Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations ...

All we have are moments. So live them as though not one can be wasted. Inhabit them, fill them with the light of your best good intention, honour them with your full presence, find the joy, the calm, the assuredness that allows the hours and the days to take care of themselves. If we can do that, we will have lived.

Richard Wagamese

Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations

Good morning, Everyone!

Yesterday, as I put my life back together after a week on Vancouver Island facilitating two wonderful workshops, my long-awaited copy of Richard Wagamese' last book, Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations, arrived in the mail.

Stopping only long enough to make a piping cup of tea, I curled up on the couch and opened the small volume, savouring its smooth cool pages, fitting photographs of Nature and her creatures and the sweet, spare, honest prose of Richard's hard won wisdom. Within moments, tears were rolling down my cheeks as I sat, overwhelmed by the emotional and spiritual power of his words. I thought, "This is my new book of scripture. My new source of sacred writings." If I could live my life in accord with these truths-of-the-heart, I would live my life well.

Richard writes as one who had long ago died in order to survive but then, at the time of writing, had come back to life in all its fullness. There is wonder, simplicity, authenticity and clarity in his wise words and every short meditation opens a window to hours of transformative reflection.

If you have not read this book, do order it now as a Spring gift to yourself. Here are a few quotations that may entice you:

Keep what's true in front of you, Old Man said. You won't get lost that way. I was asking about making my way through the bush. He was talking about making my way through life. Turns out, all these years later, it was the same conversation.

I'm learning that happiness is an emotion that's a result of circumstances. Joy, though, is a spiritual engagement with the world based on gratitude. It's not the big things that make me grateful and bring me joy. It's more the glory of the small: a touch, a smile, a kind work spoken or received, that first morning hug, the sound of friends talking in our home, the quiet that surrounds prayer, the smell of sacred medicines burning, sunlight on my face, the sound of birds and walking mindfully, each footfall planted humbly on earth.

There are periods when you exist beyond the context of time and fact and reality. Moments when memory carries you buoyant beyond all things, and life exists as fragments and shards of being, when you see yourself as you were and will be again - sacred, whole and shining.

There is sunlight in the mountains today. The morning is crisp and clear as untrammelled thought. Against the sky, the trees raise crooked fingers in praise. To be here is to be affected, made more. Filled. The creative energy of the universe. Drink it in, my friends ... 

May the rich writings of this lovely little book touch and help to transform your life.

A New Compassion Satisfaction Resource ...

Compassion satisfaction is the pleasure you derive from being able to do your work. For example, you may feel like it is a pleasure to help others through what you do at work. You may feel positively about your colleagues or your ability to contribute to the work setting or even the greater good of society through your work with people who need care.

Beth Hudnall Stamm, PhD

Hi everyone! Here is a new book for your compassion fatigue library. Compassion Satisfaction: 50 Steps to Healthy Caregiving was published in the fall of 2012 by Patricia Smith, an American CF Specialist and author of the first popular literature on compassion fatigue. (Her first books were To Weep for a Stranger: Compassion Fatigue in Caregiving and Healthy Caregiving: A Guide to Recognizing and Managing Compassion Fatigue.)

Patricia's new book on Compassion Satisfaction (CS)  offers several brief, readable chapters divided into three sections, one each for caregivers, care recipients and organizations. It's the perfect book to keep handy for quick inspiration and refreshment as you begin a day of care-giving or to dip into before going to bed at night.

Compassion satisfaction is an important concept to remember any time we speak about compassion fatigue. Our helping experiences are complex, not all bad nor all good. There is usually a mix of stressors and rewards. Reflecting upon the rewards helps us to balance the difficulties and reminds us why we chose to be helpers in the first instance. It brings into bold relief what keeps us going as we do the work. When we recognize what sustains us, we can increase our focus in these directions. 

In her book, The Compassion Fatigue Workbook, another CF Specialist, Francoise Mathieu, offers these questions (paraphrased) for reflection and journalling on compassion satisfaction:

1.  What made me choose this work?

2.  What keeps me going and sustains me, as a person and a professional, given the challenges of my work?

3.  What concrete strategies have made a significant difference for me and have allowed me to remain healthy and well in this work? (Strategies at work and strategies at home)

4.  If I were to do it all over again, is there anything I would do differently?

5.  Reflecting on successes, how have I made a difference to others?

6.  Can I think of a particular client, patient or loved one whose story has touched me profoundly in a positive way? What is it about his or her story that has moved me?

7.  Is this still the right work for me?  (p136) 

Why not make a hot drink, curl up with your journal, and reflect for a little while upon what it is about your care-giving that still makes your heart sing?

  

My Leaky Body ...

Hi everyone! I am halfway through a great new book described as part memoir, part love story, part revolutionary manifesto and I want to recommend it to you.

My Leaky Body, written by Julie Devaney, or GI Julie as she calls herself, tells the raw and honest story of her journey through the diagnosis and treatment of chronic inflammatory bowel disease, a journey made within Canada's healthcare system.

As the back cover of the book says,

Based on her popular one-woman show, My Leaky Body lays bare the deficiencies in health care, creating a road map for patients and for all those who want to transform the system.

In the language of a born storyteller, Julie Devaney moves and enlightens readers as she describes both the compassion and compassion fatigue with which she is treated during multiple interactions with healthcare professionals. She is on a mission to change a system she describes as overworked, underfunded and badly in need of some bedside manners. Unusually, she is able to make her observations, critiques and suggestions without blaming or shaming.

Devaney advocates for a concerted focus on shifting away from our trend toward private healthcare and she pushes for changes in healthcare funding and training in order to reduce the emotional pain experienced by both patients and families and healthcare professionals.

While the details of Julie's story are uniquely her's, I found that they reflected many of my own lived experiences with the chronic illnesses of my husband, mother, nephew, and three dear friends. She understands the need for more trust, compassion and connection among helpers and helpees, calling for a system that is much more egalitarian, collaborative and personal. With the health policy advocacy of people like Julie Devaney, we can all have more hope for better days in healthcare.

Julie was interviewed about her book on CBC's, The Current,  and you can find the full half hour interview here.

Her blog at the Huffington Post - Canada can be found here.

Self Care Books for the Holidays ...

Yesterday morning, I spent a few hours looking through books at a friend's bookshop in Vancouver. I was looking for Christmas presents and for some new books that I could recommend to you in today's blog post - and I have to say, I struck it rich. Here are three of the books that topped my list:

1. A Life of Being, Having, and Doing Enough by Wayne Muller (2010)

In this sequel to Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal & Delight in Our Daily Lives, Wayne Muller, founder of Bread for the Journey, a nonprofit organization that supports community organizing, explores the notion of sufficiency - not "the cramping fear of scarcity, the bloated saturation of over-abundance, but the gentle, effortless release of easy sufficiency".

He addresses the difficulty we have taking a Sabbath, slowing down, or stopping for replenishment and renewal - the difficulty of allowing our work to feel sufficient for the day. He challenges us to listen to our inner thermostats for signs that we have done enough, signs that it is time to take a break or stop altogether.

Wayne, a heart attack survivor who must now live within the limits of his energy, identifies obstacles to living a life of enough - our to-do lists, the fantasy of getting caught up, our inability to slow down or to handle silence and stillness, our harsh self-judgement and our addiction to endless self-improvement and progress.

He also describes the blessings on the road to a life of enough - the ability to see the value in small things, to have mercy upon ourselves, to see the growth that can emerge from loss, to enjoy the benefits of good company, to recognize the sufficiency of presence, and to see the value of bearing witness.

2. In An Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness by Peter Levine (2010)

In this book, American medical biophysicist and psychologist, Peter Levine, shares the essence and underpinnings of his life's work - Somatic Experiencing - a type of body psychotherapy used for healing psychological trauma.

In a style that reads like a mystery novel, Peter clearly and descriptively explains that trauma resides in the "unspoken voices" of our bodies. Using animal ethology (the study of animals in their natural environments), brain research, native healing practices and his lengthy clinical experience, he shows how traumatic experiences result in psychological injuries that can be transformed by paying attention to the natural healing processes deep within our bodies.

In chapters entitled, The Power of an Unspoken Voice, The Changing Face of Trauma, Immobilized by Fear: Lessons Learned from Animals, From Paralysis to Transformation, A Map for Therapy, The Body as Storyteller, and Body, Emotion & Spirituality: Restoring Goodness, Peter leads us through a body-based healing process that acknowledges our frozen trauma responses and safely paces our developing awareness and mastery of our physical sensations and feelings. He teaches us to self regulate and to allow for the completion of survival responses that were inadvertently cut short at the time of the trauma.

The integration of body psychotherapy and "talk therapy" is the new frontier in trauma work and, in my opinion, there couldn't be a better introduction to it than this visionary book.

3. Haiku Mind: 108 Poems to Create Awareness & Open Your Heart by Patricia Donegan (2008)

Patricia Donegan, poet, translator, and promoter of haiku as an awareness practice, has written this lovely commentary on the haiku of many poets, including herself.

She begins the introduction with a haiku by Shiki Masaoka, -

Cutting a pear

sweet drops drip

from the knife

and says-

I wanted to write this book to share the idea of "haiku mind" -

a simple yet profound way of seeing our everyday world and living our lives

with the awareness of the moment expressed in haiku -

and to therefore hopefully inspire others to live with more

clarity, compassion and peace.

A fine haiku presents a crystalline moment of heightened awareness

in simple imagery ... However, this moment is more than

a reflection of our day-to-day life - it is a deep reminder

for us to pause and to be present to the details of the everyday.

Patricia goes on to share 108 haiku, each with a brief commentary and a short biographical note about the poet who had written it. A lovely read with which to begin or end the day or with which to enjoy a restful cup of tea.

I hope you will enjoy some of these books over the holidays and that you will feel free to add to the list any others you think your fellow caregivers/carepartners might like to read.