By Jenn Brown — 2019
Frank Ostaseski, an internationally respected Buddhist teacher and pioneer in end-of-life care, has accompanied over 1,000 people through their dying process.
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In most modern cultures, it’s common for people to feel uneasy about death. We express this discomfort by avoiding conversations on the topic and lowering our voices when speaking of the dead and dying.
Studies of dying patients who seek a hastened death have shown that their reasons often go beyond physical ones like intractable pain or emotional ones like feeling hopeless.
My Feb. 5 column, “A Heartfelt Appeal for a Graceful Exit,” prompted a deluge of information and requests for information on how people too sick to reap meaningful pleasure from life might be able to control their death.
Though I wince at the redundancy, funeral “pre-planning” is a phenomenon receiving increased attention, and a growing number of Web-based guides tell how to go about it. As www.funerals.org puts it: “Funeral planning starts at home.
Is a “good death” just an oxymoron? Or can the experience of death be far more positive—an opportunity for growth and meaning?
Normal bereavement and major depression share many of the same symptoms. And because of those similarities, psychiatrists have historically carved out what is known as a "bereavement exclusion." Its purpose was to reduce the likelihood that normal grief would be diagnosed as clinical depression.
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Joanne Cacciatore of Sedona started the nonprofit MISS Foundation in 1996 to provide counseling, advocacy, research and education services to families who have endured the death of a child.
The fear of death and dying is quite common, and most people fear death to varying degrees. To what extent that fear occurs and what it pertains to specifically varies from one person to another.
Throughout his profound spiritual awakening, the great Tibetan yogi Shabkar experienced immense loss resulting in grief marked by raw pain, a sense of disorientation, sadness, and tears.
"But now we’re asked — and sometimes forced — to carry grief as a solitary burden. And the psyche knows we are not capable of handling grief in isolation." - Francis Weller
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