Two New Literary Resources for Care Partners ...

Good morning, everyone! I'm writing today to tell you about two new literary resources for feeding the souls of those who care for others. The first is brand new and the second is new-to-me. I hope that both will be a source of strength, hope, optimism and healing as you continue your care partnering at home and at work.



1. Brain Injury Journey - Hope, Help, Healing

Several times in the past I have spoken of, and linked to, the blog of Barbara Stadhura a great writer, journal workshop leader, and former care partner for her husband who has now recovered substantially from a brain injury following a motorcycle accident. Barbara is now the Editor-in-Chief of Brain Injury Journey Magazine, an exciting new publication from Lash and Associates, a leading publisher of brain injury information.

In the words of their publication introduction:

This magazine is a vehicle for information, support, and resources for the entire brain injury community. Designed to help persons with brain injury, families, caregivers, and providers successfully navigate challenges and live a full and satisfying life, each issue offers empowering personal stories, interviews with experts, clinical updates, research findings, and book reviews. Above all, it provides a community to enhance hope and foster healing after brain injury. 

The best news of all is that email subscriptions to the magazine, which will be published for the first time in April, are free. You can also order a print edition, published 6 times a year, for $48 (US).

With Barbara at the helm, this magazine can't help but provide an authentic, practical, and encouraging  information source for the whole brain injury community. Congratulations to Barbara and her team!


2.  Panhala Website

Anyone who reads this site regularly or who comes to my workshops will already know of this predilection - for those who don't or haven't,  I love poetry! A few weeks ago, quite by accident, I came across this website and, all of a sudden, I was in poetry and photography heaven.

Panhala, according to the website, is Hindi for "source of fresh water" (more or less). The purpose of the group is to " share poems and prose to make the day a little brighter".  The postings on this site are excellent, and the photography, just beautiful. Perhaps try the poem called Laughter  by Hafiz first - it will make you smile all day!

TED Talks for Helpers ...

For the past few weeks, Vancouver's been buzzing with the news that the popular TED Talks  (Technology, Entertainment, Design Talks) will be bringing their West Coast conference to Vancouver  in 2014.

Though beyond the financial ability of most folks to attend, TED's ideas worth sharing can be accessed via the Internet and many of the past speakers have addressed topics of interest to care partners and to compassion fatigue sufferers, educators or specialists. Some of these talks include:

1.  Karen Armstrong:  Let's Revive the Golden Rule,  The Charter for Compassion

2.  Nancy Berns:  On the Space Between Joy and Grief   

3.  Tim Brown:  Tales of Creativity and Play 

4.  Brene Brown:  Listening to Shame,  The Power of Vulnerability

5.  Elizabeth Gilbert:  Nurturing Creativity 

6.  Carl Honore:  In Praise of Slowness 

7.  Nigel Marsh:  How to Make Work-Life Balance Work 

8.  Kristin Neff:  The Space Between Self Esteem and Self Compassion 

9.  Mattieu Ricard:  Habits of Happiness 

10.  JK Rowlings:  The Fringe Benefits of Failure 

11.  Saalman Sana:  Compassion for Care 

12.  Ernesto Sirolli:  Want to Help Someone?: Shut Up and Listen!

While none of the talks listed above are aimed at care partners, specifically, we can each draw lessons from them to enrich our lives.  Enjoy!

  

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?

  

A Gift For and From the Heart ...

Hi everyone! February is Heart Month and the home of Valentines Day and many of us are beginning to think of Valentine gifts for our loved ones - the traditional chocolates, flowers, lingerie and poetry or more adventurous gifts like exotic cruises or white water expeditions. But what about considering a more long-lasting gift of the heart - like a heart-healthy diet for the whole year?

I love healthy, real food - the way it looks, the way it smells, and most especially, the way it tastes. Last night I made an amazing technicolour red quinoa stew with onions, mushrooms, squash, spinach, slivered almonds and dried figs. Mmmmmm-MMMMM! Gorgeous and delicious and so full of healthy nutrients that one cupful sustained me for the whole evening. I wish my husband had been there to enjoy it with me. Derrick cooked for me for 19 years and I really believe that cooking healthy food for those we love is one of the best ways we can show our love. (Following in his footsteps and learning to make a healthy dinner for myself was quite a transition for the girl whose family once joked that if anything happened to Derrick, Jan would die of a Cheerios overdose!)

Those of you who spend all day caring for others - at work, at home, or both -  may find yourselves  exhausted and stymied when it comes to another week of meal planning. So here is a Valentine gift for each of you - a list of 5 of my favourite healthy-food websites and 5 of my favourite healthy-food cookbooks, each with nutritious, easy-to-prepare meals and beautiful pictures. (It can be a gift to yourself just to spend a few minutes looking at the photographs!)

Websites

1.  Healthful Pursuit

2.  Cooking Light

3.  Heart and Stroke Foundation

4.  Food52

5.  The Healthy Foodie

Cookbooks 

1. Lighthearted Everyday Cooking by Anne Lindsay

2.  Eating For Energy Without Deprivation: The 80-20 Cookbook by Patricia Chuey and Diana Steele

3.  12 Best Foods Cookbook by Dana Jacobi

4.  Start Fresh! Your Guide To Midlifestyle Food and Fitness by Diane and Dr Doug Clement

5.  The LooneySpoons Collection by Janet and Greta Podleski

So, why not give a Valentine gift that keeps on giving - both to you and to the ones you love? 




  

Chronic Sorrow Article ...

I'm too productive to claim to be seriously depressed, and I can feel happy or amused at times, but life just seems wrong. 

Susan Roos, PhD

Chronic Sorrow: A Living Loss 

Hi everyone! I'm pleased to say that the Winter issue of BC's Insights into Clinical Counselling held my first full-length article on Chronic Sorrow, Unending Loss: An Introduction to Chronic Sorrow in Family Caregivers. The emails and phone calls I've received in response to this article have underlined the potency of the information and and the need of family caregivers everywhere to have their unique experience acknowledged and understood.

The article begins:

Introduction

I wish I had known in 1997 the things I know today about chronic sorrow (CS), a distinct, common, but little known grief response affecting people with chronic conditions and those who love them.

Late in the fall of 1997, following a hike in the North Shore mountains, my previously healthy husband developed a life-threatening heart rhythm, the first sign of what would become a seven year journey with heart failure. During those seven years, I coped with many stressors including feedback from family and friends regarding my "depression". Wasn't I over his diagnosis yet? Hadn't it been several years? Why was I still crying? Perhaps I should see the doctor for antidepressants?

Part of me pondered the same questions but another part insisted that I was not depressed. I was too focused and functional to be depressed and my periods of intense sadness, while many, were interspersed with times of genuine happiness, pleasure and gratitude. So, if not depression, what was I experiencing?

It was not until the year after my husband's death that a workshop comment by grief expert, Robert Neimeyer, PhD, led me to the writings of American psychologist Susan Roos, PhD, and through her work, to the Nursing Consortium for Research on Chronic Sorrow (NCRCS). There, I discovered ... 

A Time for Everything ...

A time for everything: A time to relax and a time to be busy, a time to frolic and a time to labour, a time to receive and a time to give, a time to begin and a time to finish.

Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Recently, I received these New Year's musings from Alie, a young friend who is a student in a Masters program far from home and for whom 2012 was a year of episodic ill health, the deaths of loved ones and the ending of a love. I wish I'd been as wise as she at the age of twenty-eight:

I've never really been one for New Year's resolutions at all. And after the bust that was 2012  (for which I kinda made a a resolution for the first time ever) my aversion to this tradition is especially strong this year.

For me, right now, it's not about goals. It's not about striving to achieve a certain thing. It's about working towards something. It's not about the present and the future and some differential between the two.

It's about putting one foot in front of the other. It's about the process. It's about balance. Good and bad. Easy and hard. Happy and sad. Tired and awake. Work and play. Exercise and relaxation. Alone and social. Loud and quiet. Up and down. It's about having a bit of both, enough of each, and some of the in between.

It's not a goal to be achieved at some point in the future, but an abstract equilibrium that is acted out in every decision made.

 Balance.

Good and bad.

Happy and sad.

Balance.

'Nuff said.

Six Spiritual Practices for the New Year ...

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light-years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spirutual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.

Carl Sagan, American astronomer and astrophysicist

As trauma and compassion fatigue research continues, we are learning that developing our spiritual lives can actually enhance our compassion fatigue resilience and recovery.

The New Year offers us an opportunity to reassess our spiritual lives and to consider practices that can deepen our spiritual connections with ourselves, those around us, nature, and that which transcends the self - an opportunity to recognize more fully the sacredness of life and to embrace its mystery. 

Here are six spiritual practices to help you deepen these connections in 2013:

1. Breathe. The word spirituality is derived from the Latin word spirale  which means to blow or to breathe. Our breath connects us intimately with the life force that sustains us in each moment. Sit quietly for 3 minutes and allow your attention to follow each inspiration, each expiration - moment by moment, breath by breath. Savour the feeling of being alive and in-spired. Choose a cue - opening a particular cupboard, hearing a phone ring - to remind you to b-r-e-a-t-h-e  in this way several times a day. 

2.  Be silent. Create stillpoints of quiet in your life. Wake early and spend that time in deliberate stillness and silence. End the day with 20 minutes silence to bring you back to yourself and the Source of your being. Eat a meal alone, without a book or TV for company. Make a silent retreat of an hour, a day or a week. Make waiting times intentional times of silence - grocery store lineups, sitting in waiting rooms, waiting to pick up the kids at school. 

3.  Spend time in wild places. Thoreau says that the wilderness is near as well as dear. You don't have to travel to distant shores to leave your busyness behind and return to the restoring rhythms of nature. The wild places are right on your doorstep - the greenbelt, the lakeshore, the parkland beside the reservoir, the pathways in the woods, even the quiet of your garden just before sunrise and sunset. Allow the rhythms you discover there - rise and fall, summer and winter, abundance and scarcity - to teach you to embrace both life's fullness and its emptiness, knowing that there is much to be learned from each.  

4.  Release what is no longer necessary, be they possessions, thoughts, feelings, experiences, habits or expectations. Reflect upon what is essential to your life then consider letting go of anything that may be keeping you trapped or blocked.

5.  Trust in what you love.  Rather than imposing a rigid plan upon your life, try following the thread of your own unique unfolding story, step by step, attending to the synchronicities and the still small voice that can guide your path. Cultivate a deep trust in what you love. What are the things that make your heart sing, no matter how at odds they feel with your current life (and perhaps especially so?). Make some room, this year, to honour what brings you to life.

6.  Open yourself to a new word for the year.  Last year, guided by the writings of spiritual director, Christine Painter, PhD, I wrote about choosing a word (or, more correctly, allowing a word to choose you) to guide you through the year. As Christine put it,  In quiet moments, what are the desires you hear being whispered from your heart? Is there a word or phrase that shimmers forth, inviting you to dwell with it in the months ahead? Something you can grow into and don't fully understand?

I don't know if any of you chose a word last year. I did and it made such a significant impact on my life in 2012 that I encourage you to join me in giving it a try this very new year.