not dying yet...

yet... we are all dying

mural by Felicia Olin, artist of my book covers and me

Greetings fellow travelers and thank you for being open to conversations that do not attempt to elevate pleasantries above all else. The real.

There’s so much chaos and injustice going on that enhances concern for our wider family and loved ones as they negotiate life in these times. Frost that cake with some personal health issues that frequently leave me physically and emotionally feeling drained, it’s difficult to not spiral into a perpetual “Debbie Downer” mode— sound on.

In these strange times, my most recent effective antidote involves, first, noticing (easier said than done most times), and then fully acknowledging and sitting with the hard. Finally, finding one speck of gratefulness within that challenging paradigm. I have a funny feeling that may be one of the places where grace lives.

An ailing friend going through severe health issues: remembering specific memories and the beauty of our relationship with gratitude for having them in my life.

Wishing a situation could be better for one or more of our children: acknowledge the learning that challenges can bring. (in our hearts, they never stop being the essence of those precious wee ones they once were, do they?)

Frustration with my own health challenges: gratitude for what this body has given me (cue jazz hands from the birthed humans) and any moments I spend in relative ease.

I try to apply this concept to the micro and macro societal troubling issues in any given moment. Acknowledging and sitting with the hard allows me to not feel as though I’m simply denying reality and “sugar coating.” All of the challenging times we experience have at least a hint of a crack of light just begging to be unleashed.

One thing I’m grateful for is that, unlike last year when I could barely muster the energy to read or think, much less write, today, I was actually looking forward to putting some thoughts down. I’ll take that. (p.s. so far this year I’ve read eight books—huge compared to my near zero status of 2023)

With “our” youngest going out into the wide world we had planned to do some extended travel this year. At this point we are leary to venture too far afield from New Zealand’s nationalized health care that as citizens we partake in. No matter how raunchy I feel there is still a youthful spirit in me that aches to explore. We found a compromise in planning a trip to some Pacific islands, that a final bequeathment from my mother’s estate will fund; she’d approve. Less of a plane ride, total r&r on the sea, not too far to abort swiftly if health plummets. It’s a trial run of sorts, one we both can benefit from and hopefully will open the door to courageously travelling further afield one day.

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I don’t have the stamina for continuing the podcast and at the same time am amazed at the blossoming of offerings available in the same genre.

One I’d like to share is Dead Talks, hosted by David Ferrugio .

When I was in the US for three months in 2022, I was supposed to wrap the visit with an interview with David in LA to talk about the book and project before I flew home to NZ.

Totally wiped out, I sadly cancelled that interview.

Back to his podcast— he was early in the production at that time and I applauded him for his effort. Kudos to him, Dead Talks podcast has blown up—in a good way. Much like me, he has folks on to share their stories surrounding life/death. Highly recommend.

Over the past year+ while I’ve been struggling with health you may have heard me say how pleased I am that the next generations are rising to the fore and creating beautiful, unique and excellent spaces to explore all things death. Dead Talks Podcast is the perfect example. Like The Death Dialogues Project Podcast and its 128 episodes (which you can find on this Substack account), David is deeply interested in others’ stories. Highty recommend!

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The other day I listened to a podcast episode that had automatically queued itself up on my podcast platform. Hearing messages, such as this beautifully articulated conversation, at just the right time, are the bits of magic and synchronicity that I hold on to tightly.

I’ve always felt like the podcast On Being is a bit like church for me, but this episode with Nick Cave and Tippet blew me away (filing it close to John O’Donahue’s episode).

Nick so articulated his view of death and loss in a way that landed deep in my soul; his every word resonated. Among many losses, an earlier history of addiction, family deaths, two of his sons died, one at 15 and the other later at 31. May I be so bold to say that grief rewiring him was one of the takeaways: listen to his beautiful words and see what you get from them. If you are here, you’ll surely find meaning there.

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A while back I took a poll of followers of the project on Instagram to see if there was interest in me sharing chapters of my unpublished memoir through the lens of death. The response was 100% yes (she shudders).

Music has always been one of the primary ways I have processed challenging times. Its effect is unexplainable, what it lights up in me. After every chapter I have a song that feels very resonate of the chapter you’ve just read. I’ll link them them so you can listen as you go… others have felt that it adds a dimension of understanding.

I have the inner stamina to share this introduction and the first chapter in another post. Full disclosure: I may need some affirmation from the readers to continue sharing chapters of the book. Again. Vulnerability.

Here is the front cover created by Felicia Olin in Springfield, Illinois. I adore it.

Introduction

Death tore me apart and put me back together differently.

After years of working in the helping field, first as a nurse and then a mental health clinician/therapist, my life has now given me the privilege of being able to honor the calling of my heart. 

Called by death.

The heavier side of this journey involves my immersion into death as a child, death in clinical settings, the aftermath of humans ending their lives, and the intimate death and dying of my personal loves from my family of origin. 

Indeed, death has had its way with me.

Raised in a tumultuous household, I was always a deep feeler and had a sense of knowing as a child that surely helped keep my head above water. 

Part of the deep knowing included an understanding that, quite possibly, there are no accidents. I don’t claim to have any concrete answers to our ultimate questions about death, dying, and the aftermath; I bow at the feet of the great mystery.

What I do feel quite certain about is the magic our universe holds.

Those déjà vu moments, the whispers we hear that point us in a direction we hadn’t seen before, the coincidences, the signs. If you read no further than this paragraph, I implore you to start slowing down, pausing and taking notice of the trail of breadcrumbs the universe drops down for us to follow.

While being trained in therapeutic intervention, I thankfully was required to dig deeply and excavate the nooks and crannies of my life that held blockages and pain. I took that work seriously, believing it was my duty to be as grounded and sound as possible if I was going to help others navigate their emotional terrain. 

Embarrassingly, there was a long period of time I took pride in feeling that the deep inner work was done and dusted. Yep, I’d picked through the bones of the chaos we lived in; therefore I could only move ever forward, thank-you-very-much.

What I was not prepared for was to what degree complicated relationships, complicated childhoods, and complicated lives beget a very complex grief process. 

Messy. Messy grief.

As I was coming to the realization that we need to let our stories surrounding death out of the closet, I'm sure my deceased brother whispered into my ear to start The Death Dialogues Project. The rationale was made crystal clear by my academic experience, therapeutic training, but especially my personal experience with the dying process and the aftermath. That experience led to my awareness that we do not learn from someone who has never known great loss and the ensuing waves of grief, or sat by the side of a dying soulmate or child, or gotten that phone call in the middle of the night, or waited for someone to come home who never would again. Nor do we learn from textbooks with rote, generalized information. 

We learn from deeply connecting with people’s real life stories—walking intimately with them through their experience. True stories of how death and grief have had their way with people. This makes us better informed when it's inevitably our time to walk that path, holding hands with grief. 

Absorbing lessons from these stories is like absorbing vitamin D from sunlight. Our lives are enriched and we are fortified. We become better humans.

After suffering a hurt-full childhood, the saving grace for me was that my mother gave me space to process, to work through our story; this was a coping skill that followed me as a young adult and into the rest of my life. Repeated practice at talking about or writing out the fact that my father’s bizarre outbursts were about him and not us, and speculating what could have been responsible for this huge chink in his armor, taught me how to practice the same discernment throughout my life. 

When great loss struck me more recently, I wanted to go back to all the people who had paid me to sit with them as their therapist throughout the years and say, “I’m sorry, I would have done better if I’d only known.” My father’s death when I was 22 was not the lesson in deep loss I thought it had been. You will understand from my story how ill-equipped I had been.

As days and nights morph into months and years,  I realize more and more that my academic and clinical foundation have been trumped by life’s greatest joys and sorrows. Within these pages I bequeath to you the wisdom I have mined from the classroom of The Real. It took laying down my academic and clinical cloak to fully awaken to the lessons that were right in front of me: the stories inside myself and the stories of others.

When your expensive education and work experience and ethical requirements insist you deny so much of your humanness to set appropriate boundaries, to keep yourself safe, to maintain professional distance at all costs—and instead hunt for the correct diagnostic box to tick—the ability to listen and connect to the layers of another’s humanness is frequently deeply damaged. 

Here is my personal story. 

Messy. 

Complicated. 

Disturbing. 

Beautiful. 

Magical. 

This is an outpouring I’ve yet to share in this depth and detail, which I hope will illustrate the answer to a question I am frequently asked. The why behind my decision to create The Death Dialogues Project. 

How in the world can someone stay so deeply involved with death?

Another book, Death and Its Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Beautiful Lessons: field notes from The Death Dialogues Project, that has been simultaneously released holds lessons, too, but not just from my stories. The lessons in those pages also come from brave souls who have shared their tender hearts with me for The Death Dialogues Project and have given me permission to share glimpses into their experiences. Because the book encompasses so many interviews and conversations surrounding dying, death, and the aftermath, the wisdom shared in it is a treasure chest of clues for better understanding the great mystery.

Life really is fueled by the stories we tell.

One of the ways I process my personal stories, especially those about loss, is with music. There is a Spotify playlist you can find called and then the stars spoke. I invite you to listen to the songs in the context of the section you’ve just read if you would like a deeper peek into my inner journey. This is one of the answers to the question, “How do you do this?” Imagine that I’m sinking into these songs with you as I did while pondering these stories and writing this long and messy tale. Over and over again.

Thanks for being here. 

Song: “Who are We” by Ian Randall Thornton  

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As I’m linking Death and its Terrible, No Good, Horrible, Very Beautiful Lessons to Amazon, I’m seeing they are basically giving the Kindle version away at the moment. Even if you don’t want to purchase from there, you can read the reviews, read a sample and hear a sample of the audio book.

Highly recommend you grab it. The physical copy’s cover is simply a beautiful piece of art and makes a lovely, thoughtful gift. The book is also available on most other online bookstores. Bookshop.org is a sweet indie choice. You can have me read the book to you by getting it on Audible.

A final thought, as I have shared pieces of my heart with you, I’m struck by how much more vulnerable I feel about putting my work out there right now. I can only imagine that exacerbation grows from the vulnerability my health has drenched me in over the past 18 months.

And I will say for the record, I am not officially dying at the moment (yet, we are actually all dying in this moment).

Here are some words from Kahlil Gibran for those who might find comfort in them:

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.

And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

Sending love and understanding-

Becky