Tarron Estes, Founder

OUR MISSION

To create a wisdom-based caring healing culture of End-of-Life Doulas, Conscious Dying Coaches and Educators of all faiths, beliefs, and ethnicities who restore death to its sacred place in the beauty, mystery and celebration of life and contribute to the evolution of human consciousness.

Why Do This Work?

Data and research point to a "tsunami of humans nearing end of life" within the next two decades. This data shows diminishing health care resources: funds, places, people, professionals, and facilities. As numbers rise, the quality of life near to the dying process decreases and gets more expensive. Seventy-five percent of all money spent on health care occurs in the last three months of life while the quality of life is the worst we ever seen. 95% of people say they prefer to die at home while 75% of people end up dying in hospitals or nursing homes.

When people talk about what is happening in our end of life culture today, we hear things like, "I don't want to die that way. I want control of how I die. I want a loving and natural death. I'll choose my own way out before I die like that."

Sound familiar? The Conscious Dying Institute responds to this deep urge for a sacred passage that honors life by offering transformative programs that help people prepare for death personally and professionally. This way, they can be authentically present as they encounter their own death as well as the deaths of their families and friends.

Welcome, I'm Tarron Estes, Founder of the Conscious Dying Institute. I am an End Of Life Educator, Radiant Dreamers Facilitator, and Best Three Months Planner, a process to understand what matters most in all Five Domains of life.

I designed and created “Conscious Dying Coach, Sacred Passage Doula and Conscious Dying Educator Certificates. Over 5000 students have engaged in these end of life education courses who now work serving others who need end of life care and support.

I am now shifting my service to End of Life Coaching and Radiant Dreaming Facilitation, Best Three Months: Manifesting what matters most in life.

I believe we can shift the end of life experience from the "worst months of life"  to the "Best Months of Life".  This calls us to explore and create transformational healing experiences during waking, dreaming and of course dying process. because we want to live as beautifully and fully as possible in a good, sacred way.

I feel we must wake up and be fully present in the HERE and NOW. For this,  I design embodiment activities that allow caregivers to fully experience spiritual ,emotional, physical, legacy and after death choices so that we can generously and graciously assist those who are still alive but can see the end. I support awakening of the individual so that we are working together for the good of the whole. I focus on uniting personal and organizational growth to produce life transformation for individuals, families, and clinical professionals, and culture change for organizations.

Poetry

When Someone Wants to Die: A Prayer to remember

Lean In. Listen. Bite your tongue. Assume for one fat moment that, They know what is right, best, better for them than you! Know that what you are hearing is THEIR truth.

Somewhere in this story of “I don’t want to be here”, You will hear why death is better for them than life as it is. YOU be the brave one

Face every word and every unreasonable but honest thought-Every feeling, pain, angst, and each point of suffering. See their open hand to God praying for mercy. Or their fist and jaw clenched, closing the door on words they’d like to say, “Why have you left me here in this horrible place”?

Or “What good am I here, like this?”

You may be powerfully tempted but don't give them answers. Listen to the difference in the life they once had And the one they are now living.

Have a little mercy party, a celebration with them. Right here in the land of their blown up dreams and wishes. In the land of “I never thought I’d be like this!” Shout with them as they scream and cry about all the Things they’ve lost in their recent past. And in this current rough ride of their disappointing present.

Then prepare yourself to bear the story of their unwelcome future

Behold with them all the ways that their body has and will continue to forsake them. Listen to their mind disappearing --without a ticket home. How long are you willing to uphold someone’s wish to die? And be the one to hold them in your arms without fixing, advising, or dialing 911?

Think of all the pretty, lovely, exquisite, bountiful, glorious gifts That this life offers.

Put yourself in this place of longing for death. Place this longing inside all the other dreams and wishes and extraordinary experiences life has ever given you or anyone.

Prepare yourself to be bigger and better than you ever-felt possible. As you hold one of life’s most feared, unwanted, hated, inevitable realities we call Death. In you own body and mind.

Hold this without convincing or trying to talk them out of it. Without shoving “Look how much you have to be grateful for” down their throats.

Just stay with their last great hope “not to survive” this final wreckage of a life.

Don’t pretend for one more moment that you know best--That what you believe is right--

That any kind of living is better than death.

Tarron Estes 2/10/20

Prose

My Story, Tarron Estes

When I was a young child, I learned from my mother that caring for others is the fruit of life.

The small town I lived in was a glass house, so small that when someone was sick, or born, dying, or dead, we all knew. Then everyone brought food. They sat and visited, comforting each in their own way, giving to the family and patient equally.

I saw my mother tend to her mother and father through the end of their long long lives. My father’s mother and father, her own sisters and brothers, neighbors, and friends. People called on her to stay with their loved ones who lingered in that half light between life and death. And when the time came, my mother helped them, kept their lips moist, fed them ice until there was no heat left to melt it, patted their pillows, touched their sweet tired cheeks, and held their hands until it was time to go on, to go HOME.

I am a child of many relatives who lived very long lives. 

I saw people in nursing homes who were faint, thin, heavy, sad, lost, but not yet dead. I saw caregivers doing their best and some not near enough. I saw families sitting in miserable chairs in waiting rooms. I saw little ladies lined up along the hall.

In adolescence, I had a friend whose parents owned the town funeral home. We played there after church on Sunday, a day that most families choose to have the service for their dead. We played everywhere in that building. We took the elevator up to the casket room and hid inside them, pretending to be dead. We went down down down to the embalming room and touched the cold still bodies. We hid behind the curtains in the funeral parlor and watched as people mourned for their dead and sang their favorite songs. We saw fathers and uncles and grandfathers break down and fall to their knees while mothers and sisters and aunts and daughters knelt beside them.

So I grew up seeing and knowing death. I became as comfortable with this passage as sitting on a swing outside. Something about this made me want to know life and dig into what it means to pass through suffering and come back with a gift in my heart. Something in me wanted to know how to turn this dying I have seen and the care surrounding it into something as precious as gold. And to bring it back to share with others. It is a blessing to give back what I have been given, guided by teachers whose souls and hearts and brilliant human caring healing gifts taught me everything I needed to remember about who I am and what I came to this earth to do. 

I trusted my life for just long enough with each of them to transform pain and doubt into a desire to give back.  This alchemy, this giving back, is now my work. - Tarron Estes