Seven days a week my chronically ill younger sister, Martha, receives a healing call from a "heart" doctor. Her truest heart ALWAYS feels better after these calls – as if some magic drug had been administered – except better.
This "heart" doctor delivers compassion, practical exercises, and life-affirming attention. Different from any conventional physician, this heart doctor engages her husband and children on the healing team. Her husband is an engineering genius who helps create an environment supportive to Martha's status as a Little Person. Her teenage son is a natural improv comic who sends Martha the medicine of laughter. Her 15-year old daughter plays the violin, delivering healing music into her being.
The heart doctor is my daughter, Tia. She heals from her home in Italy. Her dedication to her aunt is beyond anything I have seen. Martha says, "without Tia and her family, I'd be dead."
Clearly, Martha is lucky to have an amazingly large healing team of relatives and friends. Tia is just one. The point is, who heals us beyond our doctors?
And ancient and dangerous phenomenon in medicine is its obsessive focus on what is wrong. Where is the focus on what is healthy and how to advance it?
Family psychology is an illustration. We flood psychologists with news of family-induced scars.
The good news is: we all have a "family" of healers around us. The quote-marks signal an overlooked truth: Often, our dearest friends are more "family" then some blood relatives.
Our heart friends are the unsung healers in our lives. Today, you deliver healing to friends as well as to patients.
May you always respect the healing power of your presence. Just as I respect you for the people you will help today
-Erie Chapman
Photo montage: Tia and Martha
Journal of Sacred Work 
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