Introduction to the Resiliency Workshop
Welcome to a better day.
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If you are looking for ways of repair (after walking with a loved one to the edge of health, or any extended period of over-giving...) these eight gifts will speed your recovery.
They are inner, generative guides for your mind, body, heart & spirit to find your way back home – back to your resilient center.
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Resiliency Workshop Intro
This micro-video will explain the body, mind, heart & spirit approach to resiliency & the process. |
Whether it's:
Wherever you find yourself, these practices are centering. They are ordinary yet somehow extraordinary, too. |
Eight Simple Daily Practices - the Daily Eight
It's all you need to FEEL well & wondrously made (ahem...) because we are. The secret is Remembering Better... but that is a later rule (No. 20). Right now, you are on the Frontlines, & that is the challenge in front of us.
Sustainable caregiving matters, both to your others, who are infirm, and to you because you matter. We are a lifeline for ourselves and for them, too.
Superpowers: Rules or Gifts?
They are my daily healthcare PRO rules (as I am a hospice chaplain...) They remind me that no matter what is happening out there, which, at present, might constrict and challenge, I can grow a life that is well & wondrously made through the power of sweet small steps... and, thereby, continue to do my job supporting others.
They are also my gifts to you. When I was caregiving my own mother, practicing these eight made it easier... and more fun.
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What you can expect: micro-videos
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Resilience is like a shower... Daily practice is good
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I will be accompanying you on this journey via micro-videos such as this one, which detail the eight resiliency concepts.
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SWEET SMALL STEPS are powerful.
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What qualifies me to be your guide?
This micro-video is a five minute bio about me & why this workshop was created. |
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Listen to the Audible Audio Chapter
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NOTE: read along with the book's text below After listening, return to the middle Sections 3 & 4 to complete the Process & Journaling exercises for this section.
It's worth it: you are worth it.
Introduction to the Book & this Resiliency Workshop
How you DO caregiving matters...to your own health & theirs…
Intro - The Most Important Question
Einstein said it was the most important question anyone could ask themselves…
Print the Resiliency Journal's pages.
It's a DIY journal workbook...
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Click icon above to download & print the journal pages for this chapter.
You probably have everything you need to make it: a printer, a 3 hole punch and a loose leaf binder... Download the PDF pages by clicking on the icon above.
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Intro Process & Questions:
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Write about a moment in your life when it truly did feel as if the universe was a friendly place and you were safe in it:
• How did that feel?
• How did it support you?
• What was it like?
This first exercise is about ASKING...
"Is the world a friendly place?
Why did Einstein think this was the most important question anyone could ask? Why might this matter so much?
Your answer changes everything.
It is about NOTICING.
It is not about wresting with how to CHANGE your answer. This exercise is about the important work of being AWARE of what your answer is... (or a TIME when, perhaps, your answer was different... maybe when you came into this world...) Or perhaps it's 'friendly' in one area, but not another.
This question is about SEEING.
We need to have clarity around what our expectations are because we cannot change anything until we name & accept it.
Attitude is altitude.
It's perspective, which is so helpful when we are 'on the frontlines of love".
It is NOT about JUDGING yourself as smart or wise, naive or innocent, lucky or not... etc. It is about accepting 'what is" or just not resisting... because it uses too much energy, which can be better used on something I can affect and, perhaps, change.
Click on the above icon to download the PDF file so you can print out the Journal pages for this section.
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This micro-video will walk you through the process.
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What would it mean to you personally if the world truly was a friendly place?
How would it impact your life right now? What would be different? What would be the same?
How about this? When in your life did something happen to you, which you thought was catastrophic, (or rotten or terrible or just negative) and then... over time... it turned out to be an important change that set you on a better path?
Was the obstacle put there by a friendly Universe? (or God, or Love, or Jesus, or the Force... insert your name for the unnameable here...) to keep you from going down that path? Was it a gift of love? Or do you have to work for blessings to prove yourself? All these are good questions...
More questions are on your PDF Journal pages - download by clicking on the icon below. Journal about this on the pages provided or in the journal of your choice.
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Questions to write about ...because your experience matters. |
Write in a journal to consider your experiences more thoroughly. It could be one you already have, or print the journal pages out fro the above icon and make a DIY resiliency journal.
1. How would you answer the question "is the universe a friendly place?"
2. Are you willing to explore the possibility that the universe is a friendly place? How that can support you during this time?
3. On a scale of 1-10 what is your stress level? On a scale of 1-10 what is your willingness to try something new? Do either of these answers surprise you?
1. How would you answer the question "is the universe a friendly place?"
2. Are you willing to explore the possibility that the universe is a friendly place? How that can support you during this time?
3. On a scale of 1-10 what is your stress level? On a scale of 1-10 what is your willingness to try something new? Do either of these answers surprise you?
5. What is the most challenging part of your day?
6. What is the most rewarding?
7. What is one inner resource you wish you had more of right now?
5.
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Introduction
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Caregiving Could Kill You...
Caregiving could kill you, and it could be the best thing you have ever done, which it was for me. I will remember with satisfaction for the rest of my (hopefully) long and healthy life. Whichever it is, twenty-four/seven caregiving is not business as usual. It muddles everything. Its life stressors are off the charts. When I was caregiving my mother, her dementia mixed it up even more.
Caregiving could kill you, and it could be the best thing you have ever done, which it was for me. I will remember with satisfaction for the rest of my (hopefully) long and healthy life. Whichever it is, twenty-four/seven caregiving is not business as usual. It muddles everything. Its life stressors are off the charts. When I was caregiving my mother, her dementia mixed it up even more.
Yet, even if caregiving is only for a month, or two—a year or twelve, even if there is no dementia, this showing up in the trenches of love changes you. It can push your buttons to the extent that you may think you, yourself, are demented. It is an impossible task, which we do however we can but it is dangerous work. Statistically, we are more likely to fall sick ourselves (which I did)...and in some cases more likely to die from the delayed stress of post death caregiving (which, happily, I did not).
As we face complicated decisions and the burden of managing, we ourselves become vulnerable. It is DIY, learn as you go, a little more each day, because we must—but caregiving is dodgy work. We tend to allow the life and death necessities of our loved ones to take priority. We must—and yet we must not. How will we walk with them to the end (of love, life or illness) unless we do? Sound impossible? Yet, millions of us do it every day.
It’s Also Possible that Caregiving Might Save You...
This book may save you by avoiding some serious mistakes, which could damage you. However, at minimum, it will give you a reasonably good shot to be in the healthy and satisfied caregiver category. These notions are my rules and gifts to you. They generate solutions from your core; solutions, which fit who you are and what is appropriate for your family and situation. They are inside-out principles, not those imposed upon you with completed solutions.
This book is an offering of gifts that helped me recover from being a caregiver.
I also use them at bedside every day as a hospice chaplain. It is my hope that they are spoken in ways that make sense to you in a spiritual but practical framework. As an Interfaith hospice chaplain, this is my solid ground--to not know. I support people of any faith, or no faith and all the rivers that run between those two extremes at bedside and in bereavement. It is not my job to take sides but to have confidence that there are no sides. However, it is not important for you to believe as I do. As AA friends say, the rules work ‘when you work them’. However, as it did me, they may also seep into you like storm water becomes groundwater and simply amend you.
As we face complicated decisions and the burden of managing, we ourselves become vulnerable. It is DIY, learn as you go, a little more each day, because we must—but caregiving is dodgy work. We tend to allow the life and death necessities of our loved ones to take priority. We must—and yet we must not. How will we walk with them to the end (of love, life or illness) unless we do? Sound impossible? Yet, millions of us do it every day.
It’s Also Possible that Caregiving Might Save You...
This book may save you by avoiding some serious mistakes, which could damage you. However, at minimum, it will give you a reasonably good shot to be in the healthy and satisfied caregiver category. These notions are my rules and gifts to you. They generate solutions from your core; solutions, which fit who you are and what is appropriate for your family and situation. They are inside-out principles, not those imposed upon you with completed solutions.
This book is an offering of gifts that helped me recover from being a caregiver.
I also use them at bedside every day as a hospice chaplain. It is my hope that they are spoken in ways that make sense to you in a spiritual but practical framework. As an Interfaith hospice chaplain, this is my solid ground--to not know. I support people of any faith, or no faith and all the rivers that run between those two extremes at bedside and in bereavement. It is not my job to take sides but to have confidence that there are no sides. However, it is not important for you to believe as I do. As AA friends say, the rules work ‘when you work them’. However, as it did me, they may also seep into you like storm water becomes groundwater and simply amend you.
Gift No. 1 is from both the books: Begin Again as well as the Field Guide. Available for purchase from Amazon, Apple and IngramSpark.
The Distillation: Inner Generative Guides to Find Your Way Home
When you take care of a loved one, the rules change. These offerings are the distillation of my mother’s and my experience here in the trenches of love...because what we went through counts for something and your experiences do, too.
All these ideas are evergreen, resilient, and self-generative (perhaps like a firefly is self-generating with its own light). It is my hope that they guide you, as they have me, in ways that access more love and balance.
Grief (and change) is not an enemy—though I feared it for years. It can do the heavy lifting of renewal, if we let it. Be assured, the drip, drip, drip of incremental loss of a loved one through a long illness, or dementia is grief--anticipatory grief is very common in caregiving. It, and its more intense and disturbing cousin, death grief, can leverage your inner resources (and these notions)—to do the essential work in letting go of what’s not working and, possibly, renewing your life.
I like Thich Nhat Hanh’s succinct accuracy in describing this spiritual paradox. His title says it all: No Mud, No Lotus. In other words, the blooming of the lotus is directly related to the opportunities of the muck in which it grows—the nutrients in that compost. They are dependent on each other. Hint: you are both the lotus, and the hot mucky mess (i.e. that enzymatic poetic alchemy of the Earth). I call it quantum compost.
Am I nuts to say that grief can help us?
No, I am only wise in the dirty ways of my trenches, (which may look a lot like yours...). I think of it as composting that shit (hitting the fan...), the dead elephant (in the room) and the miscellaneous shoulds (which are liberally offered by the well-meaning, but frequently clueless).
Grief is medicine... and torture:
The Gifts are My Rules...
If I could have time-traveled back, to have had these rules as a guide, I would have had more fun, done better caregiving (of myself and my mother), and been less stressed-out. I also believe I would have been quicker to recover from my losses because I grew more resilient as I cared for her—not less.
I tried to care for Betty with eyes and heart open to a higher purpose but, truth be told, I barely kept from misplacing her in some foreign city. I did not care for my mother perfectly, but I resolved each day to do it better. I am not saying it could have been a dance (that would be demented...), but it doesn’t have to be a death dirge.
When my mother, Betty, passed, I wrote until I was empty, then groped my way to a new life. As a hospice chaplain, where I find myself, I am honored each day by the bedside stories of bravery on the frontlines of love. Life is messy. Any caregiver knows that there are trenches here that are so deep they can threaten our own lives. These same experiences may also nourish us. As a former landscape architect, I have come to see it as the garden of change. The circle of care—love, caregiving, loss, grief, bereave‐ ment, and renewal—is best seen, I believe, as seasons where the light promises to come round again--and it does.
These gifts will help you spring back—daily.
Some ideas might be new to you, or some simply reminders of
what you already know to be true. Adding more joy and love into
the way we give care changes our world and, especially, your beloved’s remaining and precious life. The qualities that I brought to the life and death decisions of caregiving impacted my life, even after my mother’s passing.
We have earned this wisdom but if we don’t add it to the next moment and practice, we are all Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, repeating errors in habitually comic and tragic scenes, while we loop or learn how to love (Andie McDowell) and get out of our own way. We re-live the moments of our lives daily over and over, until we germinate or die. This book is a field guide to weeding and planting a new life because this is your season, too, which is something we tend to forget as loyal caregivers of our beloveds.
You are not alone...and (probably) not going crazy.
If you are one of the 44 million unpaid caregivers on duty in the U.S.A. right now, you are already on your journey. Many millions of us are dual-processing our day jobs and watching over our beloveds who are struggling with illnesses. The notions offered here will help you navigate this best and hardest trip any human being may ever walk with another—to the end of time. They are about caregiving and giving care as a renewing pair and
that changes the planet.
The field guide is a short book and, later, a longer story as a memoir...
It took me eleven years of caregiving, and another six years of grief to parse these experiences, to get to a place of renewal. I have condensed these seventeen years into a short book because who has that kind of time? I need these rules for balance (separate of our memoir: Lovely Enoughness, which will come later) to remember a better life for myself—the one I came here to do—moment to moment.
That is the kind of time we have—moment-to-moment.
Caregiving holds its own kind of hope and grief in a dynamic balance. Its anticipatory grief pulls us into a land between where we must start telling (and re-telling) our story to ground us and make our changing experiences feel real. We are storytellers. We need stories to live. When someone dies, a story ends. Loss compels us to speak so we can make sense of our new world. It is what the bereaved must do to move through to a less dismal place than the hard winter of grief.
Your caregiving life might be outwardly confined by honor and responsibility, but with these rules, you are free in the places that matter. Your inner landscapes will be well-made, colorfully planted and ready for spring as the seasons of life offer us.
My goal for this field guide is to accompany you but it is your journey. We must learn to ignore those who discount our experiences and say, they have been there. (...They have not been you, or there.) Caregiving is a mythic underworld, which is linked to our intimate inner world where it’s good to have a sympathetic guide with you—me. The ‘evidence of things not seen’ is not illusion, but very, very real—here in the trenches of love and loss. You are not alone, but accompanied by a crowd of witnesses––or perhaps just Betty and me (but it is enough).
When you take care of a loved one, the rules change. These offerings are the distillation of my mother’s and my experience here in the trenches of love...because what we went through counts for something and your experiences do, too.
All these ideas are evergreen, resilient, and self-generative (perhaps like a firefly is self-generating with its own light). It is my hope that they guide you, as they have me, in ways that access more love and balance.
Grief (and change) is not an enemy—though I feared it for years. It can do the heavy lifting of renewal, if we let it. Be assured, the drip, drip, drip of incremental loss of a loved one through a long illness, or dementia is grief--anticipatory grief is very common in caregiving. It, and its more intense and disturbing cousin, death grief, can leverage your inner resources (and these notions)—to do the essential work in letting go of what’s not working and, possibly, renewing your life.
I like Thich Nhat Hanh’s succinct accuracy in describing this spiritual paradox. His title says it all: No Mud, No Lotus. In other words, the blooming of the lotus is directly related to the opportunities of the muck in which it grows—the nutrients in that compost. They are dependent on each other. Hint: you are both the lotus, and the hot mucky mess (i.e. that enzymatic poetic alchemy of the Earth). I call it quantum compost.
Am I nuts to say that grief can help us?
No, I am only wise in the dirty ways of my trenches, (which may look a lot like yours...). I think of it as composting that shit (hitting the fan...), the dead elephant (in the room) and the miscellaneous shoulds (which are liberally offered by the well-meaning, but frequently clueless).
Grief is medicine... and torture:
- Grief clarifies what is important to you like nothing else...
- Grief removes pretense and fosters (slapping us up side the head with) authenticity
- Grief clears space from false ideas and notions that are no longer working but ones for which we have yet to let go.
The Gifts are My Rules...
If I could have time-traveled back, to have had these rules as a guide, I would have had more fun, done better caregiving (of myself and my mother), and been less stressed-out. I also believe I would have been quicker to recover from my losses because I grew more resilient as I cared for her—not less.
I tried to care for Betty with eyes and heart open to a higher purpose but, truth be told, I barely kept from misplacing her in some foreign city. I did not care for my mother perfectly, but I resolved each day to do it better. I am not saying it could have been a dance (that would be demented...), but it doesn’t have to be a death dirge.
When my mother, Betty, passed, I wrote until I was empty, then groped my way to a new life. As a hospice chaplain, where I find myself, I am honored each day by the bedside stories of bravery on the frontlines of love. Life is messy. Any caregiver knows that there are trenches here that are so deep they can threaten our own lives. These same experiences may also nourish us. As a former landscape architect, I have come to see it as the garden of change. The circle of care—love, caregiving, loss, grief, bereave‐ ment, and renewal—is best seen, I believe, as seasons where the light promises to come round again--and it does.
These gifts will help you spring back—daily.
Some ideas might be new to you, or some simply reminders of
what you already know to be true. Adding more joy and love into
the way we give care changes our world and, especially, your beloved’s remaining and precious life. The qualities that I brought to the life and death decisions of caregiving impacted my life, even after my mother’s passing.
We have earned this wisdom but if we don’t add it to the next moment and practice, we are all Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, repeating errors in habitually comic and tragic scenes, while we loop or learn how to love (Andie McDowell) and get out of our own way. We re-live the moments of our lives daily over and over, until we germinate or die. This book is a field guide to weeding and planting a new life because this is your season, too, which is something we tend to forget as loyal caregivers of our beloveds.
You are not alone...and (probably) not going crazy.
If you are one of the 44 million unpaid caregivers on duty in the U.S.A. right now, you are already on your journey. Many millions of us are dual-processing our day jobs and watching over our beloveds who are struggling with illnesses. The notions offered here will help you navigate this best and hardest trip any human being may ever walk with another—to the end of time. They are about caregiving and giving care as a renewing pair and
that changes the planet.
The field guide is a short book and, later, a longer story as a memoir...
It took me eleven years of caregiving, and another six years of grief to parse these experiences, to get to a place of renewal. I have condensed these seventeen years into a short book because who has that kind of time? I need these rules for balance (separate of our memoir: Lovely Enoughness, which will come later) to remember a better life for myself—the one I came here to do—moment to moment.
That is the kind of time we have—moment-to-moment.
Caregiving holds its own kind of hope and grief in a dynamic balance. Its anticipatory grief pulls us into a land between where we must start telling (and re-telling) our story to ground us and make our changing experiences feel real. We are storytellers. We need stories to live. When someone dies, a story ends. Loss compels us to speak so we can make sense of our new world. It is what the bereaved must do to move through to a less dismal place than the hard winter of grief.
Your caregiving life might be outwardly confined by honor and responsibility, but with these rules, you are free in the places that matter. Your inner landscapes will be well-made, colorfully planted and ready for spring as the seasons of life offer us.
My goal for this field guide is to accompany you but it is your journey. We must learn to ignore those who discount our experiences and say, they have been there. (...They have not been you, or there.) Caregiving is a mythic underworld, which is linked to our intimate inner world where it’s good to have a sympathetic guide with you—me. The ‘evidence of things not seen’ is not illusion, but very, very real—here in the trenches of love and loss. You are not alone, but accompanied by a crowd of witnesses––or perhaps just Betty and me (but it is enough).
PREFACE: The Most Important Question
The Most Important Question
When we are in our own tender valleys of caregiving, we may or may not find other people’s stories about their comparative caregiving challenges all that helpful. In fact, it can be very painful and confusing. Have you experienced an acquaintance or a friend ask you how you are, and as you open your mouth to say, they launch into their own story of a similar experience? They are themselves still grieving and may not even know it.
AFTER YOU HAVE ACCOMPLISHED YOUR GOALS AND GOTTEN caregiving behind you, (either your sweet old someone is now well, or has safely moved on and into the great mystery), you will be okay. (Their outcome is not up to you, only the love that you have shared is on your plate.)
OUR STORY TIME-TRAVELS BECAUSE MY MOTHER DID. IT WAS ALSO A prizefight. Our lifelong argument erupted as many things, but at its core, there was only one—a worldview: Betty’s vs. mine. It was intimate and public: confused and loud. It was a multi-year, many-round championship boxing match, which we had from Tulsa to San Francisco, over the answer to this question:
“The most important question a person can ask is, "Is the Universe a
friendly place?” — ALBERT EINSTEIN
I say yes. The rules help me remember that friendly providence in the garden of change.
A Sound Meditation ?
Sound is interesting to add to a meditation practice... or help begin one. I started these YouTube offerings as my COVID-19 support to a stressed out world. Now it's a channel ...
Below is a 15 minute sound meditation to introduce the idea of a friendly universe and opening to it.
Find more at Youtube@shelter-in-grace
Sustainable Caregiving in sweet small steps...and two books:
"I read it all night. It was funny and useful." - A.W.
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TWO BOOKs AND AUDIBLE Recordings:
BEGIN AGAIN has the first 8 gifts... The Field Guide has ALL the gifts...
Both are about caregiving as a circle of care & that includes you.
© COPYRIGHT 2017-2023 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PRIVACY POLICY
BEGIN AGAIN has the first 8 gifts... The Field Guide has ALL the gifts...
Both are about caregiving as a circle of care & that includes you.
© COPYRIGHT 2017-2023 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PRIVACY POLICY