Dying

Crisis, Resilience and Lessons from a former Hospice Chaplain

Becky Sansbury is a former hospice chaplain who is now a speaker and consultant to professionals who want practical ways to help their clients get through crises. Becky’s resilience-building model organizes realistic, repeatable steps people can take to regain stability, and then move forward. She is the author of After the Shock: Getting You Back On The Road to Resilience When Crisis Hits You Head On.

When you hear the word crisis what do you think? A dramatic car wreck. A critical medical diagnosis. Divorce. Job loss. Natural disaster. Death. What about the mini-shocks within those crises or the smaller events that disrupt our lives more frequently? A fender bender in rush-hour traffic. Personal information getting hacked. Being overlooked for a promotion.
When crisis hits, large or small, we are thrown off balance.

After the ShockIn After the Shock: Getting You Back On The Road To Resilience When Crisis Hits You Head On, Becky Sansbury introduces a sustainable model to help you stabilize and move toward resilience.

After decades of working with people in crisis, she determined that four factors give us balance, strength, and support throughout our lives, but especially in shocking times. Like the four tires of a car, comfort, control, community, and connection to something bigger than self-provide both a base and a cushion for navigating the ruts and potholes of life. But that is not enough to move us on to resilience.

In the overwhelming confusion of crisis, we crave a space safe for focusing on our current experience, strengthened by crucial lessons from the past. We make both casual and far-reaching decisions based on assumptions that may no longer be authentic or lead to our desired future. We grasp for resources, often unsure of what we need.
Expanding the car metaphor, in After the Shock the reader learns effective ways to use the frame of experience, the steering capacity of assumptions, and the fuel of resources to lead toward more resilient responses in a variety of crises.

Social Media Tip: Andy DeLao, @CancerGeek 

Becky on LinkedIn

After The Shock on Twitter  (Yes, the “e” is missing in After. The correct spelling was not available.)

After the Shock on Facebook

Becky’s website 

Purchase the book 

Fostering End of Life Discussions

Gathering family and friends to have end of life discussions is not easy. What is a natural expectation of life does not mean we are prepared to talk or even think about how we want to end life. Defining “quality of life” is an intensely personal thing and one even our closest family members may not know. Kathy Kastner is a lay-person in the healthcare field who began blogging about the many questions surrounding dying at her website, bestendings.com. She provides resources, thoughtful blogs and curated information about EOL issues. A highly regarded speaker and though leader on EOL, Kathy has presented at Stanford MedX  and just joined a health technology company as a social media strategist and advisor on technology products for seniors. Listen to our conversation of drop in at the time stamps below.

Katahy Kastner 00:00 Introduction
00:45 Meet Kathy Kastner of BestEndings.com
01:40 How did you start talking about end of life?
03:20 Starting a blog
05:04 Terminology
08:33 Starting a conversation about death
12:44 Who should be talking about death?
21:31 Stanford MedicineX
24:24 Technologies for Aging Gracefully
24:45 Seniors and Communication Technology
27:56 Tech creators and Senior Tech Users
31:10 Healthcare Hackathon for caregivers of patients with dementia
35:15 Social Media Tip: Cynthia Manley “What’s the biggest need that can be solved by a mobile health app?”

Kathy Kastner: Blogger and Curator

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