Rev. Christine Davies on Chaplaincy and Spiritual Support in the Hospital

Rev. Christine Davies, the director of pastoral care at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey, shares her journey into hospital chaplaincy. As an ACPE supervisor and seminary professor, she teaches the art of hospital chaplaincy and educates clergy. Christine’s path began with a deep connection to her local Presbyterian church, a passion for helping others, and an early career as an EMT. This combination of experiences led her to shift from a pre-med major to religion, ultimately embracing chaplaincy. Her love for spiritual questions and supporting people during vulnerable times fueled this transition.

Christine's work involves addressing the spiritual and emotional needs of patients and families, especially during end-of-life situations. She emphasizes the importance of being present, listening, and holding space for individuals to explore their beliefs and emotions. Christine highlights the challenges chaplains face, such as dealing with the uncertainty of their impact and the complexities of supporting people through their spiritual distress.

In her role, Christine also focuses on advanced care planning, helping patients appoint healthcare proxies and discuss their wishes for end-of-life care. She stresses the importance of having these conversations early to alleviate the burden on loved ones during critical moments.

Christine’s approach to chaplaincy extends beyond traditional religious boundaries. She recognizes that spirituality can exist outside of formal religion, offering support to individuals regardless of their beliefs. She often encounters people grappling with anger towards God or struggling with long-held beliefs that no longer serve them in their current situations. Christine’s compassionate presence allows for open exploration of these feelings.


Christine’s work is not limited to the hospital setting. She has also led bereavement groups and facilitated advanced care planning discussions in community settings.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Christine: It's about educating my interns and then practicing it with the patients to hold space for them to explore. It's not about any answers that I may have. It's about what might they believe about this. 

[00:00:13] Jill: Welcome back to seeing death clearly. I'm your host, Jill McClennen, a death doula and end of life coach here on my show.

[00:00:20] I have conversations with guests that explore the topics of death, you. dying, grief, and life itself. My goal is to create a space where you can challenge the ideas you might already have about these subjects. I want to encourage you to open your mind and consider perspectives beyond what you may currently believe to be true.

[00:00:38] In today's episode, we explore the journey of Christine Davies, the director of pastoral care at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital. Christine shares her path from a pre med major and EMT to becoming a hospital chaplain. With a deep connection to her Presbyterian roots, Christine found her calling in chaplaincy, where she addresses the spiritual and emotional needs of patients and families, especially during end of life situations.

[00:01:07] We talk about her work on advanced care planning, helping patients navigate crucial decisions, And her compassionate approach to spiritual support. Christine also reflects on the profound impact of C*D 19 and the heightened need for spiritual care in these challenging times. Join us as we discuss the vital role of chaplains in providing comfort and guidance during life's most vulnerable moments.

[00:01:31] Thank you for joining us for this conversation. Welcome to the podcast, Christine. I'm looking forward to having this conversation. And then you realize that we actually met in person. So now I'm even more excited to have this conversation. So thank you so much for coming on my podcast today. Yes, I'm thrilled to be here with you and talk with you further.

[00:01:52] Can you start us off? Just tell us a little bit about who you are, even like before you got into the work that you got into anything that you want to share with us. 

[00:02:00] Christine: Sure. So I am the director of pastoral care at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. And I am also a ACPE supervisor.

[00:02:12] That means I teach classes about how to do the work of hospital chaplaincy and educate clergy. And I'm a seminary professor as well. How I got into all this, it is a strange career choice. I began, I think this journey, I was a Quite precocious kid and really took to church. My family attended a local Presbyterian church.

[00:02:35] I enjoyed it quite a bit. I was convinced of God's presence from a young age and really thought that my goal in life, what God wanted me to do was to help the most people possible. and I thought I would do that through medicine and it probably helped that my mom was a nurse and put me down that path. I worked as an EMT for a number of years and I was always in the back of the ambulance because I was not very good at driving it.

[00:02:59] So I was with the patients and heard a lot of their distress and we could do minimal things, right? Wrap their wounds, give them oxygen, provide safe transport to the hospital, but it was really in They're asking, why is this happening to me? Being there, holding their hand and bearing witness to what they were going through and that emotional support that I was giving them, that's what I really enjoyed about the work much more so than the medicine.

[00:03:26] And so eventually I switched my major from pre med to religion and really fell in love with that because I loved being in the spiritual realm, asking those questions, delving into that. I went to seminary, but I was very much convinced I was not going to work in a church because those were not my people.

[00:03:44] Even though I am a Presbyterian minister, I feel most at home with people of all faith tradition or really no faith tradition and helping people find their own spiritual paths, whatever that might look like. For a little while, I was also a cognitive behavioral therapist. But again, missed asking people those questions about their spiritual life.

[00:04:04] That's what brought me into a chaplaincy internship and then a residency where I just fell in love with being in the hospital in that way. I was used to the medical side of things, but then getting to be in the spiritual side and getting to be with people at their most vulnerable on the worst days of their lives and making it just 1 percent better by helping them through it.

[00:04:26] Jill: It's amazing. It's such needed work. And yeah, so Robert Wood Johnson is one of the hospitals I volunteer at. It's funny because I'm mainly with the palliative care team, but I do occasionally run into the chaplains as I'm making my way around the hospital. I know that in a lot of ways, the work that I do as a death doula, the work that my mentor Allie does as the palliative care social worker.

[00:04:51] the chaplains like it overlaps in a lot of ways because whenever we're talking to people about their end of life inevitably what they believe spiritually or didn't believe or now are coming to believe like it's gonna kind of mix in because that's one of the biggest questions that we all have is where do we go when we die right is it's gonna be heaven is it gonna be hell is it gonna be a whole different thing and i love to think about it i love to talk about it I will never know until I die, but I don't mind not knowing.

[00:05:25] And I know a lot of people really don't like that not knowing. So when you're in the hospital working with people, I know, again, as a volunteer, it's interesting because you're not always going to have the time to develop a real long term relationship. It might be somebody coming in in crisis. That might be the only hour that you have to sit with them.

[00:05:46] You'll never see them again. You don't know if your conversation helps. If it didn't help, it's just kind of like in passing, we get to meet with these people. And so what is that like for you as a chaplain and then even teaching other chaplains? How do you really deal with the fact that you're not always going to know what happens with them and you don't always know if your conversation was as effective as we would hope it would be?

[00:06:13] Christine: Yeah. Oh my goodness. There's so much in that one question. I think some of it is just trusting that we are there for that person in that moment. And that will hopefully blossom into something down the road for someone to really be supportive. When you talk about the anxieties that people have at end of life, and I would say both on the patient side and then certainly on the family side as well.

[00:06:36] Well, it's so common, right? We get that question all the time. What's after this? The fear of not knowing what's next, even when people have come to accept their own terminal condition and that they are at the end of life, there can be a lot of questions about not knowing. And I think for my interns and residents that I'm training, that's the difficult thing is sometimes our well meaning clergy type folk want to give an answer.

[00:07:00] to that question when we don't know, even if we have our own theological belief, it's about meeting the patient where they are and talking through, what do you think? How would you like to think about this? What have you heard? What have been the beliefs or the theologies that you've maybe internalized over time?

[00:07:18] What helps you as you think about what could be on the other side of it, but to really be in that space of, I don't know, tell me what you think is a hard place to be in, right? We want to give people answers. We want to make them feel better. And in so doing, even though we may be well meaning that can cause harm.

[00:07:36] And so it's about educating my interns. And then practicing it with the patients to hold space for them to explore. It's not about any answers that I may have about what might they believe about this? What have they heard? How might they imagine it? What's important to them and looking at their values.

[00:07:54] And certainly we do a lot of that as well for our patients that we know. who are end of life, looking back on their life, doing life reviews and reflections in a way that can help them really synthesize what it is that they're leaving as a legacy. And those are for the deaths that we know about and we're preparing for versus unfortunately, so many deaths that were present in the hospital are of a crisis nature.

[00:08:19] Right. Being a level one trauma center, being with the families when tragedy has struck and helping them to cope with a nightmare that they just can't believe is going on and helping them process that in real time as well. So it's a mix of the different types of end of life situations that go on. 

[00:08:37] Jill: And for a lot of people, that is their worst nightmare to be in the hospital.

[00:08:42] with some type of an accident, a loved one dying, God forbid, especially if it's a child, that's I think probably a lot of people's worst nightmare. 

[00:08:50] Christine: Absolutely. 

[00:08:51] Jill: Yeah. When you're working with people, especially in an emergency situations, you're not necessarily going to know their spiritual beliefs, which can make it I'm sure really interesting.

[00:09:02] Sometimes I'm thinking there's possibly some people that would. maybe not be welcoming to a chaplain because they have had religious trauma. They maybe feel that whatever religion they practice, they're automatically assuming that the chaplain's Christian and that they're going to come in and try to push that on them.

[00:09:22] And so how do you work with all of that? 

[00:09:25] Christine: I'll say in the trauma situation, so we're part of the trauma team and we go as the family support person, right? So because you can imagine getting that call that your loved one's been in an accident, you're going to come to the hospital and your anxiety is going to be sky high, right?

[00:09:40] So we are to be with the family and to wait with them and then to help liaison, um, with the medical team. And then heaven forbid, it doesn't go well, we are already involved for bereavement support. But I instruct our chaplains actually not to lead with, Hi, I'm the chaplain. Because what can happen is the family hears that and they assume the worst.

[00:10:01] So I'll usually say, Hi, my name is Christine. I'm here from the hospital and my job is to be with you. Now, as we're waiting, it may come out that I'm the chaplain, and I'll make sure I say, look, I go to every single trauma. My presence here is not indicative of it being the worst case scenario for your family member.

[00:10:18] But even for what I call our routine visits, so when we're going door to door, seeing patients that, uh, are not end of life, but are in the hospital for a myriad of reasons. Sometimes people confess to me right off the bat, they're like, I'm not religious. I don't go to church. That's okay. I'm not very religious today either.

[00:10:36] And so we really look at what is the difference between religion and spirituality. And I would say that most people are spiritual. Someone can be atheist and still have a spirituality and really making space for that. And absolutely, as you talk about the toxicity of religion and the trauma that a lot of people have about it, I As a chaplain, we can be a source of healing in that because we are what one professor calls the intimate stranger.

[00:11:05] We're anonymous in a way that people can share a little bit more freely about what's going on with their spiritual selves. And they may not with others because they may have a sense of judgment or fear of judgment around that. So for example, a lot of what I hear from people who may be very religious, who may find their spirituality through going to church, for instance, may be angry at God.

[00:11:29] That's a huge theme that we see in chaplaincy, but they don't feel like they can tell their clergy that. Or they think, oh, this is blasphemous, or this is a sin, or I don't want my pastor to know this. And so having this outsider there can really help bridge the gap. So even for people that are steeped in a religion, it can help.

[00:11:47] And then for those who aren't, they may not have the additional support or the opportunities to really look at some of these deeper questions in a way. And as they're trying to make sense and make meaning out of events in their lives, being able to come alongside them and help them to do that. 

[00:12:01] Jill: We do need that.

[00:12:03] person that we feel like won't judge us. And yes, even for me as a death doula, when I'm at the hospital, I will usually just introduce myself as a volunteer with the palliative care team. And every once in a while, somebody will ask me a little bit more about my role. And I'm like, no, I'm actually a death doula.

[00:12:20] But again, it doesn't mean you're dying. I'm just there to help people. had somebody a listening ear to talk about what they're going through and go through that experience. But yes, people automatically are like, Oh my gosh, does that mean I'm dying? I, 

[00:12:33] Christine: I get that all the time. I come through the door and people are like, wait, did the doctor not tell me something?

[00:12:38] We joke sometimes we can be like the grim reaper, right? And I think having an attitude of just understanding that people are scared to talk about death, as you know, right, which is why you have your podcast and normalizing the conversations that can happen around death. But especially in a heightened environment like the hospital, it can be really difficult for folks.

[00:12:57] And like I said, the bulk of the work that we do is around end of life, but there are plenty of other situations where someone may be in the hospital for something as simple as an appendectomy. But the last time they were in the hospital, they were saying goodbye to their loved ones. And so all of that grief comes up to the surface or other losses that people may be experiencing.

[00:13:18] And so being able to be there for them in those circumstances as well, I find really meaningful. 

[00:13:24] Jill: Yeah, it's true that we do get our old trauma and grief and things like that triggered when we go back in a hospital. We don't think about that. Sometimes we push the things away, we shut them down, we hope that they stay there, and then you go into a building and it all comes back.

[00:13:41] And not only are you dealing with what's happening now, you're also dealing with the future. the old stuff that you tried to ignore. It doesn't usually go well. 

[00:13:48] Christine: I used to, at a previous hospital where I worked, led a bereavement group and we wound up moving it to a community center down the street because it was too much for people to walk through the doors again of where they had last seen their loved ones alive.

[00:14:02] So we really had to take into account the space itself and how charged that was for folks and that it was much easier just a few doors down in a totally different building with different smells, with different feels, for them to be able to process their grief. grief a little easier. 

[00:14:16] Jill: Yeah, that makes sense.

[00:14:17] And I'm thinking to a question that kind of takes us a slightly different direction, but I know at least at Robert Wood Johnson, there's been times when I've heard that when the conversation needs to be had with somebody about potentially becoming a DNR, right, do not resuscitate, that that's kind of something the chaplain does.

[00:14:38] I don't know. Don't know if I have like a slightly different interpretation of what's actually happening. So is that anything that you can kind of share about? Sure. 

[00:14:47] Christine: Yeah. So we don't have the DNR conversations. That's the physician because that's a physician order in the state of New Jersey. The chaplains are responsible for doing advanced care planning or helping a patient fill out an advanced directive.

[00:14:59] So having a patient fill out a healthcare proxy. Which for your listeners, if they don't know is someone who is going to make decisions for you in the case that you cannot make decisions for yourself just in healthcare. Financial is a whole different ballgame. We don't do that. But if someone is in the hospital, they have to be awake and alert and able to say, this is the person that I want to make decisions for me in the case that I can't make them myself.

[00:15:24] If you don't have that paperwork in place, it does fall to whoever is your legal next of kin. I've seen it where. Someone is in the intensive care unit and not able to speak for themselves. And the decision maker is a estranged spouse who they haven't had contact with in 20 years, but technically that's the person that legally has to make those decisions.

[00:15:47] I always encourage people to think about who it is that you really want to make those decisions. Writing that down and then having conversations with that person so that they know what it is that you would want because they are acting not in what they think they should do, but in what you would want done.

[00:16:03] So yes, we are the individuals that do that. And then the second part of the advanced directive is the living will instructives for living will. And so that gets into a little bit more about, okay, what would I want done? What would I not want done? So sometimes people do that in the hospital, but we really stress that.

[00:16:17] The healthcare proxy and you don't have to be in the hospital. I think it's helpful to have those conversations when you're not about to go for surgery, right? So when the stakes aren't high to really talk with your loved ones about what you would want done. But I think it's the fear of talking about our own mortality that keeps a lot of us from having those conversations, but they are important conversations to have.

[00:16:39] I like to think of it as giving your family a future gift, right? If you can put these wishes and writing in it. Vance, that saves them the burden of trying to figure it out when they're already grieving and adding stress to that. 

[00:16:51] Jill: And that's true that it's the gift that you're giving to your family. Your family is going to have to be the one to answer the doctors and talk to the doctors.

[00:17:00] Do you assist as a chaplain in having conversations with the family? So like if somebody does fill out an advance directive in the hospital. Do you help them have that conversation with their family member? 

[00:17:13] Christine: We can absolutely do that. It's at the discretion of the patient. We encourage them to talk with whoever they are making their health care proxy.

[00:17:20] And to be clear, it doesn't have to be their family member, right? They can choose their neighbor, their friend, anyone but their attending physician. They can pick whoever they would like. But yes, we encourage them to talk with their loved ones about it. We'll make lots of photocopies of the document so that they can hand it back.

[00:17:35] to whoever they are naming as their proxy. And there have been times where they say, okay, well, my daughter doesn't like to listen to me talk about this. So if you can be here, that would be important. And sometimes the healthcare proxy is actually already there in the room. We all have that conversation together in a way that really can be helpful because they may not have had that otherwise without that documentation and that willingness to fill it out and to look at those hard questions.

[00:18:00] I've also done work when I go into a church and during their Sunday school hour, we talk about advanced care planning and how important that can be. And so encouraging people in the community to be having these conversations as well. Some primary care doctors will have these conversations, but they don't always have the luxury of time, especially in today's, you know, medical field with the amount of patients that they're seeing and other responsibilities.

[00:18:26] Jill: Yeah, because that is the thing. This is not. A conversation that you can rush through. It's really not even a conversation that you necessarily have to sit down and have all at one time. It can be a longer conversation because most of us have avoided thinking about this and talking about it our entire life, really.

[00:18:46] Most of us didn't grow up in a family or culture even that was openly discussing these things and so it is an adjustment, but it doesn't have to be as painful as we think it's going to be. I know we're all afraid of it, but it doesn't have to be that 

[00:19:03] Christine: bad. It can be counter controversial. cultural when it comes to our society because we're not as comfortable at discussing it.

[00:19:08] And the other thing to point out too is that people's conversations can change, right? So they may want one thing at one point in time and then want to change it later on and recognizing that that's fine. 

[00:19:20] Jill: The conversation is as important as having the paperwork. You can have the paperwork, but if you don't have the conversation, it's not going to matter anyway.

[00:19:28] I know that there's times when people, like you mentioned, people really do want an answer, right? They really want us, as somebody that they're trusting into that space, to help guide them, and to help them. get the answer even for themselves. Is it something that you find that it differs between ages, it differs between cultures?

[00:19:54] Because I know at Robert Wood Johnson, there is a variety of people. And so I feel like at the hospital, you see a lot of different people. And do you notice that there's a difference depending on demographics of people? 

[00:20:06] Christine: It really varies. It's hard to generalize, per se, generationally, or religiosity, race, all different.

[00:20:15] And I would say something that I find helpful too is just defining religion and spirituality in general. The definitions that I tend to use is that religion is an agreed upon set of And practices and beliefs that are held by a community for the sake of communing with the divine, right? For some people that might be God, it may be other kind of universal thought.

[00:20:35] Spirituality is how we connect and explore the world within and around you and how you make meaning and find transcendence. For some people, spirituality is going to be met through their religions. But for others, it's much more individual because it's about my own beliefs. And then for some people, it's a mix, right?

[00:20:56] So there's parts of religion that are helpful and then parts of spirituality that they're trying to do on their own. A common thing that I do find is in the hospital, people are reconciling with a belief that they may have held that may have come from their religion. Or just what they heard growing up and it comes into focus in the hospital and where they don't know that they believe that anymore.

[00:21:20] So for instance, I'll give you an example. I often hear people say, I know God doesn't give you more than you can handle, but this is just too much, right? So this is a common one that we get. And I teach my students, listen for the, because what that means is, We have our espoused theology, the theology that we grew up hearing, or that has been internalized in us, or maybe it was in some book that we read, or someone said it at one point in time, and that may be true for us, but the operational theology is where the rubber hits the road, and it's like, oh, actually, I don't know if I believe this, or this belief may not be serving me in the way that it had been serving me previously.

[00:21:57] So it's really about helping people chart a path. in the midst of that because that can cause spiritual distress, right? When what we believe isn't lining up with what we're experiencing to be. I hear people say, I don't understand why it is that I'm diagnosed with lung cancer when I never smoked a day in my life and really trying to find that meaning when it's not aligning with how they think that the world should be.

[00:22:20] And then the other piece that becomes difficult, and I think the chaplains really tend to quite a bit, is when well meaning family or friends might put their own theologies onto the patient in a way that is not helpful, especially around end of life. Where, uh, a well meaning individual may say, Oh, everything happens for a reason.

[00:22:41] But that's silencing that person's pain. The griever or the patient, not allowing them to fully experience what's going on. If you say like, Oh, God wanted another angel, that's another one I hear all the time. If you're following that, logic. That means that this God is not going to be on my good side right now.

[00:22:58] And we talked a little bit before about the anger that a lot of people experience with God for those reasons, because sometimes the theologies that they are given, or even the theologies they thought that they believed don't work for them in that way. Another way that I think is helpful to define spirituality is a connection between three parts.

[00:23:16] So spirituality is connection with myself, right? How am I feeling at home in myself, in my body, in my spirit, connection with others in the community, with my friends, with my family, however I define that. And then connection with the transcendent. For some people that's God, for some people that's nature.

[00:23:34] And when spiritual distress comes in, it's a break in any one of those areas. And so if I'm a patient in the hospital, who's suffering with liver disease, right? I never even thought about the fact that I have a liver and all of a sudden it's failing me. I'm going to feel like I can't trust myself and my body is betraying me.

[00:23:52] For an example, I'm going to be cut off from my community. Even just being in the hospital overnight, that is not someone's home. We all went through a little bit of that, right? With C*D 19 not being able to be in the physical presence of others and really the burden that that took. And then as we talked about how we may feel toward the divine with all of these things going on, there's so many aspects.

[00:24:12] Jill: And I know for hospitals, that was a very traumatic time for people that work in the hospitals as well. Have you found a shift at all since then in the way that people feel when they come in? Because I feel like so many of us, that was kind of a wake up call to really make a sense Think about our immortality a little bit more.

[00:24:40] Mm-Hmm. and our loved ones. And so have you found that people are asking different questions or interacting differently since that time period? 

[00:24:50] Christine: I was working in the hospital at the time, and when we were going through it, the chaplain team were kinda like, oh, all of society now is talking about. Advanced directives, ventilators, what people would want done, whereas we were steeped in those conversations.

[00:25:02] So I think in some ways it was hard for people to be faced with their own mortality in such a way, whereas this is the water in which we swim. So I do think it was helpful in terms of opening up the conversation. A lot of us in healthcare still have some PTSD from that time. You know what it is to have a good death.

[00:25:20] Right. And there weren't many good deaths in C*D. It was just terrible. And a lot of chaplains, we got into this work to help people in that time to make it as peaceful of a process as possible. And that was just not the case. A lot of us that still is resonant in the work in terms of. the patients and the families that we have coming in.

[00:25:40] I do think that they've had some of these conversations a little bit more. I think there's still space for more of them. But the other piece is they've now had more loss, right? Like we've all had a lot of collective losses and not just death loss, but loss in general. And disconnection from community, even a few years later, I think that's still going on people who are more in the know medically than I have talked a lot about people didn't have preventative health care for a while.

[00:26:10] And so now the potential for undiagnosed issues that we could have treated better sooner, I think we see some of that happening and mental health in general, right? So there is a huge influx of mental health issues that have really exacerbated for a lot of people and people not always having access to the treatment and the modalities to address those.

[00:26:32] So that's some of how I see it all coming together. But I do think that it's a bit like. C*D 19 was this tsunami of grief and we're still feeling the after effects of it. I feel like with C*D, like this huge earthquake of C*D and then these aftershocks are going to keep coming for years and years and we can't always predict what they're going to be or when they're going to be and how they're going to come up.

[00:26:54] Jill: Yeah, it's true that so much of life changed and I know even during C*D, I had done a online webinar because I realized I was doing my doula training at the time. So I was reading a ton about death and grief and I was like, Oh, actually a lot of what I'm feeling right now is grief. And I realized that there's this term, Assumptive World Grief, that is typically associated with, say you lose a spouse or even a child, where you assumed life was going to be this way.

[00:27:27] And so with their death, then you're not just grieving them, but you're grieving what you thought life was going to be like. And I was like, Oh, that's what I feel. A lot of it was just, you know, we went from everything was quote unquote normal to now everything that I thought was going to happen that year was not happening.

[00:27:44] Just so much was changing. And I don't think a lot of people even realized that that's what it was that they were feeling was grief. I'm lucky enough that. I didn't know anybody close to me that got C*D really serious and died from it. I've heard the stories of people that really went through a lot with that.

[00:28:04] So I'm lucky that I didn't have that. But man, there was definitely grief and grief for things that I didn't expect to grieve because I was one of those people where. Sometimes the things that society kind of puts value on, I don't really put as much value on. I was always like, a lot of this stuff doesn't really mean anything to me until I couldn't do it.

[00:28:23] And then I was like, Oh, but it changed me for the better because now there's the things like this week is my daughter's middle school. They call it children's night where you go into the school and you look at all their artwork that they've done and I used to do those things, but part of me would always kind of dread it.

[00:28:42] I didn't like all the people. I didn't like having to go through the whole thing. And now I have a greater appreciation for it where I'm like, Oh, okay. It's children's light. Like, yeah, I'm still going to be a little overwhelmed by the amount of people, but I have a greater appreciation for it. for some of the little things that I didn't appreciate as much.

[00:29:01] And again, some of it too is also knowing that one day I'm going to die and I'm not going to have these things. So, you know, there's that. What are you going to remember a few years from now? 

[00:29:09] Christine: When you're talking about assumptive grief. So I usually call it intrapsychic grief, but I think it's. the same thing or intrapsychic loss, right?

[00:29:15] The idea of kind of like a dream that has died, right? Or a change of how you thought life is going to be. And so I'm known for saying that there's loss and grief everywhere all the time. And it's just a matter of finding it because I'm a believer that any time there's a change, Even a good change, right?

[00:29:33] Like I officiate a lot of weddings as a Presbyterian minister. Even with that, there's a loss, right? Something that's celebratory. It's still a change, a good change, but there's a loss that's involved in it. I remember sitting at a rehearsal dinner and the mother of the bride was crying. And I'm like, Oh no, does she not like the groom?

[00:29:50] What's going on here? And she says, I'm no longer going to be the first call. If something happens to my daughter, my relationship with her is changing. So anytime there's change, there's loss. And anytime there's loss, there's grief. And so if we know that change is constant, then I think loss and therefore grief is constant.

[00:30:09] And I teach my students. You want to be investigators of the loss because loss is going to be there with whoever you're talking to in the hospital or outside the hospital and it's about helping to acknowledge that and all the myriad of feelings that can go with it and then how it impacts someone's spirituality as well, but it's worth recognizing and normalizing.

[00:30:29] Jill: Oh, for sure. And you're right. That's a soapbox that I get on sometimes is that we need to feel our grief. We need to feel it fully over. all of the things. And because there is this feeling that when something good happens, like getting married or having a baby, we feel shame about feeling grief. And then we hold it in and then it leads to us feeling unhappy and confused by we're unhappy.

[00:30:57] And if we could just talk about it, rituals, you briefly mentioned rituals with religion. And that's one of the things that I loved about. Going to church when I was a child, and that's one of the things that I missed when I got older. So I've been bringing ritual into my life in my own individual ways, but creating rituals for yourself around the losses that you have.

[00:31:21] Again, even when it's something positive, when I became a mother, And I love my children, I really do, they are the light of my life. But I didn't realize how much I was going to lose myself when I became a mother. And I was older, I was 32, so I had had a lot of self before that, and yet. I would have never at that point talk to people about what I was feeling because I would have felt ashamed and I would have felt embarrassed.

[00:31:48] And then you get what met with the like, well, at least you have a kid be grateful. Some people can't have children. And it's like, well, yes. Yes, but also, this is a huge change for me and I no longer feel like myself and I need to grieve that. And so, yeah, if we could all just properly grieve things and feel permission and feel supported and held in our grief, it seems like it would be a better world.

[00:32:13] Christine: Yeah. And not isolated in it too, right? Like how, how you describe your experience and, and feeling the stigma of it, like, Oh, I need to be happy all of the time. Now just balancing out with it, all of the things all at once. 

[00:32:25] Jill: It is all the things all at once. And in life, we can have lots of different experiences all at the same time.

[00:32:33] And that's okay. We just, we feel so attached to the good experiences and we want to push away all the bad experiences. experiences, and really they're all going to be here all at the same time. Even on the 

[00:32:46] Christine: opposite end of that, right? So in working with people, when I've run bereavement groups in the past, thinking of one in particular that I ran for spouses who had died, some of the members were like, I didn't realize that I could still laugh and I could still have joy in the midst of my grief.

[00:33:01] We're complex humans that hold all sorts of emotions and it's about honoring all of those. And there's not just one path. We can get into the stage theory and all of that and how some of that's been debunked, but there's a lot there to hold and to honor. 

[00:33:14] Jill: This idea of being given the permission to laugh and to still feel joy.

[00:33:21] And that's why bereavement groups can be so helpful. I know sometimes it's difficult though, because then you're also surrounded by more grief and more sadness. And I'm sure you probably see it too, where sometimes then there's almost that Competitive nature that humans were like, Oh, you think your grief is bad, mine.

[00:33:43] And so I can see that there's almost a double edged sword when it comes to grief roots. 

[00:33:47] Christine: Yeah, it doesn't work for everyone. Sometimes it's better to have the individualized support, or sometimes it's helpful for a season, but not in perpetuity. And different people are going to have different needs around their coping as well.

[00:34:00] And so I think that that's important to really identify what is going to work for you. And how to honor that. And you mentioned ritual before, right? Sometimes having a ritual or even creating your own ritual can be really meaningful for individuals and give them another way of processing that's not just about words, but about an act or a practice.

[00:34:20] And then for others, ritual is not helpful. So that's what makes some of this so difficult. It's kind of similar to what I find self care can be difficult because it's going to look so different for so many people. And I believe that's true for grief too. We all have various personalities, various needs, and there's no one size fits all prescription for how to grieve.

[00:34:40] Jill: And I know I have a class that I've taught a couple of times that I call like grieving with the senses or grieving through the senses or something. Oh, I love 

[00:34:49] Christine: that. Yeah. 

[00:34:49] Jill: And. It really came about because I was finding that people want to kind of create their own idea of a ritual, but they're not even really sure where to start.

[00:35:00] A lot of the time our body almost gets ignored in grief. Where it's more just like, just talk about what you're feeling, your emotions, kind of thing. But there's a lot of stuff that goes on with the body. And so with this idea of reading with the senses, is we have all these different senses, right?

[00:35:17] There's the smell, there's the taste, there's the hearing, and incorporating all those things. Because I think too, sometimes people get this idea of what ritual actually is. We all have rituals. Every day I get up in the morning. I turn my water on for my coffee. I do a little bit of movement I meditate I come out I make the coffee.

[00:35:35] I put it in the two cups for me and my husband That's a ritual and it's something that I love doing it every day. That's important to me So we do rituals all the time without realizing that it's a ritual for a lot of us We go back to what we had as children, especially in churches that we belong to.

[00:35:56] And I recently went through, I know sometimes people will say death comes in three. It really did for my family. We had three deaths within, it was like a Thursday night, a Saturday night, a Monday, right? So it was just like one after another, after another. And again, one of the things that growing up, I would sometimes go to funerals.

[00:36:13] I would go to things at my church and like, I just, I don't want to do this. Like, why am I doing this? I'm just doing it because I have to do it. I didn't realize How much I would really look forward to going to an old school Catholic funeral until I just had so much death happened so back to back to back that part of me was like, thank you.

[00:36:34] It's something that I know what to expect. I know what we're going to do. We're all going to be together. Yes, there's going to be tears, but we're going to be together. I'm going to be able to hear the songs. I'm going to be able to go through this whole process. I really wanted and needed That ritual that part of me pushed away for a long time, where I was like, nope, I don't need this stuff in my life anymore.

[00:36:55] So again, that idea, it comes with seasons. What I needed at that point, at that age in my life, with all those experiences, is different than what I had needed in the past, where it felt more like a chore that I was just going through the motions and not actually feeling the benefit from it. So it depends on where you're at in life.

[00:37:15] Christine: Yeah, there can be power to it, right? And it's about recognizing where you are, what's going to benefit you, right? If it's too hard for you to walk into a church for a funeral, then don't feel pressured to have that funeral for your loved one. But there can be healing in the community, healing in saying the prayers.

[00:37:35] singing the songs as you experienced. And the fact that I think a lot of faith traditions have prescribed things to do is because often in overwhelm, we don't know what to do. And so having something that is laid out in orderly can be a bomb for some people in their soul when they're going through it.

[00:37:55] Jill: It definitely was for me recently and I didn't expect it. And you were surprised by it. Yeah, I was surprised by it. But then again, some of it was hard because it, the church that I grew up in, it was interesting too, because the woman playing the organ is the same woman that was playing it when I was like five.

[00:38:13] So she's been for like 40 years. I saw her and I was like, Oh my gosh, it's still carrying. I can't believe it. It was just a lot of bringing up some old stuff that was not. Always as pleasant but being able to view it from a different place and to work through some of the more negative emotions that I was having.

[00:38:36] It was an interesting experience all the way around and I was so glad to have it and I was so glad to have been there but I didn't expect it. 

[00:38:45] Christine: Well, and it sounds to me, too, like the self awareness work that you've done to get to that place where you could appreciate elements about it, not taking all of the negativity that you maybe had in the interim period around faith and religion, which you're not alone.

[00:39:00] There's plenty of us that have a lot of baggage when it comes to religion, but being able to work through it and appreciate the gifts to it. 

[00:39:06] Jill: Yes, and that is it. There's still parts of me that very deeply connect with my Catholic background, and then there's the other parts of me that reject so much of it.

[00:39:16] But what I realized is the parts that I still connect with are the the parts that my grandmother was very religious, she was very Catholic, she loved her faith. And so it's more that I'm still connecting with her through it. That's the parts, the singing, and even some of the prayers, if I could separate the fact that I don't like the way that some Humans abuse their power when it comes to religion and abuse religion.

[00:39:44] But again, that's more about the people. That's not even necessarily the religion itself. It did take me a while to get to that point to be like, Oh, I can actually have both things. I can still appreciate and love parts of my religion of birth and also reject and be like, yeah, but the rest of that can stay over there.

[00:40:04] And I don't need that part. 

[00:40:05] Christine: Yeah. And I, I think that's one of the major problems with religion is that they're human institutions, right? So there's going to be the abuse of power, the feelings, right? Because we're humans and we don't get it right all of the time, but there still is the traditions and the practices that may be worth maintaining.

[00:40:27] Jill: That's one of the things that I love so much about. the chaplains that I've met with hospices and hospitals, the medical chaplains, I guess, you all bring the good part of religion and really leave the other stuff out of it. Because it's not about you. It's not about your religion. It's really about just supporting people in that space that all of us have.

[00:40:49] a need at some point to have that filled. And so that's why I love the work that hospice chaplains do. And I think it's beautiful. So I appreciate all of you. 

[00:40:59] Christine: Oh, well, thank you. Yeah. We have the luxury of getting to focus on the individual, right? I could never do the thing where I have to stand up in front of the church and be responsible for the whole congregation and all of that.

[00:41:09] But to have those really sacred moments in between two people, or sometimes more if there's family present, that is a special place to be and to bear witness to. 

[00:41:18] Jill: We are about at our time, so that's actually a good spot to leave us off. Is there any last thing you want to mention? Do you have a website or anything you want to share with people?

[00:41:27] Sure, 

[00:41:28] Christine: I do have a website. It's Christine V. as in Victor Davies, mylastname. com, and I do write a lot about my work as a hospital chaplain, and you can subscribe to that. Substackers on my website, and you can sign up and get those in your inbox about weekly. 

[00:41:43] Jill: Wonderful. Yeah, and I'll put a link in so people can easily find you.

[00:41:47] But thank you. I will make sure to say hi. I'm at the hospital. I love it. I love that it's a small world. Thanks for having me on here. Thank you for listening to this episode of seeing death clearly. In my next episode, we dive into an enlightening Chevrier, who shares her deep exploration into death, consciousness, and the mysteries of the afterlife.

[00:42:11] Stephanie discusses her journey sparked by research into near death experiences. She reflects on how this exploration has reshaped her understanding of life, urging her to live more fully and appreciate the present moment. Stephanie also touches on the intersection of science and spirituality, the compelling evidence from near death experiences, and the concept of soul fracturing, living parallel lives across different realms.

[00:42:38] Throughout, she emphasizes the importance of being open to the mysteries of existence and how contemplating death can profoundly enhance our experience of life. This episode offers a thought provoking blend of science, Spirituality and personal insight. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or family member who might find it interesting.

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