Jan Booth
Boulder, Colorado
Boulder Threshold Singers
When a hospice colleague sent me a flyer in 2014 for a new Threshold Choir starting in the Washington, DC area, he wrote, “This is surely a no-brainer for you!” He was right — it brought together my love of singing with my longtime passion for compassionate end-of-life care. I have loved being a part of the Threshold Singers of Washington, DC, both as a bedside singer and as the Music Director. I knew I would love the singing, but I hadn’t counted on how important the rehearsals would become for building beautiful community and sacred space together. I look forward to being part of a Threshold Choir in Colorado, once we land in our permanent home.
I felt a call to hospice nursing while I was still in nursing school, and have spent the past three decades focused on end-of-life care. My work trajectory has taken me from the bedside of hospice and palliative care patients to supporting the wellbeing of caregivers, and now into the larger community to further open our cultural conversation about end of life. I serve as faculty for the New York Open Center’s integrative thanatology program, the Integrative Nurse Coach Academy, and formerly for the Conscious Dying Institute’s end-of-life coach and doula programs. Leading workshops & retreats on the transformational possibilities of end-of-life work is one of my passions. Part of that work involves tracking innovative models for end-of-life care that are emerging throughout our culture – some are new, and others come out of human wisdom traditions, reimagined for the time we’re in. I see Threshold Choirs as part of that reimagining.
I’m honored to be asked to serve on the TCI Board, and look forward to seeing how I might best contribute. We are clearly in a time of growth and transition for the organization, balancing the core mission of ‘kindness made audible’ and ‘one choir, many voices.’ I hope to honor those values and do my small part to carry this sacred work forward.