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.

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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 …

Read more

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…

Read more

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…

Read more

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…

Read more

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

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, artic…

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Mirabai also introduces her current projects, including the Wild Heart Space community, which supports individuals navigating grief as a spiritual path.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2257447/episodes/16886015-helping-navigate-grief-in-the-wild-heart-space-with-mirabai-starr

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2257447/episodes/16845782

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2257447/episodes/16820243

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2257447/episodes/16766620