Preparation for Dying
dancing with the wild Goddess
“We should not need another to tell us we are dying”
Stephen Jenkinson
When we know ourselves to be dying – how might it be to honor it? To mark it with ceremony or ritual in community? This might be in the form of a rite passage where we spend time on the land without distractions, listening to what comes to us or gather with others to mark this realisation. Either can be a powerful experience.
How might it feel to be supported in making practical arrangements for our dying, such as a Power of Attorney, a Do Not Resuscitate mandate (DNR), a Will or other personal letting go practices? To have help in finding the words for those difficult conversations with family and friends. And finally, to be held by community in our dying - as we used to be?
The opportunity to step forward as an initiate into becoming a Wilderness Rite of Passage guide in my later years, feels a privileged one. A journey where honouring endings is very the essence of a rite of passage and sits in beautiful alignment with the letting go into our physical dying in this life round. Hence for me, as an end-of-life doula, coming toward the end of my own life, it is an obvious service I can bring to the world. Our aging, eldering and dying is mirrored by the elegance and beauty of these transitions in the natural world and we can only learn from them.