In this time of a global pandemic, along with all the physical preparations and precautions, such as washing your hands, sanitizing your environment, and stocking your pantry, we want to help you prepare yourselves inwardly. Peter Russell, an author and teacher focusing on consciousness and contemporary spirituality, recently wrote, “Trees provide a good lesson. If…
Keep Reading
For the last four years our mantra has been, “whether you have days or decades to live, the best time to plan is now.” Suddenly, “now” is on people’s minds more than ever. If you’re not worried about yourself dying from Coronavirus, you may be worried about someone else you know, or vulnerable people in…
Keep Reading
I’ve been thinking a lot about how the Coronavirus informs my experience of making sense of life and death. Here’s what I’ve come up with. While we’re in denial about our own mortality, we’re obsessed with stories about death and dying. The way COVID-19 is affecting us varies from region to region but what’s common…
Keep Reading
Identifying your core values—the second tool in Willow’s 7 Tools for Making Sense of Life & Death workbook—is a critical part of the foundational work of end-of-life planning. Seeing your values reflected in your end-of-life plans also keeps you accountable to living the life you want. Let me share how this works for me. The…
Keep Reading
“I was so relieved when I named and declared my fear around my death and dying. I’ve been carrying it around for so long, and thought I was the only one.” This was shared by one of the participants at Willow’s Legacy, Love Letters + Heart Wills workshop this past weekend in Vancouver, Canada. Hopes…
Keep Reading
Ram Dass (Of Blessed Memory), an American spiritual teacher, psychologist, author and one of my sources of inspiration, died on December 22nd, 2019. His teachings inspired me to co-create Willow. During my training in community deathcaring, I listened to a Ram Dass lecture on YouTube (Facing Death, Ram Dass Full Lecture 1992). In this riveting…
Keep Reading
Consciously or unconsciously, we live our lives according to particular values. Knowing your core values is one thing, living them or embodying them is another. As I move through this dance called life, I’m coming to understand and accept that how we express our core values can evolve.
This past week I was a victim of fraud and it cost Willow a chunk of money. For several days I couldn’t shake how stupid and violated I felt. I had a sick feeling in my gut and lost my appetite for both food and work. At the same time, there was a lot of…
Keep Reading
How much value is there really in the act of self reflection? Aren’t we humans being overly self indulgent if we’re continuously noticing how we’re impacted by whatever it is we’re up to? These thoughtful questions were posed to us recently by a workshop participant. If we’re talking about self reflection in isolation, we’re with…
Keep Reading
