In discovering your individual concerns, and our collective wisdom, we create powerful innovations in your life and in your family’s life. I bring my insight, creativity, passion, and thirty years of pioneering in health care, senior living, and community and home settings. My innovations have been inspired by identifying gaps and disempowerments, then bridging those gaps, empowering individuals, and creating fresh initiatives for the aging and their families. The following examples present a picture of innovations that have greatly enhanced the quality of life for individuals and for families.
INDIVIDUAL
Downsizing with Conscious Compassion
We all value the keepsakes and treasures we have collected over the years—letters, books, artwork, photographs, a favorite chair or lamp. When the time comes to scale back and move into a smaller home, the process needs to be completed with adequate time for reflection. With consciousness and compassion, we consider your belongings, one by one, with time to reflect on everything touched, sometimes cataloguing these memories for future generations. I make time and space for my client’s contemplation of his or her important possessions, and I guide a mindful allocating of items that will no longer be kept.
Memories and Reflections
There are services and books that help people to write their memoirs, or collect and organize photos to capture family history, generally in a linear fashion. I enjoy guiding and working with individuals in a more intuitive, nonlinear way, eliciting memories and reflections along the way, and exploring their deeper meanings. We uncover strengths, capacities, gifts, and common threads. I offer my clients the safety and assurance to remember good times and difficult times within a loving atmosphere, perhaps healing wounds they may not be consciously carrying. When an elder feels deep presence and love, the memories that come to light merit an attentive ear and a means to preserve them. In one instance, I recorded four hours of memories and reflections from an aging parent. The son later shared that he had never heard ninety percent of the stories.
FAMILY and FRIENDS
Circle of Friends
Circle of Friends is a powerful and enriching experience. A client provides me with a list of friends, a specially selected support group to enrich an aging adult’s life. I contact and invite the participants to join the circle of friends and support the client in ways that feel most comfortable and authentic. I create a calendar, in which friends volunteer time or services on an ongoing basis, for example, to run errands, do grocery shopping, provide transportation, enjoy an outing, meditate together, pray together, or simply sit and visit.
On a monthly basis, the circle explores the beauty, gifts, and challenges of old age, of caring for someone and being cared for. The circle discusses what it means to accompany a person in late life, glean his or her wisdom, share stories, and perhaps experience the end of life journey with that person. The person receiving support may talk about the impediments that aging people face, the inevitable transition from independence to some form of dependency, the difficulty of relying on help from others, and the challenges of facing end of life. Families, of course, can conduct a circle informally and avoid hiring outside services; yet with professional facilitation, the collective journey, the gifts, and the challenges are explored, supported, and deepened for all.
Guided Family Reunion
With families often separated by geographical distance, the nearest family member may become the de facto care provider an aging loved one. Sometimes families are divided by past hurts, old roles, or imminent regressive behaviors when returning home. As Ram Dass says, “If you think you are enlightened, go home for Thanksgiving.”
The elder may request help in calling the family together, but any family member can call for the reunion. I help with preparations, welcome the family home, set context for the intent of the reunion, and guide the family in open exploration of late life and end of life issues. I help broach the hard topics, assist in reaching understandings, and give space and time for family members to reminisce and reflect on their own unique journeys. I visit each day, once or twice, guiding discussions, clarifying understandings, and meeting with individual members who seek consultation. Uniting the family inspires intergenerational involvement, raising awareness of the challenges and the opportunities of caring for an aging loved one. Together we open channels of communication and make progress in raising the quality of life for the elder and for all family members.