Tending the Waters of Collective Grief

Water is one of the most important substances on earth, covering over 70% of the planet's surface and making up about 60% of the human body. It is a powerful symbol of purification, renewal, and healing. When we experience grief, we often have a lot of emotions and feelings that are difficult to express or even understand. Water can provide a safe space for us to release these emotions and connect with our inner selves.

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Melanie Sheckels
Death is not a medical event

There is a tsunami of an aging population descending on a healthcare system ill equipped to deliver the level of care and the quantity of it that this group of people has learned to believe will be available to them…..

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Sarah Bennett
When to Call the Death Doula

Having worked in a culture that avoids the D word for so long, I'm used to coming in late. Part of why I’m suited for this work is because I am naturally adaptable. One has to be very well moored to meet folks in the middle of a storm and help them get to shore.

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Melanie Sheckels
Time, abundance, and breaking free from the fear of death

Many times I have heard their doctors ask them if they want more time. This question preempts enrollment in a track of medical interventions: chemo, surgeries, medications and therapies of all kinds. These interventions can often spiral and compound. Before you know it, your quest for more time can become a full time job.

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Melanie Sheckels
Revel in the Sacred Darkness

Here in my corner of the Northern Hemisphere, we've begun to journey from the heady warmth and abundance of harvest towards the darkness of Solstice. This is a time when the ancestors of this place would have been finishing up necessary preparations to make it through the long, cold, dark night.

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Sarah Bennett
A Very Ambivalent Holiday

How is your heart as we enter the holiday season? For some of us, this is the season of love and light, full of friends, family, and abundance. Of gratitude and of precious, long overdue reunions. For some of us this is a stinging reminder of all we have lost and long for.

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Sarah Bennett
Grief Box

As Samhain draws near, many of us are thinking about ways to connect with our ancestors. This is the season when all that’s no longer in service to life begins to die. A time when we harvest all the remaining fruits and seeds, full of dormant life force just waiting for it’s turn at the wheel.

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Melanie Sheckels