Holding Space: On Loving, Dying, and Letting Go

The extent to which we can do this for another depends upon our willingness to traverse our dark interior, our hungry ghosts, the ugly places within our own hearts haunted by our own buried cries of past harm and regret.

Through narrative therapy, we can integrate painful events into our life story and assign meaning to them, or at least we can come to more clearly assess their impact.

Buddhist “wheel of life.”

When have you felt most alive? Most awake? Most connected? When have you felt most at one with a greater sense of meaning, purpose, or power? Most likely, such moments occurred while loving deeply, feeling deeply, and seeing deeply. Facing loss can inspire such moments. When we pristinely acknowledge the impermanent nature of this world, we can be

In her report on Torajan death practices, National Geographic author Amanda Bennett writes, “[T]he death of the body isn’t the abrupt, final severing event of the West. Instead, death is just one step in a long, gradually unfolding process.”

Whatever techniques we draw upon, we can learn to sit with another person’s grief, anxiety, hurt, fear, and loss with more compassion and spaciousness. I often ask myself: What still hurts? What isn’t in place? What is beyond the scope of my sense-making capacities? What story still blows my heart so open that I’m left scrambling for any solid grou

the hyper-medicalization of birth and death pose great challenges to all of us. They pose challenges to doulas working to improve the quality of birthing and dying. While many of our ancestors experienced profound intersections of life’s bookends, today very few of us are born and die in a space that is personally meaningful, holding memories of ou

For example, consider the following questions a death doula may ask a dying person to consider when imagining their ideal death: Do you want candles to be lit? Do you have a special object that you want to hold or have placed nearby? Are there certain clothes you want to wear? Do you want someone to brush your hair? Should prayers be said? Do you h

While most Americans do not want to die in a hospital, the reality is, most will. What can be done in a hospital to bring intentionality and compassion to that experience? What can be done to ensure that our medical system, full of life-saving machinery and drugs, does not eclipse the power of the heart, companioning models of working with grief, o