The GroundSwell Project and #dyingtoknowday

The GroundSwell Project: "The GroundSwell Project is a not for profit organisation known for using innovative arts and health programs to create social and cultural change about death and dying. 

Our aim is to promote resilience and wellbeing in response to end of life issues and to encourage people to build their death literacy. 

Who are we? A committed team of artists, arts practitioners, health professionals, bloggers, film-makers, teachers, nurses, leaders, techy types, playwrights, business professionals, innovators, writers, researchers, story-tellers. "



'via Blog this'

A Husband Mourns His Wife, Right to Die Advocate Lecretia Seales

Afterwards – Lecretia's Choice:

'via Blog this'

It’s only now that I am beginning to really come to terms with what losing Lecretia means, and how much she was so foundational to who I’ve become over these past twelve years. With her gone, there is this massive absence, and things that I was so sure of, and that I took for granted, are no longer there. I keep reaching out to latch on to assumptions about life I thought I could be sure of, and find that what I thought was firm and solid ground has given way to an abyss.
All those things that Lecretia meant to me, I am still attached to. They abide in me like hunger and thirst. And when I try and draw sustenance from the same places, out of habit, there’s now nothing. I know that I will need to find things to fulfill those needs somehow – the physical, the mental, the social, the romantic – but I know it’s months or more likely years before that will happen. For now I’ll have to endure this hunger and emptiness and it will always be a feature of who I am. I’ve spoken to a few people who have lost partners and they say similar things. It takes time, and it gets easier, they say, but it never really goes away.
There is this strange sense that I am not mourning often enough, or deeply enough. That the intensity of my grief should be a perfect reflection of the passion I had for my wife. That I have short-changed her memory somehow, ridiculously, by not being utterly inconsolable for weeks on end. But the loss is felt in moments – as sudden pangs or vertiginous stumbles – and then they pass. It’s sorrow but equally a profound sense of unfairness.
And then again:
“… this separation, I suppose, waits for all. I have been thinking of H. and myself as peculiarly unfortunate in being torn apart. But presumably all lovers are.”
The injustice, if there was one, was not the passing itself, which was inevitable, but the timing, which was too soon. I feel for Lecretia’s parents most of all, as although all lovers must inevitably part, children almost always survive their parents, and that didn’t happen this time. And what an extraordinary expression of their love Lecretia was. How great their sense of loss must be.
I am not sure what comes next. I feel unsettled. I think I want to disappear for a while, perhaps visit some of the places that Lecretia had wanted to visit, but I don’t feel like I can until I get Lecretia’s affairs in order, which I have begun to do. I have known people to become reckless and irresponsible with their lives through grief. I don’t feel like that’s going to happen to me. I carry her with me now, and at the moment I feel like I have a duty to honour her memory by being my best self. But I am not out of this process yet, and I think I have some way to go. There is much to do.

How to Talk About Dying -- Ellen Goodman on Starting the Conversation

How to Talk About Dying - The New York Times: "We still need to transform the cultural norm from not talking about how we want to live at the end of life to talking about it. The real work to close the gap is not just for doctors and patients. It’s for mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, families and friends. We have to bring people to the kitchen table to talk with those they love to have the conversation. And to do this before there is a crisis. Not in the I.C.U.

In our survey, the primary reason people gave for not talking to their loved ones was “It’s too soon.” But it’s always too soon … until it’s too late. Half of all elderly people in hospitals cannot make decisions for themselves at the end of life. Far too many health care providers are uncomfortable and untrained in these conversations.

From all the stories shared with us, we know that what people need most is help getting started. They need a travel guide to take the first steps down an unfamiliar and difficult road. So we created a Conversation Starter Kit, which deliberately avoids being a technical medical checklist for the dying in favor of a careful discussion guide for the living.

Our starter kit asks what matters to you, not what’s the matter with you. "



'via Blog this'

Poem: And Death Shall Have No Dominion by Dylan Thomas

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead man naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion. 

Dylan Thomas

National Bereavement Camp Conference -- for Facilities to Help Children With Loss

Moyer Foundation - Events: "

 The Moyer Foundation is excited to announce that the 2015 National Bereavement Camp Conference (NBCC) will be held November 16 & 17, 2015 in Washington, D.C., at the Liaison Capitol Hill. The NBCC is presented in partnership with the New York Life Foundation.  Questions? Contact Bethany Gardner, Camp Erin Program Manager, at bethany@moyerfoundation.org or (206) 298-1217.

'via Blog this'

Mourning a Mother by Helping Others Who Mourn

Grief Has No Age | National Alliance for Grieving Children: "Every day I think of her and what could have been, but I also know that I would be different, my path in life would have been different. Death is a part of life, but when you experience the loss of a parent as a young child without the proper tools grief is very hard to work through.

This life was handed to me because I am strong enough to live it and if I can be of help to just one person, one child, then it has been worth all the pain.

This is my life's purpose, this writing (righting) here, right now.... My story.

Grief has no time limit, no age.

I was put on this earth to change the future for someone, and in a beautiful way I am finally finding closure -- because I too, am still a grieving child.

"



'via Blog this'

Grief is NOT Self-Pity, Joel Osteen | The Rev. Sue Wintz

Grief is NOT Self-Pity, Joel Osteen | The Rev. Sue Wintz

The popular minister is getting a lot of comments on his statement that grieving too long is attention-seeking and people should get over it.

Allowing mourners to be in their pain, without trying to make them change how they feel (often to make yourself and said others feel better), would actually be a more compassionate and more Christlike response. Why? Because trying to force a grieving person to feel better is like telling a double amputee to get up and run before she is ready: it's insensitive, lacks circumspection, and certainly doesn't even remotely resemble compassion. And Jesus seemed intent on compassion for the weakest amongst... didn't he? Are we talking about the same guy?

I suspect the psychological responses of the couple to whom you make reference in your book were exacerbated by judging others who, like you, are likely terrified to imagine what it would be like to see your own child's dead, cold body laying in a casket. I do understand. That is not an image you want in your mind is it, sir. 

So, instead of joining them in imagining that horror, one you really can never fathom until it is happening and, even then, the brain does all it can to protect itself from the utter atrocity of the experience, you -- and others - -use spiritual bypass to "lift up" -- only for many, these pushes toward premature healing don't lift up grieving parents -- they tear down and alienate and ostracize those who most need comfort and solidarity.
By joining them in the abyss, rather than "lifting them (forcibly) up," they see that others have stood by them, borne witness to their suffering, not averted their gaze, have offered their nonjudgmental heart and compassion, slowly, ever so slowly, integration comes. 

No, they do not "like the attention." No, they are not slathering in what you call "self-pity." Their child is dead.