A New Kind of Sanctuary

A young woman walks into a hospital, trembling with despair. She tells the nurse she’s struggling with depression, that the weight of living feels unbearable. Instead of being met with deep listening, compassion, or a path toward healing, she’s asked a chilling question:

“Have you heard of the MAID program?”

MAID — Medical Assistance in Dying — was introduced with the intention of offering a humane option for those enduring terminal or untreatable suffering. But when the program extends its reach to those who are simply hopeless, we must ask: has medicine lost its way?

Suggesting death to someone crying out for life is not compassion — it’s resignation. It reflects a society that has become so estranged from true healing that it would rather extinguish pain than transform it. This is not progress; it is murder disguised as mercy.

A System That Treats Symptoms, Not Souls

The truth is, we’ve built a system designed to manage people, not heal them. The modern hospital may have sterile lights and expensive machines, but it rarely provides what most suffering people truly need:time, attention, love, and community.

Depression isn’t a disease in the same way pneumonia is. It’s often the result of disconnection — from purpose, from nature, from others, from oneself. Yet instead of restoring connection, our system numbs it further with pills, screens, and now, even assisted death.

It’s tragic but predictable: in a world that monetizes illness and isolates the soul, death can appear as the only affordable cure.

What Happened to Real Healing?

There was a time when even the so-called “primitive” approaches to healing had wisdom modern medicine has lost.Cold-water immersion, for example, was once used to treat depression — a natural way to reset the nervous system, awaken vitality, and ground the spirit back into the body.

Now, we use electric shocks — or worse, chemical sedation — to suppress symptoms rather than understand them.Instead of asking “What is this pain trying to teach me?” we silence it.

And so, suffering festers — until some, tragically, are offered death instead of healing.

A Call for a New Kind of Sanctuary

This is why we need Healing Havens — real sanctuaries where people can stay for as long as they need, surrounded by community, beauty, and holistic modalities.

Imagine that same young woman arriving not at a sterile ward, but at a haven:a warm meal waiting, a counselor to listen, a bed beside a fire, time in the sauna and cold plunge, moments of laughter and tears, nature, music, art, and the company of others who understand.

She would not need to be told about MAID.

She would feel that her life is worth living again.

The Spiritual Wake-Up Call

The deeper issue is not medical — it’s moral and spiritual.

A culture that offers death before belonging has lost its compass.

But we can realign it.

Every community could transform even one unused building — a church, a school, a home — into a place of refuge and rebirth.

We have the knowledge, we have the space, and we have the souls willing to serve.

What we lack is the courage to admit:the system isn’t broken — it was never designed for healing.

But we can build something new.