How we care for others in life and at the end of life

"This course is having an unexpected and wonderful effect on my life. Thank you. - Jackie"

How do we show up for the people we love when they need us most? How do we help give them the space to be truly heard? How do we ask the questions to help them be truly seen?

When my mother was dying, I didn’t know how to talk to her about the stuff that really mattered.

We were lost in a medical maze. I felt helpless.

Are you caring for someone with a life-limiting illness and feel that sense of helplessness too?

Are you a health professional suffering from burnout and looking for ways to care for yourself better while caring for others? Or an individual just wishing they could do more to help care for a loved one?

Maybe you have a sense that deepening connection to the healing power of nature can play a huge role in shaping how we can care for others, in helping us care for the whole of the person, and for the soul of a person, but you need help making these ideas real?

Since my mother died I have been on an odyssey exploring the ways that throughout history and across cultures, mindfulness, compassion and nature connection have enabled us to care for ourselves, others and our world by transforming suffering, building resilience and deepening our capacity for caring for others in a deep and soulful way.

Here at Archeus I developed non-medical compassionate care training and offered it as a thought-provoking and transformational 12-week online programme called The Natural Carer in which we drew together these ideas to help people caring for people at the end of life.

The course delved deeply into compassionate and contemplative care, we looked at how nature, art, music can feed the soul and provide comfort for carers and patients alike. We drew on ancient wisdom and we looked at the practicalities of the contemporary care context. We learned how to open up space and communication so that a person is able to express the things that really matter, and help others see the things that bring them comfort.

Ultimately, with this training we bring death and dying back to its natural place in life and living. We see ourselves as part of Nature and supported by Nature, in life and after death.

Students have included hospice nurses, therapists, healers, people caring for loved ones at home, funeral directors and people wishing to enter the growing field of end-of-life doulas and death midwifery.

“The way you have cared for family and friends at the end of life by gently linking them to nature, has been profound. As a nurse I have seen just how special it is for everyone in the room" - Olivia

I loved creating and running this training. It was intense and beautiful and deep bonds formed with all who went through it…… but.

Yes, for me there was a ‘but’. Ultimately it is family, loved ones, friends, those that know and care for the person as their death draws near that would benefit the most from the ideas and techniques taught in this training. And also, the dying person themselves [note to self - we all die so really this is about all of us right now] has much they can draw from in the materials to help them figure out their own way through this path. So it didn’t seem right to me to keep the content behind gates that only opened at certain times of the year. I wanted it to be more accessible. Afterall, death doesn’t happen to a timetable.

I ended up teaching my last intake of the Natural Carer in May 2022. I gave myself time to reflect on how far I’d come with my teaching. I helped friends and people who came to me through word of mouth as and when they needed me and slowly I began to pull the 12-week course apart so that I could rebuild it as a series of short topic-driven instant access online modules, which I have called the Being Here Series.

I’ve created this so that people can access what they want when they need it. If all ‘episodes’ are purchased then you pretty much get everything that the Natural Carer training offered. When you purchase content from the Being Here Series you will be given earlybird invitations to live online and inperson talks, seminars and events.

I feel that whatever age we are at now, the older we get we just have to accept the reality of being confronted with the mortality of those we love, know, work with, admire, and also our own mortality. And in my experience of working with many families over the past few years, as well as caring for my own, this journey can be softened and bonds deepened through accepting death as a natural part of life and in doing so being able to show up for each other with absolute care and compassion.

And I hope, hand on heart, that Being Here can be part of enabling that care, compassion and connection blossom.