This tran­script has been edit­ed for clar­i­ty. There may be dif­fer­ences between the audio and this tran­script.

Nav­i­gat­ing Trau­ma: Jour­ney from EMT to Chap­lain
John: [00:00:00] Long­ing, is a deep yearn­ing for what is lost or unob­tain­able, and amaz­ing­ly holds trans­for­ma­tive pow­ers when inter­twined with self care and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. When we set bound­aries and prac­tic­ing self com­pas­sion, we nav­i­gate our long­ings, while pre­serv­ing our strength and authen­tic­i­ty. Embrac­ing com­pas­sion opens path­ways to heal­ings and con­nec­tions, help­ing us to nav­i­gate the com­plex­i­ties of rela­tion­ships.
Acknowl­edg­ing and hon­or­ing our long­ings, we trans­form grief into strength and wis­dom, fos­ter­ing a rich­er, more inter­con­nect­ed expe­ri­ence of life where every­one feels val­ued and cher­ished.

Chris­tine: I lived in a town that had train tracks, and unfor­tu­nate­ly we had a num­ber of young [00:01:00] peo­ple that would want to die by sui­cide on the tracks. We would get called into that to, to real­ly do some cleanup and try­ing to be rev­er­ent in the way that we did that. But it was grue­some. And there’s things now like I can’t watch hor­ror movies.
Or any­thing that has a lot of phys­i­cal vio­lence in it, espe­cial­ly we see a lot of gun­shot vic­tims in our trau­ma bay and I’m like, no, I can’t do any­thing about it.

John: In today’s episode, our guest delves into the pro­found jour­ney of spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing and heal­ing not only her own life, but also those she works with.
Thank you for join­ing with us You’re lis­ten­ing to the Urban Grief Shamans, and I’m your host, John Moy­er. I worked as an EMT And it was in the backs of the ambu­lances, in addi­tion to doing wound care and giv­ing oxy­gen and pro­vid­ing safe trans­port. hold­ing peo­ple’s hands who were [00:02:00] scared, bear­ing wit­ness to the suf­fer­ing, they be ask­ing deep ques­tions, why is this hap­pen­ing, those moments of human con­nec­tion and rec­og­niz­ing there’s all sorts of ways to heal peo­ple. And that sense of spir­i­tu­al heal­ing that hap­pen between two peo­ple led me to do the work that I do now as hos­pi­tal chap­lain
Our guest is Chris Wasko, a com­pas­sion­ate hos­pi­tal chap­lain and for­mer EMT para­medic whose spir­i­tu­al jour­ney began after an intense and emo­tion­al child­hood . As Chris worked on heal­ing, her spir­it began to awak­en, lead­ing her to devel­op skills as a psy­chic medi­um. This trans­for­ma­tion allowed her to con­nect with spir­its and offer guid­ance, par­tic­u­lar­ly to vic­tims of nar­cis­sis­tic abuse.
Join us as Chris shares her remark­able soul­ful devel­op­ment.

John: I
Chris­tine: grew up in north­ern New Jer­sey a pre­co­cious kid. My fam­i­ly went to the local Pres­by­ter­ian church My moth­er was a nurse, she [00:03:00] stoked that fire a in me. I worked as an EMT to train for that. And it was in the backs of the ambu­lances, in addi­tion to doing the min­i­mal, wound care and giv­ing oxy­gen and pro­vid­ing safe trans­port. I enjoyed hold­ing peo­ple’s hands who were scared, bear­ing wit­ness to the suf­fer­ing, they might be ask­ing deep ques­tions, like why is this hap­pen­ing, those moments of human con­nec­tion and rec­og­niz­ing there’s all sorts of ways to heal peo­ple. And for me, it was that sense of spir­i­tu­al heal­ing that can hap­pen between two peo­ple led me to do the work that I do now as hos­pi­tal chap­lain.
John: Grow­ing up, were you intro­duced to grief ?
Chris­tine: So I think the biggest grief that I had grow­ing up was what I would call an intrapsy­chic grief, which was around a med­ical diag­no­sis that I had. So I became a patient and was in and out of hos­pi­tals myself, and then it was cor­rect­ly diag­nosed, although it took a while. With gen­er­al­ized epilep­sy and so it was some of those [00:04:00] loss­es around min­i­mal things now, but to a teenag­er, is impor­tant, los­ing my hair due to the med­ica­tion I was put on, los­ing the dri­ver’s license, los­ing my image of myself to be able to do the things that I want­ed to do and could­n’t. And real­ly the way that it impact­ed my rela­tion­ship with God, because I was sim­i­lar to those patients in the back of the ambu­lance won­der­ing why is this hap­pen­ing? Feel­ing very much the dark night of the soul. So I, when I think about dif­fer­ent types of loss, I think that was a sig­nif­i­cant one for me that helped guide me into the jour­ney of being with oth­er peo­ple, espe­cial­ly when they’re diag­nosed with some­thing.
A ques­tion that I love when I walk into a hos­pi­tal room and peo­ple say to me, Oh, I’m not spir­i­tu­al, I’m not reli­gious. That’s okay. Tell me what does mean some­thing to you? What fills up your heart or what is weigh­ing on your soul in this par­tic­u­lar moment?
So try­ing to help them iden­ti­fy what the­olo­gian Paul Tillich called the ulti­mate con­cern, because to me peo­ple [00:05:00] are spir­i­tu­al, even if, they’re not believ­ing in God or they’re not pre­scrib­ing to a cer­tain insti­tu­tion­al­ized reli­gion. It’s about iden­ti­fy­ing, what we hold true to our­selves, what is it we val­ue and then. Where is the dis­con­nect? So for me, as instance, I said before con­nect­ing with myself, con­nect­ing with oth­ers and con­nect­ing with a sense of the sacred or the divine is impor­tant. And I find dis­con­nect hap­pens for peo­ple when they’re not feel­ing con­nect­ed with her­self.
So maybe some of my patients are, about to have surgery. They’re in a lot of pain. They don’t want to con­nect with their bod­ies. Their bod­ies have been betray­ing them. With com­mu­ni­ty, maybe it’s, being in the hos­pi­tal, being away from their their loved ones. I was with a patient not too long ago who said I’ve nev­er not slept with in the same bed as my wife for 60 years of mar­riage.
And here I’m in the hos­pi­tal and, all alone. So even though it was tem­po­rary and he was going to have a good phys­i­cal out­come, there’s still that sep­a­ra­tion and that does some­thing to us. And then in [00:06:00] terms of the divine, or the sacred, or God, or how­ev­er we may define it, for some it may be nature, it may be the uni­verse, I think it’s how we’re mak­ing mean­ing of what we’re going through, and there’s times where that mean­ing may lead us to believe that there’s a dis­con­nect there, that, it’s when I’m with a patient who gets diag­nosed with lung can­cer and says, I nev­er smoked a day in my life, I don’t under­stand why this is hap­pen­ing for me. Then there’s that dis­con­nect as he’s try­ing to wres­tle with, this is not how I thought the uni­verse should be ordered. So real­ly iden­ti­fy­ing where does a per­son con­nect and where might there be that dis­con­nec­tion is part of the work that I do. And then to get to your oth­er point about how to take ordi­nary moments and real­ly infuse the sacred in a lot of times my spir­i­tu­al direc­tion clients some of whom are cler­gy. will feel guilty and they say, Oh, I should be read­ing, or I should be med­i­tat­ing for 45 min­utes [00:07:00] and adding things to their to do list that just make them feel crum­my when they don’t get done. And so I encour­age them to say, what are you already doing through­out your day? And how can we make that a spir­i­tu­al prac­tice?
Encour­ag­ing peo­ple to think what is it that you’re already doing in your life and almost like a a sacred habit stack­ing, right? We don’t need to nec­es­sar­i­ly cre­ate some­thing new, but you can do what­ev­er you’re doing already with inten­tion to real­ly sep­a­rate it out as a Yes,
John: about cof­fee.
Chris­tine: I do think that choco­late can also be a spir­i­tu­al prac­tice for me any­way.
John: Mm hmm. Well, What’s the gen­er­al reac­tion of peo­ple when you approach them about enhanc­ing their spir­i­tu­al­i­ty?
Chris­tine: I think most peo­ple Are inter­est­ed in it. Espe­cial­ly those that are meet­ing with me for spir­i­tu­al direc­tion. So they’re self-select­ing to be sure. And so it’s [00:08:00] peo­ple that are want­i­ng to do this. A lot of the work that I do with my indi­vid­ual clients is around undo­ing some of the tox­i­c­i­ty that has hap­pened to them. as a result of reli­gious insti­tu­tions. And so that’s a lot of where I call it like a patient on Tang patient untan­gling of the ways in which they have inter­nal­ized. the­o­log­i­cal truths that may not be serv­ing them well any­more. So it’s, what did they hear grow­ing up, in their fam­i­lies of ori­gin or what was being preached from, you know, maybe they did­n’t go to church, maybe it was just, the TV, was say­ing some­thing the ways that we may have inter­nal­ized beliefs that. May not be serv­ing us any­more. And there may be some harm in those. So I think that is a lot of the work that I do that is help­ful for peo­ple, but it takes a lot to, to ana­lyze that and look at that and say, is this real­ly what I [00:09:00] believe? And I find that peo­ple are will­ing to do that, par­tic­u­lar­ly those that are com­ing from a tra­di­tion where they feel like their faith does­n’t fit any­more. And they’re try­ing to find some­thing that’s more authen­tic to who they are and who they’ve become.
John: What, is it the sim­i­lar approach or response that you get from strangers? Like, You’re a hos­pi­tal chap­lain, so you’re just giv­en, these are your, the peo­ple who were brought in the hos­pi­tal last night and you go start, you want to just go see them, but you have no rela­tion­ship with them.
Chris­tine: Yeah
Yeah, so often times
peo­ple will say, what’s a chap­lain? They’re very con­fused about what I’m doing when I come in the room. And some­times they’ll think that I’m there to con­vert them to a spe­cif­ic faith tra­di­tion. I say no, I’m not the church police. I’m not, not tak­ing atten­dance on, what your reli­gious prac­tices have been. I let them know I’m an extra lay­er of emo­tion­al and spir­i­tu­al sup­port. spir­i­tu­al sup­port because being hos­pi­tal­ized can bring up so many dif­fer­ent emo­tion­al and spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ences for indi­vid­u­als. And then [00:10:00] cer­tain­ly a lot of the work that I do with patients and fam­i­lies is not those rou­tine we call them rou­tine vis­its, but is also the cri­sis vis­its. Espe­cial­ly as I work in a lev­el one trau­ma cen­ter, so that we are the point per­son to be the fam­i­ly sup­port when there’s a car acci­dent and their loved ones are brought to a hos­pi­tal. And peo­ple’s emo­tions are sky high. Their anx­i­ety, their fear until they can have some infor­ma­tion about what’s hap­pen­ing. And then also, there’s bereave­ment. I can’t tell you how many deathbeds I’ve been at in the course of my career, a fair num­ber and help­ing fam­i­lies. In those moments to be able to say good­bye to their loved ones and being there for that real­ly pro­found and beau­ti­ful and hard work to me is such a priv­i­lege..
John: can you share some of your EMT expe­ri­ences?
Chris­tine: Sure. And I should clar­i­fy, I was BLS. I was nev­er fan­cy enough to be ALS. Yeah. So, some of the two sto­ries come to my [00:11:00] mind from my EMS days and then I’ll switch to how I sup­port EMS now. And I, I start­ed doing that work as a teenag­er and I recall my first code that I ever had was the gen­tle­man, oh my good­ness, he was prob­a­bly in his mid fifties and was hav­ing some heart pal­pi­ta­tions and we were, but he was jok­ing and laugh­ing, as we loaded him into the rig. But then, things went south as we were dri­ving and had to pull over and do com­pres­sions and CPR and all of that. And he did­n’t make it. And I remem­ber when we pulled up to, that ambu­lance, we were prob­a­bly 12 miles from the hos­pi­tal and when we pulled up to the hos­pi­tal and his wife was dri­ving behind us. She was like, what is going on? He was fine. And and so I remem­ber she just crum­bled to the curb in the in the ambu­lance bay. And I just crum­bled down and sat there with her, even as she was, at first she was curs­ing at us, which I can total­ly under­stand, right? I’ve seen that many times in the hos­pi­tal, that anger [00:12:00] has to go some­where.
Of course, it’s going to go to the providers but just sit­ting there and being with her as she was in this. Ter­ri­ble, worst place of her life start­ing, try­ing to fig­ure out that, that shock of it and not even know­ing what to say or to do I just knew it would be help­ful for her not to be alone in that moment.
So crum­bled next to her, on the curb and allowed her to sob into me. So that I think is one of the expe­ri­ences that kind of prepped my work into this. Anoth­er expe­ri­ence I remem­ber hav­ing was The first, this might’ve been my very first call actu­al­ly was to what we called it at the time, which is prob­a­bly not polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect, was to a meth den. And it was a sub­ur­ban house in my neigh­bor­hood. I had no idea, all that was going on there. And so cer­tain­ly I think that was a time where my naive, my naivete was exposed and, as I went on more and more calls, I, That real­ly got erased. I just became cyn­i­cal and jad­ed for a lit­tle while. But my part­ner, we had to go upstairs. And my part­ner fell through. the [00:13:00] stairs. So one of the, they gave way under­neath him. So I learned after that, I said, okay, we always let the police go up first. We don’t go, we don’t go up first. And it was, and so we had to tend to him. And it’s also some­thing about self care, right?
Learn­ing that les­son of we have to be safe our­selves. Of course they taught us that, in school, but real­ly rec­og­niz­ing it out in the field. And then we did have to get a crane from heavy res­cue to help us to get into the patient who, he had been dead for. Prob­a­bly three days at that point.
So there was noth­ing that we could do, but we did­n’t know that going in. And so just I think that oth­er les­son of you nev­er know what you’re going to find and I try to bring that into my chap­lain­cy stu­dents, right? We have to be flex­i­ble. We have to roll with what­ev­er’s com­ing along because we don’t know how a patient is going to respond when you go into that door, much like when you’re going out to the scene. You don’t know what you’re going to find. And so some of the work now I do with our our EMTs, but also our dis­patch­ers [00:14:00] actu­al­ly. I’ve start­ed work­ing with them as well because it is as and your lis­ten­ers will know the sec­ondary trau­ma or vic­ar­i­ous trau­ma is what a lot of peo­ple call it sec­ond per­son or vic­ar­i­ous, but I think it’s even more so than that because it’s it’s not just that you’re hear­ing about some­thing that’s going on, you’re involved in it. So for instance, I was talk­ing to one of our dis­patch­ers. And they said, they hear the ter­ri­ble stuff that’s going on and then they don’t feel like they can ful­ly help. And so it does­n’t give us that that sat­is­fac­tion of the clos­ing of the loop that we some­times need in order to know, okay, this is, This did tear up my soul a lit­tle bit, but I think I made it bet­ter by being there.
Like my pres­ence or, how I was help­ing impact­ed the sit­u­a­tion enough that it was worth it. And they don’t always have that because they don’t always see, what the out­comes are. Or we saw this so much dur­ing [00:15:00] COVID, right? So part of the rea­son that I got into this work was to be present at death because I believe that peo­ple should be able to have a good death, even if it’s in the hos­pi­tal, even if it is a hor­ren­dous sit­u­a­tion. If my pres­ence can help even 1 per­cent to me, that is sig­nif­i­cant and worth it. But dur­ing COVID, there were no good deaths in the hos­pi­tal. It was all. Awful. The hold­ing up of iPads to say good­bye to the fam­i­ly mem­bers. And it was just ter­ri­ble. And we, and I live in New Jer­sey, so we were the first, I’m talk­ing the first wave of COVID. And my col­leagues who were ALS and BLS were see­ing and expe­ri­enc­ing the same thing. So I think the first step as sup­port­ing providers and for myself includ­ed is rec­og­niz­ing the impact that this can take on us. And I find a lot of peo­ple in health­care like to live in denial and say, Oh no, this does­n’t impact me at all.
And there’s a fan­tas­tic quote. I’m prob­a­bly butchered at this moment by Dr Remen, [00:16:00] Nao­mi Remen, who says, it’s impos­si­ble to be immersed in, water, the waters of suf­fer­ing dai­ly and not get wet, right? Like it’s just inevitable. This is the the water we swim in the
air that we’re breath­ing. And so we are going to be impact­ed.
John: Now, you said that you start­ed out in EMS as a teenag­er ?
Chris­tine: I did.
John: You did. It’s a pret­ty pro­found occu­pa­tion, pro­fes­sion to step into at that age. And I start­ed when I was 27, I think. Back in 78. You weren’t even born then, I don’t think. Any­ways, the what I want­ed to know is that just how pro­found did you find those first first 10 calls, just to give it a num­ber, aver­age trau­ma calls.
It’s I can remem­ber still to this day a lot of the peo­ple who were killed in car acci­dents or sui­cide or vio­lence
They’re still with you and I remem­ber my reac­tion to my first high­way trau­ma.
[00:17:00] I’m won­der­ing about your expe­ri­ences because that, you car­ry all this Oh, absolute­ly. And I’m a firm believ­er of And I real­ly like Kolk’s work the body keeps the score and a lot of the oth­er trau­ma prac­ti­tion­ers that are talk­ing about, even if we talk about these things and process them, our bod­ies hold onto them and there’s, I think a move­ment toward need­ing some­thing beyond just talk ther­a­py to process some of this, and I’ve even done some EMDR myself.
Chris­tine: That’s some­thing I would rec­om­mend to peo­ple as well which when I was in social work school was brand new, but now there’s been a ton of research on that real­ly helps with PTSD because that was a real­i­ty for me was being at these Some of these grue­some sights. And just not know­ing how to process them and we did­n’t have it, we did­n’t have a chap­lain, we did­n’t have, psy­chol­o­gists or, any­one to, to even nor­mal­ize it to say, yeah, this is a lot.
And there was very much this cul­ture of, [00:18:00] um, you just, you move on, you, you don’t real­ly let it get to you. And Yeah. I, some of the hard­er ones for me I strug­gle with, I’m like, Oh, I don’t even want to go into too much detail because your lis­ten­ers may be trau­ma­tized by it.
But I trust that they’ll know how to care for them­selves, but we I lived in a town that had a, um, train sta­tion train tracks. And unfor­tu­nate­ly, we had a num­ber of usu­al­ly young peo­ple that would want to die by sui­cide on the tracks. And then we would get called into that to, to real­ly do some cleanup and try­ing to be rev­er­ent in the way that we did that. But it was, grue­some. And there’s things now like I can’t watch hor­ror movies or any­thing that has a lot of phys­i­cal vio­lence in it. Espe­cial­ly, we see a lot of gun­shot vic­tims in our trau­ma bay and I’m like, No, I can’t do it. And my hus­band, knows I can’t do any sort of war movie or any­thing [00:19:00] like that, because see­ing see­ing what that does in real life, I, I have no inter­est in watch­ing it on the
screen. So I think from get­ting involved in that at a young age real­ly sen­si­tized me to what peo­ple go through. And. It comes out in fun­ny ways now because it’s always been in the work that I’ve done that I for­get, Oh, this isn’t nor­mal for oth­er peo­ple to have expe­ri­enced this much. So for instance I train chap­lain interns and peo­ple that are want­i­ng to do this work. So some­times it’s sem­i­nary stu­dents, or some­times it’s cler­gy who are want­i­ng to become more effec­tive in their spir­i­tu­al care­giv­ing. And one day I sched­uled. It was an ori­en­ta­tion week for our new interns or res­i­dents. And I sched­uled a vis­it to the morgue because we some­times have to do morgue vis­its so I want­ed them to be able to see it before they had to go down there with the fam­i­ly. And I did it right before lunch, and I was­n’t think­ing, they, they all went off their lunch. They said, oh my gosh, how can you expect us to eat now, Christy?
And I was like, [00:20:00] oh, I’ve just grown up with dead bod­ies. It did­n’t occur to me that this was some­thing that was so now I’m very cau­tious and care­ful about when I sched­ule that, and we have a debrief­ing ses­sion after­wards. Or so real­ly try­ing to rec­og­nize this is not every­one’s expe­ri­ence.
It helped me, I think, tremen­dous­ly to be able to work in health­care and do the work that I do with death and with edu­ca­tion. So I’m grate­ful for it and I would­n’t change it. But I do have to try to make sure I’m seek­ing out joy to coun­ter­bal­ance some of the inten­si­ty of the expe­ri­ence as well.
John: Yeah, I I’m still curi­ous, could we just step back I imag­ine you’re an old­er teenag­er,
and I don’t know what your child­hood was like grow­ing up, but I would think that many of us were some­what pro­tect­ed. We did­n’t see a lot of of trau­ma at all, oth­er than maybe cut fin­gers, stubbed toes and, abra­sion on our knees.
But those,pivotal life chang­ing event to show up at a scene like that. [00:21:00] And it’s your respon­si­bil­i­ty now to jump in at less than 20.
how Old your age was. You could fig­ure you got to be around 18, at least.
Chris­tine: Yeah.
John: Yeah, and to take that respon­si­bil­i­ty on.
And I can’t imag­ine that it did­n’t affect you deeply at that time.
Chris­tine: I was actu­al­ly 16 when I
first got licensed and did my train­ing. When I went through it, I was the youngest one in my state to have ever done it. Cause they just changed, I think the age lim­its. I do think it, it was cer­tain­ly instru­men­tal in terms of what I do now. Because I saw the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that peo­ple were going through and real­ly being in touch with a sense of mor­tal­i­ty, which espe­cial­ly as a teenag­er, it’s quite easy to feel invin­ci­ble. [00:22:00] But being in sit­u­a­tions where it was, part of the lived expe­ri­ence. I think one of the ways that it changed me. was I just expect­ed the the grief or the loss. So for instance, an expe­ri­ence I had, 16 years lat­er when I had a series of mis­car­riages that I went through about six in total. The first one I remem­ber just think­ing, oh, that makes sense. Of course I was dev­as­tat­ed by it. But I also was­n’t sur­prised the way that a lot of my oth­er friends were sur­prised when they were going through the same thing. They’re like, Oh, I can’t believe, I nev­er thought that this could hap­pen to me.
I said, Oh, I, I nev­er thought it, it could hap­pen to me. It could not hap­pen to me. So I think it was just see­ing suf­fer­ing all around made me rec­og­nize just how uni­ver­sal it is. And for me it is also paired with my spir­i­tu­al­i­ty because, going back to that ear­ly belief of feel­ing that God want­ed me to help peo­ple, [00:23:00] part of what I see as that help is being with peo­ple on the worst day of their lives. I some­times joke with friends of mine who are church min­is­ters. Cause I said, I don’t know how you could do what you do for a liv­ing. I said I could­n’t do what you do. I could­n’t deal with the pol­i­tics of, where we’re putting the park­ing lot or peo­ple giv­ing you feed­back about the ser­mons.
I can’t deal with that. I, I feel like
I can only do the inten­si­ty. And to me that’s what mat­ters most. Every­thing else goes away. It’s a bit like some peo­ple say they can’t do small talk. They can only have real­ly intense, con­ver­sa­tions. They don’t have the patience for the small talk. And yeah, so for me it’s real­ly mean­ing­ful to to be there with peo­ple at the end of their lives or peo­ple that are just going through intense spir­i­tu­al dis­tress to try to help them to know that they’re not alone in it.
John: Just one more ques­tion and I’ll step away from your ear­ly
Chris­tine: It’s great. I,
haven’t thought about some of them in years,
John: yeah, [00:24:00] I found for me there was a hard­en­ing.
place at the very Yes.
That first I that from my first high­way trau­ma, I was work­ing with an old­er fel­la, and I just remem­ber this flush going up my body and down.
And I was feel­ing proud that, I can tough­en this out. This young lady was dead at the scene, and
real­ly, we had to wait for her. The the under­tak­ers would come and recov­er the body. And the coro­ner had already, um, pro­nounced her. So we just had to wait.
We just helped to of clean up a lit­tle bit.
And
but the next night we had a par­ty.
And
I was­n’t a drinker at all. But I sure passed my lim­it
It was so unusu­al for me. uh, it was so unusu­al for
Chris­tine: huh, Uh
John: to Do that.
And then through­out those ear­ly years, you bounce back and forth through that, know, from being it was most­ly a male dom­i­nant envi­ron­ment at that time.
And and you emu­late all these old pros that have been on here for­ev­er, and then some­thing takes place in, in us that I don’t want to say it’s a soft­en­ing, but [00:25:00] it’s, I think as you described it, there’s a dif­fer­ent kind of per­spec­tive takes hold.
And you real­ize that all of us are on a dif­fer­ent path. And for me, it sounds a bit like you as well, that what gave, what stoked my pas­sion was bring­ing. order to chaos, I felt that that was a role that I could play because at that time, because of all the trau­ma, grief that I expe­ri­enced before­hand gave me a sense of con­trol because that’s how, when you have so much, know, you don’t want to, you don’t want any­body to know you have, are car­ry­ing this grief or this shame around.
So it’s all about con­trol. And I find that a lot of medics the good ones, these present that way and and then even­tu­al­ly you get old­er and then you have to come to terms with a lot of this, what we see peo­ple. We see things that we should­n’t have to see, but some­body, because it’s not nor­mal see­ing peo­ple in this way.
But to bring our strengths [00:26:00] to that per­son and their fam­i­lies and and also to not just spir­i­tu­al­ly. phys­i­cal­ly, men­tal­ly to be a big help to them is very trans­for­ma­tive for us. And the, I was, so that’s like my process.
And how much do you think that that changed you? Because you did­n’t go into the church right away
as a
teenag­er,
Chris­tine: know. Yeah. I yeah, thank you for shar­ing that. I think that’s such a pro­found jour­ney and I love how you artic­u­late it, this hard­en­ing and then a soft­en­ing and I def­i­nite­ly learned the hard­en­ing, when I first start­ed. It was, that’s I joke, that’s where I learned all the dirty jokes and all the curse words. That you would­n’t expect a Pres­by­ter­ian min­is­ter to know. I learned it from hang­ing out with with folks at the res­cue build­ing. And also the gal­lows humor, right? The ways
John: yes very dark humor. Which still exists. In I still see it all the time in our emer­gency room in par­tic­u­lar, [00:27:00] and that’s some­thing else that my stu­dents real­ly strug­gle with, and they’re like, oh, this is, ter­ri­bly irrev­er­ent.
Chris­tine: And I say you have to be able to under­stand where peo­ple are com­ing from and that this is a cop­ing mech­a­nism.
It’s a strange one but it is a way of tak­ing some of the pres­sure off and, real­ly turn­ing that release. Valve a lit­tle bit. Now we want to make sure that fam­i­lies aren’t hear­ing any of this.
And so I’ve had to have some of those con­ver­sa­tions when there’s fam­i­ly right out­side and peo­ple are jok­ing in this way, but it’s, to me, it’s one of the ways that we can keep doing this work is hav­ing and hav­ing to find our own way. Pro­cess­ing it, even if if it sounds like that. Yeah, and I was involved in the church the same time that I was doing the EMT work, but when I was in sem­i­nary, it was when I stopped because they make you learn a lot in sem­i­nary. So that’s when I I stopped par­tic­i­pat­ing and rid­ing in the backs of ambu­lances. But now I find that gives [00:28:00] me that cre­den­tial­ing when I am talk­ing to our EMTs or our or our dis­patch­ers, because at first they don’t real­ly want to talk to me and I’m like, Oh no, I was, I was an EMT too.
And then, Oh, okay. Then you get it. Then they’ll talk to me. I, because I think we want to be known and we don’t want this out­sider. We want some­one that under­stands what we go through on the reg­u­lar. To be able to talk to us and I find that true through­out the hos­pi­tal. Actu­al­ly we have, we have a ter­rif­ic EAP pro­gram or employ­ee assis­tance pro­gram, and they’ll come in and do debriefs with staff, espe­cial­ly we do a lot of them after some of the intense trau­ma. sit­u­a­tions that we have. But often­times they call me instead. They they say, we don’t want EAP. We know you, we want one of our chap­lains to lead it. And some­times I say, I can’t, I was in it. I can’t do that. Some­one else has to come in. But I think that it’s cer­tain­ly a com­pli­ment to see the val­ue of bring­ing in the spir­i­tu­al com­po­nent, but also bring­ing in the [00:29:00] famil­iar­i­ty of, all being in it togeth­er.
John: Do you have a par­tic­u­lar tech­nique or prac­tice that you apply to those who are strug­gling with loss?
Chris­tine: It depends so much on
what is the loss, right? And who is the indi­vid­ual. So some­times it’s about iden­ti­fy­ing what the loss is and nam­ing the loss. So cer­tain­ly a lot of what We do. And what your lis­ten­ers are famil­iar with is rela­tion­ship loss. So it is around the death of the indi­vid­ual. And for our cer­tain­ly, so for peo­ple that just lost their loved one, that’s a very obvi­ous, it’s obvi­ous what they are griev­ing for some of our prac­ti­tion­ers say, so if I’m work­ing with the nurs­es or the doc­tors after there’s been a death. They don’t have the same rela­tion­ship to that per­son as, that per­son­’s spouse would have. So it’s not [00:30:00] nec­es­sar­i­ly the rela­tion­ship that they’re griev­ing in the same way. But there’s oth­er loss­es that can be brought up for that. So some­times it’s the cumu­la­tive loss that we were talk­ing about before.
It’s like the sheer num­ber of, times that they’ve had to, try to resus­ci­tate some­one even that week, right? And so that’s what’s going on for them. Some­times it’s, they’ve just had a loved one in their life die. And so this is going to feel a dif­fer­ent way. One that is often very dif­fi­cult for health­care staff to process are younger indi­vid­u­als.
Indi­vid­u­als in their twen­ties and thir­ties. Because it is I think a reminder of peo­ple’s own mor­tal­i­ty. And then the oth­er ones that are hard, of course, are Chil­dren, but real­ly pre­ventable deaths. So things that could have been avoid­ed, such as drown­ings, such as, acci­dents and things of this nature, because that brings up peo­ple’s belief in That order­ing of the sys­tem in the uni­verse that we talked about before, [00:31:00] why is this hap­pen­ing and real­ly look­ing at those deep philo­soph­i­cal and the­o­log­i­cal ques­tions.
One patient death can bring about so many dif­fer­ent loss­es for an indi­vid­ual as the health­care prac­ti­tion­er.
So we real­ly start by nam­ing that and acknowl­edg­ing, what’s going on.
John: Chris­tine, how do you sup­port peo­ple who has great fear of death,
Chris­tine: We explore it. I might say, tell me more about it. What is the fear? And those are con­ver­sa­tions I’ve had a num­ber of times. And so for some peo­ple, the fear is not know­ing. What’s on, what’s going to be on the oth­er side of death and I, I wish I knew, I wish I had the answers for peo­ple because they ask me all the time and I don’t know. And that’s where we explore, okay, what do you think it might be for that par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­ual? Anoth­er fear that peo­ple come up with around death is pain. So they real­ly fear that they’re going [00:32:00] to be in pain, espe­cial­ly if they know that their death is more immi­nent. And so that’s a con­ver­sa­tion that we bring in, the med­ical team on to say, okay, this is a valid fear.
How might we acknowl­edge this for you? I think the biggest fear that I hear expressed is fear of leav­ing one’s fam­i­ly behind and the sad, it’s real­ly sad­ness, right? The sad­ness that is there. And the grief that is there from from that indi­vid­ual voic­ing that. And so being present with them and hear­ing them talk about it and then some­times we will do it.
It is dif­fer­ent and there’s, I should have pref­aces by say­ing there’s all dif­fer­ent types of death, right? So we’ve been talk­ing a lit­tle bit more about the cri­sis death which we do a lot of in the hos­pi­tal, but there’s also death where peo­ple know when it’s going to be hap­pen­ing. Or when some­one is at the end of their life
and they can do a lit­tle bit more prepa­ra­tion for that. Not every­one does come to a place of accept­ing their own death, and I will say the last dynam­ic that I see a lot of is the patient is ready for death and real­ly accept­ing of it, espe­cial­ly if it has been a [00:33:00] painful jour­ney and for them, this is
going to be a relief. But the fam­i­ly is not.
And I under­stand that, the fam­i­ly, they want to hold on to their loved one for as long as pos­si­ble. And so I hear patients, and this is some­times I try to talk to patients indi­vid­u­al­ly with­out their fam­i­ly’s pres­ence. I’ll do both, but I want to make sure that I’m able to get the full sto­ry because the patient will say to me like, Oh, every­one tells me I just have to keep fight­ing and be strong.
And I don’t want to do that any­more. Like I’m
ready. I’m done. But they’re not lis­ten­ing. And they tell me not to say that and not to think like that. And so then it’s real­ly, get­ting to be the per­son that they say that out loud to because there’s no one else that is going to lis­ten to them because they have dif­fer­ent motive, right?
The fam­i­ly, of course is going through their own dif­fer­ent grief.
John: I have a dear friend who’s a retired Angli­can priest. And , we were talk­ing about death, this is going back a cou­ple of years now and what sur­prised me was she said that mem­bers of her church were los­ing faith. in their beliefs as their time of death neared.
What’s your thoughts on
Chris­tine: Yeah. It [00:34:00] varies to indi­vid­u­als for sure. I prob­a­bly hear more of that as a hos­pi­tal chap­lain. Then their cler­gy may hear because I have the anonymi­ty that is attached to me ver­sus their cler­gy. A lot of times patients, because I may ask them, have you talked about this with any­one? Espe­cial­ly if I know that, they are a con­gre­gant some­where they’ll say no because I, I don’t want, because they believe it’s blas­phe­mous or they don’t want their cler­gy per­son to know that they’re strug­gling in this way. Yeah, it’s often how I hear it expressed is frus­tra­tion at unan­swered prayer comes across quite a bit. Like I’ve been pray­ing to get bet­ter and it’s not hap­pen­ing. Which I think then is also frus­tra­tion at God. So that is prob­a­bly one of the biggest things I hear in the hos­pi­tal in gen­er­al.
So it could be an end of life, but it could be real­ly any. Any part of one’s jour­ney is anger at God and a way in which I think it comes out a [00:35:00] lot is espe­cial­ly as it relates to one of my pet peeves as a hos­pi­tal chap­lain is the use of what I call reli­gious plat­i­tudes. So you’ll be famil­iar with these and I’m sure your lis­ten­ers will know them.
These things. tox­ic spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, pos­i­tiv­i­ty say­ings that are not even bib­li­cal, but they’ve made our way their way into our cul­tur­al lex­i­con. So things like, God need­ed anoth­er angel or every­thing hap­pens for a rea­son, or, just let go and let God or God nev­er gives you more than you can han­dle.
So these things that are meant to inspire peo­ple, but real­ly do the oppo­site, they can cause a lot of spir­i­tu­al harm. And so I’m usu­al­ly on the oppo­site end of that. When I’m with peo­ple, they’ve been told these things like you just have to have faith. And then they said the faith isn’t work­ing for me.
Like I’m not get­ting bet­ter. I’m not get­ting what I want. And so then they believe that their faith isn’t strong enough, or they do have this anger at God because of. If you’re [00:36:00] told God nev­er gives you more than he can han­dle, but then you’re giv­en quite a bit, of course, you’re going to think God’s a jerk if that’s the case, or real­ly quite evil and malef­i­cent. So I cer­tain­ly encour­age a lot of peo­ple that I talk to not to say those things. I think we say them think­ing that we’re help­ing, but we’re actu­al­ly doing a lot of harm because they become inter­nal­ized from when peo­ple are giv­en those and they real­ly silence the expe­ri­ence to what some­one is going through.
John: Okay, so what’s, what would you what would be some spir­i­tu­al prac­tices you could rec­om­mend for some­one with a hec­tic sched­ule who strug­gles to find the time for them­selves?
Chris­tine: That’s a great ques­tion. So I’ll give you some real­ly spe­cif­ic and sim­ple things to try, know­ing that it’s not going to be the same for every­one. So some peo­ple, a spir­i­tu­al prac­tice might real­ly work for them. For oth­ers that might not be the one. But one thing I would rec­om­mend is you take a five minute walk out­side.
And don’t be lis­ten­ing to any­thing on your phone, just [00:37:00] real­ly try­ing to even if you’re in a city and there’s may not be a lot of, green­ery around you, just notic­ing the wind on your face or the sun warm­ing you. Even the oth­er peo­ple that you might encounter walk­ing by just try­ing to take five min­utes and say, I’m just going to go for a walk and see what hap­pens. Even if you’re walk­ing to your car, from the gro­cery store park­ing lots doing so to be able to just take a deep breath as you’re going in and hav­ing some mind­ful­ness in that moment. Anoth­er prac­tice that I think can be help­ful for peo­ple is A ver­sion of a grat­i­tude prac­tice.
And they have apps for this. If peo­ple are inter­est­ed in that sort of thing, but you can just do it by writ­ing some­thing down or writ­ing some­thing in your phone. I’ve gone through peri­ods where I like to write down either one or three small things that you’re grate­ful for that day. And I’m not talk­ing about the big things like, Oh, my health, my fam­i­ly, my house, all those are well and good.
And it’s help­ful to have that, but I’m [00:38:00] look­ing for micro grat­i­tudes. It’s what are the very small things? That you were grad grate­ful for in that moment, because that can real­ly shift our mind­set. So it may be some­thing as sim­ple as, today I am grate­ful that I got to work on time when I’m usu­al­ly sit­ting in traf­fic, or I’m grate­ful that this con­ver­sa­tion with a cowork­er went bet­ter than I thought it was going to go. Or I’m grate­ful that. That bill that came in the mail was a lit­tle bit low­er than what I thought it would be, real very grand. I’m grate­ful for how nut­ty my gra­nola tast­ed, when I made it real­ly look­ing for small things because that is the art of notic­ing. And when we are grate­ful for the small things that can help us to be grate­ful for the larg­er things too.
And I’m not talk­ing about grat­i­tude. At the exclu­sion of the suf­fer­ing because, I’m not say­ing focus on, only the good. I’m say­ing no. Even in the suf­fer­ing, there can be small things that you’re grate­ful for. And so real­ly try­ing to hold those two inten­tion.
John: [00:39:00] Thank you for join­ing us on this episode with Chris­tine Waskell. We hope her jour­ney from EMT to Chap­lain has inspired you and pro­vid­ed new per­spec­tives on nav­i­gat­ing trau­ma, PTSD, and the pow­er of com­pas­sion­ate heal­ing. Christine’s sto­ry is a tes­ta­ment to the strength of the human spir­it and the pro­found impact of empa­thy and con­nec­tion in the face of suf­fer­ing.
If you found val­ue in today’s episode, please share it with oth­ers who might ben­e­fit from Christine’s insight, and don’t for­get to sub­scribe to our pod­casts. Until next time, remem­ber to take care of your­selves and each oth­er, find­ing moments of mind­ful­ness and com­pas­sion in your every­day lives, and thank you for lis­ten­ing.