Welcome to our September 2026 monthly newsletter, where we share reflections and insights from previous podcasts, previews of upcoming episodes, as well as events, classes, workshops, articles, and poetry.

If you’ve received this from a friend, please let us know if you’d like to be added to our mailing list by emailing endoflifeconvo@gmail.com.

We continue to create more weekly episodes in conversation with our excellent and wise editor, Sam Zemke. Check out some of those in the links below and let us know what you think!

Thank you to all our subscribers, podcast guests, students, and collaborators for helping to normalize conversations about the end-of-life.

We have started a chat for all of our subscribers where we can share our stories, challenges, joys and sorrows around end-of-life. Please join us here.

We hope you will subscribe (we now offer paid subscriptions - click to go to our subscriptions page) - your support will be appreciated and rewarded with new premium offerings!), spread the word, and let us know if you have a story, article, or event to share.

Podcast Insights

Check out the podcast here

August was filled with more insightful and compelling conversations. As always, we were honored to meet and speak with excellent guests and to have some great weekly episodes.

• Death at The Intersection of Queerness and Addiction: A Mother’s Journey | Wesley Davidson - In this episode, journalist and author Wesley Davidson shares the deeply personal story that led her to become an advocate for LGBTQ+ families after losing her son to addiction. Together, we explore the connection between family acceptance, identity, addiction, grief, and hope, while offering practical guidance for parents, caregivers, and anyone supporting someone they love.

• When Caring for Others Becomes a Burden You Can’t Bear | Weekly Dispatch - Caring for someone you love is one of life's greatest acts of compassion, but it can also be one of its greatest challenges. In this Weekly Dispatch, we share one person's journey caring for their spouse with a terminal diagnosis and explore what every caregiver needs to hear before burnout takes hold.

• When the Chaos of Death Inspires: Don’t Let Your Death Become Their Burden | Frank Flores - Most of us know we should prepare for death, but conversations about death, end-of-life planning, and organizing our affairs are easy to postpone. Then a death happens, and grief is suddenly accompanied by a long list of practical questions: Where are the important documents? What insurance exists? Who has access to the information the family needs? What happens next? In this episode, Frank Flores shares the personal experiences that led him to create **Familia Lista**, a bilingual digital life manual designed to help families organize essential information before a crisis occurs.

• Climate Grief, Family Change & the Search for Your Authentic Self | Weekly Dispatch - What do you do when life is changing, but you don’t quite have a name for what you’re grieving? In this Weekly Dispatch we explore the kinds of grief that can emerge when children grow up, family relationships change, familiar places are transformed by climate change, and we begin questioning whether we’re living as our authentic selves.

• What Does a Mortician Do? Becoming a Funeral Director, Embalmer & Crematory Operator | Wil Harker - For many of us, the word “mortician” brings to mind a funeral home, embalming, or preparing someone who has died. But the reality of modern death care is much broader. In this episode, we talk with Wil Harker, a Portland, Oregon mortician whose unconventional career journey took them from teaching, music, and sign language interpretation to becoming a funeral director, embalmer, crematory operator, and administrator of a green cemetery.

• Climate Grief: Grieving Environmental Loss in a Changing World | Weekly Dispatch - We often think of grief as something that follows the death of a person. But what happens when we lose familiar landscapes, ecosystems, seasons, species, communities, or a future we once imagined? In this Weekly Dispatch, we explore climate grief, eco-grief, environmental loss, and the emotional impact of a changing world.

• Aging, Palliative Care & Assisted Dying: What Nurses Need to Know About Death | Dr. Marianne Matzo - In this thoughtful conversation, we speak with Dr. Marianne Matzo, a longtime researcher and educator whose work has explored gerontology, palliative care, nursing, assisted dying, and the ways we prepare for death..

• The Cost of Othering: How “Us vs. Them” Thinking Divides Us | Weekly Dispatch - In this Weekly Dispatch, we explore othering, the process of seeing another person or group as fundamentally separate from ourselves, and the profound effect it can have on empathy, relationships, and community.

• How to Advocate for Yourself in Healthcare: Patient Advocacy, Healthcare Proxies & End-of-Life Care | Beth Droppert - In this episode, we talk with Beth Droppert, a former critical care nurse and healthcare advocate who has dedicated her work to helping patients and families navigate healthcare with greater confidence, clarity, and compassion.

In September, we will be meeting many more amazing and inspiring guests, including:

• Our Weekly Dispatches will continue to look at what is top of mind this week with Annalouiza, Sam, and Wakil.

• Chandra Lewnau. Chandra first became interested in the estate planning and elder law field when her beloved grandmother was struck with Alzheimer’s disease and her family struggled to care for her at home with no legal plan in place. Chandra realized that when families fight, no one wins but the lawyers.

  She then decided to use her personal and legal experience to help clients plan ways to avoid the problems she has seen over the years.

• Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is a poet, teacher, speaker, writing facilitator, and poet laureate of Evermore. Her newest book is The Wonderment. She co-hosts Emerging Form, a podcast on creative process. Her daily audio series, The Poetic Path, is on the Ritual app. Since 2006, she’s written a daily poem, sharing them on A Hundred Falling Veils. Our friend and former guest Moudi Sbeity introduced us.

• Janice Lundy, a former guest who has also hosted us on her podcast, will join us for an episode on disenfranchised grief. Disenfranchised grief now takes so many forms, and we may be in the midst of an epidemic of it. The vast majority of it is unrecognized, not just by others, but even within ourselves. Disenfranchised grief may be the most predominant type of grief in our culture and globally.

• Day Schildkret creator of Morning Altars and author of books about ritual work with loss, and support for caregivers.

  
  Stay tuned, share with your community, and let us know if you or someone you know has a story to share!

Check out the podcast here

Poetry

The Residue of Grieving
by Aasfa Siddiqui - Find more of her work on Read with Shifa

Grief is a strange houseguest
it never leaves when it says it will.

It folds itself into the hems of your favorite sweaters,
hides in the pocket of a winter coat,
collects dust beside forgotten receipts
and ticket stubs from days
that seemed ordinary enough
to survive forever.

At first,
it arrives like a storm
a loud thing.

You know exactly where it is.

It stands in the doorway,
introducing itself over and over again.

But time,
that mischievous little thief,
does what it always does.

It shrinks mountains into pebbles.
it turns screams into echoes
and one day,
you realize grief has become residue.

Just settled,
like pollen after spring
like salt left behind when the sea retreats.

It appears unexpectedly
In grocery stores, at red lights
while laughing at something ridiculous.

especially while laughing

Because joy has a habit
of uncovering old ghosts,
that invisible fingerprint
left on everything they touched.

Some days,
I think grief is just love
looking for somewhere to go.

But as a faint golden dust
scattered across the ordinary moments
of a life that keeps moving.

A little of it settles
on every new memory,
every joy arrives dusted with it.

Every happiness carries
a trace amount,
not enough to ruin it,
only enough
to remind me where it came from.

Article

This month’s article is from Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation Daily Meditations

I am convinced that people who do not feel deeply finally do not know deeply either. It is only because Job is willing to feel his emotions that he is able to come to grips with the mystery of suffering in his head and heart and gut.
—Richard Rohr

No book is less an answer book to the question of suffering than the book of Job. It fixes nothing, explains nothing, and dismisses those who even try to explain, yet the story of Job realigns and regenerates the soul in ways that few books can.
—Richard Rohr

The Heart: A Reservoir of Joy

When a friend suffered an unexpected loss, cancer survivor Kate Bowler offered her a paradoxical message of suffering and joy:

I wanted to give her a promise that reasonable people would be too reluctant to guarantee, but it is one I would hang my life on: You will never be cured of this grief, it’s true. But you will be joyful, anyway. I swear.

When a loss of any kind—breakup, breakdown, or any terrible undoing—descends upon your life, joy seems to vanish.… Laughter feels strange and a sense of ease is a distant memory. In this new reality, even the smallest spark of joy seems impossible to ignite. And even worse, suggested the nineteenth-century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, joy becomes the source of suffering. Its memory stokes the fires of hurt. The joy we once had, the joy we remember, becomes our ruin…. When you are in the deep abyss of grief, sadness, or worst of all, despair, joy feels like an insult….

But I know about the joy that persists, even though it might seem like temporary insanity.

I looked at my friend … and I could see how impossible joy felt to her. In fact, not long ago, I would not have believed in joy either. It’s strange to say it like that—but I believe in joy. We can’t mistake it for anything less than what it is: one of the most powerful ways we experience the deepest and most healing forms of gratitude, delight, and hope. It is a kind of transcendence; joy is a glimmer of love and forgiveness and wholeness that lifts us out of reality for a moment and gives us back to ourselves, anew….

In the many chambers of our beating hearts are reservoirs for joy.

“You will hear the music,” I said to my friend. “I swear you will hear the music.”

Reference:
Kate Bowler, Joyful, Anyway (Convergent Books, 2026), 5–6, 9.

Announcements and Events

Before You Go - End of Life Planning Workshop
Saturday, September 26th, 2026 - On Zoom from 11 AM to 1 PM Pacific Time
The class will focus on the information necessary to make informed decisions regarding end-of-life care. These include the various documents that explicitly guide family and friends in supporting your choices.

Register Here

We were guests on two different podcasts and it was very fun and rewarding. Both of these folks have been on our show (Mike Oppenheim and Jill McClennan - click on the links to go to their episodes on End of Life Conversations).

Mike Oppenheim on his podcast Coffin Talk interviewed us separately. Here are the links to those episodes:

Wakil’s Interview

Annalouiza’s Interview

And Jill McClennan had us on her Seeing Death Clearly podcast. Follow this link to see that episode.

Queer Death Salon is a virtual community space for all 2SLGBTQIA+ people to come together to discuss death, dying and grief. It is a facilitated drop-in discussion space, with the purpose of building connection, skill, and resources for 2SLGBTQIA+ people navigating end of life in our personal lives and in our communities. All events are Cost PWYC including free. There are three upcoming events:

Intimacy At End Of Life

Tuesday September 8 at 7 p.m. EST
Medical interventions, hypersensitivities, decreased capacity for verbal communication, and pain can all contribute to a sense of isolation for both the dying and those attending to them. A dying person may experience an aversion to touch, cognitive changes, unclear capacity for consent, and even expressions of unexpected sexuality. The challenge of a partner or family member’s transition into a caregiving role often goes unacknowledged.

Chaos Reigns - Poverty & Grief

Tuesday September 22 at 7 p.m. EST
Growing up poor, going hungry, or struggling to meet your basic needs can create deep and invisible wounds. These experiences shape how you see the world, how safe you feel in your body, and how worthy you believe you are of receiving abundance.

Grief Gardening

Tuesday September 29 at 7 p.m. EST
In times of grief, many people find that a connection to land, earth, and the tending of life can help carry us through. It is well established that a connection to nature, no matter how small, helps improve our experiences of depression, anxiety, and sense of wellbeing.

Pamela Belyea, whom we interviewed for an earlier episode (listen here), has had an article published in the Stranger Magazine, about her work with the Griever’s Library.

Read Article

Grief Companion Training through The Metta Center
Online training. Sept. - Dec. 2026

As a Certified Grief Companion, you will be able to walk alongside those experiencing a variety of losses and forms of grief, offering the highest service to someone in mourning. Grief Companions help grievers tend and integrate their grief so they no longer struggle and suffer alone. Instructor: Dr. Jan Lundy, Director of The Metta Center; Grief Support Specialist and Educator

More Info

Habibi Means Beloved by our friend and former guest (click here for his episode) is now available for preorder. Published by the University of Utah Press. Available, Sept 2026.​

“Habibi Means Beloved is an unflinching memoir by Moudi Sbeity. While challenging stereotypes about being Lebanese, queer, and queer Lebanese, the beating heart of Moudi’s story is one of family, love and joy. This is a memoir that everyone needs to read.” —Elias Jahshan, Editor, This Arab Is Queer & This Queer Arab Family

Pre-order Here

Volunteer Hospice of Clallam County, whose director, Priya Jayadev we interviewed here is hosting this online event as part of their Soul Care Speaker Series in October.

End of Life Traditional Teachings with Carmen Watson-Charles, Wed. Oct. 14, noon- 1 :30 PM PT - A Klallam perspective

Register Here

This new children’s book was co-authored by Dr Marianne Matzo, whom we interviewed for this episode.

Everyone Dies (and Yes, It is Normal) is a story about a young boy named Jax who finds something special on the beach where he and his grandpa Pops are enjoying a wonderful day. Pops helps Jax understand that death is a normal part of life.

This book provides an age appropriate, non-scary, comfortable way to introduce the important topic of mortality to a preschool child. Its simple explanation will last a lifetime.

More Information

Online Survey about NDEs During Childbirth or Delivery - The Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine is recruiting individuals who have had a near-death experience (NDE) during childbirth/delivery/labor for an online study.

Enroll

Welcome to our August 2026 monthly newsletter, where we share reflections and insights from previous podcasts, previews of upcoming episodes, as well as events, classes, workshops, articles, and poetry.

If you’ve received this from a friend, please let us know if you’d like to be added to our mailing list by emailing endoflifeconvo@gmail.com.

We continue to create more weekly episodes in conversation with our excellent and wise editor, Sam Zemke. Check out some of those in the links below and let us know what you think!

Thank you to all our subscribers, podcast guests, students, and collaborators for helping to normalize conversations about the end-of-life.

We have started a chat for all of our subscribers where we can share our stories, challenges, joys and sorrows around end-of-life. Please join us here.

We hope you will subscribe (we now offer paid subscriptions - click to go to our subscriptions page) - your support will be appreciated and rewarded with new premium offerings!), spread the word, and let us know if you have a story, article, or event to share.

Podcast Insights

Check out the podcast here

July was filled with more insightful and compelling conversations. As always, we were honored to meet and speak with excellent guests and to have some great weekly episodes.

• Grief on the Page: Laura J. Kramer on Using Literature to Heal Loss and Build Community - When you're grieving, words from well-meaning friends often fall short. What actually helps is finding a story that reflects your own — proof that someone else has been where you are and survived it. But where do those stories live, and who ensures they reach the people who need them most?

• Weekly Dispatch: Talking About Death With Someone You Love | Compassionate End-of-Life Conversations - Talking about death is one of the hardest conversations many of us will ever have, yet avoiding it can leave families with unanswered questions, uncertainty, and regret. In this Weekly Dispatch, we explore compassionate, practical ways to begin conversations about death with someone you love. You’ll learn how to recognize when someone is ready to talk, how to ask thoughtful questions without causing unnecessary fear, and how to create space for honest discussions about end-of-life wishes.

• Habibi Means Beloved: How Language and Poetry Can Heal Grief | Moudi Sbeity - When someone we love dies, most of us lose our words. We freeze. We reach for something meaningful and come up empty. But what if the problem isn't that you don't know what to say — it's that no one ever gave you the right kind of language for grief? In this episode, we sit down with Moudi Sbeity — Lebanese American poet, contemplative educator, and a man who grew up with a debilitating stutter — to explore how language and poetry can become tools for healing at the end of life and in the depths of loss.

• Weekly Dispatch - Why We Rush | Ageism, Ableism, Patience and Human Dignity - In this Weekly Dispatch, we explore how ageism and ableism often appear in ordinary, everyday moments. From waiting in line at the grocery store to helping someone navigate new technology, our fast-paced culture can unintentionally erode dignity, independence, and compassion.

• Nonprofit Hospice | Priya Jayadev on Compassionate End-of-Life Care, Volunteers & Community Hospice - Most people don't discover what hospice really does until they're facing one of the hardest moments of their lives. In this conversation, Priya Jayadev, Executive Director of Volunteer Hospice of Clallam County, shares why hospice is about far more than the final days of life. Together, we explore how compassionate, community-supported care can ease suffering, support families, and help people approach death with greater dignity and less fear.

• Weekly Dispatch: Heavy Music, Mental Health & Healing | Fire in the Mountains - Can heavy music help with grief and mental health? In this Weekly Dispatch, we explore the healing power of heavy music and the community connection at Fire in the Mountains. Our editor Sam Zemke joins the conversation about how music can help people process difficult emotions, find emotional release, and feel less alone.

• You’re Going to Die But Not Me | Liz Scott on Mortality, Hospice & the Fear of Death - What are we really afraid of when we say we're afraid of death? In this conversation, author Liz Scott joins us to explore one of the most universal human experiences: facing our own mortality. Drawing from her new book, You're Going to Die But Not Me, Liz shares how the death of her husband, the loss of her mother, and her own experience with breast cancer reshaped her understanding of grief, fear, and what it means to live fully.

• Finding Joy in Grief: Why Laughter Helps Us Heal | Weekly Dispatch - Can you laugh while you're grieving? Should you? Many people feel guilty the first time they smile, laugh, or experience joy after losing someone they love. But what if joy isn't the opposite of grief? What if it's one of the ways we survive it?

In August, we will be meeting many more amazing and inspiring guests, including:

• Our Weekly Dispatches will continue to look at what is top of mind this week with Annalouiza, Sam, and Wakil.

• Wesley C. Davidson is a journalist and co-author of When Your Child Is Gay: What You Need to Know. Having lost a thirty-three-old son to a drug overdose, she now concentrates her writing on the topic of addiction.

• Frank Flores is a first-generation Mexican-American entrepreneur and writer from Eagle Pass, Texas, on the U.S.–Mexico border. He spent a decade building ten industries — until two losses stopped him: his younger brother, and then his father. He continued to form businesses for years to outrun that grief before he finally turned and faced it. Out of that came FamiliaLista, a bilingual “life manual” so no family is left in the dark when someone they love is gone.

• Wil Harker is a mortician in Portland, Oregon. After working as a high school teacher, jazz pianist, dog trainer, and sign language interpreter, they went back to school for their mortuary license. They are a loud-spoken advocate for green burial and natural organic reduction.

• Marianne Matzo earned her PhD (1996) in Gerontology. As a certified nurse practitioner in oncology and palliative care, she dedicated her 44-year career in nursing to pain and symptom management for people living with incurable illnesses. A retired university professor, Marianne is now focusing on community education regarding dying and death. She is co-author of the children’s book “Everyone Dies” and has a podcast and website with the same name.

• Beth Droppert tells us our medical system is broken. Navigating our way through it requires guidance and support. From grassroots movements to global policy shifts, health advocacy has shaped the way communities access care, fight inequities, and protect public well-being. Beth Droppert, retired nurse and long-time supporter in the field of health advocacy, will share her work and its implications for our overall health

Stay tuned, share with your community, and let us know if you or someone you know has a story to share!

Check out the podcast here

Poetry

Sometimes a Wild God

Sometimes a wild god comes to the table.
He is awkward and does not know the ways
Of porcelain, of fork and mustard and silver.
His voice makes vinegar from wine.

When the wild god arrives at the door,
You will probably fear him.
He reminds you of something dark
That you might have dreamt,
Or the secret you do not wish to be shared.

He will not ring the doorbell;
Instead he scrapes with his fingers
Leaving blood on the paintwork,
Though primroses grow
In circles round his feet.

You do not want to let him in.
You are very busy.
It is late, or early, and besides…
You cannot look at him straight
Because he makes you want to cry.

Your dog barks;
The wild god smiles.
He holds out his hand and
The dog licks his wounds,
Then leads him inside.

The wild god stands in your kitchen.
Ivy is taking over your sideboard;
Mistletoe has moved into the lampshades
And wrens have begun to sing
An old song in the mouth of your kettle.

‘I haven’t much,’ you say
And give him the worst of your food.
He sits at the table, bleeding.
He coughs up foxes.
There are otters in his eyes.

When your wife calls down,
You close the door and
Tell her it’s fine.
You will not let her see
The strange guest at your table.

The wild god asks for whiskey
And you pour a glass for him,
Then a glass for yourself.
Three snakes are beginning to nest
In your voicebox. You cough.

Oh, limitless space.
Oh, eternal mystery.
Oh, endless cycles of death and birth.
Oh, miracle of life.
Oh, the wondrous dance of it all.

You cough again,
Expectorate the snakes and
Water down the whiskey,
Wondering how you got so old
And where your passion went.

The wild god reaches into a bag
Made of moles and nightingale-skin.
He pulls out a two-reeded pipe,
Raises an eyebrow
And all the birds begin to sing.

The fox leaps into your eyes.
Otters rush from the darkness.
The snakes pour through your body.
Your dog howls and upstairs
Your wife both exults and weeps at once.

The wild god dances with your dog.
You dance with the sparrows.
A white stag pulls up a stool
And bellows hymns to enchantments.
A pelican leaps from chair to chair.

In the distance, warriors pour from their tombs.
Ancient gold grows like grass in the fields.
Everyone dreams the words to long-forgotten songs.
The hills echo and the grey stones ring
With laughter and madness and pain.

In the middle of the dance,
The house takes off from the ground.
Clouds climb through the windows;
Lightning pounds its fists on the table
And the moon leans in.

The wild god points to your side.
You are bleeding heavily.
You have been bleeding for a long time,
Possibly since you were born.
There is a bear in the wound.

‘Why did you leave me to die?’
Asks the wild god and you say:
‘I was busy surviving.
The shops were all closed;
I didn’t know how. I’m sorry.’

Listen to them:

The fox in your neck and
The snakes in your arms and
The wren and the sparrow and the deer…
The great un-nameable beasts
In your liver and your kidneys and your heart…

There is a symphony of howling.
A cacophony of dissent.
The wild god nods his head and
You wake on the floor holding a knife,
A bottle and a handful of black fur.

Your dog is asleep on the table.
Your wife is stirring, far above.
Your cheeks are wet with tears;
Your mouth aches from laughter or shouting.
A black bear is sitting by the fire.

Sometimes a wild god comes to the table.
He is awkward and does not know the ways
Of porcelain, of fork and mustard and silver.
His voice makes vinegar from wine
And brings the dead to life.

© Tom Hirons

Announcements and Events

Before You Go - End of Life Planning Workshop
Saturday, September 26th, 2026 - On Zoom from 11 AM to 1 PM Pacific Time
The class will focus on the information necessary to make informed decisions regarding end-of-life care. These include the various documents that explicitly guide family and friends in supporting your choices.

Registration

We were guests on two different podcasts and it was very fun and rewarding. Both of these folks have been on our show (Mike Oppenheim and Jill McClennan - click on the links to go to their episodes on End of Life Conversations).

Mike Oppenheim on his podcast Coffin Talk interviewed us separately. Here are the links to those episodes:

Wakil’s Interview

Annalouiza’s Interview

And Jill McClennan had us on her Seeing Death Clearly podcast. Follow this link to see that episode.

Queer Death Salon is a virtual community space for all 2SLGBTQIA+ people to come together to discuss death, dying and grief. It is a facilitated drop-in discussion space, with the purpose of building connection, skill, and resources for 2SLGBTQIA+ people navigating end of life in our personal lives and in our communities. There are two upcoming events:

Facilitated by hospital chaplain and writer JS Park, join us for a care-full and open space where we can talk about losing faith and the grief of how it changes due to tragedy, crisis, and church harm. Tuesday Aug 11 7-8:30 pm eastern

More Info and Registration

Come along for a hands on workshop where Tricia Enns shares an accessible process of creating misery vessels, objects made of paper pulp, meant to decompose when you are ready to let go. Tuesday Aug 18 7-8:30 pm eastern

More Info and Registration

Grief Companion Training through The Metta Center
Online training. Sept. - Dec. 2026

As a Certified Grief Companion, you will be able to walk alongside those experiencing a variety of losses and forms of grief, offering the highest service to someone in mourning. Grief Companions help grievers tend and integrate their grief so they no longer struggle and suffer alone. Instructor: Dr. Jan Lundy, Director of The Metta Center; Grief Support Specialist and Educator

More Info

Habibi Means Beloved by our friend and former guest (click here for his episode) is now available for preorder. Published by the University of Utah Press. Available, Sept 2026.​

“Habibi Means Beloved is an unflinching memoir by Moudi Sbeity. While challenging stereotypes about being Lebanese, queer, and queer Lebanese, the beating heart of Moudi’s story is one of family, love and joy. This is a memoir that everyone needs to read.” —Elias Jahshan, Editor, This Arab Is Queer & This Queer Arab Family

Pre-order Here

Moudi is hosting a Book Tour Workshop / Fundraiser on August 15th from 10 - 12 MDT. He’ll be reading from his forthcoming books, offering prompts, and then opening up space to share.

Sign Up Here

Volunteer Hospice of Clallam County, whose director, Priya Jayadev we interviewed here is hosting this online event in September.

When Good Plans Go Bad: Estate Planning Mistakes Even the Pros Make and How to Prevent them with Jill Mastroianni, JD - Online Sept 9 from Noon - 1:30 PM Pacific Time.

Register Here

Online Survey about NDEs During Childbirth or Delivery - The Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine is recruiting individuals who have had a near-death experience (NDE) during childbirth/delivery/labor for an online study.

Enroll

Welcome to our July 2026 monthly newsletter, where we share reflections and insights from previous podcasts, previews of upcoming episodes, as well as events, classes, workshops, articles, and poetry.

If you’ve received this from a friend, please let us know if you’d like to be added to our mailing list by emailing endoflifeconvo@gmail.com.

We continue to create more weekly episodes in conversation with our excellent and wise editor, Sam Zemke. Check out some of those in the links below and let us know what you think!

Thank you to all our subscribers, podcast guests, students, and collaborators for helping to normalize conversations about the end-of-life.

We have started a chat for all of our subscribers where we can share our stories, challenges, joys and sorrows around end-of-life. Please join us here.

We hope you will subscribe (we now offer paid subscriptions - click to go to our subscriptions page) - your support will be appreciated and rewarded with new premium offerings!), spread the word, and let us know if you have a story, article, or event to share.

Podcast Insights

Check out the podcast here

June was again filled with insightful and moving conversations. We were blessed to meet and speak with excellent guests and to have some great weekly episodes.

• Weekly Dispatch - Reclaiming our Roots, Ancestral Grief & The Myth of the Melting Pot - What happens when the stories we’ve inherited about identity, belonging, and culture no longer feel complete, and we find ourselves feeling disconnected from our family history? For many of us, the line back to our ancestors was interrupted by colonization, migration, assimilation, adoption, or simple silence. That interruption leaves a real kind of grief, even when we don’t have words for it.

• Turning Grief Into Purpose: Lauren Reagan on Losing Her Son and Saving Lives Through Blood Donation - What does it mean to find purpose after unimaginable loss? In this episode, Lauren Reagan shares the story of her son Declan’s battle with acute myeloid leukemia, the life-saving role of blood transfusions and platelet donations, and how grief eventually led her toward advocacy and service.

• Weekly Dispatch - The Future of Death Work: Access, Community & Becoming a Grief Resource - Finding support in your grief shouldn’t be this hard — but for many people, it can be. In this episode, Annalouiza, Wakil, and Sam dig into what’s actually broken about how we access grief resources, and more importantly, what we can do about it.

• Good Grief, Pass the Bread, Mom is Dead | Angela Nissel on Grief and Caregiving a Dying Parent - When Angela Nissel’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, nobody told her — not even her mom. So when the caregiving began, Angela was completely unprepared. What followed was a crash course in love, loss, grief, and what it actually means to show up for someone who is dying.

• Weekly Dispatch | Confronting the Grief and Reality of Animal Suffering - Animal suffering is a reality that many people would rather not think about, yet for those who become aware of it, the emotional impact can be profound. Why do we grieve for animals we’ve never met? What happens when compassion collides with the realities of modern food systems? And how can we respond without becoming overwhelmed, numb, or consumed by guilt?

• Monica Kumar: Talking to Your Family About Death, Legacy, and Dying Well? Why Not Start Here? - Most of us know we should talk to our family about death — and most of us still haven't. In this episode, end-of-life educator and former nurse Monica Kumar shares how to start a conversation about death and legacy with the people you love, before a crisis forces the issue.

• Weekly Dispatch | Reclaiming Masculinity: How Men Can Embrace Vulnerability, Strength, and Emotional Freedom - What does it mean to be a man today? In this Weekly Dispatch, we explore the growing conversation around healthy masculinity, emotional vulnerability, men’s mental health, and the idea of “rewilding masculinity.” For generations, many men were taught that strength meant emotional control, self-reliance, and toughness. But what happens when those expectations collide with grief, loss, caregiving, relationships, and the realities of being human?

• Jen Blalock and Shelby Mundy | Intergenerational Death Doula Duo and Their Before I Die Cincinnati - What does a death doula actually do — and why are more people choosing green burial and community-based death care? In this episode, death doulas Jen Blalock and Shelby Mundy (co-founders of Before I Die Cincinnati) share how Jen supported Shelby's husband through his final days, and how that experience grew into a movement built on presence, transparency, and community.

• Weekly Dispatch | Why Grief Hurts: The Physical Symptoms of Loss - Grief doesn’t just affect our emotions. It affects our bodies, too. In this Weekly Dispatch episode, we explore the physical symptoms of grief and why loss can show up as fatigue, headaches, muscle tension, digestive issues, chronic stress, and even unexplained pain. Many people are surprised to learn that grief is not only an emotional experience but also a physical one.

In July, we will be meeting many more amazing and inspiring guests, including:

• Our Weekly Dispatches will continue to look at what is top of mind this week with Annalouiza, Sam, and Wakil.

• Laura Jaye Cramer is the founder of Waiting Room Publishing, an independent media company putting human-centered print magazines into healthcare, senior living, and end-of-life waiting rooms across the United States. Waiting Room Publishing publishes four titles—The Grand Life, Vital Years, Gigi, and Candlelight Magazine—the latter of which touches on loss, grief, and navigating life after a death.

• Moudi Sbeity is a Lebanese-American poet, author, and contemplative educator. Born in Texas and raised in Lebanon, he moved to the United States at the age of eighteen as an evacuee following the 2006 July war. He ended up in Utah, where Moudi founded and operated Laziz Kitchen, a Lebanese restaurant celebrated by the New York Times as “the future of queer dining.” Moudi was also a named plaintiff in Kitchen v. Herbert, the landmark case that brought marriage equality to Utah and the 10th circuit states in 2014. A lifelong stutterer, he is passionate about writing and poetry as practices in fluency and self-expression.

• Priya Jayadev.

• Liz Scott is a psychologist, writer, dog lover, and blessed mama and grandma. Her newest book, You’re Going to Die But Not Me, is an up-close examination of her mortality journey from near- terror to near-acceptance.

Stay tuned, share with your community, and let us know if you or someone you know has a story to share!

Check out the podcast here

Poetry

If You Knew

A Poem by Ellen Bass

What if you knew you’d be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line’s crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn’t signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won’t say Thank you, I don’t remember
they’re going to die.

A friend told me she’d been with her aunt.
They’d just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt’s powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon’s spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

Article - The Open Hand

On receiving, and the quiet strength it asks of us

The Death Whisperer
Jun 29, 2026

Last week [she] spent time with the realities of caregiving, the physical labor it asks of the body, the emotional weight it settles into the heart, and the financial strain that so often runs quietly beneath it all. One thread stayed with me long after that piece was finished, a thing I did not have room to follow then, which is that some of what most sustains a caregiver is their own openness and willingness to receive, from the people who love them, from friends, and from the wider community that surrounds them. This piece felt like the natural companion to that one, a gentle turning of the lens toward what may be the quieter and harder practice, the practice of letting ourselves be the ones who are held.

There is a moment I know well, when someone I love offers to help me and, before the sentence has even finished leaving their mouth, I hear my own voice answering that I am fine, that I have got it, that they should not worry about me. The words arrive so quickly and so smoothly that they feel like truth, when really they are something closer to a reflex, a door I close before I have even decided whether I want it open.

Read Article

Announcements and Events

Before You Go - End of Life Planning Workshop
Saturday, July 25th, 2026 - On Zoom from 11 AM to 1 PM Pacific Time
The class will focus on the information necessary to make informed decisions regarding end-of-life care. These include the various documents that explicitly guide family and friends in supporting your choices.

Registration

Blessing Your Journey - Exploring the End of Life

October 15, 5 PM through October 18, 3 PM (not overnight) in Olympia, WA. Come experience an open and supportive retreat, pondering our common fate, nestled in a private forested setting. We will consider physical, emotional, environmental, and spiritual aspects of death and dying. Sharing in lightness and depth. Our format is informational and experiential, including ritual, art, and song. For detailed information/registration: Text or call (360) 464-7984 (Hilarie) or blessingyourjourney7@gmail.com

Surviving Grief - a Group Companion is a new book by Gary Sturgis. Grief groups can be some of the most meaningful spaces people enter after loss.
They can also feel uncertain, emotional, and difficult to navigate.

More Information

Mourning the Matriarchs will be a small, 7 weeks long peer-led support group using cultural identity, creativity and storytelling to practice grieving. Each week, a participant will get to share about their matriarch(s) while the rest of us listen and help hold the grief. We’ll also have weekly themes like connecting to lineage, supportive movement and art as ritual.

More Information

Online Survey about NDEs During Childbirth or Delivery - The Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine is recruiting individuals who have had a near-death experience (NDE) during childbirth/delivery/labor for an online study.

Enroll

Welcome to our June 2026 monthly newsletter, where we share reflections and insights from previous podcasts, previews of upcoming episodes, as well as events, classes, workshops, articles, and poetry.

If you’ve received this from a friend, please let us know if you’d like to be added to our mailing list by emailing endoflifeconvo@gmail.com.

We continue to create more weekly episodes in conversation with our excellent and wise editor, Sam Zemke. Check out some of those in the links below and let us know what you think!

Thank you to all our subscribers, podcast guests, students, and collaborators for helping to normalize conversations about the end-of-life.

We have started a chat for all of our subscribers where we can share our stories, challenges, joys and sorrows around end-of-life. Please join us here.

We hope you will subscribe (we now offer paid subscriptions - click to go to our subscriptions page) - your support will be appreciated and rewarded with new premium offerings!), spread the word, and let us know if you have a story, article, or event to share.

Podcast Insights

Check out the podcast here

May was filled with many more insightful and wise conversations. We were blessed to meet and speak with excellent guests and to have some great weekly episodes.

• Why America Grieves Alone | Lessons From Malawi on Death, Mourning, and Collective Healing with Masankho Banda - we explore the differences between our North American grief culture and communal mourning traditions in Malawi, Africa. We examine how collective grieving can create resilience, healing, spiritual connection, and belonging after loss.

• Weekly Dispatch | When Advanced Directives Aren’t Enough | Dealing with Dementia & Wishes Ignored - Most people believe that once an advance directive is signed, their wishes are protected. But for countless families — including those navigating advanced dementia — that piece of paper isn’t enough.

• What Really Matters at the End of Life? | Chandra Thomas-Whitfield on Grief, Aging & Human Connection - Most of us were never taught how to talk about death. So when the moment arrives — and it always does — we're left scrambling, silent, or saying the wrong thing.

• Weekly Dispatch - Mother’s Day Musings on Masculine & Feminine Balance - In this episode, we explore masculinity, femininity, emotional repression, grief, vulnerability, and the growing sense of disconnection many people are feeling today.

• What a Death Doula Actually Does — and Why Every Family Needs This Conversation | Nikki Smith the Death Doula - Death doula Nikki Smith joins us to talk about end-of-life planning, dying with dignity, and why the conversation your family keeps avoiding might be the most important one you ever have.

• Weekly Dispatch: Prayers for Pulled Weeds - Learning from Invasives, Naturalization, and Ecological Change - We explore ecological grief, invasive plants, naturalization, climate change, and the emotional complexity of land stewardship. When we remove species from ecosystems, are we only managing landscapes, or are we also confronting deeper questions about belonging, survival, loss, and coexistence?

• Hospice Patients Teach Us About Living & Dying in A Changing World w/ Mike Oppenheim & Coffin Talk - In this conversation, Mike Oppenheim, host of Coffin Talk, shares insights from hospice volunteering, conversations about death, and years spent exploring how mortality shapes the way we live.

• Digging Your Own Grave to Understand Life? | Saladin Frank Pelfrey on Mortality & Awakening - In this conversation, Saladin Frank Pelfrey shares the near-death experience that transformed his life and the spiritual practices that have guided decades of work around death, awakening, and emotional healing.

In June, we will be meeting many more amazing and inspiring guests, including:

• Our Weekly Dispatches will continue to look at what is top of mind this week with Annalouiza, Sam, and Wakil.

• Lauren Reagan serves as the Community Engagement Liaison for Bloodworks Northwest, where she champions the growth and stability of the Pacific Northwest’s blood supply. As a mother of twins, her life was profoundly reshaped by the loss of one of her children to cancer. This experience instilled in her a perspective of radical resilience and a firsthand understanding of the critical role blood products play in pediatric oncology and emergency care.

• Angela Nissel is the award-winning author of three books, including the national bestselling memoir The Broke Diaries and her latest, Good Grief, Pass the Bread, Mom Is Dead. Her work has been praised as fiercely honest, deeply moving, and laugh-out-loud funny - often all at once.

• A return appearance with Monica Kumar. Monica is an End-of-Life Educator and former nurse from Vancouver, Canada, now based in Tulum, Mexico. She creates structured, values-based planning resources that help people prepare for medical, legal, financial, and personal decisions before a crisis.

• Jen Blalock with the Before I Die Cincinnati Podcast. What if we approached death with less fear and more openness. Jen and her co-host Shelby hold space for deeper conversations around dying, grief and what it means to learn from death.

Stay tuned, share with your community, and let us know if you or someone you know has a story to share!

Check out the podcast here

Poetry

Broken Light

by Mirabai Starr

Mirabai notes that although the poem is written in first person, it is an imagined situation and not my personal experience. Femicide is an ongoing issue around the world. On the average, ten women and girls are kidnapped, raped and murdered across Mexico every day. As a bereaved mother myself, I cannot help identifying with mothers around the world whose children are victims of senseless violence and endless war, perpetrated by men in power. This poem is a grief-stricken love song to mothers. May justice erupt from heartbreak.

Read the Poem

Article

When Sadness is Really Grief

By Annalouiza Armendáriz

I woke up this morning in a bubble of sadness. Most things seem quotidian-- my dog licked and snuffled me before I got out of bed and the cat accompanied me for morning chores as usual. After reading the morning news and having a cup of coffee, I went on my morning walk. Every morning walk is an opportunity to turn my mind’s eye to dreams, prayers, visions or topics that I “chew on” as I'm meandering through the neighborhood. But this morning, I had sadness as an accompaniment.

Read the Article (5 mins)

Announcements and Events

Before You Go - End of Life Planning Workshop
Saturday, July 25th, 2026 - On Zoom from 11 AM to 1 PM Pacific Time
The class will focus on the information necessary to make informed decisions regarding end-of-life care. These include the various documents that explicitly guide family and friends in supporting your choices.

Registration

Former guest Brett Nicoletti spent four days over the course of five weeks filming with the family to capture Eddie’s story.

Surviving Grief - a Group Companion is a new book by Gary Sturgis. Grief groups can be some of the most meaningful spaces people enter after loss.
They can also feel uncertain, emotional, and difficult to navigate.

More Information

Queer Death Salon is a community space for all 2SLGBTQIA+ people to come together to discuss death, dying and grief. It is a facilitated drop-in discussion space, with the purpose of building connection, skill, and resources for 2SLGBTQIA+ people navigating end of life in our personal lives and in our communities.

Tarot for Grief and Crisis - Tuesday June 23 at 7 p.m. EST

Participants will be led through Jungian, Hermetic, and Rider-Waite tarot traditions and what it means to read in different modalities, especially in times of grief or crisis.

E (she/her/they/them), is a largely self-taught tarot reader of about 17 years. They primarily approach their reads from a Jungian or Archetypal standpoint, inviting people to explore the cards from a deeper psychological standpoint.

More Information and Registration

Mourning the Matriarchs will be a small, 7 weeks long peer-led support group using cultural identity, creativity and storytelling to practice grieving. Each week, a participant will get to share about their matriarch(s) while the rest of us listen and help hold the grief. We’ll also have weekly themes like connecting to lineage, supportive movement and art as ritual.

An early bird discount is running until July 1st and End of Life Conversations newsletter folks are welcome to take an additional 10% off.

More Information

Online Survey about NDEs During Childbirth or Delivery - The Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine is recruiting individuals who have had a near-death experience (NDE) during childbirth/delivery/labor for an online study.

Enroll

This has happened before so I was not in unfamiliar territory. This was no stranger but an “elemental” I have been visited by for my entire life. The conversations we have always starts out with confusion and discomfort. And sometimes, the awkwardness of sadness is with me for days, but there are times where I can pinpoint the reason sadness bloomed. It doesn’t always go away or become resolved quickly but I can sometimes connect the dots to understanding where it’s coming from. Sometimes it comes from a ‘yesterday’ problem and occasionally it is a long ago story. Sadness is like a periodical cicada: underground for seventeen years and then emerges to start a new cycle of life.

An aspect of my personal story is that I grew up with a sibling who was disabled and for my entire formative life, her health issues and welfare were the priority in my family’s life. We often had to contain our lives after a surgery or treatment because she was more vulnerable to infections. This meant that we didn’t have many people around. My father was very keen on keeping the household virus free and thus, no community, save the minister from our church, was allowed in the house.

I felt sadness then, but my parents would become angry if I became mopey and distant so feelings had to be locked in tight and obscured. I suspect I got the blues around my birthday, which is in January and it often happened that my sister would become ill in December, and then spend a few weeks leading up to my birthday in the hospital. Because of this, I missed many birthdays or watched as tired and overwhelmed parents just did the minimum to make it through the time. And yet, feeling sad wasn’t allowed.

This morning, as I ambled along, listening to flickers tap on neighbor’s chimneys and red tipped blackbirds chortle in glee I wondered about my sadness. I was struck by the possibility that this sadness was due to an invisible loss. My daughter is also disabled and a great deal of my life is now very similar to my formative years with my sister. There are times when all we can do is hunker down and stay still while my daughter suffers pain from the trifecta of having EDS, MCASS and POTS. I grieve the loss of health and normalcy for my daughter. It’s very difficult to have an invisible disability and few in the community understand what it is that we go through behind closed doors. There are days when she has flare ups and has difficulty walking or becomes too overheated for simply climbing the stairs. We live in a disabled household and I feel grief.

As a culture we are somewhat generous with people after the physical death of a loved one and I know, to discuss grieving a life that was not to be had feels like wanting a pity party. How can we hold space for the grief that is unspoken, the grief based on the shame of not being able to hold it together. Where do we find our people when we say, I am grieving having a disabled daughter? I wonder about the families with children in prison or family members who are addicts and can’t make it home. Where do we offer a space to grieve for what they had hoped for, the chance at a ‘normal’ life with healthy kids.

On our podcast, we host a great number of people who share about their grief after a loss of someone. We bear witness to the loss of children, elders, neighbors, pets and friends. We recognize that a death opens the channels for the work of grieving--crying, resting, sitting with friends, being quiet, becoming a recluse and generally the world looks different for a while in order to absorb the death that has transpired. Wakil and I often say that we can name other occurrences as small deaths, e.g. the loss of a friendship, the loss of a vision that can no longer be sustained, a marriage, the loss of a neighborhood or the loss of open space. We use the same language to normalize grief in all these other instances but this morning, as I was walking and talking to what I thought was sadness, I realized it was actually grief.

After I recognized grief that had sidled up, I decided to do what I would tell others to do in a moment of loss--take a moment, feel into what is coming up, move slowly, drink water, take a nap and be alright with whatever the day looks like. It’s been a sad sort of day, but it has also been a clear day, filled with intention to what is transpiring in me today. I’m not out of the woods yet, but I am clear about what has created this feeling of loss and I can talk about it.

This is a short missive to anyone out there who is feeling sad right now. I’m here to let you know that it might be grief and if you can stay with the feeling and look at where it came from, it might be better in the long run. If someone asks you, “what’s going on?” you can honestly tell them that you are in a grief cycle and if you know why it’s happening and the person is the right person to discuss this with, go ahead and tell them. Fold yourself over in their arms and cry if you must, but let yourself grieve for something that may only be a thought that you held and now it is no longer with you.

Welcome to our May 2026 monthly newsletter, where we share reflections and insights from previous podcasts, previews of upcoming episodes, as well as events, classes, workshops, articles, and poetry.

If you’ve received this from a friend, please let us know if you’d like to be added to our mailing list by emailing endoflifeconvo@gmail.com.

We continue to create more weekly episodes in conversation with our excellent and wise editor, Sam Zemke. Check out some of those in the links below and let us know what you think!

Thank you to all our subscribers, podcast guests, students, and collaborators for helping to normalize conversations about the end-of-life.

We hope you will subscribe (we now offer paid subscriptions - click to go to our subscriptions page) - your support will be appreciated and rewarded with new premium offerings!), spread the word, and let us know if you have a story, article, or event to share.

Podcast Insights

Check out the podcast here

April was filled with many more insightful and wise conversations. We were blessed to meet and speak with excellent guests and to have some great weekly episodes.

• What Dreams Reveal About Life, Death, Grief, and Loss - In this episode, we explore the connection between dreams, loss, and the human experience. Whether you’ve dreamed of someone who has died or found yourself waking up with lingering emotions, this conversation offers a grounded way to understand what may be happening

• Why People Grieve Differently | The 4 Grief Personas Explained - n this episode, we explore the emotional reality that grief doesn’t follow one path. While many expect grief to look the same for everyone, the truth is that people process loss in deeply different ways. We introduce the Grief Persona Framework, a model that identifies four common grieving styles: the Steady Hand, Quiet Anchor, Seeker, and Open Heart.

• When Communities Die | Grieving the Loss of Intergenerational Relationships - What if the hardest part of leadership isn’t stepping up, but stepping back? We talk a lot about empowering younger voices, but we don’t talk about what it costs to make space for them. When new leadership emerges, something else has to end, and that ending can feel like a loss.

• The 6-Step Guide to Compassionate Caregiving (Support Loved Ones Without Burning Out) - In this episode, we explore The 6-Step Guide to Compassionate Caregiving, inspired by Tracy Heath’s work, offering a practical and emotionally grounded approach to supporting loved ones through illness, aging, and end of life.

• Burned Out on the World? Grief, Anger, and Finding Hope Again - In this episode, we explore the pervasive feeling of distrust within the United States. We delve into the erosion of trust in people and the core idea of what we believe we should be as a country, touching upon national symbols and the cultural identity that defines us.

• Why You React the Way You Do | Trauma, Grief, and Healing the Nervous System - Why do you react so strongly to certain situations… even when part of you knows it doesn’t make sense? In this episode, we explore how trauma and grief shape the nervous system and influence emotional reactions, often in ways that feel confusing or overwhelming. Instead of asking “what’s wrong with me?”, we look at what your body is trying to do to protect you.

• Death With Dignity: The Hard Truth About End-of-Life Choices - In this episode, we explore the legal, ethical, and deeply personal realities of end-of-life choices, including medical aid in dying, assisted suicide laws, and how families navigate these decisions in real life.

We have many more wonderful guests and episodes lined up for this coming month, including:

• More weekly looks at what is front of mind, with Sam, Annalouiza, and Wakil.

• Masankho Banda who learned the fine arts of storytelling and dance from his elders in Malawi. In their company, he spent many long days and nights listening to stories and dancing to music that captivated his mind, nourished his soul, and strengthened his spirit.

• Chandra Thomas Whitfield is Co-Host and Producer of “Colorado Matters,” an interview-style, daily public affairs show on Colorado Public Radio. Colorado journalists seem to be sharing a great many stories about aging and dying.

• Nikki the Death Doula is an INELDA-certified death doula (INELDA stands for the International End-of-Life Doula Association) and a grief coach, serving the terminally ill, dying, elderly and their loved ones with dignity and respect.

• Mike Oppenheim has a podcast called Coffin Talk, in which he asks humans how “The Meaning of Death” affects the way they live their life.

• Saladin Frank Pelfrey has been on a spiritual journey that began when his life was completely changed by a seminal mystical experience at the age of 23. He was a yoga and pranayama teacher in Spokane in the early 70’s, and at that time they were already discussing what it means to die.

Stay tuned, share with your community, and let us know if you or someone you know has a story to share!

Check out the podcast here

Poetry

Cumulus Cloud

By Moudi Sbeity

You say, teach me, oh cloud, how to widen my grief so large…

Read this Beautiful Poem Here

Article

Dying Back Into the Mother
by Themis Waduda, Mu’alimah of the Temple of the Divine Feminine in the Sirat-i Inayat Interfaith Sufi Path

I did not always like to speak about death; however, lately it has become so near, an unignorable presence, like the desert sun that meets the eye whether we are ready or not. It has been impossible not to be fully present to it.

Yes, I mostly speak of the loss of those we love, but also of our daily endings: the turning of seasons, the closing of chapters, the small dissolutions that naturally happen each day. Something in us is always dying, making space for what has not yet been named. And while our minds may fully comprehend this, deep inside, many of us - perhaps most of us - are not raised to welcome that part of life.

Death, while inevitable, is also what most deeply awakens us to life.

Read the Rest

Announcements and Events

Before You Go - End of Life Planning Workshop
Saturday, May 30, 2026 - On Zoom from 11 AM to 1 PM Pacific Time
The class will focus on the information necessary to make informed decisions regarding end-of-life care. These include the various documents that explicitly guide family and friends in supporting your choices.

Registration

Receive training to serve as a Certified Grief Companion and become proficient in offering 1-on-1 grief support to clients. Learn how to skillfully integrate grief and loss companionship into your spiritual care services. Facilitated by Dr. Jan Lundy through The Metta Center

Learn more and apply

Before Goodbye, a new book by Tracy M. Heath. We had the pleasure of interviewing Tracy recently and her episode aired on April 18th.

More Information

Queer Death Salon is a community space for all 2SLGBTQIA+ people to come together to discuss death, dying and grief. It is a facilitated drop-in discussion space, with the purpose of building connection, skill, and resources for 2SLGBTQIA+ people navigating end of life in our personal lives and in our communities.

Bids for Care: A Way to Practice Care - online Tuesday May 12 at 7 p.m. EST

Participants will explore and practice the concept of “Bid for Care” as a foundational element for building responsive and supportive communities. Drawing on principles of radical mental health and community care, participants will learn practical strategies for recognizing bids for care, assessing personal capacity to respond, and cultivating a culture of mutual support. Cost PWYC including free

More Information and Registration

Webs of the universe: Pet Grief Workshop - online Tuesday May 26 at 7 p.m. EST

With your pet depicted at the center, participants are asked to draw the universe of webs showing the experiences, support and feelings your pet brought into your lives. Cost PWYC including free

More Information and Registration

Online Survey about NDEs During Childbirth or Delivery - The Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine is recruiting individuals who have had a near-death experience (NDE) during childbirth/delivery/labor for an online study.

Enroll

Welcome to our April 2026 monthly newsletter, where we share reflections and insights from previous podcasts, previews of upcoming episodes, as well as events, classes, workshops, articles, and poetry.

If you’ve received this from a friend, please let us know if you’d like to be added to our mailing list by emailing endoflifeconvo@gmail.com.

We continue to create more weekly versions in conversation with our excellent and wise editor, Sam Zemke. Check out some of those in the links below and let us know what you think!

Thank you to all our subscribers, podcast guests, students, and collaborators for helping to normalize conversations about the end-of-life.

We hope you will subscribe (we now offer paid subscriptions - click to go to our subscriptions page) - your support will be appreciated and rewarded with new premium offerings!), spread the word, and let us know if you have a story, article, or event to share.

Podcast Insights

Check out the podcast here

March was filled with many more insightful and wise conversations. We were blessed to meet and speak with wise and compelling guests and to have some great weekly episodes.

• Overwhelmed by the News? Processing Collective Grief around Death and Dying in a Time of War - Wakil and Sam explored collective grief amid war and global conflict. Why do events happening thousands of miles away feel so personal? Why does constant exposure to tragedy leave us exhausted, anxious, or numb?

• Hereditary Hemochromatosis Nearly Killed Him | A Multi-Organ Failure Survival Story - In 2015, an undiagnosed genetic condition called hereditary hemochromatosis pushed Mike Tallon into rapid multi-organ failure. He was not expected to survive. Hereditary Hemochromatosis, also known as iron overload disease, is one of the most common genetic disorders, yet many people don’t know they have it until serious damage occurs.

• Finding Hope in Dark Times: Collective Grief, Global Crisis, and Spiritual Transformation - When the world feels like it’s unraveling, many people quietly carry a heavy question: How do we stay hopeful in dark times? In this episode, Sam, Annalouiza, and Wakil explore the emotional and spiritual reality of collective grief during a time of global crisis.

• What If You Can’t Afford a Funeral? Affordable & Green Death Care Options - Funerals in the United States often cost thousands of dollars, leaving many families wondering what happens if they simply can’t afford one. In this episode, we explore the financial realities of death care and the alternatives that many people never hear about.

• Advance Care Directives Explained | Choosing a Power of Attorney & Planning Your End-of-Life Wishes (Part 1 of 2) - Advance care directives are one of the most important tools we have for protecting our voice during serious illness or at the end of life. Yet many people avoid creating them because the process feels confusing, uncomfortable, or overwhelming.

• For Whom The Bell Tolls: Disconnection from Death, Dying, and Grief in our Communities - Why do so many of us feel disconnected from death, dying, and grief—until we’re suddenly forced to face it? In this episode, Wakil, Annalouiza, and Wakil explore how modern culture has shaped our relationship with death and why grief often feels isolating, confusing, or unsupported.

• Advanced Care Directives Explained Part 2: More Important Final Wishes For Your End of Life Planning - Part two of our series on advance care directives! We'll cover the remaining wishes in the "Five Wishes" document and discuss how to ensure it's legally binding. While these tools won't solve every emotional challenge, they will remove uncertainty for your health care and end-of-life planning.

• How to Be Present in Your Life (Even Through Death, Grief, and Loss) - What does it really mean to be present—especially when you’re carrying grief, loss, or the weight of change? In this episode, Annalouiza, Sam, and Wakil explore how to be present in your life even when it feels like part of you is somewhere else. Whether you’re navigating loss, burnout, or just a quiet sense of disconnection, this conversation offers a more honest and compassionate approach to mindfulness.

We have many more wonderful guests and episodes lined up for this coming month, including:

• More weekly looks at what is front of mind, with Sam, Annalouiza, and Wakil.

• Lin Diagonales a dreamworker, improviser, and facilitator currently based in Taos, New Mexico. Lin has spent the last 13 years devoted to the dreamworld, exploring a wide range of dreamwork practices and experimenting with grounding the dreamworld’s teachings through trial and error, embodiment, expressive arts, and, recently, birth and death work.

• Sarah Baldwin the Co-founder of Restfully and the creator of the Grief Persona framework, a model that helps people understand how they respond to loss.

• Tracy Heath who recently launched a book, Before Goodbye: Your Emotional, Physical, and Financial Guide when a Loved One is Diagnosed with a Serious Illness.

• Ashley Buckner who got in touch with us and asked to share about trauma-informed care, grief and loss, ethical practice, clinician burnout, and how systems—not individuals—drive many of the challenges facing mental health today. She is passionate about making complex clinical topics accessible, honest, and deeply human.

Stay tuned, share with your community, and let us know if you or someone you know has a story to share!

Check out the podcast here

Poetry

For this month’s poetry, we are thrilled to offer this special video of the poem our friend Kilah Storm read to us when we interviewed her last June, on Episode 6 of Season 4. It is called “Choose to Stay” and she uses her taxidermy puppets to perform the poem! Click on the image to watch the two-minute YouTube:

Article

Finding Hope in the Midst of Chaos

Inspirations from Bioneers 2026 | What becomes possible when we stop waiting for hope—and start building it together

By Rev Wakil David Matthews

There is a quiet, persistent despair many of us are carrying. I know I feel it all too often.

As the systems around us strain and unravel, the future can feel difficult to imagine. And when we do imagine it, it often looks unstable… even dangerous.

We see it everywhere—climate disruption, political volatility, deepening inequality. It’s not just the scale of these challenges. It’s the sense that they are all connected.

And beneath that realization, a question lingers:

What do we do with all of this?

Read the rest

Announcements and Events

Before You Go - End of Life Planning Workshop
Saturday, May 30, 2026 - On Zoom from 11 AM to 1 PM Pacific Time
The class will focus on the information necessary to make informed decisions regarding end-of-life care. These include the various documents that explicitly guide family and friends in supporting your choices.

Registration

The Choice to End One’s Life - Reverend Bodhi Be will speak on the many reasons this topic is gaining traction and on more people’s minds. We will look at options and share some of your personal feelings and experiences. In person in Seattle at the Interfaith Sanctuary - 1763 NW 62nd St. $20 Requested. Or online - click the Register button below.
Please consider a donation to Doorway Into Light, our 501 (c) (3) organization. Copy and paste this link to be taken to their donation page.

Register

LilyList Legacy Platform
The platform is live! Capture the essence of your journey and leave a legacy for generations to come

Website and more

How to Create, Lead and Launch a Grief Sharing Circle
The Metta Center, Instructor: Dr. Jan Lundy

A 7-week, online training on the practical aspects of starting and leading a Grief Sharing Circle (grief support group) in your community or online.

Held 7 consecutive Thursdays for 1.5 hrs. each week.
April 30, May 7, 14, 21, 28, June 4 & 11
11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. ET

Cohort limited to 12 individuals.

Learn more and register

Queer Death Salon: digestion maturation and death
Tuesday April 21 at 7 p.m. EST

Queer Death Salon is a community space for all 2SLGBTQIA+ people to come together to discuss death, dying and grief.

Come try on a lens through which we see death as a natural part of cyclical human maturation, and digestion of experience as an ongoing, mundane yet essential practice of being with death. Cost PWYC including free

Registration

Before Goodbye, a new book by Tracy M. Heath. We had the pleasure of interviewing Tracy recently and her episode will be coming up on April 18th.

More Information

Online Survey about NDEs During Childbirth or Delivery - The Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine is recruiting individuals who have had a near-death experience (NDE) during childbirth/delivery/labor for an online study.

Enroll

Welcome to our March 2026 monthly newsletter, where we share reflections and insights from previous podcasts, previews of upcoming episodes, as well as events, classes, workshops, articles, and poetry.

If you’ve received this from a friend, please let us know if you’d like to be added to our mailing list by emailing endoflifeconvo@gmail.com.

We continue to create more “current events” versions in conversation with our excellent and wise editor, Sam Zemke. Check out some of those in the links below and let us know what you think!

Thank you to all our subscribers, podcast guests, students, and collaborators for helping to normalize conversations about the end-of-life.

We hope you will subscribe (we now offer paid subscriptions - click to go to our subscriptions page) - your support will be appreciated and rewarded with new premium offerings!), spread the word, and let us know if you have a story, article, or event to share.

Podcast Insights

Check out the podcast here

February was filled with many more insightful and wise conversations. We were blessed to meet and speak with wise and compelling guests and to have some great current events episodes.

• We Need to Talk About Death in Our Pockets: Witnessing Grief, Dying, and Tragedy Online - A Double-Edged Sword (Current Events Episode) We dive deep into the impact of witnessing tragedy through our phones.

• How to Record Your Life Story Before It’s Too Late | Creating Legacy, Memory & Meaning from Death, Dying and Grief. Recording a life story is less about documenting everything and more about creating moments of connection, reflection, and presence—right now.

• The Grief We Don’t Notice: Climate Loss, Death, Dying, Anxiety, and Carrying the Emotional Weight (Current Events Episode) How climate change, environmental loss, and everyday signs of death affect us emotionally, even when we don’t consciously name them.

• What Happened to Rachel Waters After Her Mother’s Death? Helping families in grief to better understand Hospice Care with their dying loved one. This isn’t really a story about crime. It’s a story about how unprepared most families are for the legal realities surrounding end-of-life care.

• Walking Through Grief: The Buddhist Monk’s Peace Walk Changing How We Talk About Death and Dying (Current Events Episode) We explore how Buddhist monks who walk for peace are quietly changing how we understand death, compassion, and collective healing.

• When the Meal Train Stops: Creating Sacred Space After a Death or Loss - Rituals for Healing Grief and Remembrance Creating sacred space after loss is not about holding onto pain. It is about giving grief somewhere to land.

• Is Conflict in Our DNA? Tribalism, Scarcity, Death, Dying and Collective Grief (Current Events Episode) Instead of asking, “Why are humans so terrible?” we might ask, “What are humans afraid of losing?”

• What Really Happens During Embalming? + Aquamation & Human Composting Explained We speak with Ray Chel, creator of the online zine The Lil’ Undertaker’s Embalming Guide. Using a fictional mortician narrator, Ray created an accessible and creative way to explain the embalming process while also introducing alternatives such as aquamation and natural organic reduction, commonly known as human composting.

We have many more wonderful guests and episodes lined up for this coming month, including:

• More weekly looks at current events, with Sam and Wakil.

• We meet Michael Tallon who shares his story, retold in his memoir “Incompatible With Life.” It is not just about medical survival. It’s about resilience, love, and how a near-death experience reshapes the way we live.

• A special revisit with Liz Dunnebacke, the founder and executive director of Wake, a nonprofit organization that provides information and resources to support meaningful, affordable, and environmentally friendly deathcare.

  NOTE: This special episode is part of Podcasthon, the world’s largest charity podcast event happening in March.

• And in the last two episodes of March, we’ll share a two part series on Advanced Care Directives that you will want to view and share with all your loved ones!

Stay tuned, share with your community, and let us know if you or someone you know has a story to share!

Check out the podcast here

Poetry

We found this poem from our friend, Mirabai Starr on her recent SubStack post. She noted that she wrote it a few months after her daughter died.

This Face

Let this face
be inscribed
With the topographies
of mourning and aging.

Let these little bones
Hold lightly
This old and ravaged
Face.

Let the caverns
Of distress
Make a secret place
For wildflowers
Let the wildflowers
Render this face
Beautiful again.

Let me love
My brokenness.

Let me not turn away
From this reflected face
Pale and shattered
Extraordinary grief
And the ordinary
passage of time.

Let me love
These hurricane eyes
Fastened by creases
Lit by shadows
Eyes that look away
Afraid to cause harm.

Let me love
my aging and my grieving
my whiteness and my softness
This raw face.

Let me tie on the burka
I refused when I came of age
Pulling my hair back
From this terrible forehead .

Let me look up
Through these
burnt and burning eyes
and not turn away.

Let me cease from wondering
How anyone could possibly
Love
The person who lives inside
this fragmented face.

~ Mirabai Starr

Article

Transmission: On Lineage, Survival, and What Forms Us

Addiction, loss, and grief shaped us. So did care. There’s a kind of holiness underneath.

Elias Poore from her ‘Convicted’ Substack

Feb 25, 2026

Editors Note: This essay contains references to drug use, overdose, violence, and incarceration.

A photograph of Paul surfaced in my Instagram feed this week—a memorial post made by a friend.

The algorithm had placed him between a seminary announcement and an advertisement for sheets. His face looked the way it always had—slightly amused, slightly exhausted. Time had not altered him. It had only ended him.

He has been gone for years. Heroin. An abandoned attempt at rehab. Despair. Life ended on a stretch of highway between Amarillo and Lubbock that is mostly wind and open sky. I left that same rehab center “against medical advice” a couple of years later. I kept driving.

When his face appeared on my screen, it did not feel like nostalgia.

It felt like vertigo.

Read the rest

Announcements and Events

Before You Go - End of Life Planning Workshop
Saturday, March 21, 2026 - On Zoom from 11 AM to 1 PM Pacific Time
The class will focus on the information necessary to make informed decisions regarding end-of-life care. These include the various documents that explicitly guide family and friends in supporting your choices.

Registration

Grief Companion Training through The Metta Center - Online training. March - June, 2026
A spiritual guide or companion with specialized training in grief and bereavement can be of the highest service to someone in mourning.

More Information

LilyList Legacy Platform
The platform is live! Capture the essence of your journey and leave a legacy for generations to come

Website and more

New Book Wake-Up Calls: A Journey of Learning to Lead and Succeed in the Funeral and Deathcare Profession is now available as an audiobook.

Created for women who lead, serve, and carry a great deal, Wake-Up Calls shares the defining moments that shaped Lisa Baue’s leadership, tested her resilience, and revealed how grief can become a gateway to grit, and pain can transform into purpose.

More Information

Online Survey about NDEs During Childbirth or Delivery - The Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine is recruiting individuals who have had a near-death experience (NDE) during childbirth/delivery/labor for an online study.

Enroll

Welcome to our February 2026 monthly newsletter, where we share reflections and insights from previous podcasts, previews of upcoming episodes, as well as events, classes, workshops, articles, and poetry.

If you’ve received this from a friend, please let us know if you’d like to be added to our mailing list by emailing endoflifeconvo@gmail.com.

PLEASE NOTE: Friends, we have begun a transition to our podcast that we hope will add value and engage more listeners. Starting this week, we created our first “current affairs” version in conversation with our excellent and wise editor, Sam Zemke. Check it out and let us know what you think!

Thank you to all our subscribers, podcast guests, students, and collaborators for helping to normalize conversations about the end-of-life.

We hope you will subscribe (we now offer paid subscriptions - click to go to our subscriptions page) - your support will be appreciated and rewarded with new premium offerings!), spread the word, and let us know if you have a story, article, or event to share.

Podcast Insights

Check out the podcast here

We begin the new year with more insightful and wise conversations. Last month, we were blessed to meet and speak with these lovely folks.

• The Difference That Changes Everything | Psychological Healing When a Cure Isn't Possible where Cobie Whitten a psycho-oncology consultant, shared her profound experiences facilitating Harmony Retreats, describing it as the most significant healing journey imaginable.

• Why Fictional Characters Let Us Explore What We Can't in Real Life with Andee Kinzy, creator of the Kicking the Bucket podcast. We discussed the importance of addressing caregiving and end-of-life topics through humor and storytelling. Her podcast aims to empower families to have difficult conversations about death, using fiction as a tool to facilitate these discussions.

• On Call 24/7 | The Difficult Reality of Being a Female Funeral Director: What does it take? In this moving conversation we met Lisa Baue, a third-generation funeral director and founder of Your Funeral Coach and creator of the Funeral Women Lead foundation.

• Processing Collective Trauma After Police Violence: Healing Strategies for Individuals & Communities. The new current events addition to our podcast. In this episode, we discuss the pervasive theme of grief in contemporary society, particularly focusing on state-induced grief and the loss of connection within communities.

• How to Talk About Death With Your Friends and Family (Without Making It Awkward) Annalouiza and Wakil discuss ho to start a conversation about death naturally, what to actually say when people shut down and, how to keep the conversation going over time.

We have many more wonderful guests and episodes lined up for this coming month, including:

• The founder of LilyList, a platform designed to help individuals capture their life stories and create lasting legacies.

• A woman who made headlines in 2025 when she was indicted on two counts of murder following her mother’s hospice death in Columbia County, Georgia. She now works to spotlight systemic gaps in hospice practices and pushes for caregiver protections so that other families and their loved ones are not left vulnerable.

• Another woman who developed the The Heavenly Home, Orange County’s first nonprofit end-of-life care residence.

• And finally, an episode with Annalouiza and Wakil sharing ideas and resources for creating ritual and ceremony.

Stay tuned, share with your community, and let us know if you or someone you know has a story to share!

Check out the podcast here

Poetry

It is the Same - Contemplations from the Marsh
by Rev Wakil David Matthews

This may be
what death looks like.

Up close, the fires
of fall colors
Terrifying, beautiful,
alluring.

Further back, a black and white
still life.
An old photo smudged
at the edges,
From being held
by too many curious fingers.

Further still, dissolved
into gray
Sparkling, roiling,
mysterious.

And from out of that
gray mystery mist
The shade,
then the dark form
Then the regal,
stately presence

Of the heron.

Bringing a message:
“It is the same.”

Article

YOLO is a Lie
by Jess Wakefield
(check out Jess’ wonderful Substack for much more excellent content)

Somewhere along the way, “You Only Live Once” became a kind of cultural permission slip. It gets tossed out when we want to justify the impulsive choice. The extra drink. The late night. The leap without a plan. It’s shorthand for urgency, risk, and the belief that life is too short to think too hard about consequences.

And sure, there’s a place for spontaneity. There’s a place for boldness. But the phrase itself is deeply misleading.

Because you don’t only live once.

You live every single day.

Living isn’t a singular event or a dramatic highlight reel. It’s not just the milestones or the stories you tell later. It’s the slow accumulation of ordinary moments. It’s the routines you fall into, the relationships you tend or neglect, the ways you talk to yourself when no one else is listening. Living happens in the repetition, not the exception.

What you only do once is die.

Continue Reading

Announcements and Events

Before You Go - End of Life Planning Workshop
Saturday, March 21, 2026 - On Zoom from 11 AM to 1 PM Pacific Time
The class will focus on the information necessary to make informed decisions regarding end-of-life care. These include the various documents that explicitly guide family and friends in supporting your choices.

Registration

Grief Companion Training through The Metta Center - Online training. March - June, 2026
A spiritual guide or companion with specialized training in grief and bereavement can be of the highest service to someone in mourning.

More Information

LilyList Legacy Platform
The platform is live! Capture the essence of your journey and leave a legacy for generations to come

Website and more

Teeth Become Weapons: Trans Grief and Rage - Tuesday February 17 at 7 p.m. EST
Our bodies, lives, and very beings are increasingly politicized. Our stories and histories are flattened, made palatable for the sake of survival. Our unique grief becomes increasingly buried and unheard, unshared.

More information and Registration

Jewish Funeral Traditions on Film Zoom Presentation
Our friend, the Doyenne of Death, Gail Rubin, presented this video about Jewish death traditions. Even if you grew up with a good Jewish education, funeral, burial and mourning traditions don't get the attention of other life cycle events - until there's a death in the family.

Watch it here

Online Survey about NDEs During Childbirth or Delivery - The Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine is recruiting individuals who have had a near-death experience (NDE) during childbirth/delivery/labor for an online study.

Enroll

Welcome to our January 2026 monthly newsletter, where we share reflections and insights from previous podcasts, previews of upcoming episodes, as well as events, classes, workshops, articles, and poetry.

If you’ve received this from a friend, please let us know if you’d like to be added to our mailing list by emailing endoflifeconvo@gmail.com.

Please respond to our short survey to help us add more value to our podcast.

Click for Survey

Thank you to all our subscribers, podcast guests, students, and collaborators for helping to normalize conversations about the end-of-life.

We hope you will subscribe (we now offer paid subscriptions - click to go to our subscriptions page) - your support will be appreciated and rewarded with new premium content!), spread the word, and let us know if you have a story, article, or event to share.

Podcast Insights

Check out the podcast here

We begin the new year with more insightful and wise conversations. Last month, we were blessed to meet and speak with these lovely folks.

• What if Your Last Day Could be the BEST Day EVER? where we spoke to Eric Jepson who shared his journey from engineer to founder of BeautifullyMAID, a care home focused on providing beautiful end-of-life experiences.

• 3 Things You Need to Know About Open Air Cremation and Green Burial where we delve into the distinctive practices of the Crestone End of Life Project, a volunteer organization in Colorado that provides open-air cremation and green burial services.

• Biodiversity Loss and The Secret Role of Art as a Way to Cope with Ecological Despair with Asher Smith who discusses their journey as a queer farmer and artist, exploring themes of ecological consciousness, grief, and the role of art in addressing environmental issues.

• A Pocket Guide Caregivers Need - You’re Not Alone in These Final Conversations where we we discuss Ann Thompson's The End-of-Life Caregivers' Pocket Guide. This practical book condenses a lot of information and offers valuable tips.

• You Need to Know That it is Possible to Find Real Life Compassionate End of Life Care with David Zartman and Joanna Franco from Caring House, a nonprofit hospice care facility.

We have many more wonderful guests lined up for this coming month, including:

• A facilitator for a retreat that offers psychological and spiritual support for those dealing with a terminal illness and their caregivers.

• The creator of Kicking the Bucket, a fiction podcast about caregiving, family, and an older couple plotting to bite the dust - only they’re not very good at it.

• The founder of the Funeral Women Lead Foundation, the first nonprofit organization dedicated solely to advancing and advocating for women as leaders in the funeral profession.

• The founder of LilyList, a platform designed to help individuals capture their life stories and create lasting legacies

Stay tuned, share with your community, and let us know if you or someone you know has a story to share!

Check out the podcast here

Poetry

This poem is from our poet laureate, Andrea Gibson who passed away this summer. She reminds us to see our precious world around us and heal.

“I know you think this world is too dark to even dream in color,

but I’ve seen flowers bloom at midnight.

I’ve seen kites fly in gray skies

and they were real close to looking like the sunrise,

and sometime it takes the most wounded wings

the most broken things

to notice how strong the breeze is,

how precious the flight.”

― Andrea Gibson

Article

Grief Does Not Need to Be DIY
by Rev Annalouiza Armendariz

Death is a Master of creating a vacuum. When a loved one dies it sometimes feels like all the air gets sucked out of our lungs and our words or cries are unable to be breathed into existence. Sometimes Death squeezes our heart so intensely that there is ringing in our ears and tingling in our extremities. There is a space that opens when anyone dies. Those moments that feel as though an anvil has just landed on us, Wiley Coyote style, and unlike Wiley Coyote, you won’t want to move. And this isn’t just when a loved one dies. Sometimes it’s a dream that gets taken, or a friendship or even an elder tree sentinel who has buffered our life from the strong north winds. Our favorite tree dies and we are swept into an empty space. Death squeezes all of us in so many ways.

Many who encounter this Death storm often fold in, simultaneously barricading themselves behind an airless terrorscape that they are thrust into, folding in their words, their voice, their tears and sometimes their very bodies. Sometimes we cannot move when Death arrives. It’s both a keen awareness of self-preservation and an immense fatigue; too tired to behold the presence of the taker of life. Too exhausted to get up and keep going. Too sleepy to reckon with what is left.

As a culture, we struggle to both allow ourselves to be witnessed in this moment of grief and admit that we are maimed by it. We don’t want to cry hard in front of friends or community in fear that we might scare them away or embarrass ourselves from showing so much human pain.

It is the grief cycle, the uncomfortably still and dark space that we are journeying after a death that is not meant to be walked alone.

We have been conditioned to want to do our grief journey independently. We hide ourselves and our wounded hearts like a hurt animal, squeezing into the furthest recess of a rock wall. Animals that are in pain hide because they are aware that in their state predators could descend and devour them. What are we hiding from when we are in pain? Who are the predators that could descend upon us as we fling our bodies on the kitchen floor trying to make sense of what is now happening? There is a desire to insulate ourselves from the eyes of others, from the ears of others and from the potential judgment of our friends and families who would see this and think us weak.

I think we are debilitated in our moments of grief and that is why grieving should not be a DIY kind of endeavor. This is why when we lose a job that makes our stomach ache and dry tears pool behind our eyes, we should call our kin and kith and ask for help during this journey. A loved one dies and the funeral is over but the house is a difficult place to be in.

We, of course, want to DIY everything and I understand this construct--getting help is embarrassing. It can be expensive. It can be maddening. “What will people think,” we fuss. “My house is a mess and I can’t get out of my pajamas.” “I have taken too much time from work and my boss will be angry.” What to do or what to do….

But why DIY it when you can call on community to come in with a box of tissues, lots of water, ample amount of hugs or no hugs, depending on what you need, a funny meme or simply a dear one to hold your hand as you sift through the ashes of your cherished home that has burned down. We need to reach out to our community. We need to cry more in front of many and say, “Yes, i feel horrible. I can’t hear or see or feel anything. Can you just sit near me for a while. I just need a companion.”

In this space, many of us are used to walking in the shadow land of grief. We work together, witness a passing of a person and we get to put a hand on a shoulder and say through wet eyes, “I’m here when you need me.” There are others who are also here, witnessing the ebb and flow of life.

There are studies that now demonstrate that trees can communicate with one another making them somewhat sentient beings. During my years as a beekeeper, I found and read all kinds of books. One of them went into great detail about why it was important to keep the ladies apprised of your day to day activities. “They care about you,” the author wrote. “They are part of your eco-system.” We live in an ecosystem where the very rain that we have graced our heads in the spring, may have fallen on your ancestors and their ancestors before. We are surrounded by a system that wants to share the burden of our grief. Because Grief is not a DIY kind of endeavor.

Announcements and Events

Before You Go - End of Life Planning Workshop
Saturday, January 17, 2026 - On Zoom from 11 AM to 1 PM Pacific Time
The class will focus on the information necessary to make informed decisions regarding end-of-life care. These include the various documents that explicitly guide family and friends in supporting your choices.

Registration

Write Your Grief - Tuesday January 13 at 7 p.m. EST

Participants will be led through a short meditation/reiki offering to ground and center in the space, followed by some intentional and prompted writing time, where we’ll pick a source of grief, or grief itself, and write letters with Melissa Delizia.

More Info and Registration

LilyList Legacy Platform

The platform is live! Capture the essence of your journey and leave a legacy for generations to come

Website and more

Developing Our Hearts: A Playful & Philosophical Conversation About Care, Caring, Creativity & Community - January 31st

Our friend Neshia Alaovae will be part of a multidisciplinary conversation held by the East Side Institute. Guided by the discoveries of those reimagining aging, dementia, end-of-life, wellness, healing, spirituality and community, we invite you to join us in a playful, philosophical exploration of care and caring as something we create together.

More Information and Registration

Online Survey about NDEs During Childbirth or Delivery - The Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine is recruiting individuals who have had a near-death experience (NDE) during childbirth/delivery/labor for an online study.

Enroll

In this episode, we engage with David Zartman and Joanna Franco from Caring House, a nonprofit hospice care facility. We discuss Caring House's mission, which focuses on providing compassionate end-of-life care to underserved communities. We explore the importance of hospice care at home and discuss valuable caregiver advice for those supporting individuals at the end of life. The conversation highlights the significance of dignified care at the end of life.
We explore the critical need for hospice care at home and offer valuable caregiver advice for those supporting loved ones. The discussion emphasizes dignified end-of-life experiences, ensuring comfort and respect during this sensitive time.

Caring House Website

Welcome to our December 2025 monthly newsletter, where we share reflections and insights from previous podcasts, previews of upcoming episodes, as well as events, classes, workshops, articles, and poetry.

If you’ve received this from a friend, please let us know if you’d like to be added to our mailing list by emailing endoflifeconvo@gmail.com.

Please respond to our short survey to help us add more value to our podcast.

Click for Survey

Thank you to all our subscribers, podcast guests, students, and collaborators for helping to normalize conversations about the end-of-life.

We hope you will subscribe (we now offer paid subscriptions - click to go to our subscriptions page) - your support will be appreciated and rewarded with new premium content!), spread the word, and let us know if you have a story, article, or event to share.

Special Note: We are thrilled to have been guests ourselves on our friend, the Reverend Brother Seth Samuels’ podcast, “The Good World.” Check it out here!

Podcast Insights

Check out the podcast here

We are now posting video versions of our podcasts on our YouTube channel. Check them out, subscribe, and let us know what you think.

As we head into our third year of the podcast, we are overwhelmed with appreciation for all of our guests and for you our loyal audience. This month’s episodes were full of insights, incredible good work, and death positivity.

• The Surprising Push For Open Air Cremation In America where we met Brett Nicoletti, an award-winning documentary filmmaker. He discusses his documentary project, ‘Passing Through,’ which focuses on open-air cremation and cultural perspectives on death.

• Top 3 Ways to Unite Death Doulas, Grief Coaches, and Healers with Jessica Sadler, a death doula and founder of Dawn of Aging. Jessica shares her insights on the need to build networks for caregivers.

• What Happens When Psychedelics Meet End of Life Care? In this special episode we brought back one of our first guests, Bodhi Be, to tell us about the evolution of his work in conscious dying and the establishment of the Ram Dass Institute of Psychedelic Studies.

• What Happens When We Face Death Together? where we hosted a group of guests from the Blessing Your Journey retreat. They delve into the structure of their retreats, emphasizing the blend of information, ritual, and emotional support provided to participants.

• The Simple TRUTH About Medical Aid in Dying Laws where we speak with Mandi Zucker, who has been working to change the law in New York State to allow people to choose medical aid in dying, and appeals to everyone to let the governor know you support her signing this into law by the end of the year.

We have many more wonderful guests lined up for this coming month, including:

• A guide who helps people recognize their fondest wishes and end their lives in a beautiful place

• An organization that provides open air cremation

• A conversation about the loss of biodiversity

• An author who wrote The End-of-Life Caregivers’ Pocket Guide

• And a group creating a home for people to spend their last days surrounded by love, caring, music, and ceremony.

Stay tuned, share with your community, and let us know if you or someone you know has a story to share!

Check out the podcast here

LITANY FOR THE REMEMBERED, REMEMBERING
(for Trans Day of Remembrance 2025)
by Elias Poore, a dear friend and fellow seeker. This is a long poem that I recommend taking the time to read all the way through. Click the button at the end to see the full text.

I.
Come, gather close—
you whose bodies remember a world
before the dividing lines,
before someone took a blade to the cosmos
and carved it into man and woman,
order and nature,
holy and profane.

You who cross the boundaries
were never crossing anything—
the world simply broke
underneath your feet.

You are the seam that still holds.
You are the original map
to a universe that did not yet
fear its own fullness.

Come, tender rebels,
bone-bruised prophets,
you who learned the choreography of danger
before you learned your own names.
You are not an accident.
You are the map God drew
when They finally grew tired
of straight lines.

Read the rest

Article

The Edges of Light
by the Reverent Mother Annalouiza Armendariz

The crows can be seen flying west as the sun begins to set and the evening twilight flickers and grows. The autumnal season is here. The leaves piled on the sidewalks crinkle and rustle as people walk along the sidewalk. They appear to ignore the luscious sounds, instead staring at their phones or berating their dogs loudly as they move along. On the corner, beneath a maple, a squirrel lies still, milky eyes sunk deep with a resigned look. It may have been too cold and fallen out of the tree at night. It died, and now it has been there for two days. No one is moving the body, and possibly, no one is noticing it.

Dying happens every moment of every day. It is a bookend to “Aliving.” Life is both an act of living and an act of dying. Those two can never be separate from each other. The tree that reaches toward the sky as a sapling will someday come down as a wizened elder tree, and the leaves that erupt in the springtime will let go of their branches in autumn. The insects that abounded in the summer are now either dead from being eaten, razed by pesticides, or succumbed to the cooler breezes that stop the fluttering of their wings. Death happens.

We in the northern hemisphere are moving towards the Mystery of the Solstice. The days are shorter, the nights are longer, and we do what we can to keep up the semblance of light and lightness. We ambush the night with garish lights to push back on the quilted dark sky. Rather than inviting the stillness of the dark or bearing witness to all that is past, we march to a Life Supremacy drumbeat that refuses to acknowledge that we are all part of a cosmic system of living and dying…living and dying and living some more and ultimately dying.

The grief that enters most in many conversations is that of railing against the end. We, as a culture, feel betrayed by our own idea of potency. Why can’t we stop anything from dying? And yet, where is death not apparent? Death as an end is simply an end to this moment. A breath that is exhaled has died just as a dream carried in our hearts may have died after being waylaid by life’s exigency. Autumn is simply a moment of sleepiness, a release of all the vigor and growth of the summer months. Winter is the time to rest and dream of some new possibilities. We are in the season of significant deaths around us.

When speaking to others about death and dying, it is always a wonder when people tell me that they have never experienced a death. That their world has been mostly untouched by the end of anything. And despite that belief, there is a terrible fear about death. When I point out that death is around us in every moment, a continuous tandem of living and dying, there is surprise. The signs are all around you, I mention. And I have seen the way they look around, as though for the first time, and see that death is very much around us. What a moment to behold!

My dream for all people is that they will pay more attention to the smaller deaths that happen daily. To feel what it is like to lose “a something”. To catch your breath as the sun dies to the west and the day is gone. To watch the crystalized air on a cold day leave your mouth and disappear, never to return again. To enter into the darkness of the winter months and know that leaves have died off the tree, and they will turn into smaller and smaller bits that won’t be recognized by spring. Feel into the end of something so that you can be prepared for the end of someone.

Announcements and Events

Before You Go - End of Life Planning Workshop
Saturday, January 17, 2026 - On Zoom from 11 AM to 1 PM Pacific Time
The class will focus on the information necessary to make informed decisions regarding end-of-life care. These include the various documents that explicitly guide family and friends in supporting your choices.

Registration

Psychic Death and Transitions - Queer Death Salon -Tuesday December 16 at 7 p.m. EST

Badly Licked Bear loves death. As a transsexual person, as an Indigenous person, as an adoption survivor, as someone who works with the knowledge of the body and of bodies, death is a constant companion in her work. Participants will be held in exploring psychic deaths, what it means to be “once dead and twice born,” and how our sexuality often skirts, confronts, plays with, or outright embraces death.
What does it mean to bring death and the process of death consciously into one’s daily life and practices?

More Information and Registration

Being, Doing, Feeling - Video from Gail Rubin, CT, The Doyenne of Death, which shares her personal story of eight deaths in her family over 24 months, and fending off grief - even though she is a pioneering death educator and should know better.

View it Here

Coping with Grief
On of our wonderful guests, retired professor of death and grief studies, Dr Bob Baugher, has more than sixty 2-3 minute videos on Instagram on coping with grief.

Bob's Instagram page

Online Survey about NDEs During Childbirth or Delivery - The Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine is recruiting individuals who have had a near-death experience (NDE) during childbirth/delivery/labor for an online study.

Enroll

Welcome to our November 2025 monthly newsletter, where we share reflections and insights from previous podcasts, previews of upcoming episodes, as well as events, classes, workshops, articles, and poetry.

If you’ve received this from a friend, please let us know if you’d like to be added to our mailing list by emailing endoflifeconvo@gmail.com.

Thank you …

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Welcome to our October 2025 monthly newsletter, where we share reflections and insights from previous podcasts, previews of upcoming episodes, as well as events, classes, workshops, articles, and poetry.

If you’ve received this from a friend, please let us know if you’d like to be added to our mailing list by emailing endoflifeconvo@gmail.com.

Thank you t…

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To help sustain and grow our mission of normalizing conversations around end-of-life, we've introduced paid subscription options here on Substack.

If you choose to subscribe, you'll see a few different tiers—each with its own set of benefits clearly outlined. Your support directly enables us to continue this important work and expand our offerings.

We’re also working on a growing library of premium content to ensure that your subscription is both meaningful and valuable.

Thank you for being part of this journey.

Welcome to our September 2025 monthly newsletter, where we share reflections and insights from previous podcasts, previews of upcoming episodes, as well as events, classes, workshops, articles, and poetry.

Thank you to all our subscribers, podcast guests, students, and collaborators for helping to normalize conversations about end-of-life care.

We hope yo…

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Welcome to our August 2025 monthly newsletter, where we share reflections and insights from previous podcasts, previews of upcoming episodes, as well as events, classes, workshops, articles, and poetry.

Thank you to all our subscribers, podcast guests, students, and collaborators for helping to normalize conversations about end-of-life care.

We hope you w…

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Welcome to the July issue of our monthly newsletter, where we share reflections and insights from previous podcasts, previews of upcoming episodes, as well as events, classes, workshops, articles, and poetry.

Thank you to all our subscribers, podcast guests, students, and collaborators for helping to normalize conversations about end-of-life care.

We hope…

Read more

Thank you to all our subscribers, podcast guests, students, and collaborators for helping to normalize conversations about end-of-life care.

As a next step in serving our community, we have launched this monthly newsletter to share reflections and insights from previous podcasts, previews of upcoming episodes, as well as events, classes, workshops, articles, and poetry.

We hope you will subscribe, spread the word, and let us know if you have a story, article, or event to share.

Podcast Insights

Check out the podcast here

While we are hard at work interviewing folks for our fourth season, we remember last season when we had an incredible time meeting some unique and inspiring individuals who dedicate their lives to caring for those who are dying.

For example, we met many Death Doulas who shared their different skills and areas of expertise. They spoke to us about how each entered into a family and their dying loved one’s homes. We gained a deeper understanding of their work, including projects in prisons, with veterans, and within the LGBTQIA+ community.

We interviewed several authors. For instance, Rich Nisbet, who wrote a children’s book to help children understand death and the continuity of life, and Rusty Rossman, a first-time author in her eighties. Rusty shared a way to ensure your loved ones know your preferences and hopes for your end-of-life care.

And we interviewed a new friend, Pamela Belyea, who has dealt with the loss of her son by creating little grief libraries with organized and labeled free books about all types of grief.

For our fourth season, some unique conversations are already live, including an interview with the author Tim Arsenault, who wrote an article about his organization, which provides grief training to spiritual directors. With Dr. Sheila Collins, we learn about the use of art as a means to cope with grief. We also enjoyed a fun discussion with Jay Deitcher about texting loved ones who have passed away. We posted an episode featuring Seth Samuels, who discussed the ways men in our culture cope with emotions and grief. And most recently, we had a delightful conversation with our editor, Sam Zemlee, a young man with some brilliant insights and an understanding that every moment, every breath, is both a birth and a death.

Check out the podcast here

Announcements and Events

Grief & Revolutionary Love in response to Authoritarianism
A Sacred Conversation with Valarie Kaur & Mirabai Starr

Wednesday, June 4th, 2025 | 5pm Pacific | 75 minutes

A gathering for those seeking to transform grief into action and hatred into revolutionary love

Reserve Your Place

Queer Death Salon on the topic of Disability at End of Life
Facilitated by Carrie Batt
Tuesday, June 17th, from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time, via Zoom, in English, with automatic closed captioning.
Attendance is pay-what-you-can (including free), and all funds raised support Carrie’s work.

Registration and Information

New Book by Gary Sturgis entitled: ‘The SURVIVING GRIEF Workbook’.
A companion book to his bestselling book: ‘SURVIVING GRIEF - 365 DAYS A YEAR’.

Starting June 25, A 6-week Dementia Readiness Course called “Ready to Live Fully” with Emerson Lee.

Emerson writes that “The Ready To Live Fully course is a step-by-step process that will bring you from fear of getting dementia to holding your personalized plan for living a whole, connected, meaningful life if you get it.

More Info & Registration

Before You Go - End of Life Planning Workshop

Saturday, July 26, 2025 - On Zoom from 11 AM to 1 PM Pacific Time

“We’re all going to die, and we don’t know when…” says my friend and mentor, Rev. Bodhi Be, who runs a non-profit green funeral home.

Given that essential and poignant truth, there are many things we can do to prepare ourselves and save our loved ones time and stress when that time comes.

This class will consider the myriad of choices, documentation, records, and other relevant details that one can prepare beforehand.

This class will explore legal documentation, practical considerations, relational networks, wishes for your memorial, the disposition of your body, and much more. This information is valuable to everyone, regardless of age or health status.

Register for Zoom Class

From Doorway Into Light - Facing Death, Nourishing Life

Date/time: September 19-November 3. This 7-week online training meets 2x each week for 2 hours (14 classes total). Mondays and Thursdays 10am-12pm Hawaii Time

Description: Reverend Bodhi Be and his team will guide us in deepening our relationships with death and dying, as well as to deeper meaning and purpose in our life. This training is for all those who wish to prepare for their dying time and their death, those who may care for a dying loved one, those who currently work in the fields of caring for the dying and their families, those wishing to or are being called to work in these fields, and those who care about the world.

Info & Registration

Poetry

You will lose everything.

Your money, your power, your fame, your success, perhaps even your memory.

Your looks will go.

Loved ones will die.

Your own body will eventually fall apart.

Everything that seems permanent is absolutely impermanent and will be smashed.

Experience will gradually, or not so gradually, strip away everything that it can strip away.

Waking up means facing this reality with open eyes and no longer turning away.

Right now, we stand on sacred and holy ground.

For that which will be lost has not yet been lost, and realizing this is the key to unspeakable joy.

Whoever or whatever is in your life right now has not yet been taken away from you.

This may sound obvious but really knowing it is the key to everything, the why and how and wherefore of existence.

Impermanence has already rendered everything and everyone around you so deeply holy and significant and worthy of your heartbreaking gratitude.

Loss has already transfigured your life into an altar.

- Jeff Foster