Welcome to Kelli Dunham’s Second Helping. If you’d like to read more about the show/ movement (well, we’re trying to make it a movement), read below. If you want to find more about this Kelli Dunham person, you can
READ
Kelli’s hilarious practical substack Hoping Intentionally Recent posts have included Better Self Talk for Apocalypse, Helping After Death: Be Specific or Be Quiet (it’s not as rude as it sounds), Medical Aid in Dying Seen from The Inside Of The Room and The Kids Who Sank Columbus
LISTEN
Listen to Kelli’s runaway new hit podcast CARED FOR from PRX and Good Get! CARED FOR is a funny, practical podcast about what we do when life gets hard: caregiving, medical stress, big feelings, and the systems that make everything harder than it needs to be. Expect stories, resources and basically a nurse-comedian’s field guide to being human during the worst parts of being human.
Recent episodes include You Still Need To Get That Check Up (medical self advocacy tips), When Flowers Aren’t Enough (supporting someone in grief), Quick: It’s An Emergency (How to navigate ER trips) , Knock Knock It’s Your Doctor (tips for using humor in hard times: like when you’re dealing with health struggles) and There’s No Perfect Caregiver. Oh and An Ex Nun’s Guide to Faith.
Those are linked from the Cared For podcast page on Apple, but CARED FOR is available everywhere podcasts and delivered for free; comprehensive links here
ANYWAY, ABOUT THAT SHOW
ABOUT SECOND HELPING
Kelli Dunham grew up the youngest child in a large Midwestern US farm family that taught self-reliance as a religion.. When Kelli lost not one but two partners in a row to cancer, and then was the victim of an unfortunate exploding knee replacement incident, she was forced to start making different choices. And also there was a whole weird nun thing in the middle.
SECOND HELPING is part stand-up comedy, part sit-down tragedy with love and body fluids in the cracks in between.
As seen at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Hiram College, featured in Kristin Duffy’s Second Chapter podcast and Chris Vepoli’s Worst Time For Anything. BBC Scotland, BBC-4, and in a beautiful piece by Matilda Davis for the Sun Times. Kelli performed an excerpt from Second Helping as part of an event with Glasgow’s Friends At The End and MSP Rona McKay. Because…well, that’s the kind of thing Kelli does.
PSSST want to watch a few excerpts? Don’t tell anyone but you can watch a few choice moments…
When Heather was dying, she fancied herself a comedian…
Cheryl and Kelli played a game called NYC when
What kind of first confession does a future nun have?
SECOND HELPING is a show, and a workshop, and a movement.
I mean, we’re trying to make it a movement.
Second Helping is produced by brilliant Beth Lapides (the godmother of alt comedy-the LA Times)
There are more resources and practical guides to learning how to accept help included on Kelli’s blog right here.
ABOUT BOOKING SECOND HELPING AT NURSING SCHOOLS, COLLEGES, AND CONFERENCES
SECOND HELPING is not just hilarious entertainment for colleges, communities of faith and healthcare providers, it’s also a great conversation starter about mutual aid, care, ableism and disability. If you’re booking Second Helping for your conference or organization, every performance of SECOND HELPING comes with an additional workshop about these issues. Because Kelli likes to be helpful. Of course.
HELP: I NEED SOMEBODY: THE ART OF ASKING FOR (AND ACCEPTING) HELP [WORKSHOP]
Part of being a compassionate and social justice-minded human in the world is seeing needs and wanting to immediately assist where we can. But being in the habit of meeting others ‘ needs doesn’t always mean we are able to accept help. In this workshop we’ll consider how our help-receiving skills compare with our help-giving skills, discuss why it’s just as important to receive as to give, learn hands on skills for becoming more comfortable with asking for help, and consider what mutual aid has to do with it all.
WHEN A CASSEROLE IS NOT ENOUGH: BUILDING TEAMS OF CARE [WORKSHOP]
Family caregiving is in an unprecedented crisis and caregiving by groups, rather than by individuals is at least part of the answer. In this weworkshop–which draws on Kelli’s more than ten years as a community health nurse, her experiences during the early years of the AIDS crisis as well as her lived experience as the primary caregiver of two partners who died of cancer– participants will discuss ways to develop and leverage community mutual aid, build caregiving teams and learn how to communicate about their teams with the mainstream healthcare system.
TEAM CAREGIVING: BUT WHO WILL BE ON MY TEAM [WORKSHOP]
In this workshop–created as a direct result of questions asked during other team caregiving workshops– we’ll talk about the nitty-gritty of building a sustainable positive caregiving team, with a special emphasis on troubleshooting for folks who are geographically, socially or otherwise isolated.
