Healing in the Dying Time

Joan Furman, MSN, RN, AHN-BC, CET II
Presented to Nashville Psychotherapy Institute
January 9, 2009

Flow

Be,
as water is,
without friction.
Flow around the edges
of those within your path.
Surround within your ever-moving depths
those who come to rest there—
enfold them,
while never for a moment holding on.
Accept whatever distance
others are moved within your flow.
Be with them gently
as far as they allow your strength to take them,
and fill with your own being
the remaining space when they are left behind.
When dropping down life’s rapids,
froth and bubble into fragments if you must,
knowing that the one of you now many
will just as many times be one again.
And when you’ve gone as far as you can go,
quietly await your next beginning.
© Noel Frederick McInnis

The names and illnesses of clients and sometimes their sex are changed in the case studies I will present. Unless otherwise specified, much of the material in this presentation is derived from my book, The Dying Time: Practical Wisdom for the Dying and Their Caregivers. (Crown, 1997).

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How to Stay Healthy as a Nurse

One may wonder at the title of this article why I would write about nurses staying healthy, when nurses are obviously experts at helping people stay healthy. The simple answer is, we are not healthy. I am not speaking of blood pressure here; I am speaking of health in the holistic sense. What do I mean by holism? “Holism”, “healing” and “health” come from the Anglo Saxon word “haelan,” meaning “to make whole.” It is a process of bringing parts of oneself (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual) together at deep levels of inner knowing, leading toward an integration and balance, with each part having equal importance and value. As wounded healers, the first step in deciding an approach to your own healing is to find what good health is for you individually.

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