Good Grief

After the death of his mother, Ned Buskirk wondered why we don't talk about death more. As a producer and artist, he found a way to invite the conversation when he hosted a small event in his home, called You're Going to Die: Poetry, Prose and Anything Goes. It was a hit, and led to larger and larger monthly events, a musician's program to work with people at the end of life, and finally, the larg...

As a young and innocent 13 year old, Madeleine Black experienced an unimaginable and brutal rape which changed the course of her life. Although she spent many years affected by the experience, she was able, through her own perseverance and determination, to heal herself and create a life which she calls the best revenge. In the process, as a complete surprise to her, she came over many years to fo...

Mirabai Starr was decades into a deep spiritual practice. Then on the day her first book, a translation of Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross, came out, her daughter was killed in a car crash. All she knew went out the window in this loss beyond all losses. Over time, what seemed to be lost after her daughter's death led to a transformation and deepening of her spiritual life. In her...

Phyllis Shacter's husband made a series of radical choices about how his life would end. When he received two life limiting diagnoses within six weeks of each other, Alzheimers and cancer, he refused cancer treatment and employed natural methods instead. He planned and participated in his own funeral and followed what he believed was best for him, choosing to stop eating and drinking before he was...

People experiencing serious mental illness are likely to suffer numerous losses; of family, jobs, stability and security. How can they be supported to identify their own goals and move towards accomplishing them, even if their condition cannot be fully managed? How do we maintain faith in their human capacity for change and growth within their own context? Psychiatrist William Tucker learned throu...

Until recently, very little attention was paid to the quality of our lives at the very end of our lives. But that is changing, fueled by patient demand but also by a group of medical practitioners who are passionate about making sure everything possible is done to empower people at the end of life. At the forefront of this movement are the palliative care doctors who help seriously ill and dying p...

Lucy Hone was already an expert on resilience when she faced the worst nightmare of her life; her daughter, best friend, and best friend's daughter were killed together in an auto accident. How did she use what she knew about resilience to face her grief? What does the field of resilience have to offer grievers? And how do we decide, in each moment, which of our many human tools to activate to car...

As a person who had a long time meditation practice, Joe DiNardo had carried himself through hard times with presence and grace. But his wife's diagnosis with pancreatic cancer required that he bring every resource he had to each moment. He was sustained by his practice and also by an acute sense of his love for her and his absolute commitment to be with her every step of the way. How did his medi...

From the time Fleur was 4 years old, she communicated with the souls of people who were no longer alive. By good fortune, her family recognized that this was a gift, that she was different in a good way. Still, she didn't anticipate making a living with that gift. She grew up, and entered pre-med at UCLA in Los Angeles. Somehow, despite her intention for a medical career, she found her way to a li...

Filmmaker Matt Wolf is compelled by the people who nurture the legacy of artists who died of AIDS. He has made films about and interviewed many people who lived through the worst of the AIDS epidemic and fight to keep the public remembering and revering those we lost. A vibrant and highly creative community was in some ways decimated during those terrible years and we are left with the works they...

How does a cancer diagnosis change a life? When Patricia Bahia was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, it resulted in a commitment to live her bucket list. For her, this meant committing her life to two things; well-being and music. For her, that was really one thing. Her music was a place to express her new relationship to her life and to engage more fully with every aspect of that life. Her songs ins...

Holland Young was an impish and active 3 year old when she started complaining to her parents that she had a headache. In short order, she transformed from a very healthy to a very sick child. As the Youngs navigated the agonizing world of cancer treatment for children, what could they rest in? What helped them face the unimaginable? What gave them a way to love life again, especially after Hollan...

Bill Hayes left his life in San Francisco for New York City, hoping to heal from the loss of his partner and find comfort in the sharp rhythms and landscape of the New York skyline. Unexpectedly, he fell in love with Oliver Sacks, famous for his many books and stunning career as a neurologist. Sacks fell in love with Bill at 75 years old, having never fallen in love before. In the few years they e...

Nancy Saltman has had and survived cancer twice. But that could not have prepared her for the worst losses of her life. On an ordinary day, she got the phone call telling her that her husband and two sons, her whole family, had died in a plane crash. How would she find her way to a life she wanted to live? By stepping left, then right, she slowly created a new life. Some of the things that helped...

Finding recovery, purpose and peace all the way to the end of our lives can be challenging. Aging, with its accumulated losses and disappointments, finds us. Navigating the territory of life's difficulties in midlife carries unique obstacles. But it also holds the promise of being motivated to the lives we truly want to live! In learning how to grieve and then go on to grow, midlife can lead to ou...

When you watch someone you love live, and ultimately die, in an abusive relationship, how does it shape your own life? Sheila Kohler's sister was her childhood friend, her confidante. Living parallel lives, her sister Maxine staying in South Africa and Sheila traveling the world. But Maxine's death propelled Sheila towards a turning point. Sheila could see that accepting the abuse in her relations...

One crushing event by itself would have led Deb Hart into a dark night of the soul. But how could she absorb two terrible losses; the death of her son at 22 and a breast cancer diagnosis? She asked all the usual questions; why me, what is the meaning of this, what's the purpose of living? As she navigated through her experience, she learned how to live with those questions and create a new life AF...

As the life span of people diagnosed with cancer has lengthened, questions arise about what life looks like after. A physical illness is also a life event, a story that often needs to be told and existential questions that yearn for meaningful reflection. Surviving cancer and then learning to live in her changed landscape, Cheryl Krauter was able to employ all her training from a humanistic psycho...

How does it feel to live with life-limiting illness from your first day? How does it influence the way you look at the world and what you believe. And what is the impact of living with an illness that so many people die of, to be close, from an early age, to people you outlive? Nineteen year old Claire Wineland has lived with Cystic Fibrosis since early in her childhood and it has led her to a lif...

In a childhood filled with loss, neglect and longing, perhaps the biggest loss is a connection to one's own heart. Hardening to cope with what is lacking, we can become rigid, avoiding our deep feelings and most precious longing. How do we re-awaken our connection to the deepest parts of us? Often, it is through pains that break open the protection we've created. We're no longer able to ward off t...

Some people think that dying people increasingly speak nonsense, losing their grip on reality. But Lisa Smartt, a linguist trained to pay deep attention to words, realized as her father was dying that what he was saying was coherent and deeply moving, pointing to a world which she little understood and inviting an exploration of what he might be talking about. After his death, she hurtled headlong...

Regardless of changes in the legal rights of LGBTQ people, end of life can feel like a step backward, with biased health care workers and lack of resources. How can we educate health facilities and workers to deliver appropriate services regardless of their personal beliefs or assumptions? And how do people in these communities come to trust that when they access services, they will be treated wel...

The war between so-called pro-choice and pro-life forces in America seem divided beyond repair. But where does that leave women who have made the often painful and important decision to have an abortion? As Kassi Underwood says, they are left with a choice between regret and relief, with few opportunities to talk about the experience and feel supported in their personal struggles. Kassi knows from...

Sometimes a moment comes when we can no longer stay silent about what we have been through. Then it's time to speak out and claim our own courage and resiliency! Such a moment came for Milck, a musician who had experienced physical and sexual abuse and pressures to meet commodified standards of beauty, especially for her music career. Finding her unique voice led to her song Quiet, an anthem for b...

Barry Milazzo's beautiful son was born healthy and strong. But after two childhood immunizations, he became severely disabled, unable to communicate, walk or meet virtually any developmental milestones. With his faith severely tested, Barry deepened his own understanding of God in his life, learning to surrender to whatever might come next, while listening closely to any whispers of his own part t...