~ Joy in the Evening of Our Lives ~

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Joy in the Evening of Our Lives by Joan Englander, is a lyrically written, uplifting, holistic journey of true stories and guidance that can transform the warehousing of elders in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Joy in the Evening guides readers into becoming Healing Companions, which any reader can achieve. Through the eldercare visits of Healing Companions portrayed in this book, readers will discover elders who:

Find joy in the midst of grief.
Are released from excruciating pain through musical prayer.
Share profound thoughts in spite of mental confusion and severe memory loss.
Near death, sing and make joyful dance movements in their beds.

Many people would like to feel at ease when caring for their elders. The journey of Joy in the Evening challenges, inspires, and changes the thinking of everyone who gives eldercare. Readers will discover tools on how to:

Become revitalized and energized during eldercare visits.
Communicate through the arts, prayer and meditation.
Reawaken the will to live in elders who feel useless.
Create healing moments that bring peace and hope to both elder and Healing Companion.
Connect to a spark of inner wellness in spite of physical or emotional pain.

Many elders wait in boredom, sleeping for hours, mesmerized in front of a TV day after day, year after year. This is how they wait for life's sun to go down. Aging does not have to be this way. Elders can have joy, meaning, creativity, intellectual and spiritual challenge in the evening of their lives.

Joan's latest book Blossoming Through Life, when all seems dark is currently in the process of being published.
Here are excerpts from the book, a contemplative memoir, a journey of discovery through many lands. View video below and listen to a conversation with renowned Egyptian Mystic Omm Sety.

The Many Voices of Africa

by Joan Englander

I am the safe white person who never soils her shoes by stepping into the townships where trash, broken glass, tin shacks have their home.

I am the child crying for food, feverish and cold.

I am the black man begging in the street at the car window.

I am a little black boy playing in the sun, having fun,

oblivious to anything else except laughing.

I am the agile hands of poor black artists creating pottery, paintings, tile designs in bathrooms without toilet paper or soap.

I am the addicted black woman and man who are killing each other and may at any moment, kill friend or neighbor.

I am the black woman and man whose courage, faith and capacity for joy overcome rage and fear, again and again.

I am a praying person, seeking to praise while feeling downcast and lost.

I am the sly government official who steals money slated for the poor to satisfy greed for expensive vacations, yachts and cars.

I am the white successful attorney who adopts a family of color, loves and supports them, pays for higher education, sees them through every aspect of life.

I am the black mother whose love of Jesus moves me to take into my arms and forgive the white policeman who murdered my son and my husband.

I am the white woman, giving up comforts and safety to feed the hungry, soothe the sick, wash the feet of the weary.

I am the many voices of Africa being healed of ancestral wounds.

I am the ocean rolling back and forth, rocking my tired eyes from weeping.

I am the tallest mountain shining out in the sky, beckoning hikers to greet my heart with exhilaration.

I am the lion, placid at one moment, soon to roar in wild abandon, the next.

I am an elephant, husky and dark, swishing and swaying in the hot sun.

I am the antelope racing across the plains, free-spirited where no fences hold me back.

I am the giraffe drinking peacefully from a pond.

I am the widest of expanses and the smallest grain of sand, all of me contained in the heart of God, a God whose mystery I cannot fathom.

And now I am an old woman, not much time left for my death, wanting to give thanks for the many voices calling me, calling the world to hear the soul of Africa.

Inspired by the spirit of Thich Nhat Hanh, Call Me by My True Names

Healing Companions

A new vision for elder care

You are invited to watch the Voices of Africa. This film inspired the poem below.