7pm clapping and cheers as healthcare workers change shifts, songs that connect the isolated. We can draw upon this natural pairing of grief and gratitude to nurture ourselves during difficult times.

Brother David Steindl-Rast, the Austrian founder of A Network for Grateful Living and a 93 year old survivor of the Nazi occupation, is a beloved teacher of the practice of gratefulness. In a 2016 interview with Krista Tippett, he said,

To open your eyes and know another day - we can't take it for granted. In my youth, we couldn't take it for granted because every night, the bombs fell. There are all sorts of reasons why you (might not) see another day, and you do. And that's a wonderful thing."

His words could apply equally to these days of pandemic.  The practice of gratefulness is not about being grateful for the pandemic, itself, nor for the numbing pain and despair of these times. Nor is it about avoiding or minimizing our sadness, anger, fear and confusion.  Rather, a gratefulness practice offers the opportunity to experience more than one feeling, in full, at the same time - to know gratitude at the same moment that your heart is breaking with grief. To know sorrow and joy in the same breath.

A gratefulness practice allows us a pause to heal, grow and reconnect with ourselves, others and what or whomever we hold sacred. It doesn't take away our grief but it does help to balance it. So, when you wake in the morning or before you go to bed at night, take some time to think of - or,  better yet, write down - the things for which you're grateful. Some days there will be a long list and other days, as gratitude writer, Sara Breathnacht, says, the only thing you'll be grateful for is that the day is over. Either way, recording your gratefulness will not only help balance your grief in the moment, it will provide a wealth of positive memories from which to draw strength in the future.

Keep well, everyone! I'm grateful for all of you!

Caring Through COVID-19 ...

You Deserve Love.

Anonymous

Hello Everyone,

COVID-19 has turned life upside down for all of us including, and perhaps especially, family caregivers and helping professionals. While these two groups already have PhD's in caring for others through times of uncertainty, even their cache of coping strategies can feel strained by today's circumstances.

As many of the things modern humans count upon to be solid and unassailable disappear, helpers, like everyone else, can become anxious and frightened and lost and confused. The earth shifts beneath our feet. We grasp for something solid to hold on to but can't seem to find it. Little makes sense. In our shock, we lose our bearings. Everything is affected.

An early response to this kind of crisis is to reach out for control, to try to make the uncertain certain again. As we slowly realize that we're living a new reality and can't return to "normal", we begin to search for ways to cope. Depending upon our histories and personalities, some of us withdraw and others reach out. Some hoard toilet paper and others pray. Some tell stories of light in the darkness and others share rumours and tales of doom.

Fortunately for me, I made two small discoveries this week that offered a positive pathway for coping. This path is one with which you're all familiar - the path of caring - and the two things that reminded me to care were an anonymous message and a poem. Let me share them with you.

I noticed the anonymous message during a solitary early morning walk through the deep ravine behind my home. The clear sky had brightened though the sun's rays had not yet crossed the edge of the ravine. As I walked down the steep trail through dark evergreens and early spring growth, I came to a wooden bridge crossing a rushing stream. Halfway across the bridge, I noticed, on my left, a torn piece of paper, damp with dew, anchored to the railing by a small rock. On it, someone had written in pencil the words, "You Deserve Love." You Deserve Love - a simple reminder of how important it is to treat ourselves with love and care through difficult times like these.  I'll never know who scrawled this message on a torn bit of paper and left it on a wooden railing for all who passed by but I'm grateful that they took the time, and cared enough, to do it.

The second reminder to care came in the form of a poem written by a Father Hendrick, OFM, whose personal details are also unknown to me. I tripped over his writing in an article by a West Vancouver priest who had returned from doing volunteer work in Assisi, Italy just before the borders closed. The poem goes like this:

Lockdown

Yes there is fear.

Yes there is isolation.

Yes there is panic buying.

Yes there is sickness.

Yes there is even death.

But,

They say that in Wuhan after so many years of noise

you can hear the birds again.

They say that after just a few weeks of quiet

the sky is no longer thick with fumes

but blue and grey and clear.

They say that in the streets of Assisi

people are singing to each other

across the empty squares,

keeping their windows open

so that those who are alone

may hear the sounds of family around them.

They say that a hotel in the West of Ireland

is offering free meals and delivery to the housebound.

Today a young woman I know

is busy spreading fliers with her number

through the neighbourhood

so that the elders may have someone to call on.

Today Churches, Synagogues, Mosques and Temples

are preparing to welcome and shelter the homeless, 

the sick, the weary.

All over the world people are slowing down and reflecting.

All over the world people are looking at their neighbours 

in a new way.

All over the world people are waking up to a new reality. 

To how big we really are.

To how little control we really have.

To what really matters.

To Love.

So we pray and we remember that

Yes there is fear.

But there does not have to be hate.

Yes there is isolation.

But there does not have to be loneliness.

Yes there is panic buying.

But there does not have to be meanness.

Yes there is sickness.

But there does not have to be disease of the soul.

Yes there is even death.

But there can always be a rebirth of love.

Wake to the choices you make as to how to live now.

Today, breathe.

Listen, behind the factory noises of your panic.

The birds are singing again,

The sky is clearing,

Spring is coming,

And we are always encompassed by Love.

Open the windows of your soul

And, though you may not be able

to touch the empty square,

Sing.

Father Hendrick, OFM

So, two synchronistic reminders to care well for ourselves and to notice and care well for others. Could there be a better wisdom path in these days of uncertainty?

And as we practice caring for ourselves and others, let's also remember to extend our deepest regard and appreciation to all who sustain our caring in these difficult times - family, friends, colleagues, inspirational writers, spiritual teachers, poets, artists and, especially, the physical, mental and spiritual care providers who put themselves at risk every day to keep us well. Equally, let's remember to follow ALL the current public health directives so we're here to care for the years to come.

Keep well, everyone, and please do your best to nourish yourself and others so we can all keep on caring ...

A New Workshop: Chronic Sorrow: The Recurring Grief of Family Caregivers ...

Sometimes you just need a good cry in the shower.

Anonymous

Hi Everyone!

I'm excited to announce the launch of a new Caregiver Wellness Community Workshop -  Chronic Sorrow: The Recurring Grief of Family Caregivers.  It will be held on Saturday May 30th  from 9-4pm (registration at 8:30) at the Granville Island Hotel in Vancouver, BC. The tuition is $210 (includes handouts, continental breakfast, light lunch, breaks and GST).  Brochures with registration forms are available at caregiverwellness@shaw.ca.

Family caregivers grieve many losses and they tend to grieve alone - in the shower, in the car, in the laundry room, on solitary walks. You grieve because your loved one's serious, permanent illness or injury has changed everything. And with each change comes loss and with each loss comes grief.

Studies, so far, suggest that up to 80% of family caregivers experience recurring episodes of variably intense grief continuing from the time of their loved one's diagnosis until that loved one's death. This grief does not necessarily diminish over time like grief after death. Rather, it can increase in intensity and frequency as time goes on. This caregiver grief is called Chronic Sorrow.  (Chronic Sorrow is also experienced by people who have a serious permanent medical condition, but in a slightly different way.)

Chronic Sorrow is a normal response to loss without a foreseeable end. It is not depression or complicated grief though it is sometimes misdiagnosed as such. It includes not only feelings of sadness but all the emotions of grief - anger, guilt, envy, anxiety, fear, loneliness and others. These grief emotions are triggered whenever something reminds you of the discrepancy between how things are and how they "could" or "should" have been had the illness or injury not occurred.

Chronic Sorrow  cannot be "cured" but you can learn to live with it more comfortably and that's what this workshop is all about. It had a "test run" with the family caregivers at the Children's Organ Transplant Society and the Starlight Foundation last spring to very positive reviews and now it's here for you - anyone who provides physical or emotional support to a person with a serious, permanent medical condition, physical or mental.

Space is limited so please register early to avoid disappointment. The registration deadline is May 15th.  

If you have questions, you can contact Jan at caregiverwellness@shaw.ca or (604) 297 0609.

Hope to see you there!



*** I'm sad and disappointed to say that all Caregiver Wellness workshops are postponed until at least the fall due to COVID-19. ***

Re-dedication ...

It's never too late to be who you 
might have been.

George Eliott

Happy New Year, Everyone!

Today, the beginning of a new year and a new decade, is an opportunity to re-dedicate ourselves to the things that matter most to us.  In this threshold space, we can take a moment to remember - or reprioritize - the core values by which we want to live our lives.  And, having done that, we can set an intention to act in accordance with these values throughout the New Year.

Caregiving can greatly limit your ability to pursue the external goals you've set for your life, to live the life you were "meant to live". In fact, this can be one of the major losses underlying a family caregiver's Chronic Sorrow. However,  the inability to pursue external goals needn't keep you from re-dedicating yourself to inner goals. Do you ever wish you could be kinder, more compassionate with yourself and others, more honest, calmer, more loyal, more open-minded, more balanced, more trusting, more trust-worthy, more patient, more empathic, more courageous, more consistent, more loving ..? The list of possibilities goes on and on, depending upon the things you hold most dear.

Why not take a moment, now, to recall all the values by which you would like to live. Then look at your list and choose the top one or two you would most like to guide your life in the coming year.

Once you have chosen these core values, allow yourself time to consider how they would look, acted out in your day-to-day life. What, exactly, do you want to re-dedicate yourself to doing or being? What baby steps might you want to take toward strengthening the expression of these values in your life?  The answers to these questions will become your intentions for the New Year.

We know that rituals can help to solidify, strengthen and sustain our intentions, so you might like to go on to create a simple ritual to formalize your re-dedication to living by your values. One such ritual might be to:

1.  Find a quiet space

2.  Light a candle

3.  Notice the pattern of your breathing for a few minutes and then imagine your chosen values filling and strengthening you on the in-breath and pouring out into the world on the out-breath

4. After you've been sitting with your breath and values for sufficient time, make a positive verbal and written re-dedication of your intentions for this new year. Keep the paper close at hand in the days ahead as a reminder to act congruently with your values.

And as a way of following through with your New Year's re-dedication, you might also begin to  briefly ask yourself the following questions at the end of the day:

1.  Where were my actions in line with my values today?  Where were they not?

2.  Where they were not, how might I adjust things tomorrow?

3.  What more can I do, in baby steps,  to bring (your chosen values) more fully into the world?

(Now, being a human being, don't expect yourself to be able to  act according to your values 100% of the time. When you  mess up, just gently forgive yourself, apologize where necessary and then begin again.)

Just thinking through a conscious process of re-dedication like this will help you to live a more authentic life in 2020 and to notice more quickly when compassion fatigue, burnout, accumulated grief or moral distress are drawing you away from what matters most to you.

A very Happy 2020 to each of you!

Feed Your Spirit ...

Self care is not selfish.

Anonymous

Hello, Everyone,

Whether you are a family carepartner wondering how on earth to manage the holidays on top of your regular care-giving duties or a helping professional working 12 hour shifts over the holidays, self care deserves a place right at the top of your to-do list.

Genuine self care springs from a place of self compassion and self compassion means simply giving the same kindness to yourself that you would give to others in a similar situation. Self care is not selfish. It means allowing yourself time to heal, refresh and renew so you can become or remain whole and healthy. Once your depleted self is refilled, you can then give to others with more fullness and joy. (Those who have attended the Caring On Empty workshop will remember the wisdom of one of my favourite Sufi sayings - Never give from the depths of your well, only from the overflow. This requires that you actually have an overflow from which to give!)

Most of us can quickly come up with physical and emotional ideas for staying strong and healthy during the hectic holiday season - eating well, taking pauses to rest, frequent hand-washing, getting back to the essence of the holidays, booking a good therapy appointment - but how many of us take time to consider what we might need to feed our spirits during these busy and poignant days? Below are a few ideas to consider as you add a spiritual dimension to your holiday self care plan:

1.  Simplify.  For many, holiday traditions have become increasingly complex, commercial and just a little crazy. If this observation applies to you, consider choosing  the top four values by which you would like to live your holidays and then assess your usual traditions to see if there is an alignment between your values and activities. If not, consider what changes you could make to have a simpler, more authentic celebration. 

This week, someone told me the story of her sister who had moved into a new home right before Christmas. She quickly realized that her new neighbours were folks who went all-out in decorating their home and property. Rather than trying to compete and add more stress to her life, she made a sign, decorated it with lights and wrote on it a large arrow pointing to the neighbours' house and added the word,"ditto"! One of her values was to simplify her holiday customs and, in this one public act, her values and actions were aligned.

2.  Stay centred.  Spend a little time alone. (This is especially important for introverts, those who refresh and refuel through spending time in their inner world.) Use contemplative practices that are familiar and work for you - meditation, centering prayer, reading poetry, connecting with Nature, receptive photography, journalling and others. Reflect upon the meaning of the season and how it may have changed in your life over time. Be receptive to new insights. Pace yourself so you have time to process your feelings. 

3.  Use the Enneagram. Use the Enneagram to help you understand, forgive and accept yourself and others when people push your buttons at holiday gatherings. Recognizing the motivations behind the behaviour of those who irritate you can make Christmas dinners a little easier to take.

4.  Practice gratitude. The last Christmas before my husband died, he gave me one of Sara Brethnacht's Gratitude Journals and wrote on the first page, "Let's try this. I think it will help." And help it did. It didn't take away the pain of our long goodbye or the grief of our leave-taking but, in some magical way, it helped to balance the suffering. Each night we would write down 5 things for which we were grateful and then read them to each other. Later, when he no longer had the strength to hold a pen, we would lie in bed in the dark and whisper our gratefulness to each other. 

For those of you caring for loved ones this season, an intentional gratitude practice could help to balance your pain as well. If you have trouble thinking of something for which to be grateful, try looking at Bro David Steindl-Rast's latest gratefulness video for some prompts. (You will have to listen carefully in a quiet place because the speech of age now complicates Bro David's thick Austrian accent, but it's worth the effort to listen.)

5.  Be inspired. To inspire is to breathe life into something or someone. The word comes from the same Latin root as that for spirit.  We are all inspired by different things - acts of kindness, acts of courage, beautiful poetry, the wonders of nature, great works of art. Choose to spend time with the things that inspire you this season and take the time to savour them, allowing them to sink into your body, healing and energizing your life.

These are just a few ideas for feeding your spirit during the winter holidays. I'm sure you have your own as well. The question is, will you allow yourself to make space to use them ... ? I hope you do.

As I pack to leave for Vancouver Island for my own holiday festivities, I wish each one of you exactly what you need to feed your spirit this Christmas and every blessing in 2020.

Jan

   

Essential Service ...

When one is sick, two need help.

The Well Spouse Association

Hi Everyone,

It's been a stressful few days here in Vancouver. A labour dispute between transit workers and Coast Mountain Bus Company left many scrambling as they faced the possibility of a three day transit interruption. Amongst those most stressed but least acknowledged were family caregivers/carepartners and their care recipients - young, old and in-between.

Many family caregivers depend upon the support of homecare nurses and care aides to provide assistance in moving, bathing and feeding their loved ones plus the provision of medicines and treatments. They also need professional respite support so they can go to work, run errands, buy groceries and prescriptions, attend medical and treatment appointments and tend to self-care. When  professional helpers are unable to take transit to work or between clients, as 40 - 50% of them usually do, the stress on families they serve rises exponentially. (As if it were not high enough already.)

In looking through the online, television and newspaper articles about this incipient crisis, there were many more articles about the impact of the strike upon students and their final exams than about the needs of our most vulnerable. It makes one wonder just how cognizant the decision-makers were (on both sides of the table) regarding the risk they were imposing upon populations already at risk.

(And that is to say nothing of people with serious medical conditions who do not have family caregivers and depend entirely upon care provided by community health agencies, or who simply care for themselves. I have a friend who, while receiving treatment for breast cancer, travelled to and from her chemo appointments by bus because taxi fares were too expensive and she didn't own a car. How would she have managed during a three-day transit strike ...?)

It seems to me that people like these - family caregivers and those managing their own illness or disability - deserve to have basic transit declared an essential service so they are not subjected to additional strain and risk. We are constantly telling family carepartners and those with chronic conditions to take better care of themselves but, as a society, we owe it to them to at least make that possible. Caring for the caregivers and those with serious health conditions is the responsibility of us all.

Enduring Somatic Threat ...

Once you ... put the pieces back together, 

even though you may look intact, 

you (are) never quite the same

as you were before ...

Jodi Picoult

Hello, Everyone,

Over the summer as I was writing an article on Chronic Sorrow, I tripped over some interesting new medical research on a proposed subset of posttraumatic stress called enduring somatic threat (EST). Have you heard of it? Well, to be honest, neither had I -  though in retrospect I recognize aspects of it in my husband's seven year journey with heart failure.

Physicians and psychologists in the cardiovascular field have been studying the 12 - 25% of people who have posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) responses after life-threatening medical events such as heart attacks, unstable angina, TIA's and strokes. The response they describe is similar to traditional posttraumatic stress disorder but is said differ from it in four ways:

1. The initiating event and continuing source of threat come from within the body rather than the external environment so there is nowhere to go to escape the threat. 

2.  The person's threat-oriented thoughts and intrusions are focused more on the dangers of the present and future than memories of a past event. Because the underlying illness persists, there is constant concern regarding a present or future recurrence of the life-threatening event or something similar. 

3.  Avoidance behaviours focus on reducing reminders of current and future cardiovascular risk rather than triggers of a past event. (eg Patients may avoid prevention medications and physical activity because they are reminders of the continuing threat.)

4.  Hyperarousal behaviours and their consequences are also different from traditional PTS. People become hyper-aware of internal body sensations vs external environmental cues (fear becomes velcroed to an increased heart rate, irregular heartbeat, breathlessness, the first stirrings of chest pressure or pain, slurring of speech, loss of balance, numbness, tingling etc).

While I'm not completely sure that all the above distinctions are true distinctions - perhaps it's more a matter of both-and than either-or when it comes to past and present/future somatic threat - it will be interesting to see how this research progresses and whether it begins to explain some of the differences we see between "patient" and family caregiver manifestations of Chronic Sorrow.

I think it is wonderful that medical and psychologically-oriented folk are working together to explore the traumatic impact of life-threatening events on their patients and families. I am hopeful that they will include previous research on Chronic Sorrow and Somatic Experiencing in their explorations and models so that grief and trauma can be addressed together (they're usually entwined in serious chronic illness) and that somatic treatments will be considered for this somatic distress.

If you are interested in reading some scholarly articles about enduring somatic threat, perhaps begin with the articles below:

Edmondson, Donald E.  An enduring somatic threat model of posttraumatic stress disorder due to acute life-threatening medical events. Soc Personal Psychol Compass. 2014 Mar 5; 8(3): 118-134.

Edmondson, DE et al. A challenge for psychocardiology: Addressing the causes and consequences patients' perceptions of enduring somatic threat.  American Psychologist. 2018 Vol. 73, No 9, 1160-1171.

Jan's Summer Reading 2019 ...

Fill your house with stacks of books,

in all the crannies and all the nooks!

Dr Suess

Hi Everyone!

I've just finished the last workshop of the season, the new Compassion Fatigue: Going Deeper - Trauma, Spirituality and Resilience, and it went wonderfully well according to the evaluations. So now I can turn my face to the long, happy days of summer with the wedding of my goddaughter, Rebecca, at the end of the month and, two days later, a flight to Toronto followed by the long drive and boat ride to the Kahshe Lake cottage of friends. There I'll enjoy two glorious weeks of rest, writing and rejuvenation. (Thank heaven for dear friends willing to share their waterfront retreat!)

As usual, I'm having trouble deciding how many books I can fit in my suitcase! Here's the list from which I'll be choosing this year:

1.  Work Fuel: Boost Performance. Improve Focus. Eat Your Way to Success. by Graham Alcott and Colette Heneghan. (2019)

This book focuses on viewing food as fuel and making choices that will give your brain and body the best chance for optimum performance. For those of us who work (pretty well all of us) it promises ways to boost energy and productivity and fit healthy eating into already busy lives. I'm a sucker for books on healthy eating and this book's post-it phrases like "ditch the al desko lunch" and "be a fuelie" promise a light touch.

2.   The Art of Typing: Powerful Tools for Enneagram Typing by Ginger Lapid-Bogda. (2018)

This new-to-me book by one of the organizational experts in the Enneagram field, is written to help people to type themselves or to help them type others in a more accurate way. It offers detailed differentiating questions to help others clarify their type and, specifically, to differentiate between type pairs from the nine Enneagram personality types. I like Ginger's straight-forward teaching style and look forward to gleaning some new pointers in Enneagram typing. (If you're interested in the amazingly accurate and powerful Enneagram, I will be offering a beginners workshop on Friday November 22nd on Granville Island. You're very welcome to join us!)

3.  Life on the Ground Floor: Letters From the Edge of Emergency Medicine by James Maskalyk, MD (2017)

This award-winning memoir has been waiting on my shelf for the past year and, remembering my own years in critical care nursing, I'm looking forward to hearing how things have changed (or not) as I've gone off in other directions. I understand that it is a somewhat raw read so it may be a book to pace slowly over a couple of weeks.

4.  Rumi's Little Book of Life: The Garden of the Soul, the Heart and the Spirit by Rumi and Maryam Mafi (Translator) (2012)

A collection of 196 poems, previously unavailable in English, from the 13th Century Sufi poet, Rumi, focusing on coming to grips with the inner life. This small book is a guide to the inner journey, one which I hope will make a good companion for contemplation on quiet sunrise mornings by the Lake.

5. Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone by Brene Brown (2017) My good friend, Sandra, and I have been reading this book together -  she, as she faces into widowhood after years of carepartnering and me, as I make one more attempt to complete a book on chronic sorrow. For each of us, there is a sense of vulnerability and an enhanced perception of what Brene calls "the wilderness" as we walk our individual paths. Brene defines the wilderness as an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching, a place as dangerous as breathtaking, as sought after as feared. It is where we show up as our true selves and brave uncertainty, standing alone, and potential criticism. 

6.  Slow Dancing With a Stranger: Lost and Found in the Age of Alzheimer's by Meryl Comer (2014) This is a re-read for me. Since I first opened the pages of this book five years ago, three friends have been diagnosed with early onset dementia and I want to go through Meryl's poignant writing once again to resensitize myself to the experience of spousal caregivers dealing with dementia. (I say "re-sensitize" because I've often thought that caregiving is a little like labour and delivery - excruciating in the moment but the intensity is gradually forgotten once the pain ends.)

7.  The Black Ascot (2019) and A Forgotten Place (2018) by Charles Todd.  These books will provide my escape reading while lying on the dock. Each is one of a series - the former about a British police inspector returned from World War I with shell shock or PTSD and the latter about, Bess Crawford, a returned WW I nursing sister. Both struggle with personal demons as well as a murder mystery in each volume in the series.

So, there's the list for this summer. I intend to enjoy as many books as I can while at the cottage and hope you might enjoy a few of them as well.

A Word About Words: Chronic Sorrow ...

Where there's change there's loss

and where there's loss there's grief.

Bill Bridges

Hi Everyone,

I've been writing about the grief of family caregivers this weekend and I was struck by how many terms now exist to describe this experience. The professional writings about caregiver grief are fraught with confusion and contradiction due to the increasing number of overlapping terms and concepts.  This differing terminology arises from different professional fields, the study of different medical conditions, research in different nations and cultures, and studies from different times in history. I'll share a few of them with you here:

1.  Anticipatory Grief is the earliest of the overlapping concepts applied to the natural and expectable grief of family caregivers.  It was coined by German psychiatrist, Erich Lindemann, in 1944, to describe grief we experience before a loss actually occurs.  Later, Therese Rando expanded the concept, defining it as:

The mourning, coping, interaction, planning and psychological reorganization that are stimulated and begun, in part, in response to the impending loss of a loved one and the recognition of associated losses in the past, present and future.  (2000, p29)

Many writers assume that anticipatory grief is synonymous with caregiver grief.  However, in my personal and professional experience, anticipatory grief comprises only a portion of a family caregiver's heartbreak. To a great extent, caregiver grief also includes responses to current loss.  Workshop participants tell me that while the pain associated with the anticipated death of a loved one is certainly part of their reality, their greatest source of sorrow is the daily losses associated with current changes and adaptations.

2.  Chronic Sorrow (CS) is the second term used to describe caregiver grief. It first appeared in the literature in 1962 in an article written by American social worker and advocate for families of developmentally delayed children, Simon Olshansky. At the time, family caregivers were seen as being unaccepting of their children's diagnoses, stuck in their grief and, therefore, difficult to deal with. Olshansky offered  another viewpoint, saying that these parents were suffering from  expectable, continuing, episodes of grief that flowed from the losses occurring across their children's lifespans. He pushed for caregiver support rather than medical attitudes of pathologizing and criticism.

After an initial flush of interest in Olshansky's ideas, CS disappeared from the literature until the mid-1990's when the Nursing Consortium for Research on Chronic Sorrow published several studies confirming the concept and studying its characteristics. Later, in 2002, family caregiver and psychologist, Susan Roos, PhD, gathered the research to date and combined it with her considerable personal and professional experience to publish the first (and only) psychotherapy textbook on CS. Her book included this comprehensive definition of caregiver grief, one which includes both the grief of people with serious, permanent, medical conditions and that of those who love them:

Chronic sorrow is a set of pervasive, profound, continuing and recurring grief responses resulting from the loss or absence of crucial aspects of oneself (self-loss) and another living person (other-loss) to whom there is a deep attachment. (2000, p29

At its core, CS is the grief resulting from resulting from an aching discrepancy between life as it is and life as it could or should have been had the illness or injury not occurred.

Since 2002, multiple research articles have continued to be published.


3.  Ambiguous Loss is the third concept to describe the unresolved grief of family caregivers It appeared in the literature in 1999, much later than Chronic Sorrow. The notion was developed by educator and researcher, Pauline Boss, PhD, with little or no knowledge of the prior CS research.  Arising from the study of families whose soldier relatives were missing in action, and then applied to the dementia and adoption fields, it describes the losses and grief related to caring for people who are physically present but psychologically absent or psychologically present but physically absent. Thus, the reality of the loss remains ambiguous or uncertain.

(I see this and the other concepts described here as subsets of Chronic Sorrow.)


4.   Non-finite Loss, our fourth concept, was developed by Bruce and Schultz in 2001 to describe the lifetime of continuous and insidious loss and grief experienced by parents of developmentally delayed children.  They focused attention on the parents' gradual discovery of the impact of illness or disability with the accompanying loss of hopes, dreams and expectations.  This term has also been applied to family caregivers of those with degenerative diseases such as MS, motor neurone disease and dementia. It has been used to describe the reactions of families with non-medical losses such as those with a relative waiting on death row as well.


5.  Pre-death Grief  is the fifth and final term to be considered here.  It was coined in 2014 to provide a standardized  definition of caregiver grief upon which to base professional theories and research questions.  Pre-death grief is defined as the caregiver's emotional and physical response to the perceived losses of a valued care recipient.


While facilitating workshops on caregiver grief, I tend to use the term, Chronic Sorrow. Why? Because, while the other terms all reflect important aspects of caregiver grief and there are logical reasons for their presence in the literature, they are all in some way incomplete. CS, on the other hand, has a specific, comprehensive definition that includes the grief of both patient and caregiver, it offers the clearest demarkation between pre and post-death grief, it has a long medically and psychologically-oriented research history, and, most importantly, it has the most immediate and profound emotional resonance with family caregivers.

When I ask workshop participants which term they prefer in describing their grief, they are emphatic, and usually unanimous, in choosing Chronic Sorrow.  It most accurately and empathically communicates their experience and that, it seems to me, is the single most important reason for choosing any terminology.

I'm hoping to offer a community workshop on Chronic Sorrow for family caregivers in Vancouver again next spring. If you think you might be interested in attending, just subscribe to the mailing list in the left hand column of the website and you will automatically receive a registration brochure.

NEW CF WORKSHOP: Compassion Fatigue: Going Deeper - Trauma, Spirituality and Resilience

Every moment is a fresh beginning...

TS Eliot

Hello, Everyone! 

A slightly belated Happy New Year to you all! I'm later than usual with my first post of the year because I have been pouring my creative juices into one of TS Eliot's "fresh beginnings", a new workshop designed to follow the now familiar Caring On Empty: Creative Tools for Compassion Fatigue Resilience.  

After Christmas, what began as the light revision of an earlier, second-level CF workshop turned into the development of an altogether new workshop, Compassion Fatigue: Going Deeper - Trauma, Spirituality and Resilience. It will be offered for the first time February 1st for the wonderful folk at Canuck Place Children's Hospice and again on June 7th in the form of a multidisciplinary community workshop at the Granville Island Hotel in Vancouver.  I'm so excited to be taking our basic CF understandings just a little deeper!

Spirituality is at the forefront of trauma research these days. There have been more research papers written on the topic of spirituality and trauma resilience in the past 5-10 years than in the previous 100. Why? I'm not really sure but I wonder if a general thirst for authentic, healthy, personal spirituality; psychology's recognition that it has too often avoided the topic; and the realization that our current trauma treatment strategies are not always enough, haven't led us quietly but steadily toward this research focus. 

You will find the following description of spirituality in several (unattributed) places on the Internet:

Spirituality is a broad concept with room for many perspectives. In general, it includes a sense of connection to something greater than ourselves and it typically involves a search for meaning and purpose. As such, it is a universal experience - something that touches us all. We all have spiritual experiences, whether or not we label them as such. Some people describe these experiences as sacred (connected with the holy), some as transcendent (outside the range of mere physical existence), and some simply describe them as a deep sense of aliveness and interconnectedness.

However we define or describe spirituality, we are learning that spirituality and trauma are often inextricably intertwined. Trauma affects our beliefs in the sacred/transcendent in ways that may interrupt or even jettison those beliefs. At the same time, or alternatively, trauma can affect us in ways that strengthen them. As a result, trauma recovery and resilience is inherently spiritual and must include a focus on our belief systems.

Christine Courtois, PhD, a respected, longtime complex trauma expert, says that a damaged spirituality is at the core of traumatic injury.  If this is indeed the case, we need to shine a brighter light on the role of spirituality in both perpetuating trauma and supporting its healing and resilience, something the field has been reluctant to do until relatively recently.

This new workshop is designed to introduce helpers to the topic of spirituality and trauma resilience and, through poetry, story, artwork, self assessment tools, mini-lectures and discussion, to help you to:

- Define spirituality, trauma and resilience

- Better understand the impact of traumatic stress on personal spirituality

- Clarify the role of positive personal spirituality in promoting resilience and vitality

- Reflect upon your personal state of spiritual wellbeing 

- Become better acquainted with a variety of practices found to promote spiritual wellbeing while working in high stress, high risk environments

- Consider ways of incorporating spiritual practices/activities in your personal resilience plan

- Review and use exercises learned at the Caring On Empty workshop to help you return to the Window of Tolerance during the day  

If you loved Caring On Empty, do plan to join us as we "go deeper" into our conversation about Compassion Fatigue resilience. (Registration brochures are available February 4 at caregiverwellness@shaw.ca)

Or choose to bring this new and engaging discovery-based workshop to your own organization!

John Was a Failure...

Success is the ability to go from failure to failure

without losing your enthusiasm.

Winston Churchill

Happy Holidays, Everyone!

Today I'd like to share a story with you, one I heard many years ago at a midnight service on a snowy Christmas Eve. I still remember the warmth of the small church, overfull with extra bodies and glowing with candlelight reflected from our faces as we listened intently to this lovely story by Robert Fulghum (from his book, It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It):

 John Pierpont died a failure. In 1886, he came to the end of his days as a government clerk in Washington, DC with a long string of personal defeats abrading his spirit.

Things began well enough. He graduated from Yale, which his grandfather had helped to found, and chose education as his profession with some enthusiasm.

He was a failure at school teaching. He was too easy on his students. 

And so, he turned to the legal world for training.  He was a failure as a lawyer. He was too generous to his clients and too concerned about justice to take the cases that brought good fees.

The next career he took up was that of dry good merchant. He was a failure as a business man.  He could not charge enough for his goods to make a profit, and was too liberal with credit. 

In the meantime, he had been writing poetry and, though it was published, he didn't collect enough royalties to make a living. He was a a failure as a poet. 

Politics seemed a place where he could make some difference and he was nominated as the Abolition Party candidate for governor of Massachusetts.  He lost. Undaunted, he ran for Congress under the banner of the Free Soil Party. He lost. He was a failure as a politician. 

The Civil War came along and he volunteered as a chaplain of the 22nd Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteers. Two weeks later he quit, having found the task too much of a strain on his health. He was 76 years old. He couldn't even make it as a Chaplain. 

Someone found him an obscure job in the back offices of the Treasury Department in Washington, and he finished out the last five years of his life as a menial file clerk. He wasn't very good at that either.  His heart was not in it.

John Pierpont died a failure. He had accomplished nothing he set out to do or be. There's a small memorial stone marking his grave in Mt Auburn cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  The words in the granite read,  POET PREACHER PHILOSOPHER PHILANTHROPIST.

From this distance in time, one might insist that he was not in fact a failure. His commitments to social justice, his desire to be a loving human being, his active engagement in the great issues of his times, and his faith in the power of the human mind, these are not failures. And much of what he thought of as defeat became success. Education was reformed, legal processes were improved, credit laws were changed, and above all, slavery was abolished once and for all.

Why am I telling you this? It is not an uncommon story. Many 19th century reformers had similar lives, similar failures and successes. In one very important sense, John Pierpont was not a failure. Every year, come December, we celebrate his success. We carry in our hearts and minds a life long memorial to him. It's a song, not about Jesus or angels or even Santa Claus. It's a terribly simple song about the simple joy of whizzing through the cold white dark of winter's gloom in a sleigh pulled by one horse, and with the company of friends, laughing and singing all the way. No more, no less, than Jingle Bells. John Pierpont wrote Jingle Bells!

To write a song that stands for the simplest joys, to write a song that three or four hundred million people around the world know, a song about something they've never done, but can imagine, a song that every one of us large and small can hoot out the moment the cord is struck on the piano, and the cord is struck in our spirit, well, that's not failure! 

One snowy afternoon in deep winter John Pierpont  penned the work as a small gift to his family and friends and congregation, and in doing so, he left a permanent gift for Christmas, the best kind, not the one under the tree, but the invisible, invincible one of Joy!

So, if you're feeling a failure for any reason this beautiful and demanding Holiday Season, take care to separate failing at a task from being a failure. Then remember the story of John Pierpont, recognize your capacity to change and grow through experience, forgive yourself and begin again. There are always ways to redeem our failures especially through learning from them and doing things differently another time.

A very Happy Christmas to you all!

Jan

Autumn Learning ...

Life starts all over again

when it gets crisp in the fall.

F Scott Fitzgerald

Hello, Everyone! Happy Fall!

I love the fall, a time of gradual letting-go of the old to make space for the new. (Or, as today's topic suggests, a time of letting go of old learning to make way for some new.) I'm reading two new-to-me books I'd like to share with you and have just registered for, Alive, a new e-course from Gratefulness.org.

Let's start with the books:

1.  Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing by David A Treleaven

As most of you will know, I have a strong concern for  emotional safety in psycho-educational settings and have always prefaced information about contemplative practices like meditation with detailed caveats. (Some meditative practices are not as benign as they might seem at first glance and, in fact, can be the source of re-traumatization if not taught and practiced in a way that is trauma-informed.)

So, you can imagine my delight when I came across educator and psychotherapist, David Treleaven's new book which, while explaining it's benefits, acknowledges and explains mindfulness meditation's ability to stimulate or worsen traumatic stress symptoms and offers practical principles for establishing trauma-sensitive (emotionally safer) mindfulness practice - stay within the window of tolerance, shift attention to support stability, keep the body in mind, practice in relationship, and understand social context.

David's clear, compelling writing style, heart-felt passion for protecting trauma survivors and thorough knowledge of both mindfulness and trauma make this book an easy read packed with good scholarship and useful wisdom. I highly recommend it.

2.  Together: Our Community Cookbook by The Hubb Community Kitchen and The Duchess of Sussex

After the trauma of the Grenfell Tower fire in London, England in June 2017, a group of women gathered together to care for themselves, their families and their community through cooking fresh meals. This community cooking process became as, if not more, important than the meals themselves. The women cared for each other emotionally as they cooked, providing a warm and loving community space in which to recover from loss and trauma, restore hope and normalacy and create a sense of home. (A fine example of care-giver wellness.)

This cookbook tells their story and shares 50 of their favourite international recipes, many handed down from generation-to-generation in their home countries. A portion of the proceeds from the book will be used to expand their Hubb Community Kitchen program from two days to seven days a week. I've already ordered four copies for people on my Christmas list. Why not join me and learn about the food culture and the resiliency of those from other nations? 

And, now, Alive: the e-course:

I'm surprised to hear so many words ending in fullness - gratefulness, mindfulness, joyfulness - it's an indication to me that what we are missing is a full life. We are only half-alive ...             Bro David Steindl-Rast

This, the most recent of the Gratefulness.org e-courses, will begin October 25th and run for 4 weeks. It features a conversation between Bro David Steindl-Rast (Benedictine monk, award-winning author serving the Network of Grateful Living, and the lovely voice narrating the A Good Day video I've used in my workshops) and Christian Plebst (Argentinian Child and Adolescent psychiatrist and Director of the Academy of Conscious Teaching). It promises to address the following questions and more:

-  Why is this moment in history so significant and what is required of those of us who recognize it?

-  What does it mean to live with aliveness?

-  What is the role of trust in individual and collective transformation?

-  How does inner wellbeing support the wellbeing of the world outside us?

-  What happens when we fully attune to and accept our emotional selves?

-  What opportunities arise when we move from individualistic and competitive perspectives to cooperative and compassionate ones? 

If this looks interesting to you, you can register by going to the link above and clicking Explore for the e-courses.

And, of course, it's not too late to register for the next Caring on Empty Compassion Fatigue Resiliency Workshop  on November 2nd at the Granville Island Hotel, Vancouver, BC. (See the top of the column to the left.)


Whatever your circumstances, I hope each of you will find something that sparks your imagination and provides a new opportunity to learn, both on this holiday weekend and in the weeks to come. A very Happy Thanksgiving to you all!