About The Series
Befriending mortality can be seen as a spiritual quest, a psychological assignment, a philosophical riddle, or a culture-making undertaking. In this six-part series, we approach the fact of our deaths as a subject for learning. Dedicated to democratizing information and rebuilding our collective knowledge around how we care for our dying and our dead, each session engages poetry, stories, big questions, and nitty-gritty details.
Sessions
(6) 90-minute online sessions from 5-6:30 pm PT, alternating Mondays on:
Sept 14, Sept 28, Oct 12, Oct 26, Nov 9, Nov 23
Session recordings and extensive resource materials are included.
Cost
Early Bird: $175 - $350 sliding scale
General Admission: $195 - $375 sliding scale
To register, click HERE
Course Content
Befriending Mortality Sessions
Week 1: Befriending Mortality – What happens when we approach death as a teacher? Might we learn better how to care for the dying in our midst, to live in the presence of our mortality, to relate to our dead as something other than “lost,” and to die when it is our turn? Might grief be developed as a skill, not just suffered as an emotion? Could the skill of heartbrokenness be essential to the times we are in?
Week 2: Final Disposition – What will happen to your body when you die? What guides this decision? We will pull back the curtain on the full range of options, including how to detect greenwashing when it comes to technologies and products marketed as eco-friendly, including natural organic reduction (also known as human composting, terramation, and soil transformation) and alkaline hydrolysis (aquamation, or water or flameless cremation).
Week 3: The Dying Time – How do we support the dying in our midst? What supports might we want for our dying time? We’ll look at the landscape from diagnosis to death: palliative care and hospice; medical aid in dying (MAID), voluntary stopping eating and drinking (VSED), and other forms of “choice in dying”; assembling a care team and the role of an end-of-life doula; and the deaths that don’t go “according to plan.”
Week 4: From Death to Disposition – Historically, care for the dead was handled by family and community – and legally, it is still our right to do so. But for many, our ancestral ways of caring for each other after death have been forgotten. We’ll review the aspects of deathcare now outsourced to professionals – bathing, dressing, and transporting the body; sourcing a casket, shroud, or urn; handling the paperwork – and consider the benefits of more hands-on engagement.
Week 5: Remembering Together – How do we honor and strengthen the continuity of relationships across the veil of life and death? We’ll consider inspiring examples of creative ceremonies of bereavement and remembrance, including meaningful funerals, living memorials, and “re-dos” of ceremonies that went wrong or never happened.
Week 6: Creating a Death Plan – Birth plans have been promoted as a way for expectant parents and their care team to clarify and communicate their values, needs, and preferences for both optimal and unforeseen scenarios. A written death plan can do the same. We’ll review all the elements you may want to consider: physical/medical, legal/logistical, emotional/spiritual, and social/cultural, across the time spectrum of before illness, during the dying process, and after death.
About Your Facilitator
An experienced and knowledgeable life passage guide, Holly J. Pruett helps individuals, families, and communities to prepare for, live with, and talk about death. Holly is professionally trained as a Life-Cycle Celebrant, Community Death Educator, Home Funeral Guide, and Death Doula, with two Proficiency Badges from the National End-of-Life Doula Alliance and certification in Thanatology from the Association for Death Education & Counseling. You can find Holly here: https://www.hollyjpruett.com