A new beginning

I have sadly neglected my blog over the past 6 weeks – I’ve been busy living and experiencing, and reflecting in other ways. Of all the things I thought I would have in my life, a personal website wasn’t one of them. I really need to sharpen my act in regularly adding to it.

Most of the formal travel/meeting part of my Churchill Fellowship is now complete. I have one meeting to go via Zoom next week and then it will all be over. I am sad I will no longer have this focussed opportunity to meet incredible people with a common drive, but I am also grateful I can now turn my attention to reporting on everything I have experienced and learned. As the lyrics of Closing Time by Semisonic say: “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end”.

For me, one of the big benefits of this Fellowship has been the opportunity to base myself in each new location for a week or so. Not only have I then been able to meet people face-to-face, but I have had the chance to get a feel for each location. I can then balance that location and its people against the Australian experience – how are our communities alike? How do they differ? How will the obstetric/perinatal loss care that is implemented here translate in Australia? I think Churchill really knew what he was doing when he first came up with the concept of these Fellowships and combined the powers of travel, experience and learning.

The biggest benefit has been meeting amazing people from around the globe who are working every day to make the world a better place – bereaved parents providing peer support and fundraising; community organisations providing in-hospital care, memory-making and voices for parents; academics researching better care through improved conversations between healthcare providers and families; the doctors, midwives and nurses striving to provide the best possible care in both hospital and hospice settings while equally experiencing some of the most challenging work circumstances they have ever faced. These people have provided the biggest inspiration for me to make it through 9 weeks of solo travel and 38 meetings and engagements about a topic that is both devastating and uplifting.

Now the challenge comes – to succinctly report on all of those beautiful experiences, and to prepare a report recommending the best practice Australian approach to in-hospital volunteer care for bereaved families. That will be the start, but I have learned so much that flows beyond the scope of my Fellowship project. I think I will be writing for a while yet on the shaping of Australian perinatal loss care. Yet another new beginning…