This post contains four files (pdfs or graphics) for attendees of Doorway Into Light’s 5th Annual Death Doula Training on Maui, HI, September 2023. • This page lists the obstacles to peaceful dying that comprise Bart’s end-of-life lexicon presented under the notion of Our Rights of Passage: Obstacles to Peaceful Dying • This three page […]
We can winter through Winter 2020-21 by virtue of 30 Pleasant Things. “Among these winters there is one so endlessly winter that only by wintering through it will your heart survive.” — The Sonnets to Orpheus II:XIII, Rainer Maria Rilke, Stephen Mitchell translation It’s December 2020, we are entering the depth of the […]
In these times of coronavirus COVID-19 and its potential for ventilator triage in the face of ARDS (acute respiratory distress…in blunt terms, death by drowning on dry land), more people may wonder about accessing medical aid in dying (MAiD) should they live in a USA jurisdiction where it’s legally availably. Those unfamiliar with these laws […]
This graphic is a new accompaniment to The Promised Landing: A Gateway to Peaceful Dying. It contextualizes what the book presents. A version of this graphic appears for the first time in the May 2018 revision of The Promised Landing, on page 169. 21st Century end-of-life Milieu The top gear set depicts the end of life totality […]
The following excerpt is taken from the opening sections of The Promised Landing: A Gateway to Peaceful Dying: Is This Book for You? Have you endured, during the demise of a loved one, circumstances so distressing that you are determined to never experience a situation like that again? Are you worried that deaths of loved […]
The trouble with reading books by doctors like Otis Brawley, Atul Gawande, and Victoria Sweet is that you want them to be your doctor. The lesson, ultimately, is that you have to find your Otis, Atul, or Victoria where you live, yet there aren’t enough Otiss, Atuls, and Victorias to go around. Slow Medicine is […]
End-of-life insights don’t come as often to me as during the period in which my end-of-life lexicon blossomed and grew (in fact, that work seems complete now). However, one has arisen. It’s a mashup of several things. First is an increasing number of angst-ridden conversations on Facebook’s excellent Slow Medicine group, a very decent environment […]
Here’s what bugs me: the divisive oversimplification of the USA healthcare debate. Republicans say that healthcare is a Personal Responsibility. Democrats say that healthcare is a Right. I say phooey. Healthcare is an aspect of the commons that advanced societies provide for their citizens, communally. Once an advanced system is built out, after several generations, […]
Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch’s 2006 book, The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, is an illuminating, tedious, and telling work. Illuminating because the rigorous mental work of a highly regarded jurist is something to behold; and tedious due both to that rigor and what Gorsuch chose not to reflect upon—the absence of which makes […]
Below is the text of an article I wrote in support of aided dying, which first appeared in the Summer 2016 issue of Natural Transitions Magazine. As I make this post the Colorado End of Life Options Act is on my state’s ballot—a situation I’ve long awaited. This piece ranges wide and delves into aspects of support […]
