What does healing look like when cure isn’t possible?
That was one of the questions at the heart of our recent GoHealth members’ workshop, A Healing Presence in Dementia, held in partnership with Anna Chaplaincy and led by Julia Burton-Jones, National Training and Development Lead for Anna Chaplaincy at BRF Ministries.
More than 30 GoHealth Community members joined us online for an afternoon of learning, reflection and conversation about how we can offer a compassionate, faithful and grounded presence alongside people living with dementia, their families and those who care for them.
Julia has spent much of her working life exploring the spiritual needs of older people, particularly people living with dementia and their carers. Drawing on that experience, she invited us to think beyond dementia simply as a medical diagnosis and to notice the relationships, identities, losses, gifts and stories that surround it.
At GoHealth, this feels deeply connected to the way we understand healing.
Healing does not always mean cure. Sometimes it looks like connection. Sometimes it is the experience of being recognised, accompanied and valued. Sometimes it is creating spaces where people continue to know that they belong, even when memory, language or independence are changing.
As Gillian, our CEO, reflected after the workshop:
“One question in particular seemed to land in the room, with nods all around: what does healing look like when someone has dementia? Dementia can be a lens onto something much bigger. What healing means when we’re living with a chronic or terminal condition, what we can hope for, and what healing looks like when cure simply isn’t the expectation.”
The workshop also challenged us to think carefully about the assumptions we can make about who gives and who receives care.
People living with dementia are not simply recipients of compassion, ministry or healing. They remain people with gifts, wisdom, relationships and the capacity to respond to others.
As Gillian continued:
“There was a story shared at the end of the workshop about a really difficult day, in which it was the person living with dementia who noticed what was happening for someone else and responded with care. People living with dementia aren’t simply people who need healing, they can also be people who bring healing to others.
It’s a beautiful, countercultural reminder to value the gifts, wisdom and capacity to give that each of us carries, whatever season of life we’re in, including the most profound seasons of illness.”
And perhaps that is part of what it means to become a healing presence: not arriving with all the answers, or assuming that we are the ones doing the healing, but learning to notice God, dignity, relationship and possibility in one another.
Learning together as a GoHealth community
This workshop was part of the ongoing programme available to GoHealth members.
Membership isn’t simply access to a library of resources. It is an invitation into a community of people exploring what it means to live, lead and serve as healing presences in the places where we find ourselves.
Throughout the year our members are invited to workshops, gatherings and conversations with practitioners and thinkers from across health, theology, science and lived experience. Together we explore some of the difficult questions that don’t have easy answers, and discover what faithful, compassionate practice might look like.
Our partnership with Anna Chaplaincy is a wonderful example of that: bringing specialist wisdom into conversation with the wider GoHealth community and giving us space not only to learn something new, but to reflect together on what it might change in our own lives, churches and communities.
If that sounds like the kind of conversation you would like to be part of, we’d love to welcome you into the GoHealth community.