Overview

We live in a society where people struggle to look death in the eye. Death has become the territory of professionals and we rarely see a dead body, unless it is someone very close to us. Death has become hidden, and so more traumatic. This book shows that, if we start talking openly about death, it can change the way we live. It is a collection of stories and images about death, dying and bereavement. People from all walks of life share their experiences and what they have learned from accompanying others. Heartbreaking, angry, questioning and contradictory - laugh-aloud funny, even - the stories illuminate, inspire, reassure and inform. They are accompanied by commentaries from professionals working in end-of-life planning, health, bereavement and funeral care.

Full Product Details

9781910919637

Table of Contents

Reviews

'Telling stories is fundamental to enabling people to find meaning in life and its losses. By bringing together so many people's first-hand experiences of death and dying with the wisdom and knowledge of those who work in the death industry , this excellent book enables us to prepare better for the end of our own life's journey and make our own 'departures' as good as possible - for us and for those we love and who care for us. It is a book not just for the bereaved and dying but, as the title rightly says, for the living too.' Julia Samuel, psychotherapist, speaker and author of Grief Works and This Too Shall Pass / 'Nothing can fully prepare us for death, but this fabulous book is as close as we'll get. More than any other book I've read on the subject, and I've read many, this gives you directions and permission to have the death you want, either for yourself or for someone you love. The shared stories of death are wise, moving, useful and sometimes funny, and the expert commentaries offer excellent advice without being too prescriptive. Of course, we may not get the death we imagined - it can be a messy and unpredictable business. But this book gave me the sense of joining in and contributing to the most important conversation we may ever have. We are all going to die, but how we do it really matters. So let's start listening and talking...' Phil Hammond, NHS doctor, broadcaster, writer and comedian

Author Information

Liz Rothschild is a writer, actor, playwright and founding director of Westmill woodland burial ground in Wiltshire. She has been a funeral celebrant for more than 25 years and has run numerous death cafes and a course on preparing for end of life. In 2012 she launched, and continues to curate, the Kicking the Bucket Festival in Oxford. She also wrote and performs a one-woman show, Outside the Box - a life show about death, which premiered in 2016 and has toured the UK and US. Many of these stories come from her audiences.

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