CARE OUT LOUD
Anna Biley Interview Part 1
===
Mary Coughlin: There was a one question I wanted to ask you is Is it, is it proper, you know, would I refer to you as Professor Biley, Dr. Biley? Oh gosh, it's a snow. I'm not a professor. I, well, I just was wondering because I was reading your bio and I would love a copy of your CV when you get a chance. Okay. But I was like, oh, how do I refer to, how do I refer?
It will do. Just Anna.
Anna Biley: I don't use titles. I don't need them in my life. All right.
Mary Coughlin: All right. That sounds pretty cool. Okay.
Anna Biley: Well, you know, I haven't got an academic agenda or anything. I just, yeah, I'm not interested in titles.
Mary Coughlin: I Love that. I mean, it's kind of refreshing to hear that too, because I think just it feels at least here in the U.
S. inherent in health care in general that we really celebrate our alphabet soup, you know, and our titles and, and all that stuff.
Anna Biley: I think it's the same here. But I, you know, I work on my own. I'm independent, so I, I don't need to be part of that. Mm-hmm. That game. Really? Yeah.
Mary Coughlin: It is a game. It's, it's a game.
I love that. Well, I have to tell you, I was just so wicked excited that you agreed to being on the podcast and allowing me to interview you and really get deep into, you know, who is Anna Biley? You know, what does nursing mean to you? And maybe just share a little bit of your journey. Because I, I know you had a huge impact on me and, and my experience as I went through the Caritas coaching education program.
And I feel like you know, you, you meet people, you know that you're supposed to meet, you know, and, and people touch your life in really special ways, almost like Like, I feel like you're a bit of an angel for me and feel really blessed to have, you know, major acquaintance and I needed you in my life at the time that we spent together.
And so I, I hope that doesn't make you feel weird or anything, but I just was really delighted that you would share your time with me. on the podcast.
Anna Biley: So thank you. Thank you. I think it's a mutual thing, you know, with this Caritas coach program. And you know, it's not that teacher learning divide. I don't think we, we, we call ourselves a community of learners, you know, and, and I learn as much, if not more from the coaches as they do.
For me. So, I mean, thank you too.
Mary Coughlin: Well, I mean, but I think your wisdom and and obviously, you know, your experiences with the program and your own Caritas journey just brought, or it actually kind of like opened my eyes to a bigger view of what nursing is, what caring is all about. Thank you so much. I wasn't sure what the course, what the program was going to be like.
And it was such a welcome experience. Just open. You, I think you used the word before communitas, community that was so nurturing and just so supportive across the field. So
you must love this. I mean, how long have you been doing the work with the Watson Caring Institute?
Anna Biley: Oh, well, I'll go back. Okay,
Mary Coughlin: excellent. So, I...
Anna Biley: I first came across Jean Watson's work when I was a nursing student, which was a long, long time ago, 1987, 88 or something like that. And I first came across Jean Watson's work because I, I was trying to find somebody who felt about nursing the way I was feeling, but nobody was talking about it.
And then I met Jean Watson at a conference in the nineties. I think it was about 19. I met her at a conference here in England, and I was so kind of carried away with you know, human caring theory that I applied for a scholarship, a Florence Nightingale Foundation scholarship, and I went to Denver to study with Jean for a month.
So that kind of began my, my kind of connection with, with Jean Watson and human caring but at that time I was having my first child, but when I was in Denver and so, you know, the years just go by, don't they? And I was bringing up my family and I was. You know, working part time as a nurse and da da da.
But always sort of kept that essence and those values in, in my work. Everything I did was always sort of built on. On caring science, but then it wasn't until 2014 when I reconnected and Jean Jean's work had then become the Watson Caring Science Institute. So I connected with them in, in 2014 and I did my a doctorate with them 2014 to 2017.
So I was like a student with the institute. And then I've only in the last. Two, or three years joined as faculty to be part of the caritas coach program and the leadership program, and during the pandemic I ran a little online course, and which was called, and healing the sickle circle of life and death, because we were just trying to The institute was trying to offer something to nurses during the pandemic.
Just some sort of touch point. Yeah. So I did that as well. So, yeah. So it's kind of been a long time, but it hasn't been a long time. Yeah.
Mary Coughlin: well, I, well I love I love the story of you know, when you were in nursing school 'cause I've got to beat I graduated in 82 and and I was introduced to Jean Watson during my undergraduate study.
But it was, It felt in the moment when I was going through school, very siloed, like this was a course I had to take a course in nurse theory. You know, you had to take it, but it didn't feel like the theoretical. Content, and it was Watson, it was Leininger, it was Rogers, it was like, you know, a whole bunch of, a whole bunch of them, but it felt very peripheral to the nursing stuff, if you will, you know, it was just, there was no integration or cross pollination, it just felt like, oh, that's really interesting, and I loved it, and I loved Watson's work but it felt so superfluous And I don't mean that disrespectfully.
I just that just what it felt like as opposed to, you know, like learning to do all the tech techniques, the tasks you know, nursing process, all those things that just didn't feel like that integration. And I, it kind of broke my heart, you know, when I graduated nursing school. And, and you get kerplunked into, you know, into practice, and it was just, it just felt like this big giant checklist.
My whole life just revolved around this big giant checklist. And, you know, integrating those elements of it. You know, that felt real, but it it didn't feel ubiquitous right it didn't feel like it was the way we did nursing it was like, well you can do it that way but everybody else is doing it this way.
Feel like that. Yeah,
Anna Biley: I think I felt very isolated sometimes in, and in what I was seeing and and what. Kind of sparked my curiosity, I suppose, but also really was a this kind of connection that I felt with patients, that that was my curiosity, well, what's going on here? Because this isn't the task. Yeah.
You know, I did the tasks. I think I was good at the tasks as they were. But it was those moments of connection. Something's going on here. And it was that curiosity that and it was like, is anyone else getting this? Yeah. And it was that curiosity that kind of took me to the library in the days when there were books.
And, you know, I've, I found Gene Watson book. Yeah, yeah,
Mary Coughlin: yeah. It, I love the way you described it and I know you kind of do this little description on the Watson Caring Institute website, kind of talking about how you Found nursing, you know that you know when you were making those observations of those nurses in the ICU caring for that young man that that ended up passing away.
But, you know, at the time, and I'm just paraphrasing so you can correct me but it felt like you might not have had the language in the moment but now where you were in your practice, you realize that you were bearing witness to caring moments. and to kind of carrying science in action. And I think, I think those, I think it's probably more nurses than not feel the feelings that you just described.
Those experiences, but I think we tend to feel so isolated in our practice. And so at least I know myself. I could relate to those experience, that experience that you just described, Anna, but I wasn't about to share it with anybody else because it just felt like it wasn't part of the mainstream.
And so I just kind of held it in my own heart and just did my work, but ended up getting burned out about it, you know over time.
Anna Biley: Yeah, well I've been there as well with the burnout. Yeah,
Mary Coughlin: I mean. From your experience, you know particularly as a care test coach and a, and a doctorate in caring science, you know, what kind of wisdom have you uncovered or yeah, uncovered that may be really relevant for nursing education now?
And, and particularly I think post pandemic, you know, what have we, it's not really a discovery. It's really an acknowledgement because I think the suffering of nursing. didn't just happen as a result of the pandemic. It just, it feels like it's been exposed.
Anna Biley: Well, I think it's really, really interesting that question. I mean, I, I talked to a lot of people, a lot of nurses from all over the world and it's, it's interesting, but it kind of all, to me, goes back to what we talk about. in this kind of essence of caring science that, you know, we've already talked about burnout and, and it starts with self and our own, our own self care and appreciation of ourselves.
And that sounds, you know, that, that the people who aren't kind of familiar with that idea, it all sounds a bit sort of up in the air and. You know, away with the fairies kind of stuff. And, and I felt like that about it for, for a long, long time. You know, that, oh, you know, this is just silly. You know, we can carry on with this work.
We can carry on. We can, you know, be there and be compassionate and, and we can, and we can be kind and we can be, and we can do all those things. But it's like at what cost? Right? And I think that kind of The cost of that is what people are now showing up with, which is exhaustion. Yeah, it's exhausted.
So if there's any Sort of wisdom as, as you described it you know, it, it's Jean Watson's wisdom, which is about this, this idea of self care. And really for me, the, I didn't get that until I had my own kind of personal kind of crisis. So I didn't even pick that up in nursing really, it was my own personal crisis, which is when my husband died and I was left.
With two kids to bring up and I had to survive and so it came out of survival and and possibly there's a parallel there with where a lot of people are at at the moment, you know, but they just they're just trying to survive. And so the only way I could survive. Was to start caring for myself and just, and it was that, that that very kind of simple stuff that Jean Morton calls the micro practices of pausing, breathing.
Yeah. You know taking a walk in nature, which that was my healing, you know, that, that was my self care remains my self care. So yeah, so I would say that in answer to your question, you know, that it's the cell, it's the fact that it starts with self and if we, and it starts with us and then it radiates, that it ripples out.
Mary Coughlin: And so that experience that you just described with the loss of your husband how, you know, do you mind sharing a little bit about your journey? I mean, was that part of your the process that you went through to kind of Metabolize your grief and, and move, you know, move to this place where you are right now.
I mean, I'd love for you to touch upon the book if the book, you know, you're, I should have introduced that as well about, you know, you're being an author of an amazing lovely book, Birds Hold Our Secrets, a Caritas Story of Grief and Remembering. If that's okay, do you mind sharing a little bit about that, Anna?
Yeah, I guess share
Anna Biley: about that. So what happened was it seems incredible now that it was 10 years because time is just like, I don't know, a bit like the pandemic, you know, it's like I've fallen into a void where chronological time is not the same as it used to be. Yeah. Yeah. But so yeah, so he, he was diagnosed with cancer.
So he was age 54. And he was diagnosed with cancer and he was three months from being diagnosed to dying. So yeah, it was very kind of rapid cancer by the time they found it, it was too advanced for treatment. And but he was, he was a nursing academic. He was kind of like a, a Martha Rogers a Rogerian nurse.
And so. And then he was a teacher and he was, he was a bit avant garde in his teaching methods. And when he was diagnosed, he said, right, he said, we've got to do this. So we're going to do it mindfully. We're going to do it mindfully. Because he, he'd been in Japan the year before he, he traveled in Japan for three months looking at mindfulness.
And then he was trying to kind of relate how that might. Nursing, a nursing education. So, and he wrote a paper on mindfulness and so he said if we're gonna do this, we're gonna be mindfully. So we set out with that intention of being mindful in this, in this process that he wanted to be.
conscious of his dying process. He didn't want to be drugged up. He wanted to do it his way. He wanted to be at home. And so that's how that all happened. And, and we set that intention. And again, it was kind of like that by experience that, that, that I described very early on, but actually, Oh my goodness, something's going on here that I can't put my finger on.
Something is happening here. Yeah. And so two years later when I started the doctorate. I wanted to look at grief and bereavement as part of my doctorate, but as it turned, what it, what it became was a research process on myself. And I used caring science as that wider context. So, so I was able to delve into that whole experience.
to, to look at, you know, how and where the Caritas processes were, were manifesting really, you know, that, but in those, in the darkness, there was huge compassion. I, I was his advocate for his dignity because there were times when he was so sick. You know, I, I stepped in and I held it dignity. Yes. And, and, and so, and so on, like with all the, the, the Caritas process, you know, I learned to listen.
I became a better listener because of that experience and so that kind of became my doctorate. And as time went on, it also became about my grief process and my recovery. I guess, which is where the self care came in. Yeah. You know, that, that without caring signs at that time, I, I don't, I'm not sure how I would have been able to grasp my recovery and So, yeah,
Mary Coughlin: you're making the word healing is coming up, you know that it's really just this a process of healing and I loved the, the choice of words you used about dignity and it made me think about the sacredness of those human encounters.
I mean, all human encounters are an invitation to the sacred, but particularly when someone is in such a vulnerable state, you know, as a state of You know, extreme illness and dying that oftentimes. We can miss it. And I think that's the wonderful thing. That I've taken from the caring science curriculum and really integrated it into what I've, you know taken from becoming a care task coach is really Helping folks see that sacredness in all of these moments as, as you know, Dr.
Watson eloquently articulates in, in many of our publications. And I love the I'm looking up in my bookcase there the sacred science, you know, caring sciences, sacred science, as you were going through these experience with your husband. With their encounters with the health care community that felt supportive or felt not as supportive as you would have liked.
You know, are there opportunities that you see within health care to improve how we support individuals and families through this type of an experience?
Anna Biley: Well, I think that's, that's a good question. I think at the time, I'm looking back, I mean, we had moments where doctors tried to sort of come in and tell us, yeah, you know, make me ridiculous suggestions like you know, two days before we died, you know, let's get you in for chest x ray.
Yeah, no, you know, so, so, so we, we had that kind of sort of well, I had that. Battle of, of just holding that space and his intention, very mindfully that actually no, that's not what we want. But at the time I think it was,
I would say people were supportive and, and, and They, they did their best doctors weren't very good about talking about death. Yeah. You know, it was a little bit kind of ambiguous language around it and nobody actually came to the point. Yeah. So we, we have that, but I think the biggest thing was after he had died and Our people kind of supporting us in, in our, in our grief as a family.
And that was very difficult because that, we were very isolated at that point. Both my boy, well, my youngest son, he was in school and my eldest son left school by that time. But they just could not, they did not know what to say. They didn't know what to do. They didn't they just didn't know how to handle anything.
Yeah. And it was that kind of then, that kind of experience, which was at the time, it was several years of just deep, deep darkness and struggle. And eventually my, I had, I had counseling. I went to counseling and I also got some counseling from my son. And simultaneously this word trauma came up.
Yeah. Yeah. You know, actually, you know, this is, this is complicated because the three of you are traumatized. This, you're living with trauma. And so then I began to kind of journey with understanding trauma and, and actually what, what was going on and what had gone on and, and how. At different levels. We were still stuck in what happened that day.
And so once that was unlocked we do better.
