Introduction to the Resiliency Workshop.
Welcome to a better day.
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Here are five minutes about me...
so you know who you are journeying with... |
They are inner generative guides to find your way home- home to your own center.
These eight are my daily rules...and gifts to you. They remind me that no matter what is happening out there, which at present might constrict and challenge me, I can grow a life that is
well & wonderously made.
Eight Daily Practices
That's it. It's all you need to FEEL well & wonderously made (ahem...) because we are. The secret is to remembering better...but that is a later rule (No. 20). Right now, you are on the frontlines*, and that is not easy. Caring for yourself and another, especially when your others are infirm, matters,
but it's not easy.
Superpowers, Rules or Gifts?
Practicing these eight will make whatever is in front of you
easier ...and more fun, whether it's:
These practices are centering. They are ordinary yet somehow extraordinary, too...because what good is a superpower, if I don't use them? |
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This resiliency workshop is about using them ...with a bit of fun, too.
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What you can expect: micro-videos
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This micro-video will explain the chapter & what to do.
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Resilience is like a shower... daily practice is optimum. |
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Hello, I'm Rev Em and the author of these books & this Resiliency Workshop. I will be accompanying you on this journey via micro-videos such as this one.
Many little videos like it will guide you through these eight steps to resilience. Some steps you will know, I hope, and some may be ones that may need some work. We are all in process as human beings, but whatever stressors you find yourself in these lovely gifts will help you return to center–your center...and that, my friend, makes it a better day.
Many little videos like it will guide you through these eight steps to resilience. Some steps you will know, I hope, and some may be ones that may need some work. We are all in process as human beings, but whatever stressors you find yourself in these lovely gifts will help you return to center–your center...and that, my friend, makes it a better day.
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Listen to the two Audio(s) for this chapter
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Introduction to the Books & 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 questions anyone could ask themselves…
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Process: Your journal
Answer 'the most important question' & write about its impact on your life...
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Journal a moment in your life when it truly did feel as if the universe was a friendly place.
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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?
More questions 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.
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Write in a journal you already have or make this DIY resiliency journal to consider your experiences more thoroughly. You probably have everything you need to make it: a printer, a 3 hole punch and a loose leaf binder... Download the PDF pages at right:
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Click to download PDFs of journal pages for this chapter.
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5.
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Read: 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. Which‐ ever 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 chap‐ lain, 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 chap‐ lain, 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 (per‐ haps 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 spir‐ itual paradox. His title says it all: No Mud, No Lotus. In other words, the blooming of the lotus is directly related to the oppor‐ tunities 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 miscel‐ laneous shoulds (which are liberally offered by the well-meaning, but frequently clueless).
Grief is medicine...and torture:
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 (per‐ haps 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 spir‐ itual paradox. His title says it all: No Mud, No Lotus. In other words, the blooming of the lotus is directly related to the oppor‐ tunities 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 miscel‐ laneous shoulds (which are liberally offered by the well-meaning, but frequently clueless).
Grief is medicine...and torture:
* A note about the Frontlines of love:
There two books, as you can see below: Begin Again is (mostly) an expanded subset of the the Field Guide. Both have an audio book version.
There two books, as you can see below: Begin Again is (mostly) an expanded subset of the the Field Guide. Both have an audio book version.
The first section in both books is called the Frontlines of love, which tends to slap us into survival mode, as it did me. It is what Begin Again is focused upon, however, when there you can't easily think about more.
Don't worry about more, right now. Try these first eight. Get re-centered. It will make the small and the big stuff, easier - not easy but easier. That's enough for right now.
Until tomorrow, Wait Here, which is the first gift coming your way. It will be emailed to you tomorrow. Until then, make your journal. Think about what a 'Friendly Universe" could be like for you. Einstein thought it was the most important question that anyone could ask.
So do I.
Best Blessings,
Rev. EM
Reach out at info@emhager.com
Don't worry about more, right now. Try these first eight. Get re-centered. It will make the small and the big stuff, easier - not easy but easier. That's enough for right now.
Until tomorrow, Wait Here, which is the first gift coming your way. It will be emailed to you tomorrow. Until then, make your journal. Think about what a 'Friendly Universe" could be like for you. Einstein thought it was the most important question that anyone could ask.
So do I.
Best Blessings,
Rev. EM
Reach out at info@emhager.com
"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. on Amazon, Apple, IngramSpark
© COPYRIGHT 2017-2021 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. on Amazon, Apple, IngramSpark
© COPYRIGHT 2017-2021 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PRIVACY POLICY