Knowledge Hub
3 Things to Do When You’re Afraid Of Your Spouse Dying First
It was my greatest fear. Having had no children, the thought of my husband dying first and me being left alone in the world was something I simply couldn’t bear. Even if I had had children, the idea of my best friend, lover, business partner and companion leaving me behind was unbearable. So I didn’t…
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Top Regrets of the Dying – How To Avoid This One
One of the top 5 regrets of the dying is ‘I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings’. Given that we never know when our life is going to come to an end, it’s a really good idea to not only express our feelings, but by doing that, keep our relationships up to…
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Bereavement Leave – It Could Be Possible This Becomes Paid
Paid bereavement leave from work? Did you know that employers are obliged to offer compassionate leave, but it doesn’t have to be paid? And yet many bereaved employees return to work well before they feel they are ready, due to financial pressures. Grief Recovery Method have launched a petition asking that there should be statutory…
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What is a deathie and are you one? (The Groundswell Project Interview)
I had the pleasure of interviewing Jessie Williams of The Groundswell Project, based in Australia, a few weeks ago. Jessie shares her poignant and beautiful story that demonstrates her passion to this project, which is working in a similar way to Before I Go Solutions. Listen in below to find…
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7 Tips For A Good Valentine’s Day When You Are On Your Own
7 Tips For A Good Valentine’s Day When You Are On Your Own The thought of never again receiving a Valentine’s card from my husband almost made me drop to the floor in agony. All those other women out there would be receiving a card, flowers or being taken out for a meal, and in…
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The Cosmic Elbow Strikes Again!
Ever heard of the cosmic elbow? My husband used to talk about this a lot. Life tends to give us little nudges, and if we don’t pay attention, it often gives us bigger ones. First of all, it usually is a prod, just enough to make us pay attention to something. Then if we don’t…
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8 Pointers to a Very Different Kind of New Year Resolution
A very different kind of new year’s resolution: I want to let you into a secret (every year it used to be the same for me) – I would set a resolution (or several), think “this time it will be different,” and I would start well. Slowly, though, the excuses would creep in, and…
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How To Answer the Big Questions of Death When You Are Alive
How to Answer the Big Questions of Death When Still Alive is the name of the latest podcast from a wonderful site called Death Goes Digital. I was interviewed by the charming founder of Death Goes Digital, Peter Billingham, last week, and we had a most engaging conversation, including what music I’d have playing at…
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Health: How To Make Good Decisions Towards the End of Life
How to make health decisions towards the end of life will depend on all sorts of things – not just how you have lived your life health-wise, but also circumstances at the time, the support you have around you, and the quality of your life at the time. I recently received a story that didn’t…
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Chocolate skulls? High fashion skeletons? Halloween or Day of the Dead?
Eighteen months ago I had to cancel an event in our local town because of complaints about a coffin in a window display we had arranged (read about it in my blog post at the time). How different this is to the natural celebrations that occur with the Day of the Dead in Mexico. Watch…
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Taking a Child to a Funeral: Yes or No?
I watched my friend’s 5-year old peer down into the tiny grave. Surrounded by a group of somber people in the small churchyard, some sobbing, he was curious to see what was in the bottom of this hole in the ground. We were gathered to say goodbye to a tragedy – a baby who had…
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7 Crucial Reasons to Record, Write and Relay Your Life, Right Now
Looking at my Dad lying in the hospital bed, unable to talk due to the recent stroke he’d had, I could only be thankful that some years ago we had had a particular conversation. We were sitting outside in their beautiful garden in France, under the shade of the tree, listening to the birds twittering…
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Celebrating Today
It’s my birthday today! What’s more, I have moved very definitely out of the realm of middle age, as I am now 60. Gulp. I know that age doesn’t mean anything, I know that you are as young as you feel (true!) and I love Wayne Dyer’s words ‘If you didn’t know how old you…
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The 3 A’s of Living a Life of Joy
1. Accept It took quite a couple of years to pluck up the courage to try internet dating after my husband died. At first even the thought of it was horrifying, and my first visit to a dating site ended after just a minute or so But as time passed, and I admitted I was…
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Being Here Now
Last week I thought my Dad was on death’s door after his stroke, as did the doctors. So we have all been surprised that he is still with us, and even eating (this time last week he couldn’t swallow). I’ve been spending time with both him and my Mum but one of the blessings of…
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Death At Work
A death at work is devastating in different ways from at home. If you run a business of any kind, listen in to this conversation as Sheela tells her story of what went wrong, why and what needed to happen to help make the situation better.
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Making Time for Dying
This last two weeks has been a bit challenging with my stepdaughter dying – those of you in my Facebook group will have heard this, and that’s also why I didn’t send an email this week. You can join here if you want to: https://www.facebook.com/groups/beforeIgo/ In fact, I am going to be taking a break for…
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How To Talk With Someone Who Doesn’t Want to Talk
Bernard stomped out, shouting, ‘No. I will not talk about this!’ His wife Jennifer felt shocked. She hadn’t realized he felt so strongly. But now she was left with her questions: ‘What will I do if you die before me?’ ‘I don’t know anything about our finances, how will I cope?’ ‘I need to know…
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Afraid Of Your Spouse Dying First? Open this…
The idea of my husband, best friend, lover, business partner and companion leaving me behind was unbearable. It was my greatest fear. Having had no children, the thought of him dying first and me being left alone in the world was something I simply couldn’t bear. So I didn’t think about it – or when…
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5 Questions to Ask When Someone Is Actually Dying
Have you noticed we often use euphemisms about death? In my last blog on this, just recently I was advocating ‘telling it like it is’, and using words such as death, dying, die. But the fact is, when you come to meet someone whom you know probably has only weeks to live, is it really…
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Feeling Sad and Glad at the Same Time – Really?
Someone on Facebook said ‘my dad passed away this morning at 3.30am. I’m so relieved he isn’t in pain anymore. I’m so sad at the same time’. Is it really possible to be feeling two such strong feelings at the same time? Once upon a time I would have said no. Now, especially since my…
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Celebrating in the Dark
In a world of opposites, there is both darkness and light. Hard to believe sometimes, when you’re seemingly locked in a room without being able to see the light switch. But it is possible to find it – to find light in the dark. And not only that, but to come to a place where…
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How To Be When Someone You Know Dies
It’s difficult, let’s face it. Someone you know has died. Relatives whom you may or may not know will be grieving. You maybe are grieving, too. How on earth do you acknowledge this? Here’s an excerpt from my book Gifted By Grief: A True Story of Cancer, Loss and Rebirth, where I reflect on the…
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What We Talk About When We Talk About Death
Pushing up the daisies. Kicked the bucket. Passed on. You name it, we have a euphemism for anything to do with someone dying or who has died. Is this us trying to deny it happens? Is it because we feel embarrassed or disconcerted? Is it because we would rather just ignore the whole topic, and…
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A Good Goodbye
Gail Rubin runs a wonderful website and business called A Good Goodbye based in California, the name of which tells you a lot about what she focuses on, which is one of the reasons I wanted to interview her. In our interview we spoke about ‘matchings, hatchings and dispatchings’ – a succinct sentence to describe life,…
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Advance Directives: 5 Essential Things You Need to Know
Marie’s son was distraught. He had told his Mother he would have the doctors do everything they could – but now they were saying that they didn’t know how long she would be able to breathe on her own without the tube, nor did they know how long she might last if the machine continued…
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What’s the News Hardly Anyone Wants to Admit To?
There’s actually not a lot that we can say we know for sure about life, but this is one of them. We get born, and then some time later, we die. Yes, it may be unpalatable news and uncomfortable at that, but it is TRUE! It really is. What’s more, we cannot know how…
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TedX Talk – How To Do A Good Death
In this moving and poignant talk, Jane relates her experience of helping her husband have a “good death” and what she learnt from the process – and how it can help us all prepare for that 100% chance – the chance that we might die some day.
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7 Practical Ways to Set Yourself Up For a Good Death
I never thought about death much, other than as a concept, until my husband was diagnosed with cancer in 2010. Then it made its entrance with a bang. Even though he was 65, it felt far too young to be contemplating death. We learnt a lot about each other, about life, and about death in…
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Moving From Scared to Sacred
This month’s interview in the BIG Interview Series is with Patty Burgess, President of Possibility with doingdeathdifferently.com. Patty is a friend and colleague, has participated on my Before I Go Programme, and is one wise, wild woman (so right up my street!) In this short interview she speaks movingly about how death is an…
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Arguably the Best Valentine’s Present You Can Give A Loved One!
The best Valentine present? Really? Well, I’m sure you know someone, or know of someone, who’s had an administrative nightmare after a family member has died, all because they didn’t sort their affairs out before they popped their clogs. A colleague of mine, Heather, had that experience when her Dad died suddenly. It took her three…
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Love Knows No Boundaries – What’s That Got To Do With Dying, Death and Grief?
Love Know Knows No Boundaries is a recording of a talk I gave to a wonderful audience at St Brides Church, Liverpool. I begin with a reading of the prologue of my book Gifted By Grief, so if you want a taste of this, listen in to the first few minutes. In this talk I…
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What’s Grief Got to Do With Love? (Different From What You Might Think)
What’s grief got to do with love? Well, it’s obvious isn’t it? For instance, there is a very well-known saying from Queen Elizabeth II: “Grief is the price we pay for love.” Because we do grieve much more over those we love, than those we either didn’t know so well, or didn’t know at all.…
Learn MoreThe Time is Now! What To Do To Be Fully Alive
This short piece ‘The Time Is Now’ was written by my friend Bob German of Young At Any Age. When he sent it to me I just wanted to share it. Full stop. It is so wise. All the statements are summed up in the last one. So how can you choose love over this holiday…
Learn MoreTalking About Deliberate Ending of a Life…Is it Suicide or Not?
Deliberate ending of a life? Doesn’t that mean suicide? Well, perhaps not. It’s a very challenging subject to talk about, but I feel it’s one that many secretly think about; it just comes out in forms like ‘we treat our pets better than we treat out elderly citizens’, or ‘I wish I could just go…
Learn More5 Reasons Why Death and Divorce Are Not the Same Thing – and 5 Why They Are
One day, about 2 years after my husband died, I was at a social occasion with a group of friends I’d known for a while. One of them was suffering the aftermath of a recent divorce, seeing her ex-husband on the arms of a younger woman around town. “Sorry”, she said, looking at me…
Learn More3 Non-Actions To Take When Anxiety, Grief and Not-Knowing Are Your Bed Partners
Fear gripped me, like a vice around my guts. I treaded water in the swimming pool in which I had arrived for an early morning dip, before the heat of the day became too much. My friend had called from the terrace rooftop of the villa in which I was staying in Italy, on holiday.…
Learn MoreWhat Sort of Impact Do You Create in The World?
Muhammad Ali made a huge impact in the world throughout his life in many ways, not just his boxing. But he also made an impact in his death too – he had stated beforehand just how he wanted his funeral to be. Not only did this mean his executor and family only had to carry…
Learn MorePasswords – Keep Private or Share?
In the UK’s Saturday Guardian, Adam Golightly writes an anonymous column (Widower of the Parish) recounting his challenges each week as a new widower and father to two children, since his wife Helen died in early April. This week, he faced another apparently small, but in experience huge, problem. The one of passwords. In my…
Learn MoreWhy What You Say to Someone Who Is Grieving Is So Crucial
“Everyone’s grieving is unique, and only luck helps us strike the right note in talking with the bereaved. ” So said Mariella Frostrup in last week’s Observer magazine. Yes, grief is definitely unique in it’s expression through each person. But do we really depend on luck if we are talking with those who have been…
Learn MoreGrieving, Guilt and Letting Go: 3 Pointers That Help
When your loved one dies initially, your world is consumed with thoughts of them. You expect that, others expect that, and while it is extremely painful, there is a kind of appropriateness about it all. After all, it IS painful when someone dies. But further on, what happens when you feel moments of peace or…
Learn More5 Tips on How to Cope With Christmas When Your Loved One Has Died
How to cope with Christmas? Even the thought of it can be a nightmare when a loved one has died, and especially a partner, child or other person you were living with. I created this infographic as a quick way to help you with managing not just the day itself, but the run up to it.…
Learn MoreDeath, Grief and Paris Attacks
When something like the Paris attacks happen, the words ‘gift’ and ‘grief’ absolutely do not sit well together. They are not meant to. How on earth can there be a gift when someone dies? It’s not possible. In the moment, there is only shock (even if you have been prepared for the death), horror, tears, sadness,…
Learn MoreTrusting, Waiting, and then Taking a Step Forward
We can relatively easily see that loss might hold a gift for others. But when it happens to us, in the face of unspeakable sorrow, pain or grief, it’s not so easy to see any gifts at all. In fact the idea just goes out the window as you feel like railing against life, are…
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3 Tips on How to Cope With Grief
No 1: Open Your Doors to All Feelings Imagine you are a house. Grief (in the form of fear, anger, guilt, sorrow, sadness, despair, you name it) comes knocking at the front door. The instinct is to lock the door and block up the windows to keep it out. But the feelings are so overwhelming…
Learn MoreCan Acceptance Really Bring Freedom?
Rant, rage, stomp, fume, blame, criticise, complain, moan. So often this is what we do instead of accepting how things are. It’s as if that very action of accepting will condone the situation, or let someone ‘get off scot free’, or because we don’t know what else to do. Our society doesn’t help –…
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