Lauren Muser Cates, LMT, instructor and co-founder of Healwell, led a three-day class in Damariscotta guiding therapists on ways to embrace and be present in care-giving with end-of-life clients. Healwell’s principal mission is is to improve quality of life for people affected by acute, chronic and terminal illness through integrative hands-on therapies, education and research.

Through exercises that supported deep inquiry and consideration of emotions and ideas about living and dying, Cates provided guideposts to professionally and personally better support therapists as they spend time at the bedsides of dying patients.

Three Midcoast professionals, Patti Corscaden of Newcastle, a licensed massage therapist who focuses on complex medical conditions, Lori Rizzuto of Damariscotta, a licensed massage therapist and end-of-life Doula, and Dr. Molly Delaney, clinical psychologist, also of Damariscotta, were among the 13 attendees from Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New York. Each of these therapists explored how death affected them personally, translating into providing a better experience for people living and dying with acute, chronic and terminal illness.