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Each to their island... March 2020
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.

Dina Stander
Mar 23, 20202 min read
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Companioning the Dying: say what?
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

Dina Stander
Feb 26, 20207 min read
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A Treatise on EOLDs and Sliding Fee Scales
In a society that commodifies everything, alternative paradigms will sometimes be considered radical. Welcome to my world, Doula friends!

Dina Stander
Feb 20, 20206 min read
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HABITS THAT CULTIVATE WELLBEING WHEN EVERYTHING SUCKS:
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.

Dina Stander
Feb 20, 20206 min read
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Witnessing a Living Wake
Witnessing a Living Wake: a Celebrant's Perspective As a seasoned funeral professional, the concept of a living wake (or pre-wake wake,...

Dina Stander
Feb 20, 20208 min read
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Click Clack
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.

Dina Stander
Jan 31, 20202 min read
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Solstice Blues (then & now)
I went looking in my archives for Solstice writing and offer this updated reflection on optimism and coping skills for dark times.

Dina Stander
Dec 22, 20196 min read
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On Suffering
In which Dina describes to a roundtable of religious colleagues how she (an atheist) makes sense of the human predicament...

Dina Stander
Dec 14, 20197 min read
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Clay, Creativity & Grieving
I had the distinct honor of presenting a collaborative workshop on Creativity and Grieving at the National Home Funeral Alliance...

Dina Stander
Oct 25, 20192 min read
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poem: I forgot to ask
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...

Dina Stander
Aug 9, 20191 min read
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To Have the Death You Want ~ Planning Matters As Much As Meditation
(some rambling thoughts on the concept of 'conscious dying', friendship, and time) In the pause before the heat of a summer day I wander...

Dina Stander
Aug 3, 20194 min read
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Death-Wellness is so much more than 'death-positive'!
Death-Positive this and Positive-Death that: a Movement. Meh. So much about death, dying, and surviving is *not* going to be or feel...

Dina Stander
Jul 26, 20191 min read
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Celebrants & Ceremony in Response to Climate Grieving:
How is Earth's story calling to you in this time of great change? What opportunities are you offering your community to address the...

Dina Stander
Jul 26, 20195 min read
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The World in Faces: photos by Alexander Khimushin
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...

Dina Stander
May 4, 20191 min read
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A Day at the Office:
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...

Dina Stander
May 4, 20191 min read
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Standing on the Bridge
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...

Dina Stander
Apr 29, 20192 min read
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Poem for Pesach
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...

Dina Stander
Apr 14, 20191 min read
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Dialing Back the Pain Scale: towards a more effective conversation for pain management.
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...

Dina Stander
Apr 11, 20192 min read
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An Elefant's Shtam
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...

Dina Stander
Apr 5, 20194 min read
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The Opportune Moment and the Phone of the Wind:
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

Dina Stander
Mar 23, 20193 min read
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