With 27 years of nursing experience, Yvonne Heath has seen a lot, and not the kind of “a lot” most of us would choose to witness or experience. She’s worked in numerous aspects of health care, including the Emergency Department, ICU, Chemotherapy, Palliative Care, and Hospice.
She has come face-to-face and heart-to-heart with grief, whether with a patient or through supporting their loved ones through some of the most painful moments of hurt and loss.
And not just the painful moments in others’ lives, but in hers, as well. At one point, her teenage son was spiraling into drug addiction, she was raising 4-year-old twins, and working full-time as a Chemo Nurse… For a while she “went steady” with Red-Red Wine, attempting to numb her feelings so she could keep moving.
Inspired by real-life physician, Patch Adams, she decided to offer a different approach, one that allows our humanness – heart and humor – to come into the room. “We all experience these hard, heavy feelings,” she explains. “Emotion is energy in motion; it has to move through us…” We need to allow those feelings to show up and sit with them; how we move forward in our lives is determined in large part by how to approach and embrace or avoid grief.
What she learned along the way is that we need each other, especially in times of grief. And even when we have no idea what to say or do, we can always “Just Show Up” and be there with people, hold the space for them to experience what we’re experiencing, and love them through it. Eventually, what we need to do or say will become evident… but in the meantime, we let others know that loss – of whatever kind (job, home, health, marriage, loved ones…) – doesn’t need to isolate us as we attempt to navigate our way through.
She shares some signs of grief, as it often comes disguised as something else; part of the armor many of us take on in our attempts to not be vulnerable. She also speaks of the dreaded “polite conversation” many of us engage in when we know someone has been through something traumatic because we’re not sure what to say, and perhaps we’re afraid if we discuss it frankly, it may touch us, as well.
Yvonne’s Bio
Yvonne has been a registered nurse since 1988, working in ten different hospitals in the US and Canada in many areas including emergency, intensive care, chemotherapy and hospice.
She became disheartened by our society’s reluctance to talk about, plan, and prepare for grief and life’s challenges—causing excessive suffering in life and at the end of life. She suffered, too, not knowing how to do it differently.
In 2015, she took a leap of faith, left her nursing career and blazed a new trail. By helping us prepare BEFORE, she brings heart and humor to grief, death, and dying. She shares her message as an Inspirational Speaker, with her book Love Your Life to Death, as a television and radio host, and through social media.
In 2019, she delivered her TEDx Talk: Transforming Grief, by Just Showing Up.
Driven by her vision that everyone lives, grieves, and dies well, Yvonne is traveling and helping great organizations along the way.
Connect with Yvonne and other resources:
