Community Care

Looking after our own

During the 80s, several people began the move to providing alternative therapies, remedies and a health food café to the public. A holistic health centre at Station House was set up by Erica Cook; and Jock Millenson set up the apothecary as one of the newly emerging independent businesses in Eileen’s converted toilet block.

When I arrived in 1987 I worked in the apothecary and later took on focalising the Health and Wholeness Department in Cluny. In 1991, along with Dorothy Noble, we manifested the beautiful house Meridian at Bag End as a treatment centre, where Katie Lloyd, Dürten Lau and others organised the People Care Programme, ran educational workshops and the Medical Marriage conferences.

However, there were still people who felt they had to leave Findhorn for health reasons, or simply because they could not ‘pull their weight’ in the community. This filled me with sadness as I resonated with the grief of those leaving, but experienced even more the loss I felt for the community, as we cut ourselves off from such crucial aspects of life. In 1992 Ina May Gaskin from The Farm visited the community for the first Medical Marriage Conference and her keynote was: Only once a community has reclaimed birth and death can it realise the potential of self-determination.

In the last 20 years we have come a long way towards that. There are now a large number of highly skilled health practitioners practising in both complementary and allopathic medicine, also a large group of interfaith ministers. So we now draw

on a wealth of experience and resources to look after our own, in collaboration with those experts who work in the National Health and Social Care services. The NFA Community Care Circle group runs workshops under the title The Curriculum for the Fourth Age in order to pass on the skills and knowledge that facilitate care in the community.

The community learned about full-time caring for members when Joanie Hartnell-Beavis approached death in 1996, and needed full-time care for three months. Eileen’s unwavering support for the volunteer carers, and her bold appeal to the worldwide community, brought all the resources to provide the care needed for Joanie. Barbara Faro started the Elders’ Fund (now Community Care Fund) which since then has provided financial support for care in the community where it is not covered by statutory services. Many a legacy from community members has since then ensured that the fund is there in times of need. Our wonderful Eileen benefited from her own groundbreaking work as she was looked after at home for three years while she grew increasingly dependent.

A DIY funeral was experienced for the first time in 1997 when Doris Oulton died. Not handing her body over to an undertaker after her sudden death allowed her best friend, Constance Marcham, to say goodbye to her in a way that she knew Doris would have wanted. Since then there have been many empowering and healing transitions from life into death.

The first burial on private land happened in 1998, and in 2002 Lyle Schnadt was the first to be buried within The Park. We now have a green burial site in the woodland beyond Pineridge that serves community members as well as the general public with a natural, beautiful resting place.

The community is a better place for embracing the provision of care for the times when people are in need, including the final stages of life. We are able to apply the spiritual principles of this place in an immediate and tremendously rewarding way, right through from birth until death.

Cornelia Featherstone, worked as a GP in the NHS 1999 – 2009