Let Nature Set the Scene

For an outdoor celebration of life, consider a location that held special meaning for your loved one. A place where they found peace, happiness or joy, allowing the setting itself to become just as meaningful to the ceremony as the decorations. Fall memorial backdrop locations such as a quiet pond, autumn meadow, wooded clearing or garden surrounded by seasonal foliage, are examples of places where the natural landscape can become part of the ceremony. Mindfully choosing the outdoor setting creates an opportunity to position the backdrop so that the landscape becomes part of the view behind the speaker. In this way, the memorial does not simply take place in nature; it becomes a part of it.

Building the Memorial Backdrop

A custom wooden frame can create a beautiful backdrop, but you don’t need a carpenter to achieve this effect. The backdrop truly begins with a sturdy frame designed to withstand outdoor conditions. A freestanding garden arbor, wedding arch, or portable backdrop stand can provide an easy alternative and is often available from garden centers, event-rental companies or home-improvement stores. Once the frame is positioned securely, it can be transformed with fabric, foliage and dried grasses to create a backdrop that feels custom-made for the memorial.

You may want to obtain:

• • •    a freestanding garden arbor, wedding arch or backdrop
  • •    textured natural fabric
  • •    moldable floral or craft wire
  • •    dried autumn foliage
  • •    dried fall grasses
  • •    pampas grass
  • •    fresh seasonal leaves and flowers
  • •    an antique table, credenza or small side table
  • •    a copper box or vessel
  • •    eucalyptus or other seasonal greenery
  • •    a microphone and any materials needed for the eulogy

Drape the Fabric

Once the frame is securely positioned, drape the fabric over both sides of the structure. Rather than pulling the fabric tightly, allow the material to fall naturally for a loose, organic appearance. Use moldable wire to create simple tiebacks to hold the fabric in place. 

Add Autumn Foliage and Grasses

Create a large spray of dried fall grasses, pampas grass, fresh autumn leaves and seasonal flowers to place at the top of the arch. Secure the arrangement to the frame using wire, allowing some of the grasses and foliage to extend naturally beyond the edges. 

Create a Simple Eulogy Table

An antique table, credenza or small side table can provide a natural decorative element while leaving enough room for a microphone, notes and any other materials the person delivering the eulogy may need.

Enjoy Remembering Your Loved One

While creating a fall memorial backdrop can add something extra special, it doesn’t have to be a complex set up. For an especially simple option, use two sturdy freestanding plant stands to support draped fabric. No matter what outdoor landscape is chosen, Autumn’s changing leaves, grasses moving in the breeze and the natural colors of the season can provide a gentle reminder of life’s cycles of change, beauty and remembrance of the one you hold dear.

The post Our Monthly Tip: Incorporate a Fall Backdrop as a Memorial in Nature for Celebrations of Life<div class='secondary-title'>Fabric and dried autumn foliage create a beautiful natural setting for a loved one’s eulogy</div> appeared first on SevenPonds.

Funerals have become one of the fastest-growing categories on crowdfunding websites like GoFundMe, where online users can donate to any cause they choose. Industry watchers who have crunched GoFundMe’s reported figures even estimate that roughly 4.1% of U.S. funerals involve crowdfunding support — that’s 1 in 25 families. 

Once considered a last resort for paying these expenses, crowdfunding has quietly and quickly become a normal funding source for arranging a funeral or memorial service. This growing trend says a lot about the cost of these services, the state of American finances, and a broader change in how community support (or online support) can show up for grieving families.

The Cost of Funerals

The National Funeral Directors Association estimated in 2023 that the average cost of a funeral, including viewing and burial, is roughly $8,300. Cremation costs slightly less, at an estimated $6,280, but this amount is still thousands of dollars more than most families have in their bank accounts. Even further, these figures don’t typically include cemetery plots, headstones, travel expenses and other “external” types of costs associated with memorial services.

A large share of Americans don’t have the savings set aside to cover expenses of that size, especially if the death was sudden and unexpected. Recent Bankrate survey data revealed that 53% of Americans couldn’t even cover a $1,000 emergency expense using their savings. Around a quarter of Americans reported that they had no emergency savings at all.

For these families, funeral bills cost eight times more than the average household can produce on short notice. Crowdfunding serves to ease that burden and fill the gap that any insurance, pre-planning and savings do not cover. 

When Do Families Turn to Crowdfunding?

Relying on crowdfunding assistance for funeral expenses tends to happen when deaths arrive without warning — and this may happen more often than one may realize. Sudden cardiac events alone are responsible for an estimated 10% to 15% of all deaths, especially for men and people over 55 without any prior diagnoses. Accidental deaths, stemming from incidents like overdoses or car accidents, are ranked by the CDC as the third-leading cause of death in America, and the leading cause of death for those between the ages of one and 44. 

While families who lose a loved one after a long illness have more advance notice and time to plan, those who are confronted with a heart attack, car accident or work injury rarely do. These demographics are the most likely to turn to GoFundMe and start a fundraiser covering the related costs.

Longer Lives, But Fewer Savings

Americans are living longer than ever — in 2024, the CDC reported a life expectancy of 79 years. With longer lives, finances (especially during retirement) are stretched thinner, especially with significant rises in inflation and the cost of living. End-of-life financial preparedness is sacrificed in order to compensate for these factors.

If these financial stresses and cost increases rise further, we may see funeral expenses grow even more as a category on crowdfunding websites. Relying on online community support is an understandable response to a world where the cost of dying has outpaced a family’s ability to pay for it. Crowdfunding has even become an informal safety net during emergencies like these.

Success on crowdfunding websites, unfortunately, depends on a particular family’s social network, their ability to use and access these websites and the generosity of strangers. Nothing is guaranteed with crowdfunding, so it should not be the solution to the rise in costs and financial insecurity for American families. For some, however, it has become a lifeline.

The post Funeral Costs Dominate Crowdfunding Campaigns<div class='secondary-title'>As the cost of living climbs, more families turn to crowdfunding to raise money for funerals when saying goodbye becomes unaffordable</div> appeared first on SevenPonds.

When conventional treatments aren’t sufficient, non-Western Medicine-inspired methodologies can offer alternative avenues of hope. Dr. Nan Herron, a psychiatrist and death doula in Berkeley, CA, believes that ketamine-assisted therapy (KAT) is a powerful resource in her practice, able to catalyze profound exploration and relief.

KAT is an innovative therapeutic approach that combines the psychoactive medicine ketamine with psychotherapy to enhance and deepen the healing process. When administered in lower doses, ketamine — an anesthetic long used in operating rooms — can not only decrease sensitivity to pain but create hypnotic, dream-like, or even fully dissociative trance states. 

We spoke with Dr. Herron to get a better understanding of what KAT looks like, who it might benefit the most, and how it is helping some patients find peace when other therapies have been ineffective. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Can you tell us a little bit about how you got into psychedelic medicine, and how it applies to people dealing with end-of-life?

I moved from New York to California 12 years ago — out of the blue — for three months to escape the winter, and then never left. I was going to do a three-month visiting psychiatry job in a hospital, but that turned into a career, and staying put here. 

I got introduced into the world of psychedelic medicine because there’re so many limitations with what Western psychiatric medications offer, in terms of what we can do for people. We can help depression and anxiety to a certain extent; we can manage psychosis. But psychedelic medicines kinda hit the brain from the inside out, and real change happens when people are like, ‘Wow, I have a completely different viewpoint,’ as opposed to being like, ‘Yeah, I feel a little numb and my depression isn’t as bad.’ So that was very appealing to me. 

About six years ago, I left the hospital setting because it got to be too depressing. It was hard working with patients who had an opposite agenda to what I was working towards; either they wanted to stay and it was really time for them to go, or they really wanted to go but were too suicidal and had to stay. I was done fighting with my patients. I wanted to work with people who said, ‘I’m coming to you with a goal, with a mission, with a vision. Can you help me put it into place?’ so I could say, ‘You got it.’ So now I do outpatient work. 

And then more and more, I decided to embrace the idea of being an elder – I’m 65, and I stopped dying my hair – at the same time that all of my parents’ generation started to die. My mom is alive and well, but my dad died. And my step-parents, with whom I was very close, died, and an aunt I was very close with, passed as well. And I really began to see that even for people who are incredibly well-resourced, what limitations there are for [treating] people who are dying. 

Part of what happens in the psychedelic therapy world – if you are any good, you seek to explore it from the inside out. That is, you go to trainings and workshops and retreats, which aren’t necessary, but it doesn’t make any sense to be a practitioner of psychedelic medicine if you don’t have any personal experience with psychedelics. And I began to develop a very different relationship with death. The idea of, ‘Oh, it’s just another way of being.’ Yes, it’s horrible and full of loss and pain and missing people, but there’s so much that we could do to do things differently. So I wanted to understand how, as a physician, I could use what little power I have in this world to make things better.

California is incredibly sweet when it comes to open-mindedness with death. There’s medical assistance in dying that’s available; there’s a lot of compassionate care and death with dignity programs, so I went about educating myself. I wanted to have the academic background, the broader national perspective, so I completed the death doula training offered by UVM [University of Vermont], which is an incredible program, as well as some death doula training offered by local folks. I really wanted to understand what there is, locally, as well, and I got connected with this amazing group of death doulas: Final Passages in Sonoma County. 

How did you discover ketamine’s benefits for this kind of therapy?

Ketamine is a psychedelic medicine that is legally available in California, offered for depression, anxiety and a few other things. Its use is expanding pretty rapidly, and it seemed to be an obvious choice of a medication that could help folks who are having anxiety about dying, or for caregivers who are a part of that world. I was having conversations with some death doulas out here, who are in their late 70s, early 80s, who have a lot of experience with psychedelics, you know? But a lot has changed since they were taking it recreationally 45 years ago — which in theory I have nothing against, but in my mind it’s a waste of time and resources. When I talk about psychedelic medicine, it’s in a very controlled therapeutic setting with lots of preparation and medical supervision. 

These death doulas were very interested in the idea of using psilocybin for therapeutic purposes, which is decriminalized in nearby parts of California, and is very accessible. I mean, people are growing it in their basements. But I can’t use it legally in my practice. I can’t show up as Dr. Herron and say, ‘Let’s do some mushrooms.’ When I suggested ketamine, their initial reaction was that it sounds cold, it’s a chemical… but I referred them to a friend who has a clinic where you can safely experience ketamine. The clinics tend to have soothing music and beautiful little fountains and pillows, a real spa atmosphere, and the death doulas came out of that saying, ‘Forget what we said. This is great. Let’s do it.’

What does the process of ketamine therapy look like?

Typically, someone approaches me — sometimes it’s a family member, sometimes it’s someone who is dying — and they say they’re not okay with dying. ‘This is really not okay with me. I want to feel better about it, I want to understand it better, and I hear you have something that might help.’ Or the family member might say ‘I’m having such a hard time understanding that this is really the end, and just how to manage all this anxiety.’ Because there’s just not that kind of support out there. 

So for my practice, I work with a friend who has a clinic. I don’t have a clinic; I can’t access the injectable version because it’s a controlled substance, but I work with a couple of places that do. And we do a lot of preparation, at least three therapy sessions when we discuss what the patient is looking for, what they’re worried might come up in a session, and what their goals might be. We also discuss if they’ve had any prior experience with psychedelic medicine, and what their relationship is with the idea of death.

I always do a thorough trauma history, to find out what really difficult things have happened in their lives that have shaped who they are and what they think of from time to time. People might say, ‘There’s this thing that happened that I never told anyone,’ and we can discuss what they think they might do if that comes up on their journey. What if that becomes really vivid during the experience, are they prepared for that? So we work with that in a therapeutic way beforehand, which is why it’s so important to have a therapist involved in any psychedelic experience.

Once we feel ready, I instruct the patient to prepare themselves like they would for a spa: wear comfortable clothes, bring an eye mask, and we pick a playlist together with soothing instrumental music. They can’t eat for a few hours beforehand, because it might upset their stomach, and then we administer a very small injection, usually subcutaneously because it has a more subtle onset. 

Ketamine can be offered by injection, by mouth, or intravenously (IV), so there’s a lot of flexibility. The most common ways to administer ketamine are injection or by mouth. Mouth is awkward, because it doesn’t taste so great, and you need to hold it in your mouth for 15-ish minutes. Your mouth fills up with saliva, and it gets absorbed into your mucus membranes. But it’s the easiest way, in some ways, because a medical person doesn’t need to be there, they can just prescribe “troches,” which are lozenges that slowly dissolve. 

Ideally, though, you would go to a clinic that is really well-versed in this, where they give you an injection and there’s a medical person sitting there with you the whole time, in addition to (hopefully) a therapist. 

One of my huge pet peeves of this world is that there are ketamine clinics that say, ‘Nice to meet you, write me a check. We’re gonna inject you or give you an IV, and we’ll see you in an hour.’ People are always like, ‘It was a horrible, scary experience.’ Well, yeah! Because it was managed really poorly! You need someone doing a lot of preparation, like therapy and education, and sitting there offering a hand – literally – the whole time. 

Usually what happens is people are really worried about what the experience will be like, and they’re really nervous. So when we just give them a tiny bit of ketamine, they almost immediately relax. After a few minutes go by, when they seem comfortable with the experience, we offer a bigger dose by injection. It all depends on what the patient wants. Some people are like, ‘That was plenty, can we do that again?’ Because ketamine is very short-acting. Its effects can be as short as 20 minutes. And it all depends on your personal metabolism and a lot of other variables. 

Then, if the patient is ready for the larger dose, it’s often a dose where people “check out.” They go… wherever they are gonna go. It’s important to understand that they cannot control where they’re going to go. It’s just not an option. We can set intentions in our preparations, we can do guided imagery, but it’s all about what’s going on in your brain. That’s why we always ask people if there are matters that they really want to avoid, because that’s not how psychedelics work. If you’re trying to avoid something, you’re either going to spend the whole time being anxious about it coming up and spending energy pulling away, or it’s gonna come up and be terrifying. 

For folks who have a lot of depression and anxiety, ketamine itself will treat that over the course of five or six sessions, over a number of weeks. We typically recommend at least two talking sessions before and after each ketamine session, to discuss what you want to happen, what you’re scared of. Many people will say they only have one agenda, one intention, and then it will shift completely. They thought they were coming in for something and then they realize there’s all this stuff from their past that they’ve been suppressing that’s affecting everything else. 

What can you do if a patient is having difficulty with whatever they’re experiencing?

If someone is really freaking out, we don’t want to make it go away right away, because it could be really valuable material. Sometimes people will get scared and say, ‘Oh my God, I’m gonna go, I’m gonna die. I’m not going to exist anymore. I don’t know where I’m going.’ And my role is to hold their hands and say, ‘Yeah, you’re doing great. You’re doing great. I’m right here.’ It must be terrifying, but if you can turn toward it and ask it what it has to teach you, that’s crucial, because for many people that’s why they’re here.

So we don’t want them to avoid it, we want them to be open to it, to inspect it. During our preparations, we tell folks that if something terrifying does turn up, we’re going to keep you totally physically safe. We can come up with a signal ahead of time, like if they’re scared I can squeeze their hand, and reassure them I’m still right there, reminding them that this is a ketamine journey and we can go there together. I can ask them to describe what is happening, or focus on breathing and imagery. 

The bad experiences I’ve heard about are when therapeutic preparations haven’t been properly done or there isn’t any supervision during the journey. People have been left alone while they thought they were dead, or don’t know where they are, or need to use the bathroom and are panicked because they don’t know how to do that. I’ve had people need constant reassurances that I’m still there the whole time. 

And I’ve learned, as a psychiatrist and as a death doula, that language is really important. For example, I have learned to never tell someone that ‘they’re safe,’ because people will be like, ‘I’m not safe! I’m in the middle of this crazy experience!’ or ‘There’s a monster right here!’ or they’re re-living a traumatic experience. They might be confronting that awful thing they can’t get past. So instead I say things like ‘I’m right here with you,’ or I remind them they’re on a ketamine journey in a place where they’re physically safe.

If there’s something that’s really distressing, too scary, as a last resort I can prescribe benzodiazepines. Lorazepam, for example, is a medication that will pretty much stop a psychedelic experience in its tracks by making the person fall asleep. So if the journey is more than they can handle, I have an injection available that works very quickly. And then, we will work with what happened in whatever way is most therapeutic.

What does it feel like to take ketamine?

It’s impossible to describe a psychedelic experience to somebody who hasn’t had one. I mean, I’ve been really impressed by the fact that with psychedelics, you can have the same person using the same dose of the same medicine and have a completely different experience from one to the other. And some people will say, ‘That was so mind-blowing, and I went to this other land and talked to these people,’ and then the next time they take the same dose, they say, ‘Are you sure that was real medicine, because I don’t feel a thing.’ So, I’ve stopped trying to explain it. There’s too many variables at work.

For the most part, it takes you to a different place. Many people describe it as somewhere all the chatter and trivialities fall away. Like, ‘I can’t believe I was worried about this, I can’t believe I’m mad at that person about this,’ or ‘I gotta do something about that as soon as I get home.’ Or, people come out of it asking why they’d been wasting their time being scared of death, when they could be taking their wife to Paris, or filling out the paperwork they’d been avoiding that would make life for their survivors so much easier. In many situations, people have a perspective shift that you just can’t have any other way. You can’t suggest it to them, it has to come from the inside.

What are you able to see from the outside? What are people typically doing or saying while on a ketamine journey?

Most people, but not all, get really quiet, because there’s just so much going on internally. Some people will have this kind of running narration, like ‘Oh wow, oh, do you see that? Oh, whoa…’ And then some people will say things like, ‘Oh my God, my brother.’ And so we write that down, so that we can bring it up later in our therapy. Or a lot of the time when the patient talks it’s not entirely discernable. Every once in a while, I’ll get a total chatterbox, and I’m just scribbling notes like crazy. But more often than not, I have people who are totally silent, and then as the ketamine is wearing off they’ll say a bunch of stuff they want to remember, but it’s not always easy to follow. Kind of like, ‘Wait, there’s this thing about my mother I didn’t remember, and th- she’s in the kitchen, and this thing happened, and oh my God,’ so I write it down, and in the next session — later that day or the next day — I’ll bring up that they mentioned it, and they’ll be like ‘Oh my God, I totally forgot about that, I’m so glad you reminded me.’ So it’s hard to hold onto everything you see, because you’re in a completely different state of being, which makes it difficult to access on your own. 

Ketamine is called a dissociative anesthetic, because it makes people feel disconnected from their body. So people will often ask ‘Who’s hand is that?’ and I’ll just calmly say, ‘That’s your hand.’ And they’ll just kind of go, ‘Huh.’ That’s one of the reasons why we work so hard to make sure they’re comfortable, because you’re not really in control of your body when the ketamine is active in your system. When you finish the ketamine, in 20 or 40 minutes (sometimes longer), we help you stand up, because there can be some residual dizziness or weakness. 

With psilocybin, people will run around and dance, and do yoga – it’s a completely different medicine. 

How does ketamine therapy compare with psilocybin or other psychedelic medicines that are used therapeutically?

People can also try psilocybin [another psychedelic medicine], which is more broadly offered; it’s legal in Colorado and Oregon, and New Mexico just legalized it. There was actually an NYU study that offered psilocybin to folks with terminal diagnoses, and found some really positive results. 

But they’re really different medicines. I would say the pharmacokinetics, the actual chemistry and physiology of it is really different from molecule to molecule. 

The cost is different, too. Ketamine is extremely practical; I mean, it’s legal – which is a big plus. It’s not cheap, though. The sessions can be expensive, which puts it out of reach for some people. Whereas psilocybin is not that expensive. As I said, there are people growing it themselves, which is a little costly to get set up, but it’s still pretty cheap. 

I think the biggest difference is how they’re ingested and how long they last. Psilocybin lasts three to five hours. LSD lasts 10 to 12 hours. So, that’s a commitment. And then psilocybin at one gram is super different from three grams or five grams or eight grams. So, much of it depends on what kind of journey someone is looking for, and what they’re willing to tolerate in terms of letting go of control. The same goes for ketamine. There are folks who are really happy at 50 milligrams, and some other people prefer around 400 milligrams — like, ‘I wanna go to outer space.’

There are so many psychedelic medicines out there. There’s a huge underground world at this point, concentrated in the areas that you would expect, but there’s also churches that are designated [like Zidedoor, “Oakland’s Church of Entheogenic Plants”], and there’s stuff that’s legal in Canada and Mexico and South America that aren’t legal here. And once you get into that world, there’s a big network of folks, but they’re all different. 

When you talk to folks in the psychedelic world who have a lot of experience, they will tell you that some medicines agree with them, and some really don’t. People develop relationships with these medicines. For example, with psilocybin, a lot of people get really significant nausea, or throw up. And for some people, that’s a deal-breaker. For others, they see it as a purging, or a cleansing. And then some people don’t experience any nausea whatsoever. It’s a very personal relationship. 

What are some common outcomes with ketamine therapy?

I have a couple of friends who were nervous about doing this kind of work, and now they’re like converts. There’s this really strange thing that happens to a lot of folks who get into this world, where they feel like, ‘Everybody needs to know about this! This is a big deal!’ Not that they’re going to use ketamine every other week for the rest of their lives. A lot of folks do a certain amount of therapy and then they’re ready to move on. But they’ve learned a lot; they’ve often figured out how to have the life they want with the help of this medicine. 

Sometimes, it has allowed them to figure out that one aspect that had them so stuck, and everything just falls into place, like dominoes. You can go to these psychedelic retreats, for a weekend or a week, and a lot of people will come out of those saying, ‘Wow, I wish I’d done that a long time ago.’ Because they’d been in therapy for years, and were stuck. They knew what they needed to do, but couldn’t change. And this kind of therapy allowed them to do what years of conventional therapy never accomplished.

For a lot of people, their focus, their goal is achieved, which is often, ‘I want to get rid of this anxiety so I can live what life I have left to the fullest.’ And that’s why I got into this, because that’s what I find so meaningful. If you’ve got six months, if you have three months, you’d better figure out how you want to use it. Some people want to get their affairs in order, and that’s great. You can pull in a death doula to sit down with you and plug through that paperwork. Or if you want to sit with your loved ones and your pets and stare out at nature, okay, let’s create a scenario for that. 

Ultimately, we help people get rid of the anxiety, or at least have the intention of asking the anxiety to go over there so they can really design their death. Plan who they want to have present, what music they want, which interventions they want or don’t want. I know there are people who come into the psychedelic treatment determined to look for any experimental treatment that’s out there, to keep them alive, and come out of it saying, ‘I just want a hospice to step in and make me as comfortable as possible,’ or get medical assistance in dying. So people are getting more autonomy and control and agency, and are less terrified of talking about it, less terrified of asking someone to tell them what their options are. 

The post How Ketamine-Assisted Therapy Can Be Beneficial for End-of-Life (An Interview)<div class='secondary-title'>Dr. Nan Herron, a psychiatrist and death doula, discusses how psychedelics can help some patients approach end-of-life matters with greater peace</div> appeared first on SevenPonds.

Not even the “terminally ill” have a window into the future, and denial, even in the face of tragic news, is powerful, indeed. A terminal diagnosis doesn’t prevent us from thinking of death as a far away abstraction. But it can be a powerful reminder that our lives are defined by the choices we make.

Mary was a striking, elegant woman of 85 when she learned that she had breast cancer.

The news shocked and frightened her, but from the outset it was clear that she was not going to allow the diagnosis to derail her life.

A “lady” in every sense of the word, Mary was not the type of woman to let her emotions show. Fiercely independent and always in control, she sat unflinching in her doctor’s office, her face a mask.

“What do you recommend,” she asked, a touch of defiance in her voice.

“Surgery to remove the tumor, definitely” the doctor answered almost instantly. “Then some chemo, perhaps.”

“Perhaps?” Mary asked.

Her doctor explained that chemotherapy had been shown to be of little benefit to women with breast cancer who were over the age of 80. It would almost certainly cause some side effects, and would most likely not prolong her life.

“Fine,” Mary said–again a bit defiantly. “Then just cut the damn thing out and let me get on with my life!”

Mary weathered her surgery beautifully. One month later, she left on a trip to Rome with her granddaughter and had, as she described it, “the time of my life.” “Those Italian men are so handsome!” she said, grinning mischievously. 

“Nothing has ever freed me to enjoy myself as much as knowing that I have this disease,” she said later. “I can finally let go and do whatever I want to do. What have I got to lose?”

What, indeed?

Certainly, none of us would ever wish for a cancer diagnosis. We all strive for health and vitality, and everyone grieves when it is suddenly taken away. But we suffer so much more deeply when we learn that we are dying too late to enjoy the time we have left — when disease and infirmity have taken over, and we no longer have the stamina to do the things we wish we had done.

Which is, of course, the point.

In his seminal book “A Year to Live,” Stephen Levine writes,

Stephen is gone now, but his words remind us of the inescapable truth that, whether or not we have been told we have a terminal illness, we do.

So for heaven’s sake, live your life.

Say the things you want to say. Find the courage to speak your truth.

Go to Rome.

Live each moment as if it is your last.

Because some day it will be. And not one of us knows when that day will come.

The post Life Is More Than Just Waiting for The End<div class='secondary-title'>Living an authentic life is always a choice</div> appeared first on SevenPonds.

The families I served as a hospice nurse became my best teachers about the value of opening the heart to this experience and sharing the pain of grief.

Stan, now bedridden, was adored by his family and friends. They visited him daily in his bedroom to share stories and laughter. Only when they joined each other in the living room did they fall into each others’ arms in tears because the man they treasured was in his final days.

When the hospice nurse arrived for her regular visit, Stan angrily exclaimed,  “No one cares that I am dying!” Having observed the contrary in his friends and family when they were out of his sight, she asked why he would say that. He sighed, “Because no one has shed a single tear.”

Many of us have never learned to grieve openly. We were taught to hold it in, be strong and not burden anyone else with our grief — and most certainly not the person who is dying. In our attempt to stuff our emotions to make everyone comfortable, we lose our chance to be authentic about our feelings and to share our grief.

“We don’t want to upset them by crying!’ is the frequent admonition. In the end, will we be more upset that we did not reveal our hearts and share this time and feelings more intimately? Do we really believe that we can spare people the pain of loss by instructing them to be strong and not cry and asking them to pretend there is not a momentous event looming? Do we ask people to hold in their grief so it does not trigger our own by nudging us into the uncharted and uncomfortable territory of our tears? Can we find honest connection in the face of grief?

Facing death and the accompanying emotions can feel like being on a roller coaster. The ups and downs can include anger, sadness, gratitude, frustration, despair, guilt and appreciation. Masking our feelings, both positive and negative, does not erase them. When facing the end of life, the tragedy is that hiding our feelings behind a mask creates a barrier to authentic and heartfelt communication.

That said, not everyone is comfortable with expressing grief. I’m not suggesting there is only one way because that would be disrespectful to personal, family and cultural traditions. I am saying that the opportunity to share your heart may have the impact of a heart shared in return. That is the memory many of us wish for — to give love and know we are loved in return.

Your call to action when someone you love is dying:

Put down the mask to fearlessly and authentically show your love. You will not have another chance.

The post Finding Honest Connection in the Face of Grief<div class='secondary-title'>Saying goodbye to a loved one is heartbreaking. Don’t be afraid to share your tears</div> appeared first on SevenPonds.

My mother died in August 2014. Attending her memorial services was an interesting experience since no one seemed to know the woman she was behind the front door. It was as if I was at a funeral for a stranger.

Though my mother came across as very charming to people outside the home, my father and mother had had a marriage filled with nearly daily arguments, even up to the end. They seemed to have some kind of “soul contract,” — that they would never part, no matter the consequences. And there were consequences.

Besides the constant fighting from my early childhood on, my mother took to lying frequently, especially to cover up the fact that she was fulfilling none of her everyday responsibilities. By age six, I was doing much of the housework. My mother wouldn’t and couldn’t for a whole host of reasons (including back problems that seemed to somehow disappear completely when she got Alzheimer’s), and I finally became tired of their arguments over the housekeeping. I also often prayed they would divorce.

My mother also suffered from depression and deep insecurities, but in public, she was the socialite — the debutante at the ball — self-assured, breezy, never a misstep. She needed to be perfect because that is what she imagined would make people like her. More than anything she wanted everyone to like her. But when she reached our front door, everything changed.

Although I grew up in the same old Victorian house as my mother, I lived quite a different life from my parents. After college, I settled in the Pacific Northwest and eventually opened my own healing business. Ultimately, however, the cold, clouds and rain dampened my sunny spirit, and I decided to move back to California.

By that time, my mother was slipping away into Alzheimer’s, although she was able to hide it through her habit of light social chatting. She also lived in the same house her entire life, so she always knew where she was, unlike many with Alzheimer’s who wander off. It was 2012 when I moved back into the family house. I planned to stay perhaps three months while I found a place to live, but ended up stuck there for nearly three years.

From nearly the moment I moved back, I ended up being the caregiver for the woman who had barely cared for or nurtured me since I was a toddler. My mother’s Alzheimer’s was progressing steadily. My father, however, was in denial about how bad she was getting even though she had been making him 3-4 lunches for when he came home for lunch. He also refused to allow her to be put in a nursing home, but he was not the one who was losing whole nights of sleep, getting sick constantly from overwhelming stress, and enduring the hitting and beating from my mother when she’d get angry and frustrated.

Over time, my mother developed urinary and fecal incontinence and then major infections. Finally, this affected not just me, from cleaning up the messes regularly, but my father, who was still sleeping in the same bed with my mother. But still, ”Sara will take care of it,” seemed to be his thought, even as his wife was throwing filthy diapers straight into the washing machine and turning it on.

Meanwhile I developed a shingles outbreak and a massive sinus infection — I was clearly falling apart. “You at least have to put a second high-up lock on your bedroom door so I can get some sleep. If you don’t, I have leave to get healthy,” I told my father, and to my surprise, he did it. No doubt it was probably illegal, but at least I was able to sleep and finally heal.

Because I was trapped at home watching my mother, making sure she didn’t wander off or leave the stove on, etc. I was unable to make friends or build a life of my own. I was on a permanent adrenaline fight-or-flight rush, using the few hours I had to tend to pets, to shower, to run errands, to eat. I was never really off duty. Even when my parents had gone to bed, I could hear my father screaming at her for fouling the bed, the carpet, the bathroom.

Finally, I gave my father the word. I was broke from not being able to work. He had to put my mother in a nursing home. To my relief he said yes, although I was the one who had to find the proper home. Then in rapid succession she suffered two strokes and within a few months was gone.

As Alzheimer’s began to devour the last fragments of my mother, I did the only thing I could as a healer: I tried to retrieve the pieces of her broken soul back together so she might make her exit from this life in a whole state. Though I couldn’t have a relationship with the person that was my birth mother, I could at least connect with her spirit. At her funeral, talking to everyone was very pleasant, but they seemed to be talking about a woman I never knew. It was a funeral for a stranger.

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At first glance, the film might seem like a set-up for the “unlikely buddy” trope so popular in comedic action movies. If it stayed true to that format, Dr. Zitter – a white Jewish woman – would stoically adhere to her training in medical interventions using cold, hard science, while Chaplain Clark – an octogenarian African American woman – would be the zany sidekick providing comic relief. Instead, the film argues that the pairing of Zitter and Clark results in a formidable team of indomitable strength, resolve and dedication that could catalyse a movement towards more compassionate healthcare. 

The Doctor

Jessica Zitter is the author of “Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life,” and several of her articles and essays have appeared in prestigious national publications. She was featured in the Oscar- and Emmy-nominated short documentary “Extremis,” as well as produced and directed the award-winning, 2020 short documentary “Caregiver: A Love Story.”  

Zitter comes from a family of physicians. In “The Chaplain and the Doctor,” she explains her motivations for her career path by relating the time she sustained an injury as a child, and her parents rushed her to the hospital so another family member could treat her wounds. Her lasting impression, she recalls, was of profound sadness that not one of the many loving, capable adults thought to hold her hand through the scary ordeal. 

In her pursuit of studying medicine, Zitter wanted to retain that sense of humanity, the compassion that should be the driving force behind the ability to heal. But working in palliative care, she found that the demands of the job – and her patients – often work against that goal. 

To illustrate this struggle, we are introduced to one of the team’s patients, a woman already diagnosed with an advanced stage of cancer, who was prepared to undergo biopsy surgery to identify a mass. Zitter and Clark are in her room at the hospital, doing everything they can to delicately inform the patient that she doesn’t need this procedure. In fact, the test (ordered by another physician) could likely do more harm than good, as her weakened body might succumb while under sedation. And yet, despite explaining that whatever the results were wouldn’t change her prognosis or her treatment plan in any way, the woman said she still wanted to undergo the procedure.

To watch Zitter’s face throughout this conversation is to take a masterclass in exercising patience; we can clearly see the effort it takes to suppress the frustration she must feel. 

When we spoke about the scene, Zitter lamented that this is an all-too common scenario. “It’s what everyone expects of you. Your patients expect you to do something,” she told me. “Even when it is not what someone would want if they really understood what that ‘something’ is. This happens all the time. [We tell a patient] ‘Here is the reason this won’t help you. This is going to hurt you. This could kill you,’ but they still want us to do it.” 

As Zitter explains, some doctors find it easier to just comply with their patient’s demands. She sees other doctors prescribing tests and treatments that are unnecessary, and sometimes harmful, “because it’s easier to perform another procedure, another intervention, or give another medication, than it is to communicate, to break bad news. It’s easier to do ‘something’ than to sit with that patient in their pain and suffering.” 

As the documentary shows us, what palliative care has gradually lost – to everyone’s detriment – are medical teams experienced with doing just that: sitting with a patient in their pain and suffering.

And that’s where Clark comes in.

The Chaplain

Religious professionals often describe “following their calling,” and it is immediately clear to those watching the film that Betty Clark is driven by a persistent inner voice to pursue her life’s work long past the typical age of retirement. The child of sharecroppers, Clark rose from poverty and hardship to earn a Master of Divinity degree from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and has since touched countless lives in her career as a hospice and palliative care chaplain. 

Cameras follow Clark as she gets ready for work, swallowing a handful of prescription medications from her bathroom cabinet before she kisses family members on her way out the door. Her face is bright and expressive, her mind is sharp, and her voice is steady, but we can see that her age and dedication to her job is taking its toll on her body. (In one humorous moment, she even offers Zitter a naked aspirin tablet from her pocket, laughing about her habit of keeping them on hand, ‘just in case.’)

Despite the universe sending her messages to slow down, Clark is an unstoppable force of nature. She makes her way up and down the halls of the hospital, visiting patients and giving comfort in whatever way is needed; by singing hymns, offering prayers, joking with family members and sometimes just silently clasping hands. 

For over a decade, Clark’s guidance has allowed Zitter to better understand the systemic barriers and biases doctors often bring to the bedside — and subsequently, try to overcome them. Together, they have merged their expertise in fields often considered in opposition to each other, to provide better holistic care for their patients.

The Film

Originally, Zitter got into filmmaking after watching a different documentary that had been filmed at her hospital. “It was so powerful! I’ve been a writer for a long time – I write stories about my experience in healthcare, and I wrote a book – but I saw this film and I thought, ‘I could write 15 books, but this will reach more people than [the books] ever will.’”

The point of the documentary, then, is to use the power of filmmaking to spread awareness about what they’ve learned from their partnership. “It’s a very complicated business, using storytelling to improve the healthcare system, but I think it’s important to try.”

Perhaps that’s the only way the unlikely team adheres to the old Hollywood trope; the way that they have learned from each other’s differences, and used their strengths to broaden their professional roles into something more. In the same way buddy cops team up to heroically bring down the bad guys, viewers are left with the impression that if we could find some way to inject more Zitter/Clark combos into healthcare, we could eventually dismantle the systems that currently leave so many people to suffer alone.

In the hopes of pursuing that goal, the nonprofit founded by Zitter, Reel Medicine Media, is currently exploring ways the film can potentially be used in curricula for medical students and continuing education for practicing physicians.

At the time of this publication, “The Chaplain and the Doctor” is still on theatrical tour, offering screenings and related presentations across the country. To be informed about screening schedules, and to get alerted when the documentary is made more available for streaming online, Zitter asks that those who are interested sign up for Reel Medicine’s newsletter.

The post “The Chaplain and the Doctor”<div class='secondary-title'>The latest film from physician, author and filmmaker Jessica Zitter examines the failings of modern medicine while making the case for more compassionate, human-centered palliative care</div> appeared first on SevenPonds.

The company president, Kiyotaka Hirano, told the South China Morning Post that exiting the coffin afterward can feel like a rebirth or a chance to begin again. This “coffin café experience” offers a quiet moment of meditation that can encourage many to rethink their lives, reconsider relationships and contemplate how they’ll leave the world behind.

Kiyotaka Hirano came up with the idea after his father died. 

“Some may want to close the coffin lid for a few minutes to contemplate how they’d like to live before their time comes,” Hirano said.

The practice has spread in popularity in Japan and is now offered by Tokyo relaxation salons and other businesses. With the country’s high youth suicide rates, those in favor of the practice point out that this is a harmless and therapeutic way to consider life and mortality.

You can even choose which coffin design to lie in.

Coffin-Lying as a Religious Ritual

Japan isn’t the only country that practices coffin-lying. In fact, Thailand uses it as a religious ritual in some of its Buddhist temples, including Wat Ta Kien near Bangkok. 

In the ritual, participants will hold flowers in a coffin while monks chant funeral rites. The monks stage death by drawing a cloth across the coffin.

Agence France-Presse, a major international news agency based in Paris, France, reports this ritual is meant to “resurrect” participants by stripping away their bad karma. While this practice is much different than the Japanese trend, they both provide a spiritual way to “start over” in one’s life, or reset one’s mental health.

“People cannot escape from being born, getting old, getting ill and dying, so this is like practising dying before you die for real — as when you die, your body has to be put in a coffin anyway,” the temple’s chief abbot, Phrakru Samusangob Kittiyano, said.

The Benefits of Coffin-Lying

Does coffin-lying actually have any benefits to your mental health? A Taiwanese study published in BMC Medical Education studied student volunteers who participated in a three-hour coffin-lying activity. 

The participants measured their fear of death before and after the experience. The data showed that the students who went through the coffin-lying exercise exhibited a lower fear of death and less avoidance of death-related topics than the control group who did not participate. These effects may be worth looking into.

For those who participate in coffin lying with the lid closed, the sensory deprivation that occurs from the experience may also help calm the brain and lower stress levels. It can also allow those to focus on confronting their fear of death without distraction.

Lying in a coffin isn’t meant to replace other effective methods of therapy, such as grief counseling. However, it may just be worth looking into as a short-duration, low-cost exercise to explore your reaction to death and make the most of your time on Earth. This activity is just one of many to prove that structured encounters with mortality can assist with coming to terms with it.

Coffin lying may not be available everywhere, but closing your eyes, limiting distractions and focusing on your reaction to death in a safe environment may help ease your anxiety about the subject. What you take away from it is up to you.

The post Can Coffin-Lying Help You Overcome the Fear of Death?<div class='secondary-title'>Climbing into a casket is emerging as an unconventional way to improve mental health and address mortality</div> appeared first on SevenPonds.

Few experiences are as devastating as the loss of a baby. Much of the time, words can feel woefully inadequate for expressing the unimaginable grief of parents and families going through such a loss. But every once in a while, the right words — delivered at the right time and from the right person — can be a source of consolation.

These quotes about infant loss speak to the heartbreak, love, and lasting bond that can exist even when a child’s life is far too brief.

1. “Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.”

— Often attributed to A. A. Milne

The post 24 Quotes About Infant Loss<div class='secondary-title'>Words of consolation when all others feel inadequate.</div> appeared first on SevenPonds.

Those we should pity, according to Dumbledore, are the people who must continue living, carrying that grief and facing the difficult choices that come with being alive. But even more so, we should feel sorry for those living an empty life, having shut themselves off from those human emotions.

Death is not the greatest tragedy; it would be a greater tragedy to have lived without love, connection, or purpose. And while those relationships cause us pain, they are also what makes life worth living.

The post End-of-Life Lessons From Literature<div class='secondary-title'>Sage advice from a wise old wizard about what makes life worth living.</div> appeared first on SevenPonds.