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"Wandering in a professional wilderness, I took a yearlong certification class from Frank Lawlis and Jeanne Achterberg called The Uses of Imagery in Medicine. It was a delightful learning experience. As medical shamans we drummed, explored our inner worlds and received concrete scientific data for what we were doing.
Near the end of that year, Jeanne asked me what I was going to do with my education. I told her that I didn’t know and that I was not even sure what to call myself. Jeanne suggested I find out about an organization that her friend Barbara Dossey was engaged in. She encouraged me to continue nursing and told me the name of the organization was the American Holistic Nurses Association (AHNA).
I attended the AHNA conference that was held that year and met several nurses whose career paths were close to my own. As alternative nurses, each had our own unique path but there were underlying similar patterns. All had become disenchanted with the workplace and sought other ways to be caretakers. Like me, they had received educations outside of nursing because, at that time, nursing curriculums did not offer classes in things like transpersonal psychology, mind-body consciousness and the use of spirituality in healing. With AHNA I knew I had come home. Two years later, because of my education in transpersonal studies, I wrote a challenge paper for AHNA and received my certification in holistic nursing."
~ Toni Gilbert RN, MA, HN-BC
"I have been in the Healing Arts for over 25 years, and one of the sweetest things ever said to me was said during one of the classes I offered to AHNA. One of the nurses approached me after my presentation and said, 'You are a doctor with the heart of a nurse.' I will never forget this, and I have been a champion for nurses ever since."
~ Dr. Robin Shapiro
Be Well America!
"I was seriously doubting whether I should continue to be a nurse. I had started another job part-time to try to build my own business. Somehow I came across a brochure for an AHNA conference. I thought, 'Why not?, maybe I'll see something that will help guide me.'
During the conference, I met wonderful, like-minded nurses. We shared some very heartful hurts, wonders, and joys with each other. At the end, we formed a circle and agreed to be in contact across time and space with each other, whenever we needed each other. I can still feel those connections. I may have forgotten some of the names in the real world of who was in my group, but I remember them.
The AHNA conference made me feel like I was at home--with a family who cared about me and what I did in ways that felt comfortable and not stuffed-suit. That's what AHNA is. Even now. That's why I joined AHNA. That's why I'm still a nurse."
~ Unknown |