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What if curiosity is all you need?

Inviting curiosity…

When I’m about to start working with a group that I have never worked with before I’m usually feeling a little anxious. I’m wanting to be there, but my needs for predictability, connection, contribution, they are all flaring up in that moment in part because I don’t know for sure what is coming next.

One of the ways I try and bring some ease in those circumstances is to invite my curiosity.

Who is out there?

What did they have for lunch?

I wonder what their hurts are?

What will I learn from them?

What will I discover about myself through our interaction?

How might I make a difference in someone’s life today?

Being purposeful about being curious shifts my energy from a sensation of constriction to a sensation of openness and possibility.

Friend or foe…

Imagine going into a job interview.

Imagine going on a blind date.

Imagine you are walking on the street and someone is walking towards you yelling loudly in a language you don’t understand.

Imagine you are approaching a customer service rep at the counter after delayed or cancelled flights and there is no clear indication of how you are going to get home.

Imagine you feel guilty about something you could have done, an action you should have taken.

Being curious doesn’t equate with putting yourself in harms way. It doesn’t excuse bad service. It doesn’t deny the reality of difficult circumstances. It can however invite us to see the humanness in others and it invites us to acknowledge the humanness in ourselves.

In unknown, awkward, or difficult circumstances our starting point is often fear or anxiousness. Our amygdala, part of the limbic region in our brain, is playing a constant stream of “Am I safe? Do I belong? Am I safe? Do I belong?” In other words we’re a little on edge and we’re checking each other out to assess friend or foe.

When compassion feels hard…

Am I not just advocating being compassionate? Nope. I appreciate the language of compassion and empathy. On some level I resonate with the statement “All you need is love.” But in my reality, and I suspect it is the same for others, sometimes I can’t jump right into love. I have my own things going on – maybe I’m triggered by the circumstances and/or what someone has said – and so love, compassion, empathy feel hard to connect with in those moments.

What I can direct my energy towards however is curiosity. I don’t have to love you or even like you in that moment. But if I can be curious, it feels like I’m leaving a door open, I’m open to possibilities. If I’m there with curiosity, then I’m listening with a willingness to be changed.

Our human needs for sense and meaning making, for learning and growth – these are the foundations for curiosity. I think curiosity is also interwoven with empathy, but sometimes we can’t jump right into each others experiences from a place of shared resonance. But I can be curious. I can be wondering what is going on for you.

And when I’m in one of my own funks, when things are not going right, or actually might feel terribly wrong, I can be curious about what might be going on for me. Which of my needs are not being met? You have the same options when you’re in a funk, when things are not going right – what might your present experience be asking of you? Which needs of yours are not being met?

And by the way your brain seems to function well under conditions of curiosity as well – at least from the stand point of learning and memory.

So the next time you’re feeling a little on guard or triggered be curious about the person sitting across from you. And if you are being really hard on yourself, be curious about the person in the mirror.

Willing to try being purposeful with your curiosity? Let me know how it goes in the comments below…

Injury versus Illness

Is there a difference in how you hold yourself when you have, say, the flu versus a sprained ankle?

I’ve discovered that I can be far more gentle with myself when I have an illness like the flu. I can give myself permission to be tired, to adjust my eating patterns, to feel a little out of sorts, to put off cleaning.

Sure, I’ll be irritated because things aren’t getting done. I might even notice the dust bunnies more than usual because I feel less energetically able to do anything about them. There however won’t be a voice of “Suck it up and get moving.” I can lie down, read a book, nap, catch up on my Internet viewings, etc. without a sense of guilt or that I’m doing something wrong.

Conversely, I recently sprained my ankle and I notice I’m not giving myself much permission to be anything other than ready and raring to go. You see I don’t see myself as “sick”, therefore part of my belief system has me saying , “I’m okay and able to work so let’s be creative, keep evolving my business, and don’t forget about the vacuuming!” And yet when I try and do those things – like vacuuming (I sure hope my physiotherapist isn’t reading this), or sit at my desk for an afternoon, I’m exhausted and my pain levels shoot up.

In either scenario, whether illness or injury, my body has healing to do.

And maybe therein lies the invitation…

It’s not about getting into inner debates about how sick I am, or how injured I am. Is it a grade 1 or grade 2 sprain? Do I have a high enough fever to warrant not going to the office? Rather it is about hearing my body telling me it needs to heal. Period.

The body knows. It gives signals – low energy or pain or both. We may have shivers, a fever, or a need to walk differently because our foot and ankle don’t move they way they normally do. All of it is our body asking us to go forward gently and hear the call to healing.

And if we’re listening, we’ll “hear” the healing too. The decreasing pain levels. The return of energy. The walking that gets that much less awkward. The sense of more choices. Seeing the sunshine in the day.

So the invitation is to be gentle with yourself, whether you’re ill or injured or both! Listen to your body and what it is asking.

What if your body really is your greatest ally?

Text and Images Copyright © Dr. Catherine Hajnal 2014

Living Your Dash

I can’t remember when I first heard about the poem The Dash by Linda Ellis. What I do know is that every time I read it I renew my desire to live my life on purpose – to continue to do work that feeds my soul, to do one thing a day that scares me (encouraging my evolution), to step into the emotions that feel difficult or uncomfortable, to let the good stuff sink in including expressing gratitude and love, and to see the possibility in whatever is showing up in my life.

Here’s the general gist of the poem. (I encourage you to read it in its entirety here.) On a tombstone there is a beginning date and an end date. In between those two dates is a dash. That tiny dash represents the fullness of your life. The question the poem raises is what do you want to do with your dash?

The intention here is not to instill fear of the end-date (the second date on your tombstone). Stirring up panic and a sense of scarcity of time is not the vibe I personally want to have clouding my dash. The reality however is we generally don’t know when our end-date is coming. We imagine living a long and fruitful life and yet anything could happen.

Here’s the approach I’ve taken. I’ve asked myself what do I want to be doing now so that if I found out I was terminally ill and going to die within a month or two I would have some degree of ease because I had been living my life on purpose, because I had been making choices in awareness of the reality of not knowing when the end will come. I don’t think it is possible to live without regret (the words that come of my mouth some times – yeesh!), yet I do think it is possible to minimize regret through actions like vulnerability, compassion, empathy, and a willingness to ask for re-do’s or acknowledge mistakes.

Do the people you love and who matter the most to you know it through your words and actions?

Is the work you are doing feeling your spirit – does it make your heart sing?

Are you learning from and in the discomfort that life gives?

Are you being gentle with yourself? Do you acknowledge your self-worth?

Are you having fun?

I ask these questions not to invoke shame or a sense of “not enough”, rather they are invitations to reflect on how you are living your dash. You are worthy and enough no matter how you are living your dash. AND you have agency in how you live your dash. I realize sometimes it can feel like you have anything but power and possibility in your life. This is the gentle reminder that there is always choice. That you can bring “creator” energy to your daily life.

Dream like you’ll life forever. Live as if you’ll die tomorrow. ~James Dean

I’ll be speaking on this topic on Sunday February 23rd as part of the service at the Centre For Spiritual Living Vancouver. Please join me if you are interested in reflecting on how you live your dash. [11 AM Creekside Community Centre, Olympic Village, Vancouver]

Acknowledging Your Losses

As part of the course work I was taking to become a certified Life Coach we dipped into art therapy. Each of us in the class was invited to pick up a piece of clay and play with it our hands. We could squish it, pound it, shape it however we wanted. I started squishing the clay around in my right hand having it ooze through my fingers, then my left, and then back to my right.

We were also asked to connect with the clay through as many senses as possible exploring texture, colour, smell, weight, etc. I opened my right hand and first noticed the shape the clay had taken looked a lot like the images of the vertebrae I had seen in the x-rays of my back. The round core and the “jutty out” parts of the facet joints. Then I noticed the weight – how heavy the clay felt in my hands. And the tears began to flow. And flow. And flow.

I literally cried for hours that day because in that briefest of moments the weight of the clay connected me with the weight, with the burden that my back had been for me for over 20 years. I’ve come to be grateful for that pain because it has lead to so many amazing things in my life. In that moment however I needed to acknowledge my sadness associated with the choices I couldn’t make because of my back. I needed to acknowledge the energy my back and pain had consumed. The weight of that clay represented the moments of sweating profusely because of the pain I was in when all I was trying to doing was stand there and teach, the times I had to say “no” to a friend’s invitation because I was too exhausted and in too much pain, the trips I couldn’t take, the high-heels I couldn’t wear, the gardening I couldn’t do, the racket sports I had put aside.

Until that time I had focused on getting healthy and happy. At this point in my life journey I had left academia. I was now living in Vancouver, supported by friends and family to make a new set of choices. I had but two months earlier undergone an 8 hour double level spinal fusion surgery that had been extremely successful. I had connected with and was excited by the idea of becoming a life coach or counsellor so had gone back to school to better appreciate the differences, and to hone my skills so that I could feel confident in my ability to hold a client and their needs safely and professionally. I was told that the fusion would not fully take hold for at least a year, maybe two so it seemed like the right timing to go back to school. So yes I could acknowledge having made progress – amazing progress as a matter of fact though I would never have labelled it that at the time – and yet here I was crying for hours.

I am so grateful to the facilitator in class that day. He brought to my awareness that I had grieving to do. That I needed to acknowledge my losses. Clearly there were many. Yet they were not the kind of losses we typically think about. I hadn’t lost a person or relationship close to me. I wasn’t terminally ill – I had recovered. Yet I understand now my “stiff upper lip”, “solder on” attitudes served me in one way and harmed me in another.

If you’re brave enough to say “goodbye”, life will reward you with a new “hello”. ~ Paul Coehlo

Grieving is a very natural human process. The reality is we experience loss daily and it needs to be grieved. This doesn’t mean you have to grieve for days or months or years even – though sometimes, depending on the loss and your process, that’s exactly what you’ll do. There doesn’t have to be public displays of mourning though sometimes there will be that as well. What I do advocate is that we take time to acknowledge our losses – big and small – because there are no beginnings without an ending. We are effected by losses and rather than pushing those emotions back inside, I’m inviting acknowledging them so that the e-motion (energy in motion) can be released. That energy release can lead to new things. It certainly did for me.

The next day after my clay experience I was exhausted and I absolutely felt lighter. I also felt calmer. I could begin to see all the changes that I had made in a different light – I could begin to celebrate them rather than stay focused on “What is the next thing I need to get done? Keep going. Keep going. Soldier on.”

My own experience with loss has inspired me to study the processes of grief more closely and bring it more deeply into my work. I have seen the value of acknowledging losses and stepping into the associated sadness – the sense of freedom it garnered, the relaxation, the sense of opening and even more possibility.

If sharing my story of losses has struck a cord, I invite you to contact me. I am also offering a workshop on Creative Hurt: Turning Loss into Learning and Growth. (March 1st. More details on my Schedule page.) The invitation is to begin to acknowledge your losses and in so doing discover what catalysts those could be for you moving forward.

Doing or Saying One Thing A Day That Scares You

With all the writing in the popular press about the New Year and setting resolutions, intentions, or defining goals I couldn’t help stopping to reflect on how I treat the start of the new year. I do use it a time of reflection – to stop and look back over the past year and to launch a few intentions, dreams and desires for 2014. The reality is I do this type of reflecting regularly. It’s about living my life on purpose. I stop and ask myself what it means for me in this moment to be “on purpose”. The New Year is a spark to step into that reflection.

Because I’m reflecting regularly, the outcome is often to renew or reshape some intention I have expressed before. For example one intention I keep coming back to is Do One Thing a Day That Scares Me. Here’s why…

That intention has inspired me to be vulnerable. To speak my truth. To express my gifts. To let people know they matter to me. In summary – to take risks that come from revealing an inner part of myself. It has indeed been scary. And wonderful!

When I set that intention at the beginning of 2011 part of me had ideas like bungee jumping and other physical activities in mind. I had begun reading the work of Brené Brown on vulnerability and shame and I had been studying Non-Violent Communication for a few years, endeavouring to put it into practice. I came to realize what I had to say and how I reached out for connection – that I reached out for connection period! – were some of the scariest things I could ever do. Do one thing a day that scares me and Say one thing a day that scares me became interchangeable.

It meant noticing when I hesitated to make a phone call to a potential client, reminding myself of my intention, and then going for it even though I was scared. It meant submitting proposals for workshops and risking the rejection. It meant telling the people I love that I love them. It meant having conversations with a friend with cancer when I was anxious about saying the “wrong” thing. In all of these cases it could have been easier, less anxious, indeed less scary to just not do anything.

So why did I do them? Because I had set an intention? Is that what motivated me? I set my intention because I was curious about discovering what holds me back in my life. As I stepped further into that exploration, I discovered that a rather persistent voice was present. It was so persistent is was almost like white noise. I didn’t realize it was always there, the default station playing on my inner radio. And its public service or should I say dis-service message was “I am not enough.”

It is the voice of shame. It is the voice that can have me feeling “less than”. It is the voice that believes I won’t find connection, that I won’t be liked, that I won’t belong because of some aspect of self. Powerfully un-empowering stuff!

And so what did I do with this discovery? In Catherine world I read books on the subject and I take workshops. And I talk to my “digestors” – a small group of people with whom I feel a sense of safety and being held. (More on this group in a future post and why you might want to consider having such a group too.) My curiosity drives my learning and growth. My digestors give me the space to express what is percolating for me in that learning and growth process. They listen. They provide empathy. And when asked, they offer ideas, possibilities, advice, solutions. Through all of that I integrate. I endeavour to be gentle with myself. I move forward.

I’ve learned a great deal about shame and vulnerability in these last few years. Whatever I learn about myself becomes part of the work that I offer to the world. It is why I love being a Life Coach. I get to keep working on me (which even with its trials and tribulations I have a thirst to do) and then share that learning with my clients.

I hope you are seeing the value in stopping to reflect and launching your intentions, dreams, and desires. They can be an amazing catalyst for what comes next in your life. So I invite you to reflect on what it means to be “on purpose” in your own life. And why not consider doing one thing a day that scares you in the coming months? Wonder where it might take you…

To facilitate your journey I have a few offerings coming up that might be of interest:

1) Four consecutive Monday evenings – a program on vulnerability and shame for men through Manology beginning on January 13th, 2014. We look at that voice of “I am not enough” and how to strengthen the voice of “I am enough.” We’ll walk the bridge of shame resilience.

2) A one day workshop entitled “Life is One Big Improv” on March 8, 2014. This will be an interactive workshop that will blend theory with practice. We’ll explore shame and vulnerability concepts and then use a variety activities including improvisational theatre techniques as a way to try that learning on. An opportunity to discover where you hold yourself back – an opportunity to do one thing (or two) that scares you! A day to celebrate being enough.

More details can be found on my Schedule page.

Warmly and purposefully,

Catherine

Life is ONE BIG IMPROV

Think about where you were and what you were doing exactly one year ago. Did you know then what you would be doing right now? Did you know then what life was going to bring your way in the last 12 months?

Maybe you had an inkling. Or you set some intentions so you had a rough idea of what you were hoping you’d be doing and where you’d be on the journey of life right now.

But for the most part, we have no way of predicting with clarity exactly what life will hold. Let me speak for myself anyway – I generally have no idea what I’m going to be doing a year from now. Yes, I have a plan. Yes, I set intentions. And when I launch those intentions out into the Universe I always add “This or something better.” I’m open in my life to those things that are nowhere on my horizon right now. I’ve come to love those things – those people – those possibilities – that I can’t image in this moment.

Let me give you an example. I’d just finished my swim at Kits Beach Pool on Saturday late afternoon and was contemplating leftovers. Checked my phone and there’s an invite to dinner.

Everyday I read something or get a call or email from someone that takes me to an idea, a website, a possibility that wasn’t on the horizon at all before that moment. And here’s the thing, I want to fully step into those moments. I want to say yes to those moments. I wanted to say YES to dinner but….

Sometimes the voices of NO are way louder than the voices of YES. Now sometimes a NO truly is a NO. But sometimes, and for me often times, the NO is accompanied by the voices of

I can’t do that.
Not possible.
I don’t have experience or the skills.
I’m scared.
I’m not creative enough.
I’m not ________ enough. Submit your descriptor here!

In other words the NO is accompanied by some form of resistance. Sure that resistance is my friend – its trying to keep me safe – but gall darn it – what if that resistance is starting to hold me back?

In my dinner example, the first voices, when I received the invitation were:

I’m in yoga pants and my hair is wet – I’m not dressed for a dinner.
I don’t have anything with me. I’ll be showing up empty handed.
I don’t know these people that well.
The text came in over an hour ago. They’ve probably already started.

I stepped in guided by the principles of improvisational theatre or “improv”. I expressed some of my fears to my potential host. She said come, just come. So I showed up empty handed with wet hair and yoga pants. Met new people. Had a great time! Life gave me an offer, or a gift as it is often referred to in improv, and I said YES to it.

If you’d like to learn more about the principles of improv and how you can use them purposefully to live more fully in your life – to say YES to the possibilities that come along – come play with me in Douglas Park in Vancouver this August. For four consecutive Thursday evenings I’ll be sharing the principles of improv, we’ll be playing some improv games, we’ll be relating it to life, and we’ll be having FUN! I’ll be teaching a more formal workshop on this in September, and for now, come discover and have fun. Say YES – to one evening or all four! Notice any resistance and come anyway. When you started reading this blog you didn’t know you’d be doing improv in Douglas Park in August…

Details of the August Improv in the Park available here…

Window Into Death

Have you ever seen a dead body?

Have you thought about about what you would like to have happen with your body once you have died?

Have you shared those thoughts with someone?

Here is a window into all of that as told in the context of a family, Lynch and Sons, and their Funeral Direction services. Through their story we learn about how caring for the dead is just as much about caring for the living.

I personally did not know all of elements that I saw in this video. I’m glad I watched it. It has, interestingly, given me a greater sense of ease imaging that my family members were treated with the same reverence and respect.

I hardly remember my Grandfather’s funeral. I was a young adult, yet the memories are very vague. Curiosity about why I don’t remember.

When my Nagymama (Hungarian Grandmother) died, I did not travel to Hungary for the funeral. I have been to her grave site several times and appreciate being able to connect with her there.

When my Grandmother died, I had just spent 10 days with her knowing she would die soon, but without knowing exactly when. I left, saying goodbye, knowing I would never see her alive again. That goodbye was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. She fell days later and died rapidly after that. Because I just had the ten days with her, I opted not to fly back for her funeral. Having now studied death and grief, I wish I had flown back. I didn’t appreciate then the value in seeing the body and saying goodbye once again.

I say these things not to advocate for burial, cremation, or to say you should have an open casket. I do however now see the value in ritual and the need for mourning. Mourning is grief made public. It is the outward expression of bereavement and our grieving process needs that.

I invite you to watch this video and consider what you would like for yourself when you die. And I invite you to step into conversations with those that matter in your life about what they want. I encourage you to have a ritual – whatever resonates in the context of you and your loved ones.

I have done some thinking in the context of Advanced Care Planning about what I would like. I’ve gone as far as saying I want to be cremated. I realize now I want to consider a few more details as well. Not with the intention of burdening my family, but rather to open space for some ease at a time when there will be enough “hard”.

Some of you who read this might be saying “Is she obsessed with death?” No. I don’t spend every waking minute thinking about what it will be like to die (who knows!) nor do I spend inordinate amounts of time thinking about what I want when I die. I’d like to live a long life – there is much I still want to do – yet I find some peace in this moment knowing I’ve looked through the window into my own death. It helps me live this life. It gives me a sense of being on purpose – of taking responsibility for my living by giving some consideration to my death.

This video was produced in 2007. You will see dead bodies being prepared for either burial or cremation. You will hear the story of parents preparing for the death of their child. Of a niece caring for her aunt in a hospice setting. Of a family that has dedicated its energy to serving the dead and the living. I’ve imbedded the first part of the video below. To see it in its entirety, I encourage you to go to the PBS FRONTLINE Website and watch The Undertaking.

Watch The Undertaking on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

No Regrets

It seems that as we approach the end of our lives we have regrets.

I’ve read many books that talked to people who are nearing the end of their lives either because of terminal illness or age. A common theme is having regrets.

Regrets come in all shapes and sizes –

wishing you had said no when you said yes
wishing you had said yes when you said no
wishing you had resolved that problem with a particular person
wishing you had told that person how you felt about him/her
wishing you had jumped, taken the risk, when instead you hesitated

The list could go on. For the most part regrets are about wishing you had taken an action – whether it is to do or say something – an action different than the one you took.

I try and live my life without regret. I ask myself with some regularity “If I were to die tomorrow, how do I feel about the choices I’ve made to this moment?” And then I notice how I feel as I ponder my answer. I have to say that right now I’m noticing some not so good feelings – those feelings are telling me I have to take some different actions.

I did take some action today. I wrote am email I’ve been putting off doing for several days – am email that might well lead to the end of an intimate relationship. Yet now if tomorrow never comes, I shared some things I needed to share. And it wasn’t about yelling, being angry, or about wishing for something different. It was about taking responsibility for my own feelings and asking to hear about theirs.

And there is some other action I need to take. Another friend is, I believe, hanging at the moment because I haven’t responded. I’ve been avoiding – it feels easier in this moment. Yet the idea of tomorrow not coming leaves me with a bad flavour in my mouth if I am to leave things with this friend the way they currently stand. It is not a big deal, but it is about speaking my truth and sometimes that can feel vulnerable and scary. So I’m inviting myself to step into that scary, to be vulnerable, to speak my truth, and know that shifts my feeling of regret.

A person recently asked me “Can you really get to the end and not have regrets?” I don’t know. I’m certainly willing to put the energy into my life, to live it on purpose, to be vulnerable, to speak my truth, and find out. How about you?

No Such Thing As Mistakes

I’m getting the flash of the “X’s” in either red or bold black on the school assignments.

The years in school had a huge focus on right and wrong, on correcting mistakes. In some fields of study there is right and wrong. Two plus two is indeed 4, it is not 5 or any other number. We need to learn that. And yet that horrible feeling – at least for me anyway – that would come when I saw those X’s or the grade that meant I didn’t get full marks. It took me to that place of “not good enough”, that place of shame, and somehow that doesn’t seem best for learning.

I remember in particular an incident in grade 10. The assignment was to read a story and write your feelings about the characters. I did not find one of the characters very sympathetic and wrote this in my assignment. I found myself defending myself in front of the whole class and being told by the teacher that I was “walking on thin ice,” that my opinion was incorrect, that my feelings couldn’t be that. I don’t remember what my feelings were supposed to be, I just remember mine were wrong, to the tune of an F. This was the first F of my life. Life went on and I ultimately passed the class and Grade 10 with flying colours, yet I sure do remember that incident. Even now I’m feeling the tightness and anxiousness in my body as I recall that experience.

Incidents like these have influenced my life. For some, in those moments your voice gets louder. For me, I shrink, feel smaller, and experience that warm wash of shame. These experiences were not empowering – at least they didn’t feel that way in the moment.

Having them as part of my experience in this moment now, in who I am in the present does feel empowering. I can work with them in ways that enables me to feel bigger, stronger, more powerful in my life. One of the ways that I do that is to consciously, purposefully not use the language of mistakes, of right and wrong.

I’m more than willing to acknowledge those circumstances in which I make a choice, learn something after experiencing that choice and then perhaps saying “Wow, I wish I’d chosen differently,” or any sort of wishing for having done, said, or been different. Was I wrong or mistaken with the first choice? I believe not. I practice discernment. I generally don’t take decisions lightly. I am a lawful citizen.

I learn and with that learning I make new choices. That doesn’t make me wrong or mistaken. That makes me a reflective, purposeful learner. I’m happy to be one of those.

So I invite you to think about that voice in yourself that judges you as right/wrong, good/bad. Consider being a little gentler with yourself.

To close, here is one of my favorite quotes from Rumi:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I will meet you there.

Part 1: Advanced Care Planning

In the work that I do with hospice and as I talk about death in other contexts as well, one of the topics that repeatedly comes up is advance care planning. My awareness has increased around the value of having a plan and a recognition that the pieces I currently have in place, a will and living will, do not feel sufficient for me. So to be in integrity with my own ideals/values, what I say, and how I show up in the world, I’m embarking on a journey with my desired outcome of having completed an Advanced Care Plan. I invite you to come on this journey with me – this is both a process – involving questions, conversations, reflections – and a likely set of documents. In this blog I’ll share my planning process and what resources I use along the way.

So what is Advance Care Planning?

Here are the two main documents I am using as I begin this journey and what they say Advance Care Planning is about.

1) Speak Up: Start the conversation about end-of-life care published by the Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association.

Advance care planning is a process of reflection and communication, a time for you to reflect on your values and wishes, and to let others know your future health and personal care preferences in the event that you become incapable of consenting to or refusing treatment or other care.

Advance care planning means having discussions with family and friends, especially your Substitute Decision Maker – the person who will speak for you when you cannot. It may also include writing down your wishes, and may even involve talking with healthcare providers and financial and legal professionals.

You may never need your advance care plan – but if you do, you’ll be glad that it’s there and that you have had these conversations, to make sure that your voice is heard when you cannot speak for yourself

2) My Voice: Advanced Care Plan published by the BC Ministry of Health as a provincial guide for advance care planning.

Having a voice in decisions about your health care treatments is important. There may come a time when, due to illness or injury, you are incapable of expressing your treatment wishes to health care providers. By planning in advance, you can be sure that your family, friends and/or health care providers know your wishes, and can ensure these wishes are followed.

Here’s why I want to do an advanced care plan:

I believe that talking about death informs how I want to LIVE my life.
I’ve heard many stories of how families struggle to make health-based decisions when a loved one is incapacitated due to illness or injury. I know I can’t alleviate the struggle completely, but I certainly believe I can support my family by having conversations with them now, in the present moment, that will make my desires clear and help to inform their decisions later.
I want to be responsible with how my health care dollars are spent. Unnecessary procedures in the forms of ones I am not wanting to have add to the burden on the health care system.

In the coming months I’ll share what unfolds for me in my advance care planning process in the hopes that helps to inform your process. For now I invite you to get a hold of the documents/workbooks I’ve highlighted above and think about you and your family/friends might benefit from energy you put in to advance care planning.

NOTE: In locating these documents one of the things I’ve learned thus far is that there are a few versions of the My Voice floating out there. From what I can tell the most recent version is Feb 2012. I found it through the CHPCA website. They have links to other planning documents in additional to their Speak Up and the VCH My Voice. Here’s the link to where their planning section starts.