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It is 13 years since my sister died. and In a few hours it will be 8 years since my mom died. In my tiny backyard, I wave to the cannisters that hold their ashes. The third cannister holds the ashes of my father. Earlier today I lit a candle for them to memorialize their death anniversary, also known as a yehrzeit candle.  I texted my kids so they could remember their grandma and their aunt. They sent back heart emojis. Their college education was largely paid for by their grandma and their aunt. I yearn to talk to my mom these days, more than I have in the 8 years since she died. I feel like she would have some wisdom for me.  Something I need to hear.  Something I want to know. I don't feel in touch with her spirit, but I am going to ask her to grant me her wisdom, tonight when I go to sleep. She loved chocolate cake. This was her last birthday cake 8 years and 3 months ago. She loved it. And at 94 years old, she giggled with glee as she ate it.  She knew the sweetness and deep pain of life. She knew you can't have one without the other. I had a good mom. My kids had a good grandma.  To Hikey and Barb, your memories are a blessing

So many amazing, hot women! Seventeen years ago when I went through menopause, I was hard pressed to find information about it, through holistic and conventional channels. Everything is different now!  One of the best outcomes of feminism is women in medicine and sciences. They are moving the field forward with their intelligence, synthetic thinking, humanistic approach, and making all sorts of discoveries. Now the field of perimenopause and menopause has exploded and there are so many great women scientists at the helm! Here are some of these badass women docs who have great podcasts and books that I have learned so much from: Lindsey Berkson Esther Blum Amy Killen Gabriella Lyon Rena Malik Tyna Moore Cynthia Thurlow I listen to their podcasts and have learned so much! I am so happy that my beloved daughters in 30 years will have even more information. Since I am an end of life doula and a holistic health coach, I believe in living fully until we die! Its aspirational of course but its truth. #menopause   #womendoctors   #deathdoula   #livinganddying

I am not a 12-Step person but there are two 12-Step axioms that I just love. In my 60's, I think I finally get what they mean. "Self-seeking will slip away."  and  "Half measures availed us nothing."  (on pages 84 and 59 respectively of the Big Book, thanks to my pal JTM!) If I am not always trying so hard to fix something I see as broken within myself, and can find a please of ease with myself, I can fully show up for the right here and right now. and I stopped doing things half-assed, because either I have more time to do them properly at this time in my life or I can just let them go because they are not necessary. I have choice. Doing things half-assed gets me nowhere fast.  Here is one more that I love: "Don't give up before the miracles happen!" Things are always changing and amazing things happen if you hang in there. Which axioms do you love and live by?

A woman cried in my arms when we finished her advanced care directive. "You have no idea what this means to me. I have been trying to do this for ten years. Its been so emotional for me that I haven't been able to. This is a huge relief for me." Most of the time, advance care directives (ACD) are not needed. They are there in case you cannot speak for yourself.  They define your wishes. In what scenarios would you want life saving measures? When would you prefer to die peacefully without intervention? What do you want if you have cognitive decline?  90% of us agree ACD's are very important. Only about 30% of us have them filled out.  You can find an abundance of forms online or through your healthcare provider. Who do you want to speak for you? Who do you trust to respect your wishes? Who do you trust to handle decisions for your care that you may not have anticipated? Try giving yourself a reasonable time period to do it, perhaps a month to decide on a form and another month to fill it in, and a third month to review with the person you want to speak for you if you cannot speak for yourself (health care proxy). If you find yourself having a difficult time facing it, talk to someone about it. But don't stop. Keep going. The ACD is a living document. You can change it any time.  You should review and update it every five years or so.  The important thing is to get it done.

I want to have a sense of completion before I die, assuming I die slowly like 90% of us do. Dr. Ira Byock wrote about this. As we approach the end of our days on earth, we withdraw from the world, then the country, then the region or community. We say goodbye to family and friends as our perspective narrows. We are spending our precious time on a smaller slice of the proverbial pie. Just the people who matter the very most. As we move towards a sense of completion, everything that is not absolutely essential falls away. We are with ourselves, with our own reckoning of self, our own acceptance of death, making our way to the transcendental and letting go.

I started thinking randomly the other day about what I will miss seeing in my two daughters' lives when I die, whenever that is.  I will miss a lot.  One daughter just got engaged and has so many creative ideas about putting on a really fun, special wedding. I love getting to hear her plans and she even wants to hear my input. It is just so sweet to be there with and for her as she takes this step in life. Honestly, and no pressure here, but I cannot wait for those grandbabies!  I got to visit my other daughter at her place of work yesterday. It was the third time I had been there in the almost two years she has worked there. And like the other times, every one of her colleagues couldn't help but tell me how much she helps everyone, how hard she works, how much she cares. I was nodding and beaming. Plus, I added, she is very beautiful. I can't wait to see all the things she does in her life and all the ways she grows and comes into herself. My favorite moment was when one of her colleagues said we looked like twins, despite our 40 year age difference! That was extra sweet because my girls are identical twins!  It really is incredible to see these two grown, lovely women, who came from one tiny egg that split way back in the first moments of conception, become two separate human beings, with different paths in life, who ask different questions from life, who have different interests and trajectories.  I honor both of their paths. May they walk with strong gaits and greet life with open hearts each day, and always come home- and to each other- for love.  I wish my mom, who died 8 years ago next month, could see them now.

I did therapy on and off for a total of thirty years. I had a very high ACE (adverse childhood events) and it took me a minute. Or two.  I received this daily Buddhist quote in my inbox a few days ago and I have since read it dozens of times. This quote is better than all the tools I learned those thirty years:  "Whenever you are experiencing an emotion, ask yourself: "Am I going to feel the emotion or be aware of the emotion?" In other words, are you going to watch it as an uninvolved observer, or are you going to participate in the emotion?" Nowadays I often can remember to do this. To just notice the feelings and get curious about them. I am much less reactive. I see my emotions as data that give me valuable information. Sometimes my partner tells me that I seem cerebral or analytical, and he is none too pleased with me, but really I am just noticing, with attachment or aversion. He is starting to realize there are benefits to my observation and non-attachment. I had a conflict with a woman a year and a half ago and I wish I had been able to do that then. I didn't. I felt anger and aversion. Now, I am not attached to the story I had told myself about what happened. Now I am happy I moved on. I didn't speak to my ex-husband for twenty five years. Then we spent a year communicating about the demise of our relationship. It was healing and I think of him with peace. I hope when I am on my deathbed that I have no unfinished business with others. I am working on that. I am also working on letting go of regrets and forgiveness towards myself. Have you observed being an uninvolved observer to your emotions? How's it going?

"I wish I had lived the life I wanted, rather than the one I thought was expected of me." That is one of the most common regrets of the dying.  That is why I tell my daughter to go for what she wants, work that she feels passionate about, that makes her feel that she is using all of herself. It’s not that she has ever been told she was expected to be a certain way. In fact, I told her she was whole and complete, and to find her way on her sweet, special journey. But how does she develop that level of discernment about what she really wants when she is pummeled by social media and movies that implicitly and explicitly value certain paths over others? I tell her she may feel drawn to the conventional, mainstream life and that is fine. It is also fine to be non-traditional, anti-authoritarian and non-conforming. There is a huge palette of choices. Her choice depends on her being honest with herself about what really makes her heart sing and what really calls her.  I hope she is relieved that her mom does not have this popular regret, although I have others! She has time. She will find her way. This is her one precious life. I love that girl.

Does it matter that the first evidence of a human burial rite is 100,000 years old?  By way of comparison, the wheel is only a 5,500 year old invention. This means that burying our dead in some type of ritualized manner became meaningful long before we needed wagons, carriages, or cars. Death was seen as part of life. Inevitable as the day and night. It’s right up there with controlled fire, which was invented 800,000 years ago. We innovate as we identify our needs and we have needed burial rites for a long time. Of course, stone tools, having been used by humans for 2.5 million years, were needed way back! We have a long history of honoring our dead; of making space for death and dying; of knowing it is the natural way. I love learning so many different death rituals from many cultures and traditions. They all seem to honor the spirit leaving the body in some kind of ritual of transition.  I believe we were a death embracing people before it was taken away and a taboo created around it. We are getting back the the natural way.

Why does it seem like everyone wants to be a death doula? It is no coincidence that most of us come to the work after experiencing caring for a loved one who died.  We were deeply, incredibly moved by sitting bedside. We were altered by being their witnesses. We were changed by facing death gently and compassionately. We were carried into a place of deep love. We survived the pain, the poignancy, the extraordinary experience of the hours and days and weeks of sitting quietly, wiping foreheads, cleaning bodies, talking with hospice workers, making arrangements, feeling death arrive and then leave with our dear ones. We shared with them their desire to belong, to feel deeply known.  We felt their need to know their life made a difference, their longing to be remembered.  We helped them leave this world in an ordered and peaceful way.  We feel blessed by them and we bless them. We celebrate them and we hold them in peace. Thank you Dr Byock for this list!

My hero, Parker Palmer, in a recent interview with the Greater Good Science Center said something I love. He said, "I can't think of a sadder way to die than with the realization that I never showed up in the world with who I really am and what I truly believe and care about and what I truly hope for..." He also said he defines spirituality as any way, any way, the person has to answer the perpetual human longing to be connected to something larger than one's own ego; something that can save us from the loneliness of self absorption; something that can give us a sense of meaning and purpose.  He allowed how that could be walking in nature, or organized religion, or meditation, or acts of kindness, or it could be involvement in an ultra right wing movement. We must use our own sense of discretion, our integrity, our moral compunction, to pursue our spiritual expression honestly and openly. How do you define your spirituality?

Nike was wrong. Feel the fear and do nothing. I am feeling the fear.  And noticing what it feels like. Every day since Jan 20th, I promised myself I would not give in to fear. I would not just prattle on about things. I would look for the hope and what I could effect. I would find out what great things others were doing.  That lasted about a month before I caved.  I took a pause and just observed the fear. I located where I felt it in my gut. I noticed that my stomach gets really tight and I feel a bit nauseated.  I started noticing something else about fear. It is everywhere, every day. It is our constant, albeit a behind the scenes companion.  My partner and I were talking tenderly about our fears about potential dealbreakers in our relationship. We fear love because it makes us so, so vulnerable. My daughter was afraid she wasn't going to get the job she really wanted.  We fear failure and we fear success.  I remember when my kids were growing up that gnawing fear I always had should any harm fall upon them. We fear our loved ones could be hurt and we could be unable to protect them. When my first husband and I split up, I was in deep emotional pain and it took me many months to feel hope again. I was so afraid that the pain would consume me. We fear the pain of heartbreak. I have a client who is so afraid of the pain that her illness will bring that she can hardly think of anything else, even though she desires a sense of completion about her life and her death. We fear physical pain. We fear death. That is the ultimate fear. What I know for sure is I can hold the fear. No matter the source of the fear - personal or political.  The fear co-exists with other companions including hope, courage, persistence and love. We will continue. Photo by Shubham Mittal