meg hegarty - creativity and dying: communication in caring for the spirit at the end of life
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Creativity and Dying: Communication in Caring for the Spirit at the End of Life
Meg Hegarty
Illustration: Michael Leunig
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Ageing & Dying
Living fully and preparing for dying: -“the final career in life: moving towards death”
(MacKinlay E, 2006)
Time of transition: “in-between time”/liminal or thin space
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Do we recognise and hear the language with which the person’s
spirit is speaking?
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Expressions of spirit(uality)
Depend on
personality,
culture (social, religious & family),
the times in which we live,
life experiences and developmental capacities.
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Language of the spirit
Whole person - includes head, heart, gut, spirit
Embodied: dance, touch, tears, laughter, and physical symptoms
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Symbolic language
“We forget that the strongest influences upon our lives are always symbolic. Contrary to common belief, we do not respond to the actual or the concrete; we respond to what each event, relationship or feeling means to us symbolically.”
Reeves, 1999, p73
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Symbolic language
• Metaphors– Physical: “Signs, symptoms and
symbols of spiritual distress” – Heyse-Moore, ….
– Verbal: Words, phrases, stories• John’s story
– Art, music, poetry, silence, beauty
– Dreams
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Language of the spirit
Whole person - includes head, heart, gut, spirit
Embodied: dance, touch, tears,laughter, and physical symptoms.
Symbolic – image, metaphor, story – meaning
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Ritual
The place and healing creativity of ritual
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Prayer
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How do we see spiritual struggle?
Or a sense of being abandoned by God, or what gives meaning?
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Silence
Some experiences are too deep for words…
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Silence
Silence is the language of God.” - Rumi
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“Dying people in particular are often in a purgatory of routinized communication, and they crave silence.” (Halifax J, 2009, p 109)
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“To be silent enough to stay with something… without feeling so uncomfortable you have to say something or do something or change something…The longer I stayed in palliative care the less I spoke.” (Nurse 3)
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Language of the spiritWhole person - includes head, heart, gut, spiritEmbodied: dance, touch, tears, laughter,
physical symptoms...Symbolic – image, metaphor, story – meaningBeauty, nature, poetry, music, art, literature… Ritual – celebration, letting go…Prayer / meditation - awe & intimacySilenceValues-holding in compassion, living fullyStruggle AND peace, trust, letting go
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How do we hear and speak this language?
Compassionate presence and
Contemplative listening
…often in silence
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Hearing the language:3 Kinds of Listening
• Diagnostic listening - listening for
• Empathic listening – listening to
• Contemplative listening – listening with
(Byrne M, 2011)
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Contemplative listening:
“the vulnerability of listening and having no answers”
(Lunn, 1990)
“living the questions…”(Rainer Marie Rilke, 1934)
Shift from “fixing” to presence/staying with
(Hegarty et al, 2010)
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We speak this language when:
• We “live the questions” with people
• We’re present with suffering, in silence often, contemplatively and compassionately, letting go of our need to fix things, so we can be fully present
• We hear and use the dying person’s language
• We facilitate simple, meaningful rituals
• We respect & reverence struggles as much as peace
• We remember that this language is of the whole body and person, and deeper than cognitive function.
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Enabling the gifts in dying
creativity,resilience, hope,
through being held safely, listened to, heard, reverenced.
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ReferencesMargaret Byrne, 2001, lecture notes in “Care of the spirit in palliative care” postgraduate topic, Flinders University.Fischer K, 1995, Autumn Gospel. Integration
Books: New Jersey.Halifax J 2009 Being with Dying: Cultivating
Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death. Shambhala: Boston.
Hegarty M 2007 Care of the spirit that transcends religious, ideological and philosophical boundaries. Indian Journal of Palliative Care, 12(2):42-47.
Hegarty, M.M., Breaden, K.M., Swetenham, C.M. and Grbich, C.F. (2010). Learning to Work with the "Unsolvable"; Building capacity for working with refractory suffering. Journal of Palliative Care, 26(4 ), p.287-294
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Heyse-Moore LH On Spiritual Pain in the Dying. Mortality, 1 :297-315, 1996
Keen S,1990 To a Dancing God: Notes of a spiritual traveller. Harper Collins.Mackinlay E, 2006, Ageing, Spirituality and Palliative Care, p69.Mako C, Galek K, Poppito S 2006 Spiritual pain among patients with advanced cancer in palliative care. Journal of Palliative Medicine, 9(5), pp1106-1113.Nolan S, Saltmarsh P and Leget C 2011 (for EAPC Spiritual Care Taskforce))
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Rilke RM The Selected Poetry of Rainer Marie Rilke. New York: Random House Inc., 1987.Reeves P, 1999, Women’s intuition: unlocking the wisdom of the body. p73. Conari Press: Berkeley. Savage, 1996, cited in Mundle RG, 2011, The spiritual strength story in end-of-life care: two case studies. Palliative and Supportive Care, 9(4), pp420-21.PicturesMichael Leunig - slides 2 & 9,Belinda Clatworthy – slides 14, 17, Meg Hegarty – slides 5, 12, 15, 19, 23
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Points for discussion
What do we need to develop in ourselves to recognise and speak the language of the spirit effectively?
How do we learn this?
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What do we need?
• Deep reverence for the wisdom of the other’s spirit
• Ability to stay with, in the struggle• Ability to be silent, to cope with
not knowing, not fixing• Own spiritual awareness and
practice• Doing our own spiritual / inner
work (healing wounded healers)
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Spirit
• Essence• Energy / life force • Spark of the Divine / God
(known by many different names)
• Ground of Being, Deep Mystery
• Higher Self / The Self• The Human Spirit• “One closer to me than I
am to myself”
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‘Spirituality is the dynamic dimension of human life that relates to the way persons (individual and community) experience, express and/or seek meaning, purpose and transcendence, and the way they connect to the moment, to self, to others, to nature, to the significant and/or the sacred.’ - Nolan S, Saltmarsh P and Leget C, 2011
(for EAPC Spiritual Care Taskforce)
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Anam Cara
“We live in the shelter of each other.”
(Celtic wisdom)