Personalizing Advocacy for Loved Ones
by Jari Holland Buck

My mother will tell you I entered the world with “my voice fully engaged,” the politically correct term for “screaming at the top of my lungs.” I will tell you that I entered the world announcing my mission – advocacy. Over the years I have had many opportunities to describe and refine that mission. Why, then, did I internally stumble several weeks ago when a radio host asked me to define advocacy? Was it because I was still too raw to discuss it as it relates to my husband’s illness? Was it because I now realize this is an “evolving” definition? Was it because my definition has subtly changed?

The answer to all these questions is, “yes.” However, that still does not resolve for me the reasons for my tightening gut, the lack of air in the room, the anxiety behind my answer. Llewellyn just released my book on advocacy, Hospital Stay Handbook. Since Llewellyn published my book, I suppose I am “some kind of an expert” on this subject.

A recent Google search of the word “advocacy” produced 52,200,000 hits. However, I am but one voice that can still claim to be an expert. What made me one? 225 days in four different hospitals working with thousands of healthcare workers, watching hundreds of machines, and witnessing hundreds of interventions, all focused on keeping my husband alive and for which I was present 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

What I realized in this humbling epiphany is that:

• I am an expert only in my own form of advocacy;
• I know how to advocate only from my own frame of reference; 
• I learned how to represent only my husband’s wishes.

While all these “opportunities” (that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy…) to “practice” advocacy (because it IS about practice, not perfection…) give me a “voice” in the community of hospital advocacy, it is but a single voice. The reality is, we all need to find our “own” voice. We also need to define the type and extent to which we will serve as an advocate for another. And, for each person, for each situation for each person, the picture of advocacy will look different.

Being an advocate is hard enough, and then we are asked to silence our own fears and desires about outcome on behalf of an injured or ill person. During the course of seven and one-half months of full-time, intensive advocacy on behalf of my catastrophically ill husband, I left the hospital and went outside into nature many times, this done to clear not my head but my heart. My heart moved me to speak and act occasionally in ways that may not have produced the desired outcome. As I have become more distant, and hopefully, more objective, about our experience, I have come to realize that there is another component to advocacy, that of acting not only on behalf of another’s wishes but acting in a manner that honors that person’s path through the world.

What does this mean?

Click here to read the full article.

Back to Top

An Interview with Jari Holland Buck, author of Hospital Stay Handbook
by Llewellyn

What is in your background that made you write this book?

• anger about my husband’s illness and set-backs, the  major one of which was caused by an infection he  contracted in the hospital;
  
• frustration regarding the problems we had experienced  and how unprepared I had been to address them in the  early days; and
  
• despair regarding the medical system coupled with the denial of many to actually face the issues of their loved one’s illness/injury and treatment.

Explain what you mean by preventing medical mistakes.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a shortage of one million nurses by 2012, a situation that was already evident within every hospital that cared for Bill. Because of “managed care” as dictated by insurance carriers, doctors are required to see 2-3 times more patients in order to achieve the same financial return. Hospital administrators are held to the same profitability goals that drive private sector CEOs since today, hospitals are businesses. And, let us remember, we are all human and make mistakes, even doctors! As a result of all these issues, everyone is vulnerable within hospitals today.

Is there a big problem with medical mistakes happening in hospitals?

Here is but one example of hospital mistakes… In an AARP article entitled, "What to Look Out For to Avoid Hospital Mistakes," the following reveals our vulnerability with regard to medications administered in a hospital setting.

“In a hospital with 100 patients who take four different drugs four times a day, with 10 possible places in the system where things can go wrong, there are 480,000 opportunities each month for an error to occur somewhere in the medication chain. Doctors can prescribe the wrong drug. Pharmacists can misinterpret a doctor’s handwriting, supply the wrong drug, mislabel it or mix it under unsanitary conditions. A nurse can give the drug to the wrong patient.”

Bill would have been victim to medication mistakes at least ten times without my presence and oversight.

How did you use prayer, and spiritual healing with your husband?

Click here to read the full interview.

Back to Top

How to Enchant a Man: Spells to Bewitch, Bedazzle & Beguile
by Ellen Dugan 
How to Enchant A Man is an entertaining and enjoyable guide into the world of loving enchantments, romantic spells, and women’s witchery. Designed for both single and married enchantresses, this is a fun and pleasurable book that invites you, the reader, into the world of personal improvement. Reclaim your feminine power, focus on your captivating abilities as a woman, and bring more romance, laughter, love, and magick into your life!

Read More

Blended Horoscopes: A Guide to Composite Charts
by Isabelle Ghaneh
Man is a knot into which relationships are tied, according to Antoine de Saint-Exupery. It’s true that most of us, though certainly not all of us, need to connect with someone; when that connection is made, how can the energy created be interpreted? With Valentine's Day right around the corner, can relationships (both negative and positive) be understood?

Read More

Love Spells: Find, Heal, and Nurture Love
by Ileana Abrev
Regardless of how you spend Valentine’s Day or even if it is simply meaningless to you, everyone needs help with their love life from time to time. And whether you are looking to begin a relationship anew, mend one on the rocks, or forget the pain of loves past, love spells are a great aid in moving your love life forward. Ileana Abrev, author of White Spells for Love, teaches how the simplest of things can create the most powerful love spells on your way to finding, keeping, and nurturing love.

Read More

Back to Top

Colored Candles for Love Spells

Ritual: An Imbolc Celebration

Love Spells: Find, Heal, and Nurture Love

2008 Newsletter Reader Survey
Please take a few moments to answer this brief online survey to help us improve your experience with Llewellyn's new monthly e-magazine.

Tantra
While sexual activities are most commonly practiced for pleasure and procreation, there has been a secret knowledge held among various groups that the energy raised during sexual activity, as well as the mental state that occurs during prolonged sexual activity, can be united to create remarkable changes in our spiritual selves and physical environment. The techniques to do this are commonly called Sex Magick. 

Many thousands of years ago, the philosophy and techniques that would become known as Tantra developed in northern India...

Gaia Hypothesis
Also known as the Gaia Theory, the belief the Earth and everything in it functions as a type of organism. While a popular belief among some Pagans, it also has a growing number of scientists who take the hypothesis as a way to explain the functioning of the earth....

Imbolc
(February 2) Imbolc/Imbolg is the Old Irish name for an ancient Celtic festival occurring at the beginning of February. Imbolc was the second of the four great fire festivals of Celtic religion and under Christian influence was also known as Candlemas. From early times Imbolc was associated with the fire goddess Brighid, and celebrated the approach of spring and the promise of renewal.