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"

Hope for 2018 ...

Hope is the belief that tomorrow
could be better.

Anonymous

Happy New Year, Everyone!

Here we stand on the threshold of a new year, in the in-between space of expectation and possibility between old and new.

My focus today (and perhaps my new word for 2018) is hope. Thoughts about hope have arisen organically through the rhythms of my life over the holidays. I am taking Jan Richardson's free online retreat for Women's Christmas 2017 - Walking the Way of Hope, I'm reading a Christmas gift book about hope and, in a very real way, I'm actively practicing hope each day as I look for a new place to live. The notion of hope is all around me.

For me, hope is not a Pollyanna-ish, frothy, pie-in-the-sky type of experience but a rooted, ever-available, undergirding strength that promises that even in painful times, even when hope itself flickers, there are unexpected gifts, new directions and fresh possibilities in each moment, if we have the eyes to see them.

There are those who decry hope as being future vs present-oriented and, therefore, not a useful concept. To these people I can only say that there have been times in my life when focusing continually in the present would have been overwhelming and traumatizing and, without the forward pull of hope, I might not have survived let alone thrived.

Jan Richardson, whose blessings I use so often in my workshops, calls us to hope in this way:


Rough Translations

Hope nonetheless.
Hope despite.
Hope regardless.
Hope still.

Hope where we had ceased to hope.
Hope amid what threatens hope.
Hope with those who feed our hope.
Hope beyond what we had hoped.

Hope that draws us past our limits.
Hope that defies expectations.
Hope that questions what we have known.
Hope that makes a way where there is none.

Hope that takes us past our fear.
Hope that calls us into life.
Hope that holds us beyond death.
Hope that blesses those to come.

Whatever your circumstances this New Year, may hope accompany, enfold and strengthen you and may you look ahead with eyes primed to find the best this year has to offer.

Quickening ...

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time.  This expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost. The world will not have it. 

It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself and your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware of the urges that 
motivate you.  Keep the channel open.

Martha Graham

Happy 2017, Everyone!

I hope you've had a peaceful and refreshing holiday season. 

The rather old fashioned word, quickening, has been playing at the front of my mind this week as I've prepared to spend the next two months writing. Quickening has several meanings -  to make more rapid, to enliven or return to life, to excite or stimulate and to reach the stage of pregnancy when a baby's movement is felt. It is the middle ones that we're interested in here.

Quickening is an experience of hope and possibility and potential. It is the restless energy that initiates growth and creativity whether we are moving into a new stage of development, painting a masterpiece, building a fence or coming up with a more comfortable way to tape a catheter to a loved one's leg. We can see examples of quickening in nature each Spring as seemingly lifeless seeds and branches respond to an inner urging that coaxes them to life. 

We are all familiar with these excited stirrings that can enliven and motivate us. I can recognize quickening in my own life when I spend time in contemplative silence; when grief lightens after a loss; when the first snowdrops push through in the spring; when I return from a fibre fair with a bag of beautiful yarns for a new project and when I feel the urge to take my camera to the lake, open to receiving whatever images may appear. I also feel a spark of this vital energy when I've struggled through a dry spell in my writing and then, suddenly, disparate thoughts fall into place and I rush to the computer to capture them before they disappear.

What about you? Where might you be feeling quickening or new aliveness emerging this New Year? Is something within trying to catch your attention, to help you solve a problem, to enliven a new part of you, to take you in a new direction? It doesn't have to be anything monumental. In fact, quickening often speaks in quiet excitement about seemingly small possibilities. We just have to learn to notice and pay attention to this voice of excitement and then respond.

Here, once again, is one of Jan Richardson's poems which I think well describes the experience of quickening:

This restless hope

is what drives me

beyond the weariness

beyond the discomfort

beyond every thought

that what I carry within me

will never come to birth.

This restless hope

beyond all reason

flutters beneath my heart

and grows within my soul.

It is beyond me,

and it is of me,

and it is delivering me

home.

I hope 2017 will be a year of possibility and promise for each of you. May you find ways within whatever constraints are present to "keep the channel open", to feel the quickening and to respond in the most life-giving ways you can.

A Happy and Hope-filled New Year ...

There is no medicine like hope,

no incentive so great,

no tonic so powerful

as expectation of

something tomorrow.

Orison Swett Marden

A Happy and Hope-filled New Year to each one of you who supports or cares for others, be they patients, clients or loved ones.

Hope is one of the great gifts of a new year. The unwritten days spread out before us - wide open, filled with opportunities and possibilities.

Sadly, the stress of caring for others can diminish hope in many helping professionals and family caregivers. In a 1999 article published by "Health Care for the Homeless Clinicians Network", called Coping With Stress: Creating and Maintaining Hope, ten clinicians working with the homeless from different parts of the US were asked what internal and external sources of hope and inspiration gave their work meaning and how they sustain and renew hope in themselves and others. Here are a few of their answers:

Sources of Hope:

1. Self Knowledge: Knowing, trusting and depending upon your personal strengths.

2. Belief Systems:

- Religious - belief in doing the work through, and sustained by, a Higher Power.

- Philosophical - belief in a philosophy of compassion or The Golden Rule.

- Theoretical - belief in a solution-based, harm reduction model of care.

3. Care Recipients:

The inspiration that comes from the recipient's resilience, creative responses to challenges and appreciation of even the most minimal help.

4. Colleagues:

Colleagues' commitment, empathy, support and lack of condemnation.

5. Mentors & Role Models:

Both the desire to model the values of a beloved mentor and the hope to be a good mentor oneself.

6. Family History:

Working to help people overcome challenges experienced by our own families.

Sustaining & Renewing Hope:

1. Balancing work with personal time:

- "You can't give all the time and stay emotionally healthy."

- "You need time with younger people. They're the ones who renew my hope."

2. Seeking a broader perspective:

- Learning new things, trying new aspects of the work.

- Connecting with others doing similar work at a regional or national level.

- Travelling to other areas to see how they are approaching the work.

3. Taking time out to reduce stress:

- Exercising 30 minutes / day at something you really enjoy.

- Daily meditation or centering prayer, often during your mid-day break.

- Spending time in nature and noticing the endless hope & renewal of the seasons.

4. Having faith that you are making a difference:

- Becoming more philosophical about the work. Taking sustenance from beliefs like the old Chinese proverb that says, "A drop of water, very small and very soft, falling in the same place can make a hole in a rock that is very large and very hard." Or like Mother Theresa's belief that, "God has not called me to be succsessful. He has called me to be faithful." Or like the guidance at the core of Niebuhr's Serenity Prayer - to change what you can, to let go of what you can't, and to be wise enough to know the difference.

5. Focusing on the "small" positives:

- Listening with respect, touching the "untouchable", offering the basics of warmth, presence, focused attention.

- Celebrating and highlighting the baby steps forward with affirmations and creative rituals.

6. Reading inspirational materials:

- Pieces like Desiderata, Native American Prayer, or Water Balloon Fight or stories from your own favourite inspirational writers.

Now, for those of you family caregivers who face new losses every day, the notion of hope can be a distant and painful one at best. For you, I share again what I learned through years of caring for my husband - that the way to maintain the experience of hope, with its sense of destination and its fuel for continuing the journey, is to be willing to change what it is that we hope for.

With each loss we must grieve then reorient ourselves to a new, and often smaller hope - one more remission, one more vacation, one more Christmas dinner, one more night without pain. This can seem a poor substitute for the kind of hope we used to experience but it is still hope and it will carry us through the tough times much better than having no hope at all.

So, for all of you, may 2011 be a year of hope with all the strength and energy that hope can provide.