There is no normal to retreat to. I stop, sit, take a breath and let it go. Wiggle the toes, accept not knowing, do my best and be here now.

However you embrace or wrastle with your own mortality, companioning the dying will bring you (as my own old dead dad would say) toe to toe

In a society that commodifies everything, alternative paradigms will sometimes be considered radical. Welcome to my world, Doula friends!

We are going to be bent low on the shores of an ocean of sorrow. Here are tips to cultivate resilience to face the fierce wind of our time.

Witnessing a Living Wake: a Celebrant's Perspective As a seasoned funeral professional, the concept of a living wake (or pre-wake wake,...

I go out into the cold, stand close to a tall oak and listen to it commune with the cosmos, feeling my smallness to the marrow of my bones.

I went looking in my archives for Solstice writing and offer this updated reflection on optimism and coping skills for dark times.

In which Dina describes to a roundtable of religious colleagues how she (an atheist) makes sense of the human predicament...

I had the distinct honor of presenting a collaborative workshop on Creativity and Grieving at the National Home Funeral Alliance...

I forgot to ask (for S. Trudel) Once the dust has settled after a death and the mad rush of deep memory short-films stashed in the way...

(some rambling thoughts on the concept of 'conscious dying', friendship, and time) In the pause before the heat of a summer day I wander...

Death-Positive this and Positive-Death that: a Movement. Meh. So much about death, dying, and surviving is *not* going to be or feel...

How is Earth's story calling to you in this time of great change? What opportunities are you offering your community to address the...

I want you to meet this human being. Because some time in the middle of this last winter I had a day that was too hard to bear. When I...

Work today is a story about a memorial service in an old New England church, with the tall windows that let all the light in and simple...

The second funeral service I ever wrote and presided at was for an artist who was the family's gay and ex-communicated black sheep. The...

Pesach, 2016 Here is the thing of it when we are in the narrow place squozen by the pressures of our time there is no thought of...

There I was, sitting in an exam room in a medical office thinking, can I just say fuck you? Because the medical professional taking my...

I read this story from the stage of the Great Falls Word Festival at the Shea Theater, in October, 2018, just days after the fatal...

There is a deep need many people have to keep the ordinary conversation of life going, even though the person they have this conversation wi