It’s no secret that healthcare professionals and caregivers of all kinds are stretched beyond their limits. We can’t look to healthcare systems themselves to give us the care and attention we need, so where CAN we go for support (and answers)? Don’t miss this week’s episode with guests Koshin Paley Ellison and Chodo Robert Campbell of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care.
To submit your questions by voicemail, call us at (323) 643-3768 or visit megandevine.co
In this episode we cover:
- why it’s important to look beyond the identified patient to the invisible web of caregivers
- the realities of caregiver burnout and stress
- the one practice you can do even - and especially - when you have no time to care for yourself
- do you stay or do you go? Making decisions for yourself inside this healthcare system catastrophe
Guest info and resources:
Sensei Chodo Robert Campbell is co-founder of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care — a non-profit organization that focuses on the teaching of Zen and Buddhist practice with the goal to make them more accessible to people all around the world. His passion lies in bereavement counseling and advocating for change in the way our healthcare institutions work with the dying. Find Chodo and the NYZC @newyorkzencenter on IG, and online at zencare.org
Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison is an author, Zen teacher, Jungian psychotherapist, and Certified Chaplaincy Educator. Koshin is a world-renowned thought leader in contemplative care. He is the author of Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up and the co-editor of Awake at the Bedside: Contemplative Teachings on Palliative and End of Life Care. His work has been featured in the New York Times, PBS, CBS Sunday Morning, Tricycle among other publications. Find him on IG @koshinpaleyellison
If you work in healthcare, I very strongly recommend you check out New York Zen Center’s Contemplative Medicine Fellowship. Registrations for the 2022-2023 fellowship are open now.
To hear one of my favorite passages of all time, read by Chodo Robert Campbell, check out the first video at this link. The whole video is a lovely teaching from the founders of the Zen Center for Contemplative Care.
All of the Zen Center’s offerings, from books to support groups to ongoing educational opportunities can be found at zencare.org.
Questions to Carry with you:
- special bonus questions and meditations from our guests! I’ll be back next week with my own QtCWY, but don’t miss this edition!
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of Here After with Megan Devine. Tune in, subscribe, leave a review, send in your questions, and share the show with everyone you know. Together, we can make things better, even when they can’t be made right.
To submit your questions by voicemail, call us at (323) 643-3768 or visit megandevine.co
For more information, including clinical training and consulting, visit us at www.Megandevine.co
For grief support & education, follow us at @refugeingrief on IG, FB, & TW
Check out Megan’s best-selling books - It’s Okay That You're Not Okay and How to Carry What Can’t Be Fixed - at refugeingrief.com/book
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is here After, and I'm your host, Megan Divine.
Each week we tackle big questions from therapists, caregivers, and
other helpful folks that let us explore how to show
up after life goes horribly wrong. This week showing up
to the full catastrophe of caregiving personally and professionally with
incredibly special guests Cohen, Paley Ellison, and Robert Chodo Campbell,
(00:24):
founders of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care.
Don't miss this one, friends, We'll be right back after
this first break. Before we get started, one quick note, Well,
I hope you find a lot of useful information in
our time here together. This show is not a substitute
(00:45):
for skilled support with a licensed mental health provider or
for professional supervision related to your work. Hey, friends, I'm
going to keep my intro here brief today, at least
brief from me, because I want to use all the
time we possibly have available for you to hear from
both of our guests on the show today, two people
I love and admire and respect so much, Coach and
(01:07):
Paley Ellison and Choto. Robert Campbell Coach and Paley Ellison
is an author, Zen teacher, young and psychotherapist and certified
chaplaincy educator. He and Robert Choto Campbell co founded the
New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, which offers contemplative
approaches to care through education, personal caregiving, and Zen practice.
Through the Center, they provide a lot of resources and education,
(01:29):
but I know them best to their Contemplative Medicine Fellowship,
a year long training for physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician
assistants who want to lead a change in the culture
of care. You can probably tell that I am reading
that directly off of their website because I want to
make sure I describe it correctly. But there are two
of the kindest, most thoughtful people I have ever met,
and I know a lot of people. But enough about me.
(01:51):
Let's get to our guest, Cohen Choto. Thank you so
much for being here. It's a delight to be here.
It's such a delight to be here, especially for me.
I get to sit next to my husband of twenty years.
I get to be in front of all your beautiful faces.
Can believe, Tanya and Megan. It's just a beautiful, beautiful,
(02:13):
beautiful way to begin my day. I treat the afternoon
time is elastic. I'm already getting that face. It's Toto.
What are you talking about? This is supposed to be
a brief intro, and he's doing that thing where he
just you know, you roll your your hands off screen,
off screen, roller hands off screen. You can have unbelievable
(02:39):
what's your intro moment? God, I'm so glad to have
you so coaching. The last time that you and I
were in a gathering together it was probably we've probably
done it since, but it was like April, sort of
height of the early pandemic in New York City, and
I remember it was an online event, obviously pandemic, and
(02:59):
you were in middle of speaking, and suddenly the sirens
behind you sort of drowned out your voice, and you
just stopped and closed your eyes, and you said so
sweetly to the audience, every siren is a chance to practice.
And you took a beat, and then you just rolled
along with whatever you had been saying about being present
(03:22):
at the bedside of the suffering or the dying, or
those facing difficult medical stories. It was such a beautiful moment.
And I actually told our producers here that when I
said that, I was probably gonna cry because I do
cry every single episode because I'm a human with feelings.
But that moment, for me really encapsulates what the two
of you do. Right, just when humanity intersects with the
(03:45):
moment that we're in, that's really where the two of
you shine. I don't really have a question there, but like,
that's what I feel about you two. One of the
other things that comes to mind when we hear the
sirens is we often will say to our students or
members in the zendom at that time, you know, let's
(04:06):
all just hope that whoever is in an ambulance gets
the hospital in time. Let's hope that the technicians in
the ambulance can do everything they can to save this life.
And when the fire engines go by, it's the same thing.
Let's hope to get there on time to save members
in trouble. Yeah, it's just that that moment of connection, right.
(04:28):
I think I picked up from you saying that in
caution that one assigmon goes by, I just like close
my eyes for a second and say good luck for everyone, right,
the person in the vehicle, the family and friends that
surround that, the people who are driving that vehicle, and
the people at the medical facilities who will receive them right,
all of those concentric rings in that moment. I think
(04:51):
that what's so striking is that our life is filled
with what are sometimes called interruptions and annoyances or you know,
the fly and ointment or whatever it is. And whether
it's a siren or you know, someone not responding to
(05:11):
you in the way that you wished it was, or
get receiving a diagnosis that you wish you didn't receive,
or someone has died that you wish didn't die. To me,
the opportunity is always saying, well, this is what's happening,
and how do I actually receive it and welcome what's here,
(05:32):
whether it's a siren or a whale from our own chest,
because we're just missing and yearning for someone who has died,
you know, thinking about you know, a friend of ours, Stanley,
and when he was in the grocery store aisle of
picking up a tomato, and he burst into tears because
(05:52):
the smell of the tomato reminded him of his wife
who had died twenty years before. And there's no inter option,
and after he wept, he just said, look at this tomato.
I love what you said about concentric circles, because when
we're with someone who is dying or someone who is
(06:14):
suffering in the hospital, we often think that all the
attention and usually ninety percent of the attention should be
focused on the patient of the person in the hospital,
but we forget the speaking of concentric circles, we forget
about the care givers. We forget about the nurses, aids,
the home health days, the doctors, the janitor that brings
(06:37):
you know, the cleans the room, the person that brings
the food to the room, as well as all the
family members. Of course, we tend to forget all the
people involved in one patient's care. So I love that
idea in the illustration that you're bringing up concentric circles
and they just continue to ripple out. And if you consider,
for instance, the home health daid or the nurses a
(07:00):
system in a nursing home who has maybe two three
hours of travel to get to where they need to go,
how does that affect ripple out into the family When
usually as a female, when she gets home after taking
four bus rides or two bus rides or a subway
in a bus ride, and she's exhausted and she has
(07:22):
to make dinner, and she has to take care of
the kids. So it's not just about the one person
and one identified patients, shall we say, So that concentric
circle is really important to keep in mind. That's what's occurring.
And it brings up from me this idea that invisible
and not invisible web of helpers that we just expect
(07:43):
them to keep helping, right? Would we just expect them
to sort of be machinery of help, right, or or
helpful machines and just keep going? And I love what
you said. They're total like often women in these positions
and they come home and they have to serve more
and they have to keep going. And certainly now like
none of this stuff with the pressure on the health
(08:04):
care professions, none of this stuff is new. But seeing
all of this trauma and stress and death and loss
and suffering on top of old systemic fractures, like this
is really what I wanted to have you here with
us today to talk about. Like I think in my
in my notes too, I was like, I feel like
we need to have a conversation inside the apocalypse for
(08:26):
those networks of helpers, the therapists and the home health
aids and the people who serve the food and work
in the kitchens, and the doctors and the social workers,
and what we keep asking them to bear and how
do we even talk about not being able to bear
that anymore? And honestly, you know, normally, when I have
a guest on the show, I sort through the listener
(08:47):
questions and I find things that intersect with the guests
so that we can open up those conversations. And this time,
as I was preparing, I just found myself saying, like,
I don't know what to say about this stuff. I
don't know what to say about the compound weight on
the I don't know communities, legions, legions maybe of people
we lean on for help, And where are they supposed
(09:10):
to lean for help when we keep looking for them
to show up and serve and show up and serve
and show up and serve and not stop. This is
something that we hold so dear to our hearts, you know.
And I think that one of the things that we've
been concerned about these folks for a long time. You know,
Chad and I have been teaching, in particular physicians for
(09:34):
fifteen years and working with them and really figuring out
how what's useful, how do we learn how to drop
into ourselves. And in particular, physicians, you know, have the
highest rates of suicide, divorce, drug and alcohol abuse as
well as one of the unique things is that the
(09:54):
most people leave that profession of being of doctor. And
so we've been deeply concerned and then when the pandemic hit,
we realized that we needed to do something that we
needed to meet that need, and so we created this
Fellowship in Contemplative Medicine, this year long fellowship for physicians,
(10:19):
nurse practitioners and physician assistance to really address the roots
of suffering, what the causes of their suffering are, how
to pivot and what is the path? And so it's
based on the for noble truths of the Buddha and
really looking at which is such a rare thing, is
(10:41):
looking at our intra personal lives, like how are we
inside of ourselves and our inner personal like how are
our relationships going? Like what are we actually doing when
we get home? And then you know, a third of
it is also clinical work, but that really, in some
ways I feel like the call of this time has
(11:02):
been part of the call of the medicine of this
time is to remember we only have one life. You know,
there's so much focus on work life balance, and but
really we have one life, and how are we in
that life. We want to come back just for a
moment to the importance of noticing the key givers in
the home. It's something like seventy percent of care givers
(11:26):
in the home of family members. And we have a
support group four ke givers. We meet once every two weeks,
and one of the key give us a couple of
a couple of months ago said something so profound. Both
her parents have Alzheimer's and the daughter she does the
errand she makes the food, she goes to the ATM machine,
(11:47):
but she does everything that she needs that the parents
are asking of her. And one afternoon she just turned around,
she said, I am not your robot mom. Can you
imagine that what she had to go through it to
get to that point where she said, I am not
your robot mom. I need to take care of myself.
(12:07):
I mean that it's so for me that it's so
heartbreak to be diminished in such a way by her
own parents, and to think about the suffering of the
parents too with Alzheimer's. You know that obviously they were
loving parents at one point, because she's taking care of them.
But that kind of shift in relationships is so important.
(12:29):
Coach was speaking of the relationships from these doctors that
come into the profession hearts open, wanting to serve, wanting
to do the best that they can, and slowly turn
into these not all but of course slowly turned into
these workhorses that go home and their relationships with their
family changed, parent fall apart. We're in the middle of
(12:52):
a huge crisis. It reminds me of just that that
reductive binary that we applied to all aspects of being human, right,
that if you are called to be of service, you
must be at service to your own detriment forever and ever, amen. Right,
And that there is no time culturally speaking, socially speaking,
(13:12):
or in the workplace, there's no time for you to
say I need a break, I need to stop. We
don't support that. Instead, we come in and we say like, well,
you got into this for a reason, and you need
to draw on your passion for this so that you
can stay resilient. Or in terms of a caregiver and
the home a family member, it's like drawing the love
that you had for them and give back and give back.
(13:32):
So this is all something that that is a really
big topic. We're going to go to a quick break
and we're going to come back and I bet we're
going to talk more about it. Welcome back, everybody. That
reductive binary of human nous, right that you are supposed
(13:54):
to give and give and give and give and give
and give and give and say thank you for being
depleted like that, that really messes up so many things.
I think that's one of the reasons why we've been
really thinking about language. And you know, we have a
habit of talking about caregivers, right, so it makes this
one person just giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, It's kind
(14:19):
of almost like a machine. And so we've been really
reflecting on language and really moving from caregiver to care
partner because I feel like in many ways that that
is actually moving to centering generosity, which for us is
a different way of thinking about care. If we think
(14:41):
about generosity, which is giving and receiving equally, so we're
actually nourishing ourselves. And if we're not actually including ourselves
in the circle of care, then what kind of care
we offer. We're the agent, We're the one so coming
to the bedside or the zoom side, whatever it is
(15:05):
to show up. If we're not nourishing ourselves, we're just
bringing that depletion to the relationship. Yeah, I mean again
with this, keig keig. Of the support groups that we have,
they come in for the you know, it's an hour
and a half of being together and you'll have a
group of say eight or ten people with one commonality.
(15:28):
I'm exhausted. I don't know how much longer I can
do this. Even often is voiced, I love my mom,
I love my dad, but it's time. It's been sick
for so long. And I hate to say this, but
if they died, it would be a huge relief for
me and my family, and I love them so much.
(15:50):
But this is unbearable. And within twenty four seven and
I'm exhausted, and they'll be And you know, without a blame,
the rest of the group, we're saying, yeah, I understand
the relief, the relief. So this is you know, this
is also a huge, huge question that we have. What
(16:12):
are we doing to take care care partners? And you know,
very little, yeah, very little. We share that same approach.
We're telling the truth about it is the most powerful
act we have currently available right, because we're so often
rushing people out of their exhaustion, or speaking their tiredness
(16:35):
or their irritation right, reminding people to be resilient, all
of these things that we do. And so even just
that ability or the welcoming of the truth in that
situation does something I also I wonder about. You know,
we're speaking about family caregivers. This same sort of deficit
of generosity shows up in all of the caregiving professions.
(16:55):
So how do we start talking to you know, the
social worker at the hospital or the internist who just
they can't take a moment to be generous with themselves,
They can't ask their colleagues to be generous with them
and take care of each other, because we're all working
from such such a deep deficit that like, there is
effort involved in caring for yourself. And I can hear
(17:17):
the frustration and so many people I speak with and
here from. I don't have the energy to figure out
what I need to do to take care of myself.
And this is yet another another one of those unsolvable
challenges here, what do we do there? I don't know
that I quite buy into that we teach doctors not care,
(17:37):
you know, what they'll come, because they'll come in that statement,
I don't have time and a time to rush my
you know, to see you know, fifteen patients in a
hour whatever, say, actually know what it takes? One minute?
Stands still, where are your feet there on the floor,
ground yourself, take a breath. I am hearing this moment.
(18:01):
In this moment, I'm giving myself permission to stop, and
it could take one minute. We stay. Three minutes is preferable,
but one minute will do it. Before I go to
the next patient, to the next encounter. It's just and
then moving on. That could mount up to say, I
don't know, it's thirty minutes a day. So it's for
(18:23):
thirty minutes of your day. You've stopped, you've noticed what's
happening in your body, you've noticed what's happening to your breath,
and you've come back to center. So people often think
that you have to meditate, it's gonna be thirty minutes
and I don't have time. Well they don't for the
most part. One minute. Everyone has. I love that, thank you.
(18:45):
That's something that I try to practice, and even I
forget that. We get into that cycle of depletion and think, oh,
crap right, like, oh, this means that I need to
make myself healthy food, which means I need to find
time to go to the grocery store and make sure
that I get this and this, and I have to
come home and then the dog needs this. That sort
of rapid cycling of the mind that says, I can't,
(19:06):
I can't, I can't, I can't, And it really is
that brief, one minute of connection. One of the things
when I when I speak at hospitals back when we
used to do things in person, when I speak at
hospitals and very often speaking to nurses who see a
lot of death and suffering and they don't have time to,
you know, have a decompression session with their colleagues, to
(19:26):
talk about how hard it was to watch that kid die.
What can we do, Like, what's the medicine that we
need in there? It's that moment of grounding and centering
you spoke about, and a moment of connection, whether that's
with our own selves or with the people around us.
And that's like, you know, I can't do it now
because I'm nobody will see me on air. But the
(19:46):
thing that I often encourage people in those fast paced
environments to do is put one hand on their heart
and make eye contact with somebody split second. There is
something so medicinal in that commune acknowledgement of the moment,
even if that's all you have time for. Just as
important is to remember that this moment of stopping and
(20:09):
grounding one so doesn't have to be limited to the
our work hours. We can do this on our day off,
we can do this on a weekend if anyone has
a weekend. But to be able to just in the
midst of enjoyment, in the midst of shopping with our
favorite things, looking at the tomatoes, whatever it is, to
be able to go, and that trains us, trains the
(20:32):
mind to come to stands, to stop. So I wouldn't
just concentrate totally on the work environment, also in the
whole environment, hiking, whatever it is. Just take a moment here,
and it's like a moment of sabbath, you know, of
actually taking a moment to be at one with where
you are. And many of us think, you know that
(20:54):
that whole thing about self care and self care at
that's and kind of manicure, watch Netflix or what ever
that is, and all those things could be fun. But
I think that how do we make time to not
do even if it's that moment that we're talking about,
you know, And I was thinking about nurses too, and
how Da and I were on a impatient oncology you know,
(21:19):
which you know mostly is the people are many of
them will die, and when they died, you know, there
was just this accumulative trauma on the staff because people
love these people, and people said, we don't have time
to do one more when I have time to do anything,
and we realized, like what we do, Actually we have
(21:39):
three minutes. We can get in a circle and say
this person has died, and what did you miss about them?
What did you love about them? And everyone world, Yeah,
everyone can say one thing, and it was so healing.
We often are investing in habits that are depleting more
(22:02):
than we're investing in habits that actually are nourishing. So
to me, it's also about how do we just get conscious.
And that's one of the things that I'm just loving
about our fellows is that they're learning about how to
undo and to remember what they care about most. And
(22:25):
then that's one thing is awareness, but then the crucial
thing is learning how to put it into action. So
seeing them really changing, like learning to look at their
partner in the eyes, learning to look at their children,
learning to look at themselves in the mirror, like who's there,
(22:45):
you know. And it's so beautiful to see them actually changing.
And but I think that change only happens when we
crossed the threshold of awareness. We all kind of know
what's off. But it's amazing to see when people say,
I know it's off, and I'm going to practice and
(23:06):
not be good at making a new group so excited.
I love that those those creating habits that actually feed you.
I think divorcing that like I I hear the things
that you're suggesting in the things that you're saying, and
I can hear people sort of saying, but that's not
(23:27):
going to fix anything. What like sort of that collapsed
despair and despondency, like what is this one overly simple
tool going to do about the reality of this life
and the death and the suffering and the constant fatigue
in the exhaustion. And it's sort of that you know,
Davy and Goliath moment, what do I have? And I
(23:47):
love how you framed that as like try it and
see try it and see this is an experiment. It's
going to wake you up to the reality of your
life and the real acts suffering around you, and the
reality of the suffering of the world. And it may
spark some moment of what can I do? What can
(24:12):
I do when I take the attention totally away from myself?
What can I do to change the situation the hospital?
How do I advocate for myself? How do I advocate
for the for the staff? Do I advocate sometimes for
the patient, so it's not so self centric that one
(24:33):
minute may evoke a moment of clarity, and it may
be you know what, I don't need this bullshit. I'm
out of here. I need to take care of myself.
I'm done with this ship. I'm done with being overtired,
I'm being dumbly being under paid, I'm done with being
treated like a robot. To use that way again, or
(24:54):
maybe you know what. I love my job. I love
this job. I just need to focus on that minute,
in that moment of clarity, when I realized I've exhausted it. Yeah,
I'm so exhausted. How can I get help my husband,
from my wife, from my from my kids, just one thing?
(25:16):
So I don't buy that the one minute stopping. Well
not it's not about fixing anything. It's about being aware.
So much in this world we cannot fix that, we
can be aware of it. And what do we do
with that awareness? Exactly? We can change the world. And
that that complaint, Oh, that's not gonna work. Ooh, that's
(25:42):
you know, like it's so popular, right, and you know,
we hear that I tried that. I tried that, I
tried it. I tried it once. You know. It just
reminds me of this story where this guy goes up
to this meditation teacher, Jack Martfield in the airport. It's
like you're Jack Garnfield and they're in the Miami Airport
and he's like, I happened to be and he said,
(26:03):
you know, I went to something about meditation with you,
like thirty years ago. And he's like, oh, how was
that And he's like it was horrible, didn't work. He's like,
but the funniest thing I was on the gurney going
in for open heart surgery and suddenly that was the
only thing that made sense. And I'm so grateful, like
(26:25):
I was able to come back to myself. So I
think that there's something so amazing about our lack of
receptivity to change. We resist change, we resist death, we
resist actually reality of how things are changing, and how
do we just in some ways like have a bit
(26:47):
of playfulness around that voice of like it's not gonna work.
It's like, I hear you grumpy, you know, I hear
you jaded part I hear you, I see you, I
love view and step out aside little time sharing the psyche. Yeah,
(27:09):
it's such a popular voice, you know, that kind of
dissenting of change because we're so in some ways addicted
to our suffering. In some ways, that's a voice of
depletion that I have nothing in me to try these things,
these things can't possibly work. That is seeing that voice
as a voice of depletion. M. We've been talking so
(27:31):
much about caregivers and showing up in the moments and
the power of that telling the truth to yourself and
telling the truth to others. So, as educators and as practitioners,
if you had sort of okay, one succinct, sort of
pathy message that you wanted to give to other educators
(27:51):
and other practitioners, what do you think what do you
wish other educators and practitioners would know? Either about grief
or exhaustion or telling the truth? What do you wish
they would know? You can't put it all in one bucket.
There's no succinct answer, there's no same answer for each person.
Grief is unique to each of us. We all do
(28:13):
it differently. We're all grieving differently for different things. Oftentimes,
you know, people are thinking they've lost a partner or child,
or we could be grieving for the loss of a dog,
the loss of any pet, for the loss of any animal.
Grieving can be the loss of the job, you know,
the loss of a home. So we can't always assume
(28:33):
that there's like one pat answer, one pat recommendation to
deal with grief. So for me, the pithy if you
like to use that word, is take a look. What
is it really about? Remembering that a moment or a
period of grief can touching to so many other grief experiences.
(28:53):
You know, it's like it's the domino effect. It's like
the my cat died and I'm direct on beyond beyond
sadness and has realized, why am I thinking about my mom?
Why am I thinking about X, Y and Z? Why
am I thinking about that? I haven't processed my grief
from twenty years ago. So how do I say to
(29:16):
someone you know, recognize the grief of what it is
in this moment, and recognize the grief of what else
it could be. It's not always want, it's not always
so you have to not get stuck in some idea.
Who I agree. I think that makes sense for grief
in our own lives and also as educators and those
(29:39):
who show up to serve people who are in really
difficult times of their lives, is to wander into it
and be curious, rather than thinking we know all of
the answers or that there are any answer. So I
think that's a really beautiful place for us to sort
of come full circle with the beginning of our conversation
into this conversation about curiosity and experimenta with what it
(30:01):
means to be fully human and fully here even in
the moments when you don't feel like you can be
fully here. Friends, thank you so much for being here.
I'm going to link to all of the places that
people can find you, and the fellowship and all those things,
but tell our listeners right now where they can find
you individually and collectively in anything else you need them
to know. Before we get into our questions to carry
(30:23):
with you after the break. So the New York and
Center for Contemplative Carry can find us at zencare dot
org and at New York Zen Center at New York
Zen Center for Instagram and Coach and Paley Ellison at
Coach and Pale Elison for Instagram and Toto Campbell Zerogy.
(30:47):
Applications for the fellowship open soon. For the Contemplative Medicine
Fellowship are currently open is open enrollment, and so we're
already filling up for the next co ward. And we
have a podcast it's called Send Care and you can
find an Apple podcasts oh and our books Awake Up,
(31:09):
the Bedside, Contemplative Teachings and Petative and End of Life
Care and my book Cold Hearted, Slowed Down, Help Out,
Wake Up. Both of those books can be found anywhere
that books are sold excellent. Each week I leave you
(31:31):
with questions to carry with you until we meet again.
It's part of that whole This awkward stuff gets easier
with practice thing. But this week we are not wasting
an opportunity to hear from our guests with their questions
to carry with you. So one of the things that
I invite you to do this week is to reflect
on what else is true? And so when you find
(31:54):
yourself caught in some thought about a sadness or an
anger or grief, just to invite the question what else
is true? For me? This is a way to learn
how to widen out, not to bypass anything, not to
deny anything, but to actually allow ourselves to ground ourselves
(32:18):
right where we are. I remember walking down the street
the other day just feeling so sorrowful and looking up
in the sky into seeing the birds flying above and
the branches, the bare branches framing the sky like that
was also true, So that finding how do you drop
(32:40):
down and widen out and find what else is true?
Does it really overused sentence or cliche? Wake up and
smell the coffee. I like to ask you to wake
up and smell and notice and see whatever is in
front of it. You're walking down the street, a lady
(33:04):
or gentleman with a stroller and baby, or walking towards you,
notice that moment of look at that beautiful baby, or
that that baby doesn't stop crying. Why isn't a parent
taking care of it? Just notice? Noticed dogsh it on
the sidewalk, Notice the beauty of the buzz are beginning
(33:24):
to appear now in the spring or whatever the time
of year is. But to really notice what is in
front of you from your home, on the way to work.
What is it like to step onto the bus, the
transition from the sidewalk to the bus, the people on
the bus who want to bank, notice them. Don't get
stuck in your iPhone, your pots or whatever it is.
(33:48):
Be fully awake to your life, to each moment of
your life, because it's short. In my meditations, I say
each in breath is bringing to the body, and each
outbreath is a small day. The last thing we do
it's die on the ExHAM. When we die, the last
(34:08):
thing we do is exhile. So on each breath. Where
if you are in your life right now, I want
to know how to send your questions into me to
maybe answer in the future show. This show is nothing
(34:30):
without your questions. It is literally a Q and a show.
I use your questions to talk about the wider world.
So if you have a question, I guarantee that at
least a thousand other people have the same question. There's
no empirical evidence for that number, so don't quote me.
But I'm sure whatever you're wrestling with, other people are
wrestling with it too. So bring me your questions, your
(34:52):
clinical questions, your frustrations about caregiving or life, anything that
you're really wrestling with, and you could use a script
for let's talk it out. Call us at three to
three six four three three seven six eight and leave
a voicemail. If you missed it, you can find that
number in the show notes or visit us at Megan
Divine dot c O. If you'd rather send an email,
(35:13):
you can do that right on the website Megan Divine
dot c O. We want to hear from you this show,
this world needs your questions. Together, we can make things
better even when we can't make them right. You know
how most people are going to scan through their podcast
app looking for a new thing. They're going to see
(35:34):
the show description for hereafter and think, I don't want
to talk about that stuff. Well, here's where you come
in your reviews. Let people know it really isn't all
that bad. In here. We talk about heavy stuff, but
it's in the service of making things better for everyone.
So everyone needs to listen. Spread the word in your workplace,
in your social world, on social media and click through
(35:54):
to leave a review, Subscribe to the show, download episodes,
and send in your question want more Here After? Grief
education doesn't just belong to end of life issues. Life
is full of losses, from everyday disappointments to events that
clearly divide life into before and after. Learning how to
(36:14):
talk about all that without cliches or platitudes or simplistic
think positive posters is an important skill for everyone. Find trainings, workshops,
books and resources for every human trying to make their
way in the world after something goes horribly wrong at
Megan Divine dot c. O Hereafter with Megan Divine is
(36:35):
written and produced by me Megan Divine. Executive producer is
Amy Brown, co produced by Kimberly Cowen, Tanya Jujas and
Elizabeth Fossio, Edited by Houston Tilly, and studio support by
Chris Urin. Music provided by Wave Crush
This is here After, and I'm your host, Megan Divine.
Each week we tackle big questions from therapists, caregivers, and
other helpful folks that let us explore how to show
up after life goes horribly wrong. This week showing up
to the full catastrophe of caregiving personally and professionally with
incredibly special guests Cohen, Paley Ellison, and Robert Chodo Campbell,
(00:24):
founders of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care.
Don't miss this one, friends, We'll be right back after
this first break. Before we get started, one quick note, Well,
I hope you find a lot of useful information in
our time here together. This show is not a substitute
(00:45):
for skilled support with a licensed mental health provider or
for professional supervision related to your work. Hey, friends, I'm
going to keep my intro here brief today, at least
brief from me, because I want to use all the
time we possibly have available for you to hear from
both of our guests on the show today, two people
I love and admire and respect so much, Coach and
(01:07):
Paley Ellison and Choto. Robert Campbell Coach and Paley Ellison
is an author, Zen teacher, young and psychotherapist and certified
chaplaincy educator. He and Robert Choto Campbell co founded the
New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, which offers contemplative
approaches to care through education, personal caregiving, and Zen practice.
Through the Center, they provide a lot of resources and education,
(01:29):
but I know them best to their Contemplative Medicine Fellowship,
a year long training for physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician
assistants who want to lead a change in the culture
of care. You can probably tell that I am reading
that directly off of their website because I want to
make sure I describe it correctly. But there are two
of the kindest, most thoughtful people I have ever met,
and I know a lot of people. But enough about me.
(01:51):
Let's get to our guest, Cohen Choto. Thank you so
much for being here. It's a delight to be here.
It's such a delight to be here, especially for me.
I get to sit next to my husband of twenty years.
I get to be in front of all your beautiful faces.
Can believe, Tanya and Megan. It's just a beautiful, beautiful,
(02:13):
beautiful way to begin my day. I treat the afternoon
time is elastic. I'm already getting that face. It's Toto.
What are you talking about? This is supposed to be
a brief intro, and he's doing that thing where he
just you know, you roll your your hands off screen,
off screen, roller hands off screen. You can have unbelievable
(02:39):
what's your intro moment? God, I'm so glad to have
you so coaching. The last time that you and I
were in a gathering together it was probably we've probably
done it since, but it was like April, sort of
height of the early pandemic in New York City, and
I remember it was an online event, obviously pandemic, and
(02:59):
you were in middle of speaking, and suddenly the sirens
behind you sort of drowned out your voice, and you
just stopped and closed your eyes, and you said so
sweetly to the audience, every siren is a chance to practice.
And you took a beat, and then you just rolled
along with whatever you had been saying about being present
(03:22):
at the bedside of the suffering or the dying, or
those facing difficult medical stories. It was such a beautiful moment.
And I actually told our producers here that when I
said that, I was probably gonna cry because I do
cry every single episode because I'm a human with feelings.
But that moment, for me really encapsulates what the two
of you do. Right, just when humanity intersects with the
(03:45):
moment that we're in, that's really where the two of
you shine. I don't really have a question there, but like,
that's what I feel about you two. One of the
other things that comes to mind when we hear the
sirens is we often will say to our students or
members in the zendom at that time, you know, let's
(04:06):
all just hope that whoever is in an ambulance gets
the hospital in time. Let's hope that the technicians in
the ambulance can do everything they can to save this life.
And when the fire engines go by, it's the same thing.
Let's hope to get there on time to save members
in trouble. Yeah, it's just that that moment of connection, right.
(04:28):
I think I picked up from you saying that in
caution that one assigmon goes by, I just like close
my eyes for a second and say good luck for everyone, right,
the person in the vehicle, the family and friends that
surround that, the people who are driving that vehicle, and
the people at the medical facilities who will receive them right,
all of those concentric rings in that moment. I think
(04:51):
that what's so striking is that our life is filled
with what are sometimes called interruptions and annoyances or you know,
the fly and ointment or whatever it is. And whether
it's a siren or you know, someone not responding to
(05:11):
you in the way that you wished it was, or
get receiving a diagnosis that you wish you didn't receive,
or someone has died that you wish didn't die. To me,
the opportunity is always saying, well, this is what's happening,
and how do I actually receive it and welcome what's here,
(05:32):
whether it's a siren or a whale from our own chest,
because we're just missing and yearning for someone who has died,
you know, thinking about you know, a friend of ours, Stanley,
and when he was in the grocery store aisle of
picking up a tomato, and he burst into tears because
(05:52):
the smell of the tomato reminded him of his wife
who had died twenty years before. And there's no inter option,
and after he wept, he just said, look at this tomato.
I love what you said about concentric circles, because when
we're with someone who is dying or someone who is
(06:14):
suffering in the hospital, we often think that all the
attention and usually ninety percent of the attention should be
focused on the patient of the person in the hospital,
but we forget the speaking of concentric circles, we forget
about the care givers. We forget about the nurses, aids,
the home health days, the doctors, the janitor that brings
(06:37):
you know, the cleans the room, the person that brings
the food to the room, as well as all the
family members. Of course, we tend to forget all the
people involved in one patient's care. So I love that
idea in the illustration that you're bringing up concentric circles
and they just continue to ripple out. And if you consider,
for instance, the home health daid or the nurses a
(07:00):
system in a nursing home who has maybe two three
hours of travel to get to where they need to go,
how does that affect ripple out into the family When
usually as a female, when she gets home after taking
four bus rides or two bus rides or a subway
in a bus ride, and she's exhausted and she has
(07:22):
to make dinner, and she has to take care of
the kids. So it's not just about the one person
and one identified patients, shall we say, So that concentric
circle is really important to keep in mind. That's what's occurring.
And it brings up from me this idea that invisible
and not invisible web of helpers that we just expect
(07:43):
them to keep helping, right? Would we just expect them
to sort of be machinery of help, right, or or
helpful machines and just keep going? And I love what
you said. They're total like often women in these positions
and they come home and they have to serve more
and they have to keep going. And certainly now like
none of this stuff with the pressure on the health
(08:04):
care professions, none of this stuff is new. But seeing
all of this trauma and stress and death and loss
and suffering on top of old systemic fractures, like this
is really what I wanted to have you here with
us today to talk about. Like I think in my
in my notes too, I was like, I feel like
we need to have a conversation inside the apocalypse for
(08:26):
those networks of helpers, the therapists and the home health
aids and the people who serve the food and work
in the kitchens, and the doctors and the social workers,
and what we keep asking them to bear and how
do we even talk about not being able to bear
that anymore? And honestly, you know, normally, when I have
a guest on the show, I sort through the listener
(08:47):
questions and I find things that intersect with the guests
so that we can open up those conversations. And this time,
as I was preparing, I just found myself saying, like,
I don't know what to say about this stuff. I
don't know what to say about the compound weight on
the I don't know communities, legions, legions maybe of people
we lean on for help, And where are they supposed
(09:10):
to lean for help when we keep looking for them
to show up and serve and show up and serve
and show up and serve and not stop. This is
something that we hold so dear to our hearts, you know.
And I think that one of the things that we've
been concerned about these folks for a long time. You know,
Chad and I have been teaching, in particular physicians for
(09:34):
fifteen years and working with them and really figuring out
how what's useful, how do we learn how to drop
into ourselves. And in particular, physicians, you know, have the
highest rates of suicide, divorce, drug and alcohol abuse as
well as one of the unique things is that the
(09:54):
most people leave that profession of being of doctor. And
so we've been deeply concerned and then when the pandemic hit,
we realized that we needed to do something that we
needed to meet that need, and so we created this
Fellowship in Contemplative Medicine, this year long fellowship for physicians,
(10:19):
nurse practitioners and physician assistance to really address the roots
of suffering, what the causes of their suffering are, how
to pivot and what is the path? And so it's
based on the for noble truths of the Buddha and
really looking at which is such a rare thing, is
(10:41):
looking at our intra personal lives, like how are we
inside of ourselves and our inner personal like how are
our relationships going? Like what are we actually doing when
we get home? And then you know, a third of
it is also clinical work, but that really, in some
ways I feel like the call of this time has
(11:02):
been part of the call of the medicine of this
time is to remember we only have one life. You know,
there's so much focus on work life balance, and but
really we have one life, and how are we in
that life. We want to come back just for a
moment to the importance of noticing the key givers in
the home. It's something like seventy percent of care givers
(11:26):
in the home of family members. And we have a
support group four ke givers. We meet once every two weeks,
and one of the key give us a couple of
a couple of months ago said something so profound. Both
her parents have Alzheimer's and the daughter she does the
errand she makes the food, she goes to the ATM machine,
(11:47):
but she does everything that she needs that the parents
are asking of her. And one afternoon she just turned around,
she said, I am not your robot mom. Can you
imagine that what she had to go through it to
get to that point where she said, I am not
your robot mom. I need to take care of myself.
(12:07):
I mean that it's so for me that it's so
heartbreak to be diminished in such a way by her
own parents, and to think about the suffering of the
parents too with Alzheimer's. You know that obviously they were
loving parents at one point, because she's taking care of them.
But that kind of shift in relationships is so important.
(12:29):
Coach was speaking of the relationships from these doctors that
come into the profession hearts open, wanting to serve, wanting
to do the best that they can, and slowly turn
into these not all but of course slowly turned into
these workhorses that go home and their relationships with their
family changed, parent fall apart. We're in the middle of
(12:52):
a huge crisis. It reminds me of just that that
reductive binary that we applied to all aspects of being human, right,
that if you are called to be of service, you
must be at service to your own detriment forever and ever, amen. Right,
And that there is no time culturally speaking, socially speaking,
(13:12):
or in the workplace, there's no time for you to
say I need a break, I need to stop. We
don't support that. Instead, we come in and we say like, well,
you got into this for a reason, and you need
to draw on your passion for this so that you
can stay resilient. Or in terms of a caregiver and
the home a family member, it's like drawing the love
that you had for them and give back and give back.
(13:32):
So this is all something that that is a really
big topic. We're going to go to a quick break
and we're going to come back and I bet we're
going to talk more about it. Welcome back, everybody. That
reductive binary of human nous, right that you are supposed
(13:54):
to give and give and give and give and give
and give and give and say thank you for being
depleted like that, that really messes up so many things.
I think that's one of the reasons why we've been
really thinking about language. And you know, we have a
habit of talking about caregivers, right, so it makes this
one person just giving, giving, giving, giving, giving, It's kind
(14:19):
of almost like a machine. And so we've been really
reflecting on language and really moving from caregiver to care
partner because I feel like in many ways that that
is actually moving to centering generosity, which for us is
a different way of thinking about care. If we think
(14:41):
about generosity, which is giving and receiving equally, so we're
actually nourishing ourselves. And if we're not actually including ourselves
in the circle of care, then what kind of care
we offer. We're the agent, We're the one so coming
to the bedside or the zoom side, whatever it is
(15:05):
to show up. If we're not nourishing ourselves, we're just
bringing that depletion to the relationship. Yeah, I mean again
with this, keig keig. Of the support groups that we have,
they come in for the you know, it's an hour
and a half of being together and you'll have a
group of say eight or ten people with one commonality.
(15:28):
I'm exhausted. I don't know how much longer I can
do this. Even often is voiced, I love my mom,
I love my dad, but it's time. It's been sick
for so long. And I hate to say this, but
if they died, it would be a huge relief for
me and my family, and I love them so much.
(15:50):
But this is unbearable. And within twenty four seven and
I'm exhausted, and they'll be And you know, without a blame,
the rest of the group, we're saying, yeah, I understand
the relief, the relief. So this is you know, this
is also a huge, huge question that we have. What
(16:12):
are we doing to take care care partners? And you know,
very little, yeah, very little. We share that same approach.
We're telling the truth about it is the most powerful
act we have currently available right, because we're so often
rushing people out of their exhaustion, or speaking their tiredness
(16:35):
or their irritation right, reminding people to be resilient, all
of these things that we do. And so even just
that ability or the welcoming of the truth in that
situation does something I also I wonder about. You know,
we're speaking about family caregivers. This same sort of deficit
of generosity shows up in all of the caregiving professions.
(16:55):
So how do we start talking to you know, the
social worker at the hospital or the internist who just
they can't take a moment to be generous with themselves,
They can't ask their colleagues to be generous with them
and take care of each other, because we're all working
from such such a deep deficit that like, there is
effort involved in caring for yourself. And I can hear
(17:17):
the frustration and so many people I speak with and
here from. I don't have the energy to figure out
what I need to do to take care of myself.
And this is yet another another one of those unsolvable
challenges here, what do we do there? I don't know
that I quite buy into that we teach doctors not care,
(17:37):
you know, what they'll come, because they'll come in that statement,
I don't have time and a time to rush my
you know, to see you know, fifteen patients in a
hour whatever, say, actually know what it takes? One minute?
Stands still, where are your feet there on the floor,
ground yourself, take a breath. I am hearing this moment.
(18:01):
In this moment, I'm giving myself permission to stop, and
it could take one minute. We stay. Three minutes is preferable,
but one minute will do it. Before I go to
the next patient, to the next encounter. It's just and
then moving on. That could mount up to say, I
don't know, it's thirty minutes a day. So it's for
(18:23):
thirty minutes of your day. You've stopped, you've noticed what's
happening in your body, you've noticed what's happening to your breath,
and you've come back to center. So people often think
that you have to meditate, it's gonna be thirty minutes
and I don't have time. Well they don't for the
most part. One minute. Everyone has. I love that, thank you.
(18:45):
That's something that I try to practice, and even I
forget that. We get into that cycle of depletion and think, oh,
crap right, like, oh, this means that I need to
make myself healthy food, which means I need to find
time to go to the grocery store and make sure
that I get this and this, and I have to
come home and then the dog needs this. That sort
of rapid cycling of the mind that says, I can't,
(19:06):
I can't, I can't, I can't, And it really is
that brief, one minute of connection. One of the things
when I when I speak at hospitals back when we
used to do things in person, when I speak at
hospitals and very often speaking to nurses who see a
lot of death and suffering and they don't have time to,
you know, have a decompression session with their colleagues, to
(19:26):
talk about how hard it was to watch that kid die.
What can we do, Like, what's the medicine that we
need in there? It's that moment of grounding and centering
you spoke about, and a moment of connection, whether that's
with our own selves or with the people around us.
And that's like, you know, I can't do it now
because I'm nobody will see me on air. But the
(19:46):
thing that I often encourage people in those fast paced
environments to do is put one hand on their heart
and make eye contact with somebody split second. There is
something so medicinal in that commune acknowledgement of the moment,
even if that's all you have time for. Just as
important is to remember that this moment of stopping and
(20:09):
grounding one so doesn't have to be limited to the
our work hours. We can do this on our day off,
we can do this on a weekend if anyone has
a weekend. But to be able to just in the
midst of enjoyment, in the midst of shopping with our
favorite things, looking at the tomatoes, whatever it is, to
be able to go, and that trains us, trains the
(20:32):
mind to come to stands, to stop. So I wouldn't
just concentrate totally on the work environment, also in the
whole environment, hiking, whatever it is. Just take a moment here,
and it's like a moment of sabbath, you know, of
actually taking a moment to be at one with where
you are. And many of us think, you know that
(20:54):
that whole thing about self care and self care at
that's and kind of manicure, watch Netflix or what ever
that is, and all those things could be fun. But
I think that how do we make time to not
do even if it's that moment that we're talking about,
you know, And I was thinking about nurses too, and
how Da and I were on a impatient oncology you know,
(21:19):
which you know mostly is the people are many of
them will die, and when they died, you know, there
was just this accumulative trauma on the staff because people
love these people, and people said, we don't have time
to do one more when I have time to do anything,
and we realized, like what we do, Actually we have
(21:39):
three minutes. We can get in a circle and say
this person has died, and what did you miss about them?
What did you love about them? And everyone world, Yeah,
everyone can say one thing, and it was so healing.
We often are investing in habits that are depleting more
(22:02):
than we're investing in habits that actually are nourishing. So
to me, it's also about how do we just get conscious.
And that's one of the things that I'm just loving
about our fellows is that they're learning about how to
undo and to remember what they care about most. And
(22:25):
then that's one thing is awareness, but then the crucial
thing is learning how to put it into action. So
seeing them really changing, like learning to look at their
partner in the eyes, learning to look at their children,
learning to look at themselves in the mirror, like who's there,
(22:45):
you know. And it's so beautiful to see them actually changing.
And but I think that change only happens when we
crossed the threshold of awareness. We all kind of know
what's off. But it's amazing to see when people say,
I know it's off, and I'm going to practice and
(23:06):
not be good at making a new group so excited.
I love that those those creating habits that actually feed you.
I think divorcing that like I I hear the things
that you're suggesting in the things that you're saying, and
I can hear people sort of saying, but that's not
(23:27):
going to fix anything. What like sort of that collapsed
despair and despondency, like what is this one overly simple
tool going to do about the reality of this life
and the death and the suffering and the constant fatigue
in the exhaustion. And it's sort of that you know,
Davy and Goliath moment, what do I have? And I
(23:47):
love how you framed that as like try it and
see try it and see this is an experiment. It's
going to wake you up to the reality of your
life and the real acts suffering around you, and the
reality of the suffering of the world. And it may
spark some moment of what can I do? What can
(24:12):
I do when I take the attention totally away from myself?
What can I do to change the situation the hospital?
How do I advocate for myself? How do I advocate
for the for the staff? Do I advocate sometimes for
the patient, so it's not so self centric that one
(24:33):
minute may evoke a moment of clarity, and it may
be you know what, I don't need this bullshit. I'm
out of here. I need to take care of myself.
I'm done with this ship. I'm done with being overtired,
I'm being dumbly being under paid, I'm done with being
treated like a robot. To use that way again, or
(24:54):
maybe you know what. I love my job. I love
this job. I just need to focus on that minute,
in that moment of clarity, when I realized I've exhausted it. Yeah,
I'm so exhausted. How can I get help my husband,
from my wife, from my from my kids, just one thing?
(25:16):
So I don't buy that the one minute stopping. Well
not it's not about fixing anything. It's about being aware.
So much in this world we cannot fix that, we
can be aware of it. And what do we do
with that awareness? Exactly? We can change the world. And
that that complaint, Oh, that's not gonna work. Ooh, that's
(25:42):
you know, like it's so popular, right, and you know,
we hear that I tried that. I tried that, I
tried it. I tried it once. You know. It just
reminds me of this story where this guy goes up
to this meditation teacher, Jack Martfield in the airport. It's
like you're Jack Garnfield and they're in the Miami Airport
and he's like, I happened to be and he said,
(26:03):
you know, I went to something about meditation with you,
like thirty years ago. And he's like, oh, how was
that And he's like it was horrible, didn't work. He's like,
but the funniest thing I was on the gurney going
in for open heart surgery and suddenly that was the
only thing that made sense. And I'm so grateful, like
(26:25):
I was able to come back to myself. So I
think that there's something so amazing about our lack of
receptivity to change. We resist change, we resist death, we
resist actually reality of how things are changing, and how
do we just in some ways like have a bit
(26:47):
of playfulness around that voice of like it's not gonna work.
It's like, I hear you grumpy, you know, I hear
you jaded part I hear you, I see you, I
love view and step out aside little time sharing the psyche. Yeah,
(27:09):
it's such a popular voice, you know, that kind of
dissenting of change because we're so in some ways addicted
to our suffering. In some ways, that's a voice of
depletion that I have nothing in me to try these things,
these things can't possibly work. That is seeing that voice
as a voice of depletion. M. We've been talking so
(27:31):
much about caregivers and showing up in the moments and
the power of that telling the truth to yourself and
telling the truth to others. So, as educators and as practitioners,
if you had sort of okay, one succinct, sort of
pathy message that you wanted to give to other educators
(27:51):
and other practitioners, what do you think what do you
wish other educators and practitioners would know? Either about grief
or exhaustion or telling the truth? What do you wish
they would know? You can't put it all in one bucket.
There's no succinct answer, there's no same answer for each person.
Grief is unique to each of us. We all do
(28:13):
it differently. We're all grieving differently for different things. Oftentimes,
you know, people are thinking they've lost a partner or child,
or we could be grieving for the loss of a dog,
the loss of any pet, for the loss of any animal.
Grieving can be the loss of the job, you know,
the loss of a home. So we can't always assume
(28:33):
that there's like one pat answer, one pat recommendation to
deal with grief. So for me, the pithy if you
like to use that word, is take a look. What
is it really about? Remembering that a moment or a
period of grief can touching to so many other grief experiences.
(28:53):
You know, it's like it's the domino effect. It's like
the my cat died and I'm direct on beyond beyond
sadness and has realized, why am I thinking about my mom?
Why am I thinking about X, Y and Z? Why
am I thinking about that? I haven't processed my grief
from twenty years ago. So how do I say to
(29:16):
someone you know, recognize the grief of what it is
in this moment, and recognize the grief of what else
it could be. It's not always want, it's not always
so you have to not get stuck in some idea.
Who I agree. I think that makes sense for grief
in our own lives and also as educators and those
(29:39):
who show up to serve people who are in really
difficult times of their lives, is to wander into it
and be curious, rather than thinking we know all of
the answers or that there are any answer. So I
think that's a really beautiful place for us to sort
of come full circle with the beginning of our conversation
into this conversation about curiosity and experimenta with what it
(30:01):
means to be fully human and fully here even in
the moments when you don't feel like you can be
fully here. Friends, thank you so much for being here.
I'm going to link to all of the places that
people can find you, and the fellowship and all those things,
but tell our listeners right now where they can find
you individually and collectively in anything else you need them
to know. Before we get into our questions to carry
(30:23):
with you after the break. So the New York and
Center for Contemplative Carry can find us at zencare dot
org and at New York Zen Center at New York
Zen Center for Instagram and Coach and Paley Ellison at
Coach and Pale Elison for Instagram and Toto Campbell Zerogy.
(30:47):
Applications for the fellowship open soon. For the Contemplative Medicine
Fellowship are currently open is open enrollment, and so we're
already filling up for the next co ward. And we
have a podcast it's called Send Care and you can
find an Apple podcasts oh and our books Awake Up,
(31:09):
the Bedside, Contemplative Teachings and Petative and End of Life
Care and my book Cold Hearted, Slowed Down, Help Out,
Wake Up. Both of those books can be found anywhere
that books are sold excellent. Each week I leave you
(31:31):
with questions to carry with you until we meet again.
It's part of that whole This awkward stuff gets easier
with practice thing. But this week we are not wasting
an opportunity to hear from our guests with their questions
to carry with you. So one of the things that
I invite you to do this week is to reflect
on what else is true? And so when you find
(31:54):
yourself caught in some thought about a sadness or an
anger or grief, just to invite the question what else
is true? For me? This is a way to learn
how to widen out, not to bypass anything, not to
deny anything, but to actually allow ourselves to ground ourselves
(32:18):
right where we are. I remember walking down the street
the other day just feeling so sorrowful and looking up
in the sky into seeing the birds flying above and
the branches, the bare branches framing the sky like that
was also true, So that finding how do you drop
(32:40):
down and widen out and find what else is true?
Does it really overused sentence or cliche? Wake up and
smell the coffee. I like to ask you to wake
up and smell and notice and see whatever is in
front of it. You're walking down the street, a lady
(33:04):
or gentleman with a stroller and baby, or walking towards you,
notice that moment of look at that beautiful baby, or
that that baby doesn't stop crying. Why isn't a parent
taking care of it? Just notice? Noticed dogsh it on
the sidewalk, Notice the beauty of the buzz are beginning
(33:24):
to appear now in the spring or whatever the time
of year is. But to really notice what is in
front of you from your home, on the way to work.
What is it like to step onto the bus, the
transition from the sidewalk to the bus, the people on
the bus who want to bank, notice them. Don't get
stuck in your iPhone, your pots or whatever it is.
(33:48):
Be fully awake to your life, to each moment of
your life, because it's short. In my meditations, I say
each in breath is bringing to the body, and each
outbreath is a small day. The last thing we do
it's die on the ExHAM. When we die, the last
(34:08):
thing we do is exhile. So on each breath. Where
if you are in your life right now, I want
to know how to send your questions into me to
maybe answer in the future show. This show is nothing
(34:30):
without your questions. It is literally a Q and a show.
I use your questions to talk about the wider world.
So if you have a question, I guarantee that at
least a thousand other people have the same question. There's
no empirical evidence for that number, so don't quote me.
But I'm sure whatever you're wrestling with, other people are
wrestling with it too. So bring me your questions, your
(34:52):
clinical questions, your frustrations about caregiving or life, anything that
you're really wrestling with, and you could use a script
for let's talk it out. Call us at three to
three six four three three seven six eight and leave
a voicemail. If you missed it, you can find that
number in the show notes or visit us at Megan
Divine dot c O. If you'd rather send an email,
(35:13):
you can do that right on the website Megan Divine
dot c O. We want to hear from you this show,
this world needs your questions. Together, we can make things
better even when we can't make them right. You know
how most people are going to scan through their podcast
app looking for a new thing. They're going to see
(35:34):
the show description for hereafter and think, I don't want
to talk about that stuff. Well, here's where you come
in your reviews. Let people know it really isn't all
that bad. In here. We talk about heavy stuff, but
it's in the service of making things better for everyone.
So everyone needs to listen. Spread the word in your workplace,
in your social world, on social media and click through
(35:54):
to leave a review, Subscribe to the show, download episodes,
and send in your question want more Here After? Grief
education doesn't just belong to end of life issues. Life
is full of losses, from everyday disappointments to events that
clearly divide life into before and after. Learning how to
(36:14):
talk about all that without cliches or platitudes or simplistic
think positive posters is an important skill for everyone. Find trainings, workshops,
books and resources for every human trying to make their
way in the world after something goes horribly wrong at
Megan Divine dot c. O Hereafter with Megan Divine is
(36:35):
written and produced by me Megan Divine. Executive producer is
Amy Brown, co produced by Kimberly Cowen, Tanya Jujas and
Elizabeth Fossio, Edited by Houston Tilly, and studio support by
Chris Urin. Music provided by Wave Crush
Host
Megan Devine
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