6/10/22 I feel relieved.
Taking a deep breathe & leaning back in my chair.
Talking with people about this brings such a sense of peace as I watch them come to their own sense of peace and breakthroughs around it.
And during a pandemic that got us well-acquainted with isolation, the group dynamic is a welcomed change and a complete joy. To connect with others on this, surprisingly feels incredibly natural. Sharing openly, communicating honestly with others, interested and curious . . . in the one thing we are all in on.
Our life includes our death. Guaranteed. We are simply stepping into an awareness of what’s incredibly key to our lives.
Our losses have shaped us. And our future losses will shape the direction of the rest of our lives. Discussing them and learning ways to talk about them, is a relief.
Why do we avoid the important things?
There’s serious resistance. The medical system and hospitals weren’t created with any kind of focus on handling death well. Despite the fact that so many end up dying there. The unstated perspective is that death is a failure.
But what’s more natural than death?
Nature knows. Nothing more natural than life and death. My gardener friend says nature knows exactly how to use death to live. Decayed things supply living things with nutrients. He says it’s nature’s greatest nurturer. Gardens are fed by it. A Forest grows using decaying, dead matter to rebuild itself.
Nature soothes. A walk through a forest calms the nerves. A realm of so much growth awakens & enlivens us. Something radically bigger than us thrives in there.
Our parents are aging. Our children are growing. Our bodies are gradually changing.
Are we so separate from that thriving forest?
Questions come up like:
How have I started preparing?
Why haven’t I started talking to my parents about what they have arranged?
How does my husband want his last moments to go?
How do I want mine to be?
Do my kids have a sense of all of this?
Have I prepared them?
Bringing it up seems awkward and never quite like the right time. But truthfully, there’s never been a better time than right now.
And the result, is one of the biggest gifts you can give to yourself and those you love. 