Open to all

Membership will be limited to 18 people

Many people, including helping professionals, feel fearful, overwhelmed, and unsure of how to best respond when they are in proximity to death, dying and bereavement processes. As death in the United States, has become an increasingly invisible and medicalized process our collective willingness, and ability to talk and listen about death and dying has atrophied, and is often left to specialists. Climate injustice, political and economic instability, and the pandemic, with so many unacknowledged losses, has only intensified this dissociation.

I believe that it is everyone’s work to be able to talk about death and dying, and that the general population needs to learn again how to to support those who are in close proximity to death through care-taking, bereavement, exposure to natural disasters, scarcity and violence, or potentially terminal illness. Those immersed in death, dying and bereavement processes too often experience extreme feelings of alienation from the wider community as a result of our inadequately developed skills and lack of familiarity with end of life.

You are welcome to explore these resources about my work and stance:

Santa Fe NM Public Radio KSFR Interview: Grief, Loss, Mortality and Living Well - interviewed by Dr. Melanie Harth

New York Magazine: I was always terrified of wasting time. A cancer diagnosis made me reconsider

As well as this recorded community discussion -The Uncertain Path. If you use this discount code - G9YZUW4 - you will be able to access this recording for free.

The syllabus will offer suggested readings prior to each session, often from my ebook, Circling the Drain: Essays from the Edge of the Abyss, which I complied as a companion to this workshop, and which will be provided as a PDF to participants.

Each session is a facilitated discussion focused around a theme and a series of discussion prompts: evocative excerpts from relevant works of memoir, non-fiction, poetry, psychology, philosophy, thanatology and theology.

Discussion is followed by a period of guided contemplation and brief silence, offering an opportunity to integrate the content. Before closing the session, time will be reserved to share any after-thoughts that may have emerged during reflection.

Some subjects covered in this workshop:

• Cultural history of death and dying

• Care taking and bereavement

• Defining “a good death”

• The psychological labor of dying

• Racism, white supremacy and the distribution of death

• Climate change and existential anxiety

• Ancestors and Object Constancy

• Dreams, visions, psychedelics and end of life

• Memento Mori and impermanence practices

• Living with dying as existential and political practice

I do need to state clearly that this content is challenging, and this serves as a content warning for the workshop in its entirety.

The goal of this workshop is to help people incrementally test and gently expand past their anxiety line – to increase their comfort and tolerance of end of life discussions. My hope - and my personal experience - is that by withstanding these fears more than our avoidant culture encourages, that we become  braver, freer and more connected to our lives and the lives of other people and species.

This is not a psychotherapy group, or a bereavement group – although I hope it will offer us space to heal and grieve along the way.  I strongly encourage each person who participates to arrange to have some psycho-spiritual support in some form – a therapist, spiritual advisor, a bereavement group, a mentor or elder – available to you. Nothing discussed in this group should be considered clinical guidance.

Those struggling with active or passive suicidal thoughts or gestures, or severe traumatic symptoms should not enroll in this workshop.

(Contemplation of legal methods of hastening death for those terminally ill, physician assisted suicide, death with dignity etc. are not considered “suicidality” for the purposes of this group)

Also: this workshop does explore various spiritual, religious perspectives on death and dying from an agnostic and respectful perspective– including various Buddhist, Catholic and shamanic viewpoints. If discussions of religiosity or spirituality are offensive or annoying to you, this workshop will not be a good fit.

Finally - this workshop, with myself as a facilitator may not be a good fit for everyone who enrolls. You are welcome to make donations on your own schedule, so that if you determine this workshop is not for you after enrolling you can withdraw without feeling bound by your donation. I encourage participants to make whatever decisions are best for them and anyone who decides to withdraw at any time will be supported in that decision.

This group actively welcomes members of different professions, races/ethnicities, gender identities and socioeconomic realities, spiritual/religious beliefs and practices.  The expectation is that we come together to try to hold each other’s diverse experiences with mutual respect.

I facilitate my workshops according to a modified model of community group processing derived from Quaker practice that emphasizes the freedom of each participant to regulate their own participation according to their needs.

I do not require cameras on at all times and I try not to pressure quieter members to share although it is certainly nice to see faces and hear from everyone, and I will occasionally check in on people who are more reserved to see if they have anything they want to share.

The model of processing here less focused on cross talk between members, and more focused on parallel subjective sharing - holding up all of our divergent responses and experiences alongside each others so that we may get a glimpse of a larger whole.

We do not gather to persuade, correct or change other’s points of view, but to listen and understand how differing perspectives may exist together.

Participants are welcome to take breaks as they need, no one is pressured to participate in the contemplative exercises that are offered, and may chose to sit in silence or use that time for personal reflection if they so chose.

I can, when people have scheduling conflicts or emergencies or illness record sessions upon request. Recordings are double password protected, and shared only with workshop members - and deleted after two weeks.

I expect workshop members to be able to rely on their personal and professional supports to process feelings and ideas that emerge after or in between sessions.

• This workshop is offered by pay-what-you-can donation

• $1280 is the suggested donation for those who are financially comfortable. (16 sessions/24 hours of programing or $80 per session)

• You are welcome to attend for half ($640) or a quarter ($320) of the suggested donation or whatever is affordable based on your financial circumstances

• I expect to offer up to four free/pro bono seats in my workshops depending on group size/enrollment

• If you are in a position to do so, please consider making a donation to provide scholarship funds to community members who have interest but do not have resources. For example: a $160 donation subsidizes one full scholarship seat in the group, and $40 covers a quarter of the cost of a full scholarshiip

• These are not clinical services, and insurance will not reimburse for any part of this content

• Donations can be made on any schedule that is comfortable for you.

It is important to me that these groups be socioeconomically inclusive so please don’t hesitate to let me know what is affordable for you.