DAISY Foundation - A Healer's Touch

A Healer's Touch

Spirits In Stone Galleries (www.spiritsinstone.com), based in Sonoma, CA., has made it possible for The DAISY Award recipients to receive a unique, hand-carved sculpture, entitled A Healer's Touch. Each sculpture is hand-carved by an African Sculptor of the Shona Tribe of Zimbabwe.

To the traditional people of Africa, the nganga, or village healer, is believed to have the power to heal those who are physically ill, suffering misfortune or spiritually weak. To become an nganga, a person must offer evidence that he or she is guided by a healing spirit. Often this is the spirit of an ancestor who had been a healer and wishes to continue their work through the living descendant. By legend, a child is chosen by the njuzu or water spirit and taught the ancient and mystical healing arts.

The vigilance and kindness of the healers, their skill with medicines, and the ways in which they council, comfort and care for the afflicted, endear them to all they serve. Healers, whether

Meet A Nurse Named Rose

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male or female, are affectionately regarded as treasures by those they care for, and the well being and safety of the healer is of community-wide importance.

The flowing, connectedness of the sculpture also reminds us of the bond of care and trust that exists between healer and patient, unbroken, one flowing into the other in the unique, caring reliance. How appropriate for DAISY Award nurses!

DAISY's purchase of these sculptures has become very important to the people who

Three Grateful Women in Zimbabwe
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carve these beautiful pieces. Given the desperate political situation in Zimbabwe, there are no tourists to buy their work. So the money we send to Zimbabwe to pay for the Healers is a tremendous help to the artists and their families. Their letters of gratitude for this support are heartfelt and heartbreaking. "We know now that we will eat and keep our children in school and be able to gain a little strength," reads one of them, sent when they received a payment from us.

What this said to us is that the incredible work being done by nurses here in the U.S. is reaching around the world to help save the lives of these gifted artists. The artists, in turn, are creating these very sensitive depictions of the unique relationship nurses have with their patients.