5 things you can do to join the Death Positivity movement and value life more
Dying is a fundamental part of life, if not the defining element of being alive. However, we live in a culture of extreme death denial. Despite this, there is a growing Death Positivity movement. Death Positivity is about coming to terms with death as a part of life, and creating an encouraging space for dialogue and exchange about mortality. Below are five things you can do to help cultivate Death Positivity. It can help with some of the heebeejeebees about death, and might just help you live a richer life…
Put the fun back in funeral: I threw a surprise birthday funeral for my metamour
Kitty is my metamour — Chris’s other partner — and a passionate devotee to all things dark, grotesque, and twisted. As her birthday falls on New Year’s Eve, so she very rarely has a birthday party of her own. I decided to remedy this with a surprise birthday party (no, a surprise birthday funeral!) two weeks before her birthday to really catch her off-guard. Here’s how we pulled it off…
How a deceased fantasy writer helped me explain death to my 4-year-old
Death is a scary question. It is the scary question. It’s your first real encounter of the inevitable as a child; the day you realise, because you live, you are going to have to die. Petrifying! I didn’t want to dismiss it with the old Catholic one-liners that I was fed as a child, but I didn’t want to traumatise my child any further with whatever half-baked, uncharted belly flop into the pool of hippy parenting my brain was feverishly trying to piece together.
Reflecting on becoming a mother when you’ve lost your own
While my husband and I discuss having a kid, I’ve heavily reflected on how my mother’s life and death will translate into my own experience as a parent, and my relationship with my child. I’ve questioned how I can give my child what my mom gave me as hers. I’ve even feared the potential reality of me having the same fate as her at her age. But with this, I’ve realized two very important things within my concerns…
What happens when your parent dies early
Understandably, in the weeks following Dad’s death, I turned to the internet for ideas and help to process what I was going through when your parent dies early, and, to be honest, I drew a bit of a blank. So, these are a few thoughts on my experience, in the hope that someone else going through a similar slightly “early” loss finds them useful…
Learning to be loved by my mother-in-law
My husband and I have been married for a couple of years now and we recently decided to “take the plunge” into the waters of living with his mom, my mother-in-law. When I instantly found myself uncomfortable and lost in this new living space, I was surprised and confused by my feelings. I was embarrassingly confused and mad at myself for acting unintentionally cold to her — unable to find the words to explain to my husband as to why I was feeling this way, because I didn’t even understand myself.
Sweet, sometimes geeky, and generally non-religious funeral readings
What if your loved one did not leave behind helpful clues as to what to read at their funeral? Don’t fret, you have enough upset right now, just scroll down this post and hopefully the perfect funeral reading will resonate with you…
Facing my own mortality inspired me to stop making excuses and start running
I am a mother, a wife, an individual, a runner, a crappy cleaner with a pretty messy house, I like to read, and write…. But what have I really done with that lately? What makes my life enjoyable and worth living? That evening, upon returning home, I thought of a million excuses why I should just go inside and call it a night, but I made a different choice.