Hospice Whispers

“The view from the edge of life is often far clearer and wiser than the way most of us see things today. In these exquisite and luminous true stories Rev. Carla Cheatham offers us a key to a deeper and richer life. Hospice Whispers: Stories of Life is not only a book you will read again and again. This book will bless you.”

– Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.
Author of Kitchen Table Wisdom
and My Grandfather’s Blessings

Hospice Whisperers: Stories of Life is a compilation of touching end of life experiences told beautifully by writer and hospice nurse, Carla Cheatham.  Each story is honest, powerful, painful, and most of all, inspiring.  Every family that Carla worked with was fortunate to have her on their “team”.  This is a good one!

– Barbara Karnes, RN  
Award winning End of Life Educator and Hospice Pioneer

Want a better life? Read this book!

Forget “self-help” books! Read “Hospice Whispers” instead. In a deeply validating view of the truths, joys and frustrations that arise at life’s end, Rev Carla Cheatham’s “Stories of Life”  summon us all toward our most authentic selves- right here and right now. She teaches/invites us to embrace “what is” and to find the gifts therein. Who could pass up such an offer?

– Monica Williams-Murphy, MD
Huntsville Hospital Emergency Physician and Medical Director
for Advanced Care Planning and End-of-Life Education
National Speaker, Award-Winning Writer,
Author of “It’s OK to Die”- An End of Life Planning Guide

Hospice Whispers is a beautifully written book of stories about the lives of patients and families at life’s end. It reminds us that we are all spiritual beings—including the many professionals who provide the care. This book is a great gift to the ever growing field of palliative care and reminds us that much healing and blessing comes in the final chapter of life.

– Betty Ferrell PhD, FAAN, FPCN
Professor and Director, Nursing Research,
City of Hope Medical Center

This book is full of personal stories and experiences, which set a great field in which Carla gives the reader insights and teaches about being a Hospice Chaplain. Carla lets us know it’s more than OK to be human, to laugh and to cry, not alone, but alongside those we minister to. Carla gives a broader audience the chance to experience this. I think this book would not only be a good read for Hospice Chaplains, but all Chaplains. I can see this being a good thing to read for families entering Hospice too, as they do not know what to expect, but Carla’s storytelling will give them some insight, and permission to do as they need, not what they think they should do. Well done Carla.

– Kenneth E. Ingram
Chaplain, Heart Hospital of Austin

Sharing Our Stories

Sharing Our Stories: A Hospice Whispers Grief Support Workbook is a wonderful gift — a beautifully constructed book that includes inspiration and opportunities for reflection. Individuals who are experiencing loss will find much in this sensitive workbook to help them marshal their resources to cope with grief.  

– Kenneth J Doka, PhD 
Author, Grief is a journey: Finding your path through loss

As a powerful companion workbook to Hospice Whispers: Stories of Life, Sharing Our Stories: A Hospice Whispers Grief Support Workbook deepens our awareness of our unique grief, it helps us to discover how to ask for the support we need in our grieving journey, and guides us to a place where we can come to terms with the death of our loved one(s).  This workbook is for the grieving family, grieving friends or the solitary griever. Whether your grief has just begun or is decades old, this thoughtful resource is a gentle path towards healing.  

– Barbara Karnes, RN
Award winning End of Life Educator and Hospice Pioneer

In an invitation to explore the contours and gifts of our grief, this companion to “Hospice Whispers” escorts us safely along a course of reflection. Here we can record the spoken and unspoken experiences of our own lives as we accompany the dying and those who love them. Wisdom and growth are the products of this work. Thank you, Rev. Carla Cheatham for guiding us!

– Monica Williams-Murphy, MD
Huntsville Hospital Emergency Physician and Medical Director
for Advanced Care Planning and End-of-Life Education
National Speaker, Award-Winning Writer,
Author of “It’s OK to Die”- An End of Life Planning Guide

Sharing Our Stories offers a well-written, much needed guide through being with, and supporting those of us who are living and working with death and dying. On a personal level, it offered me a gentle hand to hold during the last days of two people very dear to me.

– Pamela D. Blair, Ph.D., Interfaith Minister
Author of the bestselling, award winning classic on grief,
I Wasn’t Ready to Say Goodbye

During the years of my mother’s progressive dementia, I reached for books to help me understand, to give me support, but also to cope with the disillusionment and deep sadness that was encircling me. I knew my mother would die, but I didn’t know when (of course) and I didn’t know how. I wanted real words, not just hints and euphemisms, not what you see in the movies and on television about dying. I found Hospice Whispers by Rev. Dr. Carla Cheatham, and felt like I had a friend, someone to accompany me as I sat with my mother who wanted so much to leave this world. And now, Dr. Cheatham has written a companion workbook called Sharing our Stories to help explore our feelings – on our own, with friends and family, or in a support group setting. This workbook is not a cookie cutter approach to grieving, but a sensitive, exploratory book to help us each find our own way when someone we love dies.

– Linda Jo Stern, MPH

When you are grieving, you don’t want to be alone. If you are looking for someone to quietly guide the steps in healing your grief, I hope you give Rev. Dr. Carla Cheatham’s Hospice Whispers a chance. With brief glimpses of people she has met in her work as a hospice chaplain, each short chapter will be like holding a helpful hand. Sharing Our Stories, the new workbook linked to Hospice Whispers, adds depth and practical suggestions for healing. As someone who has led numerous grief support groups for hospice, I enthusiastically recommend these books as a great resource.

– Rev. Larry Patten
Hospice Bereavement Support Specialist
Fresno, California

Grief is universal; grieving is not. Every person’s journey through grief is unique. Grieving is not a one-size-fits-all type of process, and in her book, Sharing Our Stories: A Hospice Whispers Grief Support Workbook, Carla captures not only the shared experience of grief, but also encourages her readers to embark on their own individualistic grief journey in order to find a sense of healing and a new norm after the devastating loss of a loved one. Her workbook differs from other grief workbooks, as the questions that are asked are very real, very thought-provoking, and very healing as emotions are recognized and processed through the utilization of this workbook. Some of the questions raised are hard to consider…but grief work IS hard and the things presented to the reader for their consideration in this workbook will offer the reader a chance to think carefully about the in-depth questions that we who grieve wish someone…anyone…would ask so that our healing can begin.

– Bonnie Camp, MSW, LSW, CT, GC-C
Social Worker and Grief Support Specialist

For those of us who are grief-workers, finding a voice as clear and engaging as Rev. Dr. Carla Cheatham’s is rare. When that voice offers tidings of wisdom and truth, hope and humor as she addresses grief and its inevitable obstacles, it is almost a miracle. Yet these are the powerful yet accessible messages that are found in Carla’s latest work, Sharing Our Stories, a workbook for the grieving that is a companion piece to her iconic work Hospice Whispers of 2014.

For anyone who is grieving and who feels isolated and unsure how to move the process forward, or for grief counselors, social workers, psychologists, and chaplains who are the companions to those who grieve, this workbook provides an abundance of ways to help. There are thoughtful poems, quotes and journaling prompts, but more importantly, there is room for those using the workbook to find their own pace and comfort level.

I am very much looking forward to using this splendid resource both in group settings and with individual clients.

– Deb Wojcik, MSW, LCSW
Bereavement Coordinator, Cancer Wellness Center
Psychotherapist in private practice

Prepare to read Hospice Whispers and the accompanying Sharing Our Stories workbook with tears in your eyes. Articulate, gracious, and humbling—these stories will resonate with readers, while the workbook provides a safe place to pour out that grief-seared resonance. An excellent resource that will assist the bereaved as they cope with their own grief journey, and serve as a tool to aid pastors, grief counselors, and others as they minister to the grief-stricken. Well done by a hospice chaplain who has accompanied many through the morass of grief and bereavement.

– Cherie Fry, PhD, BCCC, CT, CFHPC
Hospice Chaplain

Carla Cheatham has an intimate story-telling style that invites the reader into her experiences with families who are caring for loved ones who are dying. Through her stories she reveals her sensitivity to the emotions, struggles and needs that grief creates. She demonstrates the compassionate love that opens the way for people in sorrow to find comfort, humor and hope.

This book is a great resource for families who are caring for their terminally ill loved ones, for friends who want to help others who are grieving and for all positions on both hospice and hospital staffs.

Carla does not lecture, does not give a 1,2,3 way of caring for someone who is dying . . . instead she tenderly
describes each person, their unique needs and then shares her heartfelt instinct in trusting her compassionate sense of what will ease the tension in the room. She gives us an elegantly beautiful image of what the end of life can be.

– Janie Cook
Grief Group Facilitator
Bereaved parent

Discovery and recovery come to those who have courage to embrace an intimate relationship with grief. I encourage you to take the healing journey with Carla, through Sharing Our Stories: A Hospice Whispers Grief Support Workbook. With sensitivity and transparency, Carla skillfully draws a rare form of wisdom from a colorful pallet of seasoned grievers. This workbook is an invaluable resource for both professionals and the bereft.

– Linda Vogel
Director of Family Care, TriCare Hospice
Advanced Practice Palliative Care Chaplain and Palliative Life Coach