Training
Though we recognize that we are always learning ourselves, we also recognize that there are parts of our experience and our study that may be of use to those around us. From that well of knowledge, we draw as much as we can and offer it as freely as we know how to the medical and non-medical systems around us. Layne’s expertise and passion for palliative care and Jon’s passion for grief literacy and teaching the skill in the work of grief itself are on offer to whomever we may come across.
Layne’s PhD work in palliative care makes her especially good at offering important insight into improving care for patients and families alike with serious and chronic illnesses.
Counseling
Both dying and being in close proximity to it are all-consuming paths. The light by which we illuminate every step on those paths is often a flickering candle held in the shaky hand of the dying and each footfall is uncertain at best.
Jon’s experience and study into griefwork can shed just a bit more light along that path and, at times, give a bit more sturdiness to the step.
The effects of grief and dying are not reserved for simply the sick and their families. Healthcare professionals, and anyone else connected to the loss all suffer the losses along the way in different ways. Into the hurt of those losses we offer what little balm we can, and what wisdom we have.
Philosopher and medical ethicist Jeffry Bishop wrote that suffering is “to undergo loss of capacity, potency, history, project, or purpose, all of which are integral to this particular embodied being” (Jeffry Bishop, The Anticipatory Corpse). This idea of suffering rightly distinguishes itself from pain, and reveals that suffering comes from loss. Loss unmakes our attachments, it is the breaking and pulling away of that which we have tied to ourselves. And “grief is the rope burns left behind, when that which is held is pulled beyond our grasp.” (Stephen Levine, Unattended Sorrow)
We have years of practice in holding those burned hands softly, in pouring a soothing balm into the raw flesh of the burn, and in giving ritual and rhythm to the confusing and catastrophic.
Contact or Give.
Email: jonheller@casaahava.org
WhatsApp: +258 82 369-1505