Contemplative Caregiving

FINDING HEALING, COMPASSION & SPIRITUAL GROWTH THROUGH END-OF-LIFE CARE

Contemplative Caregiving is an indispensable guide for end-of-life caregivers and for anyone seeking to transform experiences of caregiving and grief. Rather than leading to burnout and despair, caring for those who are suffering and dying can enrich our lives with meaning and further our own spiritual growth and resilience.

Whether you are caring for a loved one with cancer or dementia, grieving a sudden traumatic loss, or even serving time in prison, Contemplative Caregiving offers encouragement for showing up to the fullness of life in whatever those circumstances may be. Healing, compassion, and spiritual growth are available to us all, in this lifetime, right now.

Dr. Baugher’s unique style of integrating social scientific research on caregiving and grief with teachings from Buddhist, contemplative Christian, and other wisdom traditions, illuminates how we each can transform experiences of loss and suffering into a path of compassion. Contemplative Caregiving weaves together powerful stories from interviews with diverse hospice caregivers – Vietnam veterans, nurses, housewives, Catholic nuns, those convicted of murder – with the author’s own journey toward wholeness in the face of grief and traumatic loss, including the murder of his own mother. Through rich storytelling, teachings on compassion, and skillful contemplative exercises, Baugher invites you to join him in exploring the healing power of contemplative caregiving.

The teachings and practices in Contemplative Caregiving can help you:

transform the pain of grief into a seed of compassion for yourself and others
sustain your motivation to care and avoid burning out
empathically connect with those who are suffering
release expectations and respond flexibly to the needs of those in your care
expand the scope of your compassion to include all persons and all situations.

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For Press and Media
Katelin Ross, Publicist
Shambhala Publications
(720) 799-8251
kross@shambhala.com

Media Kit

Praise for Contemplative Caregiving

“Baugher pioneers for us the very outer frontiers of human empathy. A very important frontier, a very important book.”

— Arlie Hochschild, author of Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, a finalist for the National Book Award

“Our families, hospitals, prisons, and whole society can benefit from the vision of compassion offered by John Baugher. This is truly a book for the heart.”

— Thupten Jinpa, Principal Translator to the Dalai Lama and author of A Fearless Heart: How the Courage to Be Compassionate Can Transform Our Lives

“A dazzling study of human vulnerability and connection, Contemplative Caregiving is wide-ranging in scope, profound in its intimacy. Baugher conjures the transformative potential of care in an array of moving and unexpected insights.”

— Yasmin Gunaratnam, author of Death and the Migrant and Researching Race and Ethnicity

“In this beautiful and moving book, we learn what it means to see caregiving as a path of redemption and transformation rather than a source of stress and burnout. The journeys described here are messy, rich, painful and transcendent. Contemplative Caregiving is an absorbing read and an indispensable guide to all of us who live in this mortal world.”

— Leslie J. Blackhall MD MTS, Section Head, Palliative Care, Tussi and John Kluge Chair, University of Virginia School of Medicine

“Contemplative Caregiving is an invitation by author John Baugher to discover with him the transformative potential of love. In both living and dying, Baugher guides us exceedingly well.”

— Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness and Real Love

“Baugher’s wisdom will resonate with anyone who finds themselves caring for someone at the end-of-life.”

— Publisher’s Weekly

“An inspiring and compassionate story of how to transform personal suffering into the ground of mutually beneficial service. It is possible to keep our heart open in hell. This book illuminates the way.”

— Frank Ostaseski, author of The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

“Who better to tell the story of so many transformed by giving and receiving compassionate care at the end of life, including prison inmates, than a man who has so deeply transformed his own unspeakable pain by bringing dignity to the suffering of others. This is a book about life and death, courage and compassion, and the transformative power of love.”

— Fleet Maull, PhD, author of Radical Responsibility and Dharma in Hell

“A trenchant and ground-breaking book inviting readers to taste the real, profound, unscripted, and liberating effects experienced by someone generating and enacting compassion for another person. This book can speak to all of us, whoever we are, about ourselves, sounding an infinitely bright and uplifting note in the otherwise mounting overture of despair and confusion in our world today.”

— Patrick Gaffney, editor of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying and Talent for Humanity

“In this courageous book, John Baugher connects with the timeless wisdom of spiritual traditions both East and West. Picking up the mantle from Dame Cicely Saunders, Thich Nhat Hahn, and other visionaries, Contemplative Caregiving weaves together story and teaching with practical exercises to empower us to extend compassion to ourselves and all others without exception. An invitation to hope and healing in these troubled times.”

— Matthew Lee, PhD, Director of Empirical Research, Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University and author of The Heart of Religion

“A work of courage and deep vulnerability that can inspire leaders in any field in moving beyond models of heroic action toward authentic, relational encounters with self and others. I invite all who pick up this book to see their own life’s journey reflected in its pages and to draw on the creative spaces within themselves to further a more compassionate 21st century.”

— Eliane Ubalijoro, PhD, Board Member, International Leadership Association; Professor of Practice, McGill University