Train In One Of The Top 10 Fastest Growing Jobs Of The Future
How Do I Practice for Death by Tarron Estes
The Evolution Of The End Of Life Doula Movement by Jeff Markel
The Grace of Dementia by Sara Bensman
Holding Space with Death by Marie David
Becoming a Sacred Passage Doula by Shirley Grant
Initiation Of A Death Doula By Kristie Zahn
Tarrron, you are a wonderful teacher and facilitator. Greg, I learned so much from you, your wisdom and your being. Tarron, same. A wonderful experience and education. Becky, thank you for answering all of my questions beautifully. All the faculty is so great and wonderful.
--2016 End of Life Doula Graduate
“We can't control if we'll die, but we can occupy death” in the words of Peter Saul, an emergency doctor. He asks us to think about the end of our lives — and to question the modern model of slow, intubated death in hospital. Two big questions can help you start this tough conversation.
What does it mean to Occupy Death? I think it means to Embody, transform our current death denying cultural. Just as there is no prescription to cure death, we cannot “proscribe” how to attend as people are dying.
Francis Weller’s Five 5 Gates of Grief are a profound inquiry. Identify your losses in each of the gates. Provide Emotional support for yourself and those facing death and loss. Everything you love you will lose. Places inside you that have not known love. Sorrows of the world. What we expected and did not receive. Ancestral Grief: bodily holding from grief of our ancestors. Watch Francis Weller Video below.
Are the visions and visiting of those facing death illusion or a part of the dying process itself? Watch this trailer for the upcoming film: “Death is But a Dream” with Dr. Christopher Kerr! http://deathisbutadreamfilm.com/
Contact Tarron for Dreamwork Sessions and End of Life Coaching Sessions @tarron@consciousdyinginstitute.com
Enroll for our End of Life Doula Certificate and learn more about Acknowledging Mysteries and Unexplainable Events http://www.consciousdyinginstitute.com/events/
Validate the nearing death visions and dreams of those nearing death…watch this powerful Tedx video by Dr. Christopher Kerr! Enroll for our End of Life Doula Certificate and learn more about Acknowledging Mysteries and Unexplainable Events Enroll for our End of Life Doula Certificate and learn more about Acknowledging Mysteries and Unexplainable Events http://www.consciousdyinginstitute.com/events/
“Life of Death” Watch this beautiful 7 min video. Then ask: "If Death is a Mother Doula, What do I bring as her child to this last Rite of Passage?"
Stephen Levine
Stephen Levine, one of the major voices in conscious deaths, talks about Threshold spaces And loving the living body. Watch this video and being to send loving healing energy to your body.
http://levinetalks.com/Videos/video_single/couch-talk-31
Grassroots movements throughout America take back care of their loved ones after death with Sacred After Death Care, Rituals for the body and green burials. Read this article called: “A Perfect Ending”.
Join us for Our end of life doula certificate! It offers demonstrations and information about this grassroots sacred after death care. Our next Boulder training begins: Jan 27, and in Vancouver: Feb 11. More info: http://www.consciousdyinginstitute.com/events/.
Make New Years resolutions a new way: "Before I die I want to ___." TED Fellow, Candy Chang turned an abandoned house in her New Orleans neighborhood into a giant chalkboard asking a fill-in-the-blank question: "Before I die I want to ___." Her neighbors' answers were surprising, poignant, funny, becoming an unexpected mirror for the community. What do you want before you die?
The BBCRadio News Hour London recently interviewed Greg Lathrop, R.N. Greg is a Sacred Passage: End of Life Doula and Conscious Dying Institute Faculty. Greg describes how he "walks beside, and just a little behind" his dear friend and patient, Tom. He describes how being an End of Life Doula is a way to "return to the old ways in a new way". Listen to interview.....
"What End of Life Care Needs Now: An Emerging Praxis of the Sacred and Subtle" by Wiiliam Rosa,MS, RN, LMT, AGPCNP-BC, CCRN-CMC, Caritas Coach and Tarron Estes
Conscious Dying Institute (CDI) is paving a new path…one emerging from awareness, humanity, dignity, caring consciousness, and a return to the sacred. {In this work} we Explore an Emerging Archetype: The nurse as healer…a universally recognized professional archetype that extends beyond clinical specialty, culture, gender, credentials, or disciplinary worldview…Read more....
Visit Advances In Nursing Science Issue
Conscious Dying and Cultural Emergence: Reflective Systems Inventory for the Collective Processes of Global Healing by William Rosa MS, RN, LMT, AGPCNP-BC, CCRN-CMC, Caritas CoachPublished in: Beginnings | American Holistic Nurses Association October 2014
How do you want to die? Not if you die, but when…how do you want to do it? Better yet, how do you want to be cared for during your final moments? Do you envision a serene transition of integrity and dignity? Is death a mystery you fear or a celebrated rite of passage? Let’s not be idle with our time but spend these moments together confronting some deep truths present before everyone, again, giving pause to the sacred nature of a continually emerging quandary: How do I want to die?
Death is the instinctual exhale to our inhale, wane to our wax, and stillness to our frenzy. It is the truth beyond all perceived and subjective relevance and the bottom line to our overly articulated, seemingly justified rationales with which we defend our positions. It is the deal-breaker, the game-changer and the silver lining all in one. Ironically, death is an elusive, inexplicable phenomenon and yet, we confront it more closely and encounter it more deeply with each passing moment. Death halts the physical life, whether abruptly or protractedly, and, in the midst of the dying process (and in the stewardship of said process), space is created for dignified caring, compassionate practices of bodymind-spirit-heart, and humanizing the ethical values inherent within the holistic paradigm. Read full article.....
December offers many joyous gifts. And because this month has the highest death rates of all months, there can be sadness and grief for many. Our End of Life Doula program offers practices for Grief. Of these practices, one graduate said: “The grief ritual was an amazing opportunity.... it may be a once in a lifetime experience.” Listen to Martin Prectel in a powerful talk on grief: Grieving is “praising life”
During mealtime, the only conversations from women in my family were on illness and death. No matter what else might have been going on in the world, Kennedy’s assassination, Vietnam, presidential elections, sports events ( discussed by men)— women only talked about was who was sick and who was dead.
I’ll never forget what my Uncle said about "death talk". He said, “Tarron, here's what it’s like: My wife and I go down to the café to have a meal. As soon as we walk in the door, she goes off to say hello to her women friends and before I can sit down, every one of them is rattling off the hospital report”.
If you sit through these discussions long enough, you will get the complete medical history on every family and what the doctor said about their health. You could hear my relatives describe the color that someone’s skin turned before getting to the hospital and what street the ambulance took a wrong turn on. You could hear in depth discussions of the food someone ate and whose wife cooked it before her husband had a heart attack. You could gain insight into all the things people do to bring on the hard luck of sickness and what was expected to become of them.
When someone died, “Lord, Lord…” were the first words beginning every sentence, and then, “Poor old so and so”. My mother, her five sisters and both my grandmothers talked on and on about who was at the funeral home and why their relative didn’t show up fast enough to see him before he was laid in the ground. They would dress up any day of the week and go down to the funeral home with casseroles and dishes of homemade beans and ham and pecan pies and cornbread in hand to honor the dead during an open casket showing no matter who had died.
They took their lace hankies-- prepared to grieve and mourn and listen to the same sad hymns sung by choir members of differing churches. Dying was a whole town affair, and talking about it was sewn into this Southern rural culture like the patches on a quilt. You not only talked about what happened, but you showed up to see the body all coiffed and life-like in the casket. Then you went to the cemetery for the burial.
After the last shovel of dirt was tossed on the grave, friends, family and clergy moved from cemetery to home. There they opened plates of pecan pies, pound cakes, sliced ham, fried chicken, creamed corn and three bean casseroles. They poured sweet tea into glasses of ice and served the grieving family.
At this after-death "house warming", you learned more about a person’s life than they would ever want told. But each story, told with great affection, gave the family the sense that their loved one had been known, loved and was already missed and remembered.
Our Human Experiences Unify and Connect Us
Beyond our Professional Lives and Roles
Regardless of our professions, whether it is software, healing arts, education, retail, or healthcare, death's grief and loss touches all of us. Regardless of our age or status; where, when, or how we were born, each of us will be touched by endings because we love. Through love and loss, these common, undeniable human experiences, we feel our interconnectedness. This teaching story from the Buddha says it much better than I:
The Mustard Seed
Long long ago, a young woman from a wealthy family was happily married to an important man. When her only son was one-year-old, he fell ill and died suddenly. She was struck with grief; she could not bare the death of her only child. Weeping and groaning, she took her son's dead body in her arms and went from house to house begging all the people in the town for news of a way to bring her son back to life. She wanted MEDICINE.
Of course, nobody could help her, but this young woman would not give up. Finally she came across a Buddhist who advised her to go and see the Buddha himself. When she carried the dead child to the Buddha and told Him her sad story, He listened with patience and compassion, and then said to her, "There is only one way to solve your problem. Go and find me four or five mustard seeds from any family in which there has never been a death."
The woman was filled with hope, and set off straight away to find such a household. But very soon she discovered that every family she visited had experienced the death. Once she accepted the fact that death is inevitable, she buried her child and could stop her grieving. She realized that she was not unique-that she had not been singled out by God. She understood that surely as life comes to all of us, so Death comes to us all.
Acknowledging Mysteries and Validating Unexplainable Events at End of Life. Most caregivers attending at end of life bear witness to stories of mysterious and unexplainable events that happen around the dying process.
Recently I heard this story from a caregiver: “I was with an elderly nursing home resident when she died. She hadn’t had her eyes open or spoke in about a week and all of a sudden she opened her eyes, smiled, and said in a very clear excited voice, “Oh, Winston. You’re here. You’re okay. Yes, Yes, I’m coming Winston.” And then she turned to me and said, “Tell my family that Winston and Mom are okay.”
The caregiver said that she then closed her eyes and died. The caregiver admitted her concern about telling this story to the family and nursing home staff, thinking they would judge the elder as being deluded at the moment of death. But she followed her intuition and told the story to the elder’s family. In doing this the caregiver discovered that Winston was the elder’s younger brother who died in a fire in the arms of her mother over 30 years ago. The family told the caregiver how comforted they were to know the elder had seen her deceased mother and brother before she died. That she had always suffered because she did not get to tell them goodbye. This gave them all a feeling of peace and relief and strengthened the caregiver’s trust in her intuition, even though at the time of the event, she did not know the meaning of the elder’s last words
Stories of meeting or seeing deceased loved ones is commonplace at End of Life. People in all roles, genders, social classes, cultures, religions and ages report experiences they cannot explain around the dying time. Most of these reports have a feeling of awe and mystery. They deserve our respect. They are stories that deserve to be shared and acknowledged.
7 Ways to Support the Unexplainable events surrounding end of life: What we can do?
The Path of the Healer “You may think of yourself as a doctor, nurse, health professional- and yet in many traditional societies, you would be called a medicine person, a shaman. You would be called a shaman because you have the privilege to steward the Mysteries of illness and death which is an initiation to coming home again to a deeper sense of self and well-being.” Angeles Arrien, PhD
Increasing our deep sense self and well being allows us to offer our authentic caring healing presence to others during illness and death. This may sound simple, but really, how do we do this?
How do we be with someone who is experiencing grief, isolation, fear, anger, or pain during their journey through death, illness loss? How do we let go of fixing, helping, changing, and "doing" something, anything, when we don't know what to do?
Here are 4 ways to increase your healing presence with others:
Honoring the memory of loved ones by writing a beautiful story strengthens our connection with them and supports our own deep desire to be remembered. Think of a beautiful moment that you shared with someone who has passed and write it down as a gift to them and to others. Keep the link to our ancestors alive and our acknowledgement of the gifts they gave to us.
An End of Life Transmission: Mary Eva Estes, 1900-1986
In the weeks before my Grandmother died, she lay in bed mostly paralyzed from a stroke. Less than a month before, she still raked the leaves and fed the chickens. This last time I saw her,she was dozing between worlds, holding a steady grace in bed, at ease with the restful peace of this time.
I reached out for her hand and she opened her eyes wide as pumpkins. She held my one hand in both of hers, and with clear speak, undefiled by the stroke, she began to say my name out loud three times, as if she pushed my name right through me. She said, “Tarron Janiece Estes….Tarron Janiece Estes…Tarron Janiece Estes”.
The warm pocket of her hand was still holding mine and like the memory of a common language I said, “Mary Eva Estes…Mary Eva Estes…Mary Eva Estes”. In that short still moment, I felt the meaning and wisdom of her whole life shoot like a star to my heart giving me back everything we ever shared, learned, and loved together.
I knew in that moment our purpose together as souls, larger than grandmother and granddaughter. I knew that she gave me what is possible in dying and my purpose in serving other at end of life.
“For any culture/person who is primarily concerned with meaning, the study of death – the only certainty life holds for us – must be central, for an understanding of death is the key to liberation in life”. Stanislav Grof
Conscious Dying Education gives caregivers the opportunity to engage in self-reflective experiential activities regarding their own life and death. This self-reflection decreases the gap between current unhealthy life situations and their vision for good life and death.
Self Liberation Activity:
