John’s new book Contemplative Caregiving is an indispensable guide for end-of-life caregivers and for anyone seeking to transform experiences of caregiving and grief. Rather than leading to burnout and despair, caring for those who are suffering and dying can enrich our lives with meaning and further our own spiritual growth and resilience. Whether you are caring for a loved one with cancer or dementia, grieving a sudden traumatic loss, or even serving time in prison, Contemplative Caregiving offers encouragement for showing up to the fullness of life in whatever those circumstances may be. Healing, compassion, and spiritual growth are available to us all, in this lifetime, right now.
Baugher’s unique style of integrating social scientific research on caregiving and grief with teachings from Buddhism, contemplative Christianity, and other wisdom traditions illuminates how we each can transform experiences of loss and suffering into a path of compassion. Contemplative Caregiving weaves together powerful stories from interviews with diverse hospice caregivers—Vietnam veterans, nurses, housewives, Catholic nuns, those convicted of murder—with the author’s own journey toward wholeness in the face of grief and traumatic loss, including the murder of his own mother. Through rich storytelling, teachings on compassion, and skillful contemplative exercises, Baugher invites you to join him in exploring the healing power of contemplative caregiving.
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We often imagine that when we care for another, we are the ‘giver’ and the one we care for is the ‘receiver’. But in this important, extensive, and deep exploration of the experience of hospice volunteers, Baugher describes givers who feel like receivers — of gratitude, patience, and wisdom drawn from a deep connection to another human being at an ultimate moment.
Having lost his mother as an eighteen-year-old, at the hands of a murderer, yet later bonding with fellow hospice volunteers who are themselves imprisoned for murder, Baugher pioneers for us the very outer frontiers of human empathy.
A very important frontier, a very important book.
—Arlie Hochschild,
Author of Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, a finalist for the National Book Award
An inspiring and compassionate story of how to transform personal suffering into the ground of mutually beneficial service. It is possible to keep our heart open in hell.
This book illuminates the way.
—Frank Ostaseski,
Author of The Five Invitations:
Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully
Our families, hospitals, prisons, and whole society can benefit from the vision of compassion offered by John Baugher. This is truly a book for the heart.
—Thupten Jinpa,
Principal translator to the Dalai Lama and author of A Fearless Heart: How the Courage to Be Compassionate Can Transform Our Lives
A dazzling study of human vulnerability and connection, Contemplative Caregiving is wide-ranging in scope, profound in its intimacy. Based on interviews with diverse hospice caregivers —Vietnam veterans, nurses, housewives, Catholic nuns, convicted murderers — Baugher conjures the transformative potential of care in an array of moving and unexpected insights.
—Yasmin Gunaratnam,
Author of Death and the Migrant and Researching Race and Ethnicity
Contemplative Caregiving is an invitation from author John Baugher to discover with him the transformative potential of love. In both living and dying, Baugher guides us exceedingly well.
—Sharon Salzberg,
Author of Lovingkindness and Real Love
John’s life-long commitment to caregiving began on the front lines of the AIDS crisis in New Orleans in the early 1990s. Over the past 25 years, he has provided emotional, spiritual, and bereavement support to countless dying persons and their family members in hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, community centers, and private residences. John is a certified nursing assistant (CNA), bereavement group facilitator, hospice caregiver, and chaplain with a Ph.D. in sociology.
His latest book, Contemplative Caregiving: Finding Healing, Compassion, & Spiritual Growth through End-of-Life Care, integrates insights from his own caregiving experience with research on hospice workers in the United States and Germany, including caregivers who are inmates in prison. The book, a culmination of twelve years of research, offers a guide for end-of-life caregivers and for anyone seeking to transform experiences of caregiving and grief.
https://www.shambhala.com/nsearch/?q=baugher
And my website offers a coupon for 30% off the book:
https://johnericbaugher.com
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