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Nugent, the founder in 2006 of the non-profit NurseLink Foundation, specializes in providing home-based, end-of-life holistic nursing and has lectured and consulted widely around the world on issues surrounding geriatric nursing as well as hospice and palliative care. In this book, she not only contemplates the myriad issues surrounding her holistic nursing career and philosophy but, in particular, shares more of her personal philosophy by exploring the concept of soul and the afterlife.
Writing with compassion and an authority informed by three decades of providing end-of-life care, Nugent (who was inspired immensely by the legendary Florence Nightingale) explores such topics as confidence in dying, religion and spirituality, euthanasia, healing wounds, deep connection with those in her care, and chakra, along with other esoteric energies. During the author’s 30 years working at the bedside of people nearing their end of life, she explains that she had the privilege of being part of the miraculous process of parting the veil between this world and the hereafter.
Nugent’s strength is her generous explanation of the philosophical and psychological analysis which underpin many of the life and death experiences with which she has been a part. For example, she oftentimes cites such figures as Carl Jung, Jack Kornfield, Joseph Campbell, Deepak Chopra, and the like as well as quotations and ideas drawn from Catholicism, Tibetan Buddhism, and Hinduism’s Bhavagad Gita. Referring to herself as “an agnostic Buddhist Catholic who recites Hindu mantras and had a Methodist upbringing,” the range of world traditions and disparate religions from which the author draws is impressive. Enlightening as well is how this all shapes her perspectives on soul-searching and end-of-life issues.