Knowledge Hub
Why Bother Doing An End Of Life Plan?
Let’s face it, there is never going to be a good time to address anything to do with dying, death or grief. When you’re fit and healthy, the last thing on your mind is the end of your life. However, this is actually the very time to take your head out of the sand and…
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Wills, Weddings and Updating Your Documentation
The royal wedding here in the UK has been a huge topic in the media of all kinds these last few weeks. However, I can bet that hardly anyone has been also talking to Prince Harry and Meghan about a crucial thing that needs to happen when a couple get married. It’s more usually thought…
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What Is a ‘Good Death’? – 5 Contributing Factors
My husband was lying in the hospital bed. Drains, tubes, and a catheter were connected to him in various ways. The constant beep-beep of the machine next to him was irritating beyond description, particularly at night-time. We’d been told there was nothing more they could do, and by this time he was too weak to…
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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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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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Ageing – The Secret Behind the Greatest Opportunity You’ve Ever Had
Most people think ageing sucks. And it especially does, when you compare how you are now to what you were then. It’s all very well having memories, but when you become stuck in them, or resentful because you can’t do what you want to do in the same way, then they can be a problem. Jane Duncan Rogers will talk in this interview about why and how ageing is an opportunity, and what the secret is to being able to fully enjoy life, no matter what age you are.
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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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Jane talks decluttering with BBC’s Aggie MacKenzie
Jane talks decluttering with BBC’s Aggie MacKenzie Recently, a little book has come out ‘The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning’, by Margareta Magnusson, a Swedish woman who describes herself as ‘somewhere between 80 -100 years old’. It’s been marketed very cleverly – a different angle on what used to be called ‘spring cleaning’, and…
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Before I Go Solutions goes international
Here’s a press release that was sent out yesterday, and resulted in several opportunities – more news on that to come 🙂 Before I go Solutions is branching out and will be training others to run end-of-life planning courses in Canada, America and Australia and throughout the UK. Jane Duncan Rogers who founded the business…
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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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How Death Got Cool and a training opportunity…
If you’re in the UK, you may have read in The Guardian journal section this weekend ‘How Death Got Cool’ – a discussion stating that ‘dying well has become one of the defining obsessions of our times’. Whether you agree with that or not, death is here to stay, so long as we are alive!…
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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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New book! The Essential Guide to Creating A Good End of Life Plan
Is it possible to create a good end of life plan? Yes! My new book Before I Go: The Essential Guide to Creating a Good End of Life Plan is now available for pre-order through the publishers website here! (USA only – available in the UK later in 2018) Very exciting! Being published…
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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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A Vision Coming True – Who Wants to Be Part of This?
I HAVE A VISION! Who wants to be part of this vision? • Imagine a world where people feel at ease talking about dying, death and grief. • Imagine your family, or some of them, talking naturally about end of life, round the dinner table • Imagine everyone having death plans, just like…
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Nominated for Moray Business Women Most Enterprising Business Award!
Before I Go Solutions has been nominated for this great award! The Celebration Ball is on 18th November, so will find out then who has won. Congratulations to the other five nominees and may we all have fun on the night, enjoy ourselves and raise lots of money for Moray Food Bank, the charity that…
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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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5 Thing to Do Right Now To Save Your Loved Ones Headache and Heartache After You Die
This dying stuff is notoriously difficult to get around to doing. The number one reason people don’t do it is because they can’t find the time. It just doesn’t get to the top of our list of priorities, and that’s what this webinar is all about. Come and join me next Monday or Tuesday, LIVE,…
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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.…
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How To Die Peacefully – an Interview with Dr Wendy Nickerson
The words ‘how to die peacefully’ really struck me. That’s what everybody wants, isn’t it? Every month this year I am going to be interviewing a specialist in the field of dying, death and grief for my new series The B.I.G. Interviews Series, hosted on my You Tube Channel. First up was Dr Wendy…
Learn MoreBrexit,Trump, Death and Fear – What To Do Next
Fear. That small word that has such an enormous impact. And today, the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration, there will be many people feeling any one of the words associated with fear – here’s just a few: anxiety, jittery, uncomfortable, alarmed, jumpy, distrustful, timid, shy, apprehensive, unsure, uncertain, scared, worried. Recognise any of them?…
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 MoreNear-Death Experience and What Happens After Death…
This is a really interesting interview with a man who died and came back, ie had a near-death experience. What he reports is very much in line with what I have experienced, even though I didn’t have an NDE. If you’re at all interested in this, listen in and come back and comment here, or pop…
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