Joanne Park

A retired hospice social worker who is not a therapist and says so weekly. Thursdays.

I was a hospice social worker for twenty-six years. I am not a therapist, I am not a doctor, and I say so at the top of the column every week, because the advice genre is full of people implying otherwise. What I have is a very large number of hours sitting with households at the worst moment they will ever have, which turns out to be useful for the ordinary ones too. Mother of three adults, grandmother of four. I answer one letter a week.