CarePages: A Hub for Healing Conversations

CarePages: A Hub for Healing Conversations – CarePages: Broadcasting executive Nance Guilmartin was at her office when she learned that her 62-year-old mother had died without warning of a heart attack. Guilmartin felt unprepared to cope with the loss. 'I looked around,' she recalls, 'and thought, Where’s the guidebook on this?' Some friends said all the wrong things, and, struggling with everything from mourning to finding a home for her mother’s dog, Guilmartin wasn’t quite sure how to ask for help.

Similar feelings arose a decade later, when Guilmartin herself awaited the results of a cancer test. Before her medical scare was over, she had decided to write a book on 'what to say when you don’t know what to say.' Healing Conversations, a collection of stories drawn from Guilmartin’s life and conversations with loved ones and strangers, was published in 2002. A revised edition was published this year. . . .

Being able to determine what people in crisis need (or don’t need) is key to a healing conversation, Guilmartin says. She advises people to shift out of the ping-pong of autopilot conversation in favor of genuine listening and respectful pauses, and to avoid such unhelpful comments as "Oh, you’ll be fine."

"There’s a quality to a healing conversation. It’s not a Hallmark card kind of conversation," Guilmartin says. "It’s a matter of bringing in my ears, my heart, my mind." The same principles apply in person or online, though attention to tone is especially crucial when you're posting on the Web. "Think hard before you write something that might be too much for someone to handle," she says.