The Existential Dispatch, Issue No. 54

A Word from the Founding Director

This issue keeps company with the limits of what we can fix. Henri Nouwen writes about the friend who can tolerate not curing, a physician-author argues that tenderness and truth should outrank technological bravado at the end of life, and new research on meaning-centred care continues to travel across languages and cultures. At the same time, reports from Quebec and eastern Congo remind us that those who stay with suffering need protection themselves.

Existential Thinker of the Issue

Henri Nouwen

“The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not-knowing, not-curing, not-healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is the friend who cares.” — Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude (1974), as quoted in Seeds of Hope: An Henri Nouwen Reader (cepreaching.org)

Nouwen, the Dutch priest and psychologist who wrote The Wounded Healer, spent his last decade living and working alongside people with intellectual disabilities at L’Arche Daybreak in Richmond Hill, Ontario. His sentence describes a clinical skill that training rarely names: staying present when there is nothing left to fix. For clinicians, the urge to advise or reassure can be a way of escaping our own helplessness; tolerating it, without abandoning the patient, is often the most honest care we can give.

In Academia

Meaning-centred psychotherapy for Chinese immigrants with advanced cancer. Lui, Breitbart and colleagues report in Palliative & Supportive Care (October 26) on two pilot trials of the “Meaning-in-Life Counseling Program,” a one-on-one cultural adaptation for Mandarin-speaking patients with stage III or IV cancer exploring meaning, identity and purpose. cambridge.org

Meaning-based interventions and suicide-related vulnerability. A systematic review in the same journal (October 19) finds that meaning-based interventions most consistently improve meaning in life, spiritual well-being and quality of life, and may reduce suicide-related vulnerability by strengthening existential resources rather than by targeting symptoms directly. cambridge.org

In Film, Literature and Culture

Timor Mortis: How We Live with Death. Richard Coker’s “hybrid memoir,” drawing on his work as a physician and public health specialist, argues that “tenderness and truth” should trump “technological bravado” near the end of life, and that we should think about death every day so that fear brings greater fulfilment (review of October 18). literaryreview.co.uk

The Unbecoming. Kathy Fagan’s new collection of poems, chosen among the Sewanee Review’s fall picks, follows a queer, childless woman reckoning with the deaths of both her parents and with her own mortality, with quiet humour and equanimity. thesewaneereview.com

In Healthcare (Global)

Quebec City psychiatric emergency staff ask for specialised security to return. Unions at the CHUL psychiatric emergency department say staff have been exposed to patient violence since a specialised security role was cut in November 2024; health care and social assistance accounted for 47.4% of Quebec’s accepted workplace violence injuries in 2024. thesafetymag.com

A nurse killed while responding to an Ebola alert in eastern Congo. According to the World Health Organization, a nurse was killed and another health worker severely injured in an attack in the Butembo area, a reminder that violence against health workers is also a global public health problem. thecanadianpressnews.ca

Funding and Grant Opportunities

NCI: Improving Care and Outcomes for Cancer Survivors from Sexual and Gender Minority Populations (R01). The National Cancer Institute invites observational and interventional studies to understand barriers and improve care and outcomes for SGM people with cancer, including the use of sexual orientation and gender identity data in cancer care; the deadline is January 8, 2027. purdue.edu

Conferences and Events

Deadline reminders. EAPC 2027 abstract submission opens on November 1 and closes on December 5, 2026 (see Issue 49), and CAPO 2027 abstracts close on December 6, 2026 (see Issue 50). capo.ca

Startup and Innovation Watch

Empathy expands to Canada. The bereavement platform, which combines logistical help with estate and insurance matters and emotional support, launched in Canada in January and partners with insurers such as Zurich in the UK. Its founder notes that “grief is made harder by logistics, and logistics are made harder by grief”; the open question is how such tools can reach chosen families who sit outside insurance and next-of-kin systems. phoenixcourt.vc

To Close: An Existential Joke

A doctor asked Nouwen what to say to a patient when there was nothing left to do. “Try saying less,” he said. “It is harder than it sounds.”