Meet Rev. Laura Carey

We recently connected with Rev. Laura Carey and have shared our conversation below.

Rev. Laura , we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.

Finding my purpose in many ways was a lifelong journey. In truth, many aspects of my life, sort of led me to where I am today. I started out caregiving to help out my best friend’s grandmother, many years ago when my now 31 year-old son was in fourth grade and we had just started homeschooling. It was something I could do to help my friend and her family, and bring my child with me. I discovered at that point that I loved being with folks and helping them stay home at the end of their lives. . Fast-forward a few years, I started working for an agency doing non-medical home health work. I was assigned a client who wanted to come home after an illness that was going to take her life, and she had no family to support her so I along with a couple of others provided 24 seven care for the remaining, three or four months of her life. After she died, the hospice agency offered bereavement to myself and one other caregiver that had spent many hours with her. That was my first introduction to hospice. Not long after I went through the training to become a hospice volunteer and started doing that along with my non-medical caregiving. I did that for about five years. For quite a few years, my minister had been encouraging me to go back to school to become a minister, she really felt like I had a calling, but traditional ministry never really spoke to me. I learned of an interfaith seminary in Maine and my late husband really encourage me to pursue it so I did, and after two years of studying, I was ordained as an interfaith minister, I truly thought that I was going to be a hospice chaplain, and though I do love hospice and all the services that they offer ,I discovered that the spiritual process for most people at end of life does not happen that quickly. After ten years of employment for a non-medical caregiving agency my last client passed away and the family gifted me some money and encouraged me along with my late husband to start my own business. Heartsong Caregiving and Ministry Services LLC Working as a death, Doula, caregiver, Chaplin fill my life with purpose.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

Over the last decade since embarking on my Heartsong Caregiving and Ministry Services journey, my focus has been to help people remain at home if at all possible. In that time surrounding them with patience and life honoring hands on support, compassionate understanding counsel, and mostly just love them in the form of professional care at the end of their life.
Singing with and for my clients is something that I have found great spiritual and physics value in, and something I practice frequently. I have found the power of music to be so healing and comforting for many people, and is a love language that I am fluent in.

One aspect of my ministry also is educating folks around death and dying. I believe we are a culture that does not like to talk about death, so in an effort to combat this I host regular presentations talking about the sensitive subject, as well as grief groups. One particular event that has had a great deal of engagement is a “death Café” that meets monthly in the town of Bridgton Maine.

Another element of my ministry that began in the last six months of my late husband’s life, involves what I call “zen-doodling”. In an extremely tumultuous period of my life it was one of the few effective practice I could employ to quiet my mind. It became a form of prayer and meditation for me. After amassing a large collection of these works I began cutting them apart and converting them to collages, and then from collages into cards. I’ve always found handmade crafts and thoughtful messages to be excellent medicine.

One of the many blessings of the work I do at end of life allows me to not only support those dying, but build relationship with their families and support them through the end of life process. As a minister, I have often been invited to be a part of their loved ones celebration of life where I can share a unique and intimate perspective of their lives.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I guess one of the most important things in doing the work I do is making peace with fragility of life. Knowing that none of us get out of here alive. It is so important to feel comfortable with folks who are at end of life.

I think another skill that is really important to have (this one I practice at every day) is holding intentional space for people. It’s often hard to be in the silence, especially when there’s pain, but it is a critical step in the healing journey.

I am registered with the national death Doula association, and I’m often contacted by folks who are contemplating going through different death Doula trainings, one of the things I often suggest is that they contact their local hospice and go through the training and become a volunteer. There is no cost involved in that and it’s a truly priceless way to see if it really is a good fit for them.

All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?

Being self-employed, as a non-medical caregiver/death Doula the greatest obstacle I am dealing with is marketing my services. When you work with people at the end of life, there’s a constant turnover and an ever present need to continue finding new clientele to keep the business afloat. I have found it challenging at times to determine how best to put my ministry services out into the world. It is no small task encouraging people to view an incredibly stigmatized subject through a more wholistic lens in general, and even harder to allow someone in to guide you in that process.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://heartsongservices.com/