Episodes
June 15, 2016
My Way
Watching our own parents face the end of their lives often illuminates questions about how we want to navigate that territory. What will support our own end of life experiences? What are the limits of medical intervention? Ho...
June 8, 2016
When Breath Becomes Air
When Dr. Paul Kalanithi faced a stage IV lung cancer diagnosis in his last year as a neurosurgical resident, his wife, Dr. Lucy Kalanithi faced it with him. In the twenty-two months that followed, they continued to work, had ...
June 1, 2016
The Forgiveness Project
Are there human acts that are un-forgivable? Perhaps, but as human beings, some of us are able to find a way to forgive the person or people who have hurt us. Marina Cantacuzino's mission is to collect the narratives of peopl...
May 25, 2016
Thoughts in Passing
For Claudia Bicen, curiosity about the meaning of life inevitably led to curiosity about facing death. But how would she explore that deepest of human questions? A self taught artist, she decided to interview and draw people ...
May 18, 2016
OK To Laugh
Keeping a sense of humor at the worst of times seems impossible until you're actually living through the worst of times. No one knows that better than Nora McInerny Purmort, whose husband died of brain cancer when she was 32,...
May 11, 2016
Art for Amaey
How does a parent cope with the illness of a child? We want to protect and insulate our children from all harm. But when a child is diagnosed with cancer, we watch them experience many pains and ills. Purvi Shah's son Amaey w...
May 4, 2016
Mountains of Light
In times of profound loss, what do we turn to? Some of us look for a way to express our experience through writing or art or movement. Some of us write. Some of us turn to the comfort of the natural world, finding our place i...
April 27, 2016
You're Going to Die
Ned Buskirk did not consciously intend to open a conversation and create a movement about dying and death. But when he thought about what would make his open mic events meaningful, the title popped into his mind. What if he c...
April 20, 2016
Grief in the Workplace
After a loss, people often have to return to work much too soon. And what do they encounter? A workplace which understands very little about grief or how to support a colleague in the loss. Often, a lack of experience and edu...
April 13, 2016
Gen Silent
With the legalization of marriage for all Americans and the greater level of acceptance for LGBT people, we could come to the mistaken conclusion that bias no longer affected LGBT people. But far from it, aging and dying LGBT...
April 6, 2016
Gone From My Sight
At the end of life, there is so much mystery, so much we don't know. But because of the work of Barbara Karnes, we do have a map of the physical territory. Just knowing that what is happening to a loved one at the end is part...
March 30, 2016
Integrated Life Strategies- A Believer's Guide
Going through the deepest struggle is sometimes the road to new illuminations. Robin Perry Braun knows this first hand. The tremendous struggles in her early life led her to a belief that with the right practices, she could a...
March 23, 2016
Making Healthcare Better
Palliative care has been a little understood aspect of our overall health care system even as it has become more recognized within that system as a valuable resource for patients and their families. Patients often have no edu...
March 16, 2016
Turning the Corner on Grief Street
At first, grief knocks us down. we are stuck on the corner, watching almost everyone else moving down the block. But as we investigate, there is the possibility of bringing meaning to our own experience and to open up realms ...
March 9, 2016
Forgiveness: Stories for Our TIme
Our religious and spiritual teachers encourage us to forgive, as if we know how to do that and naturally want to. Yet forgiveness is actually a complex and nuanced experience, especially complicated when great loss has result...
March 2, 2016
Dying to Talk
Breaking the silence to talk about the end of life is sometimes hard, but can also be compelling. For those who have had experience with people facing the end of their lives, the conversation is crucial. And if you work with ...
Feb. 24, 2016
Dear Dead Mother: Against Grieving in Silence
When Rachel Stephenson was five years old, her mother died in a car accident and never returned home. While the rest of her family was determined to move on, replace her mom and maintain their silence, Rachel rebelled against...
Feb. 17, 2016
Sexy After Cancer
No one talks about the hidden losses that come along with a cancer diagnosis. For Barbara Musser, a single young woman in 1989 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, suddenly facing struggles with her sexuality was an une...
Feb. 10, 2016
Where There's Smoke, There's Dinner
Regi Carpenter has always used story telling to make sense of her world. By the time she faced the loss of her brother suddenly, she was well established in her story craft. And as she moved through her own experience of loss...
Feb. 3, 2016
In the Womb of Love
Aida Salazar lost a baby and quickly found herself pregnant with another. Struggling to find an open heart in the midst of fear, she did what artists, and many other grievers, do; she accessed her creative expression as a way...
Jan. 27, 2016
Five Hours
How would we cope if our brand new baby could not live beyond a few hours? Most of us cannot imagine that experience but, for others, it is a reality. Beyond a crushing grief and sense that this should not have happened, ther...
Jan. 20, 2016
Resolution Care
The obstacles to exercising our own choices at the end of our lives sometimes seem impossible to overcome. We are part of a culture that refuses to accept death, a medical system that reflects that culture and a lack of capab...
Jan. 13, 2016
Conversations That Heal
Some losses are losses of things we never had; a safe childhood where we were protected and treasured. Attention to our needs and protection from what hurts. For a person abused as a child, the grief is for what never was and...
Jan. 6, 2016
The Soul With Two Voices
How do our losses help us uncover our true purpose? This is the question at the heart of Sonika Marcia Ozdoba's memoir, The Soul with Two Voices. Losing what she thought was most valuable to her, her professional singing voic...