The end of life is part of life that we must experience.  Let us make the experience a positive one.

•    “Being present for a person who is living the end of life is a privilege and a life-changing experience. Sharing this journey teaches us how to live more fully by being compassionate toward others and ourselves. Many of the people I love will die before I do. I want to learn all I can to support them and then to die peacefully myself.”
  --Loretta Downs
  
  
  Loretta Downs has always been drawn to service. At age five, her first career choice was to be a nurse, like her big sister. Over time, teaching and volunteering replaced nursing.
  
  In high school she delivered baskets to the poor at Christmas. She helped the Anti-Cruelty Society of Chicago open a gift shop. Drawn to the dogs in the Society, she became a pet therapy volunteer, taking puppies to visit children in hospitals. Throughout her management career she volunteered on benefit committees and at fundraisers for a variety of not-for-profit organizations.
  
  In 1995, responding to the health crisis in her industry and the loss dozens of friends and business associates, she became a volunteer on the AIDS ward at Illinois Masonic Hospital in Chicago. There, she began to notice the differences in the quality of the deaths of patients dying with hospice care and those without.
  
  That experience led her to join Hospice Partners (now Heartland Hospice) as a patient care volunteer in 2000. There, she has served as many as four patients at one time in different locations -- at home and in nursing homes and hospitals. She quickly became active in training and mentoring volunteers. She joined Seasons Hospice in 2006 to volunteer at their 14-bed in-patient unit at Lincoln Park Hospital in Chicago.
  
  Following her father’s death in a hospital in 1991, Loretta became a caregiver to her mother, Anna. The last six years of Anna’s life were spent in The Fairmont Care Center, a nursing home, during which Loretta and her mother experienced deep, transformational personal growth that healed their life-long emotional disability. Their reconciliation changed their relationship from one of animosity and shame into mutual respect and unconditional love. This reconciliation and her experience in caring for hospice patients at the Fairmont inspired Loretta to create The Chrysalis Room so that her mother, and other residents who had become family, would have a dignified, peaceful and loving passage.
   

  "Dearest Loretta, Tears are streaming down my face as I read the story of your mom.  I, too, experienced healing peace with my mom as she suffered from dementia during her last year. It was not until then that I really felt her love and care. I truly believe that her last year was a momentous and exceptional gift from above. I am blessed to have heard your story and I feel a bond with you." --Barbara E. Silvestri, MA

  
  Anna died peacefully on April 10, 2006, in The Chrysalis Room with her daughter at her side. Loretta continues to visit her many friends at The Fairmont Care Center (fairmontcare.com) where she volunteers as the official Family Guide and co-facilitator of a family support group. As a special gift and in memory of her mother, she raises Monarch butterflies in the summer with the residents.
   

  

   

   

   

   

   

   

  
  
  
  Career
  At age 30, Loretta received a hard-earned college degree and landed her first management job. Thus began a 25-year career in the home fashion industry in Chicago’s Merchandise Mart. With a talent for sales, she earned substantial bonuses to invest as a real estate developer. Retiring from sales in 1998, she eventually opened a small bed and breakfast, "The Respite." She now works full-time writing, lecturing and consulting on death and dying, in addition to her hospice and other volunteer activities.
  
  Education and Affiliations
  
  Graduate, the prestigious Alaya Institute End-of-Life Care Practitioner Program (alayainstitute.org) in 2006, which offers a psycho-spiritual counselor training program for professionals working in the field of end-of-life.
  
  Roshi Joan Halifax’s “Being With Dying” residential workshop in 2005 (upaya.org).
  
  Member of the Board of Directors, The Chicago End-of-Life Care Coalition.
  
  Member, The Illinois Coalition for Improving End-of-Life Care
  The Association for Death Education and Counseling
  International Association for Near Death Studies
  The American Society on Aging.

 Loretta believes that being present for the dying is her calling. She believes that death and dying are natural parts of life. She has observed that when this fact is denied, there is more physical pain and emotional suffering for everyone involved. The need for education, a review of medical ethics as related to the end of life, and elimination of the debilitating denial of death and dying in our culture must be addressed so we can transform the time for dying into a positive experience. Ms. Downs is committed to doing that before she herself dies.