In Acts of Care, Sara Ritchey recovers women's healthcare work by identifying previously overlooked tools of care: healing prayers, birthing indulgences, medical blessings, liturgical images, and penitential practices. Ritchey demonstrates that women in premodern Europe were both deeply engaged with and highly knowledgeable about health, the body, and therapeutic practices, but their critical role in medieval healthcare has been obscured because scholars have erroneously regarded the evidence of their activities as religious rather than medical. The sources for identifying the scope of medieval women's health knowledge and healthcare practice, Ritchey argues, are not found in academic medical treatises. Rather, she follows fragile traces detectable in liturgy, miracles, poetry, hagiographic narratives, meditations, sacred objects, and the daily behaviors that constituted the world, as well as in testaments and land transactions from hospitals and leprosaria established and staffed by beguines and Cistercian nuns. Through its surprising use of alternate sources, Acts of Care reconstructs the vital caregiving practices of religious women in the southern Low Countries, reconnecting women's therapeutic authority into the everyday world of late medieval healthcare. Thanks to generous funding from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access (OA) volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other Open Access repositories.

WINNER OF THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • “A delightful, compelling book that offers a dazzling array of practical, thoughtful exercises designed to spark creativity, help solve problems, foster connection, and make our lives better.”—Gretchen Rubin, New York Times bestselling author and host of the Happier podcast In an era of ambiguous, messy problems—as well as extraordinary opportunities for positive change—it’s vital to have both an inquisitive mind and the ability to act with intention. Creative Acts for Curious People is filled with ways to build those skills with resilience, care, and confidence. At Stanford University’s world-renowned Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, aka “the d.school,” students and faculty, experts and seekers bring together diverse perspectives to tackle ambitious projects; this book contains the experiences designed to help them do it. A provocative and highly visual companion, it’s a definitive resource for people who aim to draw on their curiosity and creativity in the face of uncertainty. Teeming with ideas about discovery, learning, and leading the way through unknown creative territory, Creative Acts for Curious People includes memorable stories and more than eighty innovative exercises. Curated by executive director Sarah Stein Greenberg, after being honed in the classrooms of the d.school, these exercises originated in some of the world’s most inventive and unconventional minds, including those of d.school and IDEO founder David M. Kelley, ReadyMade magazine founder Grace Hawthorne, innovative choreographer Aleta Hayes, Google chief innovation evangelist Frederik G. Pferdt, and many more. To bring fresh approaches to any challenge–world changing or close to home–you can draw on exercises such as Expert Eyes to hone observation skills, How to Talk to Strangers to foster understanding, and Designing Tools for Teams to build creative leadership. The activities are at once lighthearted, surprising, tough, and impactful–and reveal how the hidden dynamics of design can drive more vibrant ways of making, feeling, exploring, experimenting, and collaborating at work and in life. This book will help you develop the behaviors and deepen the mindsets that can turn your curiosity into ideas, and your ideas into action.

The original collection of inspirational true stories about acts of kindness and generosity of spirit—with suggestions for living more compassionately. The unprecedented success of Random Acts of Kindness has not only inspired many individuals, but also led Congress to declare a National Random Acts of Kindness Week in February 1995. The inspiration for the kindness movement, Random Acts of Kindness is an antidote for a weary world. The true stories, thoughtful quotations, and suggestions for generosity in this book will inspire you to live more compassionately and experience the joys of sharing and kindness. What if everyone started performing good deeds every day? This inspiring collection presents many true stories of people who’ve committed, received, and observed voluntary acts of kindness—and seen for themselves how small acts of goodness can make a big difference in people’s lives. A USA Today Best Bet for Educators

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was designed to increase health insurance quality and affordability, lower the uninsured rate by expanding insurance coverage, and reduce the costs of healthcare overall. Along with sweeping change came sweeping criticisms and issues. This book explores the pros and cons of the Affordable Care Act, and explains who benefits from the ACA. Readers will learn how the economy is affected by the ACA, and the impact of the ACA rollout.

Marriage should be based on love, right? But does it seem as though you and your spouse are speaking two different languages? #1 New York Times bestselling author Dr. Gary Chapman guides couples in identifying, understanding, and speaking their spouse's primary love language-quality time, words of affirmation, gifts, acts of service, or physical touch. By learning the five love languages, you and your spouse will discover your unique love languages and learn practical steps in truly loving each other. Chapters are categorized by love language for easy reference, and each one ends with simple steps to express a specific language to your spouse and guide your marriage in the right direction. A newly designed love languages assessment will help you understand and strengthen your relationship. You can build a lasting, loving marriage together. Gary Chapman hosts a nationally syndicated daily radio program called A Love Language Minute that can be heard on more than 150 radio stations as well as the weekly syndicated program Building Relationships with Gary Chapman, which can both be heard on fivelovelanguages.com. The Five Love Languages is a consistent New York Times bestseller - with over 5 million copies sold and translated into 38 languages. This book is a sales phenomenon, with each year outselling the prior for 16 years running!

Why do people act? Why are other people drawn to watch them? How is acting as a performing art related to role-playing outside the theater? As the first philosophical study devoted to acting, Acts: Theater, Philosophy, and the Performing Selfsheds light on some of the more evasive aspects of the acting experience— such as the import of the actor's voice, the ethical unease sometimes felt while embodying particular sequences, and the meaning of inspiration. Tzachi Zamir explores acting’s relationship to everyday role-playing through a surprising range of examples of “lived acting,” including pornography, masochism, and eating disorders. By unearthing the deeper mobilizing structures that underlie dissimilar forms of staged and non-staged role-playing, Acts offers a multi-layered meditation on the percolation from acting to life. The book engages questions of theatrical inspiration, the actor’s “energy,” the difference between acting and pretending, the special role of repetition as part of live acting, the audience and its attraction to acting, and the unique significance of the actor’s voice. It examines the embodied nature of the actor’s animation of a fiction, the breakdown of the distinction between what one acts and who one is, and the transition from what one performs into who one is, creating an interdisciplinary meditation on the relationship between life and acting.

The editors undertook this project to promote the International Conference on Death, Grief, and Bereavement in La Crosse, Wisconsin, USA. Throughout its history, the conference has attracted internationally known speakers. This book illustrates the quality of their presentations. Section One, "Professional Applications in End of Life Care," begins with Currier, Hammer, and Neimeyer's examination of the importance of the social network, including both religion and family, not just the individual, in working with those at the end of their lives. The authors analyse the impact of social support and its health implications. In Chapter 2, Parkes looks at the influence of child development on adult life and bereavement. Rather than simply showing how insecure child development affects loss as adults, he examines how insecure attachments in childhood can lead to extreme attachments to God, homes, territories, political leaders, and symbols and discusses interventions for these extreme attachments. Papadatou (Chapter 3) develops a model for professionals and caregivers who work with the dying. She suggests that those who give care to the dying also have multiple needs and also face suffering, examines the private world of professionals and what is healthy and what is unavoidable, and describes both functional and dysfunctional coping patterns used by professionals. Kobler (Chapter 4) uses case studies to explain how to develop and maintain relationships with children and their families in paediatric palliative care. She offers strategies for using rituals and ways to initiate and maintain relationships with children and their families. Thompson (Chapter 5) focuses on the effects of working in situations involving high levels of emotion and the stress that may result. He makes a strong case that such stress can do harm to individuals, groups, and whole organisations and offers a model for a more holistic approach that incorporates social and organisational strategies and practical ways to prevent and manage stress. Eves-Baine and colleagues (Chapter 6) examine the application of paediatric and adult-based principles to the newborn period. They discuss how to create the best situations for families when life-sustaining medical therapy has been withdrawn, how to support the family, and the ethical challenges that perinatal palliative care presents. The authors offer models for care through the journey of palliative and bereavement care. Section Two, "Facing End of Life and Its Care," begins with Gilbert's chapter presenting a strong argument that caregivers need to honour the multiple tracks that come with dying while maintaining a focus on the wishes of the dying person. He offers ways for the team to better meet the needs of the dying person. Koppleman (Chapter 8) follows the journey of a friend who faced death. It is a powerful story, told from the point of view of the dying in a scholarly fashion. Smith and Potter (Chapter 9) suggest that palliative care for the dying can be defined as offering "comfort care," both for those who are dying and for their loved ones. The authors present a model of the psycho-spiritual side of palliative care as a way of offering comfort to all those involved. Adams (Chapter 10) examines different methods of working with patients and families. It looks at the ways in which such work can be complicated by factors of geographic distance, differences in family reactions, differences in treatment plan concepts, and in meaning making. All of these factors may become stumbling blocks and may prevent the delivery of positive support. Pizzini (Chapter 11) looks at the experience of dying in prison from the perspective of inmates who are terminally ill, prison medical staff, and prison security staff. She discusses how to maintain dignity of the dying and a "good death" while in prison. McCord (Chapter 12) discusses attempts by hospice patients and others diagnosed with terminal illnesses to die either by