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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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What’s Driving Your Physical Distancing: Death Denial or Death Phobia?

In the realm of end-of-life education, two terms come up very often: death denial and fear of death. We talk about fear of death and death denial as kind-of the same thing and we use the terms interchangeably. But are they really? I’m wondering if the varying ways that people think about and respond to the coronavirus pandemic, shed some light on the differences between the two terms.

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What About the Last Responders?

Until just weeks ago, the hard work, dedication and sacrifice of the bereavement industry, or death trade as it’s sometimes called, wasn’t even listed as an essential service. Despite this recent shift in designation, I suspect there’s little or no applause or acknowledgement for the essential workers like the ones named by our provincial government: coroners and workers performing mortuary services, including: funeral homes, crematoriums, cemeteries and workers supporting the appropriate handling, identification, storage, transportation, and certification of human remains.

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“The Best Online Course I’ve Taken” – Only One Day Left for Your Deep Discount

You have until midnight Pacific Time on April 30th to purchase Willow’s 7 Tools for Making Sense of Life & Death Online Program at a deep discount of $77USD instead of $177USD. We put everything we’ve got into this program and it’s pretty fabulous. But hey, don’t just take our word for it, check out…
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Dig Deep and Answer the Questions You’re Avoiding

Unlike many other people, I haven’t been forced to pause and slow down. I feel like I’m busier than ever. Yet even in this business and chaos, I find myself asking—or re-asking—a lot of deep questions about the meaning of life and death. Let’s face it, the whole world is at war with death right…
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