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Memento Mori and Don’t Forget to Live

Memento mori is latin for “remember that you [have to] die” and is also an artistic or symbolic reminder of the inevitability of death. And while we’re all going to die and we all know we’re going to die, most people don’t think about it at all.

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The Desire Map Planner: another tool to help you live and love fully

It was 2014 when I welcomed Danielle LaPorte’s soothing voice to guide me in discovering my core desired feelings. I listened to her audiobook, The Desire Map: a Guide to Creating Goals with Soul and I’ve never looked back. No longer do I focus my energy identifying and working towards what I want to accomplish in life. Instead I think about what to do, so that I can feel the way I want to feel.

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Free Tool: Brief on Grief and Mourning

In case you missed our offer in the last newsletter, we have a new free tool to share with you and yours. Until last week, A Brief on Grief and Mourning was only available inside the 7 Tools for Making Sense of Life & Death online program. We’re making this free tool widely available now because grief is not just something that happens when someone you love dies.

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How Grief Gave Me My Life Back

Do you too have life lessons that keep showing up—same message, different day? One of the recurring messages in my life is that grief is a pathway to healing. Actually, let me rephrase that. My recent experience of fall-on-my-knees grief revealed, once again, that grief is a pathway to living and loving fully.

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My First Memorial Service was on Zoom

My first memorial service took place on Zoom, just a couple weeks ago. We were honouring the life of a dear friend from my church, who died of complications related to a cancer he had been living with these last few years. I suppose I’m fortunate to have gone through nearly thirty years of life without anyone close to me dying. In fact, I’ve only been to one funeral, that of someone I can’t say I knew very well. This is all to say, I still feel quite new to realities of mortality and the rituals that fall under what we at Willow call “Departure Directions.”

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An Exercise to Help You Move Through Turmoil

These times are challenging beyond compare and we have something that can help you, now. Multiple times every day, I read, see, hear and feel how we’re experiencing an unprecedented time of uncertainty. Personally, in our communities and throughout our planet, we’re living with health crises, ecological devastation, political and economic turmoil and systemic racism and injustice. We don’t know when the impacts of all this will end, how it will end, and what our lives and the world will look like in the near or distant future.

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5 Steps for Successful End-of-Life Planning Conversations

Talking about death in a death-phobic and death-denying culture can certainly be a challenge. Willow’s interactive, fillable tool, will help you start and keep having fruitful end-of-life planning conversations. Learn more about this too and make your end-of-life planning conversations a powerful gateway to connect.

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Your Heart Will: Reconciling Your Actions and Intentions

It’s been four years since I wrote my Heart Will, a lasting message for people I love and future generations. While I’ve been soul searching most of my life, the events of 2020, and in particular the much-needed spotlight on systemic racism, has accelerated my inquiry into high gear.

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Amplifying Voices: Two Opportunities to Listen and Learn about Anti-Black Racism

It’s been two weeks since the murder of George Floyd, and the launch of massive demonstrations against anti-black racism around the globe. In our previous newsletter we shared that among other things, we’re committed to using our platforms to amplify the voices of Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour. Below are two opportunities to listen and learn.

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