Susan Freeman

Rabbi Susan Freeman is a chaplain and ACPE Certified Educator, teaching Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) at Sharp HealthCare in San Diego. Originally from Denver, CO, Susan has her M.A. in Hebrew Literature and Rabbinic Ordination from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. She has been involved in hospice, hospital, and home health chaplaincy since 2003. Prior to chaplaincy, she worked as a congregational rabbi, education director, High Holiday cantor, writer, and dancer.

Besides the books listed here, her new book To Dwell in Your House: Vignettes and Spiritual Reflections on Caregiving at Home was published in November 2017. Articles published in The Journal of Pastoral Care and Counseling include "Opening to Torah, Bedside" (Fall, 2010) and “A Prayer Before I Visit” (Spring, 2013). Articles published in Reflective Practice: Formation and Supervision in Ministry include ACPE Theory Paper of the year – “The Art of Supervision: Canvas, Song, and Dance” (2011); “Encounters for Change: A Book Review Roundtable” (co-author, 2013); and “Jasmina: The Little Things” (2017).

As a yoga practitioner, she has completed over 700 hours of teacher and other intensive trainings. She is married to Rabbi Philip Graubart and has two adult sons.

Contact Information: Susan Freeman; susan.freeman100@sharp.com; (858) 541-4850.

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BOOK REVIEW, February 21, 2018

From NAJC: The International Organization of Jewish Health Care Specialists

by David J. Zucker, PhD, BCC

This is a wonderful book! The first one hundred pages, Part 1, centers on Vignettes; Part 2 offers Reflections and Theories. Susan Freeman is a Rabbi, an experienced Chaplain, and a Pastoral Educator. Those three professions are ably reflected in this sensitive and wise volume. Freeman tells us that in her work in home care she often engages, “with patients at critical crossroads in their lives – when they are trying to adjust to, make sense of, and cope with significant health challenges that affect their intimate relationships, finances, living circumstances, and spiritual worldviews.” Many of her clientele, “may not be dying or ready to die, but the challenges in their lives make day-to-day existence an entirely new, and sometimes daunting and incomprehensible, reality”. With some slight adjustments to reflect one’s own particular area of chaplaincy--long-term care, acute care, hospice, or other settings—that description should resonate with many of you reading this review. Indeed, this fine volume can easily inform a very broad scope of chaplaincy, since the wording of her contemplations, affirmations, and prayers are not connected to any specific religious tradition.

Freeman offers thirty vignettes, each only a couple of pages in length. Each explores an encounter between the chaplain and patient(s)/family member(s). This is followed by “Contemplations”, questions and suggestions for caregivers’ own responses and reflections. In the vignette, “Fear’s Range of Motion”, in the chapter titled “Attending to Fear”, the Contemplations are:

What do I fear?

What helps allay my fears?

What do my patients/those whom I care for fear?

What would be three incremental steps I might practice myself and suggest to my patients for addressing fear (or another difficult emotion, such as worry, anger, or hopelessness)?

Next is “An Affirmation for Me”, which is a one or two sentence encapsulation of an essential idea in the vignette. Finally, in the brief section “A Prayer to Share”, Freeman offers a short biblical quotation from the Hebrew Scriptures, and then her own wording of a creative, thoughtful open-ended prayer. These are spiritually uplifting and highly accessible, in the style of such authors as Rami Shapiro and Rachel Barenblat.

The Vignettes section is divided into seven chapters, each just over a dozen pages: Listening; Empathizing, and Being a Confidante; Alongside Grief and Despair; Attending to Fear; Overcoming Challenges to Connecting; Navigating Changes, Boundaries and Borderlines; Standing with Authenticity, Blessed with Revelation; and Witnessing Growth and Discovery. The latter part of the book, “Reflections and Theories”, offers seven short chapters: Spiritual Pain: Theirs and Ours; To Be at Home; What Can We Do to Serve?; The Most Potent Intervention; Anthropology of Listening; A Theology of Listening; and Final Thoughts.

Freeman works at a home health agency, so the term ‘home’ is both a literal entity and a metaphor for her. In the following excerpt, ‘home’ has both of these meanings: “Illness may force modifications in a person’s home … Each stage in illness presents possibilities for getting stuck in the most negative interpretation, for lingering in the ‘worst room of the house.’ Likewise, each stage offers opportunities to see more affirmative accountings of changes, for exploring the ‘other side of the home’”. Writing about “Home as Hope”, she explains, “Cultivating hope is an effort open to all, regardless of a particular faith tradition, and is a means of nurturing resilience now."

This is a gem of a book. It is open, accessible, thoughtful and thought provoking.

BOOK REVIEW

Reflective Practice: Formation and Supervision in Ministry, 2018

by Lois Williams Sutter Care at Home and Hospice Concord, California

Susan Freeman, an ACPE certified educator, rabbi, and chaplain, invites you to take some time in the world of home care chaplaincy. Although her book is written for those venturing into home care chaplaincy, I would also recommend this work to pastors and medical team members, who often greet the chaplain with the question, “What do you do?” Susan Freeman answers this question in a vignette about Joseph and Adele, who simply ask her “So what is your product?” As a hospice chaplain for ten years, I reflected back on my own visits to identify my “product.” For me, this book clarifies the calling to serve as a chaplain and identifies the basic skills that one must continually hone to create change. In To Dwell in Your House, Susan invites us to sit next to her and contemplate what a particular person and/or situation needs in order to promote the resilience needed to heal or the spiritual wholeness it takes to have a good death. Through vignettes, she introduces patients struggling to heal their bodies and souls after a physical challenge. Just when the reader feels they have grasped the issue being presented, be it struggling with loneliness, fear of change, loss of dignity, an unsafe environment, or any of the many spiritual issues that come up during the journey of life, Freeman turns the issues around by asking the reader about their own quest and struggle with these issues. Each vignette can serve as a daily devotional; they are followed by quotes from sacred writings that lead to a poetic reflection that can only be described as a “new psalm.” Freeman’s reflections are religiously inclusive; they are drawn from various spiritual traditions while emphasizing a compassionate narrative counseling approach that begins with listening. What do chaplains do? This is it.