Episodes

As a young and innocent 13 year old, Madeleine Black experienced an unimaginable and brutal rape which changed the course of her life. Although she spent many years affected by the experience, she was able, through her own pe...

Mirabai Starr was decades into a deep spiritual practice. Then on the day her first book, a translation of Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross, came out, her daughter was killed in a car crash. All she knew went o...

Phyllis Shacter's husband made a series of radical choices about how his life would end. When he received two life limiting diagnoses within six weeks of each other, Alzheimers and cancer, he refused cancer treatment and empl...

People experiencing serious mental illness are likely to suffer numerous losses; of family, jobs, stability and security. How can they be supported to identify their own goals and move towards accomplishing them, even if thei...

Until recently, very little attention was paid to the quality of our lives at the very end of our lives. But that is changing, fueled by patient demand but also by a group of medical practitioners who are passionate about mak...

Lucy Hone was already an expert on resilience when she faced the worst nightmare of her life; her daughter, best friend, and best friend's daughter were killed together in an auto accident. How did she use what she knew about...

As a person who had a long time meditation practice, Joe DiNardo had carried himself through hard times with presence and grace. But his wife's diagnosis with pancreatic cancer required that he bring every resource he had to ...

From the time Fleur was 4 years old, she communicated with the souls of people who were no longer alive. By good fortune, her family recognized that this was a gift, that she was different in a good way. Still, she didn't ant...

Filmmaker Matt Wolf is compelled by the people who nurture the legacy of artists who died of AIDS. He has made films about and interviewed many people who lived through the worst of the AIDS epidemic and fight to keep the pub...

How does a cancer diagnosis change a life? When Patricia Bahia was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, it resulted in a commitment to live her bucket list. For her, this meant committing her life to two things; well-being and musi...

Holland Young was an impish and active 3 year old when she started complaining to her parents that she had a headache. In short order, she transformed from a very healthy to a very sick child. As the Youngs navigated the agon...

Bill Hayes left his life in San Francisco for New York City, hoping to heal from the loss of his partner and find comfort in the sharp rhythms and landscape of the New York skyline. Unexpectedly, he fell in love with Oliver S...

Nancy Saltman has had and survived cancer twice. But that could not have prepared her for the worst losses of her life. On an ordinary day, she got the phone call telling her that her husband and two sons, her whole family, h...

Finding recovery, purpose and peace all the way to the end of our lives can be challenging. Aging, with its accumulated losses and disappointments, finds us. Navigating the territory of life's difficulties in midlife carries ...

When you watch someone you love live, and ultimately die, in an abusive relationship, how does it shape your own life? Sheila Kohler's sister was her childhood friend, her confidante. Living parallel lives, her sister Maxine ...

One crushing event by itself would have led Deb Hart into a dark night of the soul. But how could she absorb two terrible losses; the death of her son at 22 and a breast cancer diagnosis? She asked all the usual questions; wh...

As the life span of people diagnosed with cancer has lengthened, questions arise about what life looks like after. A physical illness is also a life event, a story that often needs to be told and existential questions that ye...

How does it feel to live with life-limiting illness from your first day? How does it influence the way you look at the world and what you believe. And what is the impact of living with an illness that so many people die of, t...

In a childhood filled with loss, neglect and longing, perhaps the biggest loss is a connection to one's own heart. Hardening to cope with what is lacking, we can become rigid, avoiding our deep feelings and most precious long...

Some people think that dying people increasingly speak nonsense, losing their grip on reality. But Lisa Smartt, a linguist trained to pay deep attention to words, realized as her father was dying that what he was saying was c...

Regardless of changes in the legal rights of LGBTQ people, end of life can feel like a step backward, with biased health care workers and lack of resources. How can we educate health facilities and workers to deliver appropri...

The war between so-called pro-choice and pro-life forces in America seem divided beyond repair. But where does that leave women who have made the often painful and important decision to have an abortion? As Kassi Underwood sa...

Sometimes a moment comes when we can no longer stay silent about what we have been through. Then it's time to speak out and claim our own courage and resiliency! Such a moment came for Milck, a musician who had experienced ph...

Barry Milazzo's beautiful son was born healthy and strong. But after two childhood immunizations, he became severely disabled, unable to communicate, walk or meet virtually any developmental milestones. With his faith severel...