Jane Boyle Therapy  RMT, ELCD, CYT      

                                                                 

I didn't come by serving the dying and their loved ones in a direct way. Rather, as with most of the things I've found to be transformative and authentic, the road was winding and difficult to predict. Deeply affected by loss in my own life, I realized that this thing grief had broken open something inside me, leaving me drawn to helping others in difficult times.

In 2000 I began providing in-home palliative and caregiver comfort-care in the form of RMT massage, reflexology and Reiki. I also began an eight-year stint teaching self-care skills courses at Sheena's Place, a Toronto based support centre for people with eating disorders. Soon after, I began teaching these courses to frontline staff at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, where I was presented with an opportunity to join a research team documenting the effects of massage on children awaiting bone marrow transplants.

Having been informed that these children had a 50% chance of dying during this process, this work took on a sacred aspect for me. I also realized that the families of these kids needed just as much tenderness and support as they did. Providing loving touch and a supportive presence for these children and their loved ones was sometimes difficult and deeply gratifying. I learned that while I can never fully know the anatomy of another person's pain, and that I don't need to fix or smooth it over, just the act of listening, really listening, is a huge service in and of itself.

I was soon being contacted by the Sick Kids' Palliative team to provide comfort care in the form of massage and Reiki to dying children, which I continue to do on a contract basis. On one such occasion I was working with Ahmed, a five-year-old with an old soul. As his aunt watched me closely with what I sensed was a bit of skepticism about this stranger touching her nephew, she asked me if I had any children of my own. Ahmed gazed at her incredulously and said “Auntie! We’re all her children!” This is one of my fondest memories of this work.