Inviting Communities into the Conversations around Death and Honoring Life
In our American “death avoidant” culture we are quick to shy away from conversations around death. This has lead many of us to become fearful of death, uneducated in how to talk about death, and confused about how to show support to those who are dying, or grieving a loved ones death. Instead of grappling with the many ways death shows up in our lives, it becomes easy to put it in a closed box that we hide away. As a result, when those around us experience loss we often jump to pity, out of our own fear, and have a hard time accessing compassion. A big part of my work is about educating communities about death by; normalizing talking about it, encouraging people to share their wishes with loved ones, inviting people to examine the stories they have around death that strike fear, and helping them think through some practical steps to prepare for their own deaths. Together, I believe we can reframe how individuals and communities deal with death, and as a result, cultivate more compassion and love in our communities. Some communities are ready to talk about Death, in more obvious ways, and others are not. My job is never to force anything, but to respect the needs of the community and curate a workshop that best fits the needs of the culture.
“When your fear touches someone's pain, it becomes pity, when your love touches someone's pain, it becomes compassion.”
-Stephen Levine
Workshops for Caregivers at Healthcare Facilities
Rachel Naomi Remen has wisely said, "The expectation that we can be immersed in suffering and loss daily and not be touched by it is as unrealistic as expecting to be able to walk through water without getting wet. This sort of denial is no small matter.” As a M.D. she saw how easy it was for healthcare workers to become burnt out, numb, disassociated from not only the self but from patients as well. With the hopes to cultivate compassionate environments that care for both workers and patients, I use both conversational, and experiential techniques that invite healthcare workers of all positions to both examine their own health and relationship with death, and then take a loving look at how this is impacting their interactions with patients. We also spend time learning about techniques that cultivate presence, compassion, and the workers are given tools and information to help them enter into their work more consciously.
Workshops for Places of Worship
At the end of life people often look to their places of worship for support. As beautiful as much of the support faith based communities give, as a result of a lack of education around death, some places of worship have been known to cause unintentional harm to its congregants by using regurgitated phrases when someone dies, such as, “It was God’s Will” or “At least they are in a better place.” Regardless of wether or not people ascribe to these beliefs, I have seen people left feeling belittled and unsupported in the face of these comments. We can do better to become educated about appropriate language that we can use, and have authentic conversations around how we feel about death without the fear that our answers aren’t “holy enough.” Places of worship are wonderful spaces to introduce these sort of conversations around death that help us not only examine our own relationships with death, but examine how we can be lovingly present to others in the face of death.
Workshops for Aged people at Assisted Living Homes
I work with unique communities to create specialized workshops that help people process their mental and emotional health at the later stages of life. Every community has different needs, so I work with the staff to provide care in a way that honors the culture at hand. I invite clients to process their mental and emotional health through storytelling, sharing, and gratitude activities. It’s so important that we create spaces for people at the later stages in life to process both the beauty and pain their life has held in safe and not forced ways.
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