BLOG | RESOURCES
some links may require subscription

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

~ Wendell Berry, The Peace of Wild Things

Reign of Moonlight #10 (detail) by Karen Bellone

As a death doula, I have pondered my own end of life preparation. I know now that there is a direct connection to how I live until I die. I see my place as both an individual and an entity within the collective, with responsibilities to adhere to - with myself, with my loved ones and with the Earth itself. Accompanying other beings through the transition at the end of life has revealed to me unequivocally that we need one another, and we need our stories, as much as we need the Earth’s stories. Seeking to commune with ourselves about all this, we might attempt to rewind our consciousness as the world speeds through us at an even faster pace than it did just ten years ago. Thankfully, there are many wonderful minds pondering these profound questions. This month I recommend two recent books to explore, both with riveting podcast interviews. ~Karen

Poet David Hinton’s elegant & economic call-to-action book Wild Mind Wild Earth/Our Place in the Sixth Extinction begins with this introduction. Before intention and choice, before ideas and understanding and everything  we think we know about ourselves —we love this world around us? How can that be? How can we love all this when our cultural assumptions tell us in so many ways that “we” humans are fundamentally other than “nature,” and that “nature’s” only real value is how it supports our well being? There’s no love in that. Doesn’t love require kindred natures? He builds a beautiful narrative exploring our inherent human nature that simply answers so many of the daunting ecological and environmental dilemmas that plague us at  this critical moment in our story with the rest of the animals on Earth..

Find the Emergence Magazine Ethics of A Wild Mind podcast with David Hinton here and buy Wild Mind Wild Earth here.

Music impresario Rick Rubin’s book The Creative Act: A Way of Being may put some off at first as it appears to be geared toward the practice of artists, but there is so much insight for any individual to glean from his refreshingly simple approach to huge ideas. Learning to quiet the mind, leaning on repetition and ritual to unleash the innate power of one’s connection to self, and to one another, is practice everyone really wants to know. He shares ideas in service of building a structure for our individual lives where we can seek and come to know more authentic purpose.  In Ezra Klein’s preface to his podcast, he says definitively, Rubin turns his philosophy of creativity into a manual for living.

Listen to The Tao of Rick Rubin podcast here and buy The Creative Act: A Way of Being here.

Teen grief is on the rise. NPR reports 1 in 3 teen girls report seriously considering suicide. 1 in 5 identifying as LGBTQ+ say they attempted suicide in that time. Between 2009-2019, depression rates doubled for all teens - and that was pre-pandemic. 

We’ve chosen to highlight this supremely beautiful film, Hawa, a coming-of-age story that accurately portrays modern-day teen grief. The film is a surreal journey of a young Malian girl in Paris named Hawa who carries the weight not only of the loss of her only caregiver and last remaining relative, her Grandmother, but the relentless burden of serving as a voice for a people when colonization has dispossessed her West African indigenous community of their traditions. We follow her as she sets out to ask her ideal mother, Michelle Obama who she discovers is visiting Paris, to adopt her.

Watch the movie Hawa here. 

Read NPR’s How to talk - and listen - to a teen with mental health struggles here.

Family caregivers are struggling as people are living longer and most of our elders need care but nursing homes are expensive and isolating and very few want to live in one anyway so families are stretched thin. 80% of care is provided by family members (statistics by the on-the-ground activists creating real change for caregivers in the US,  Caring Across Generations).

In this NYT article, we’re guided by experts on the step-by-step process of How to Make a Caregiving Plan (So It’s Ready When You Need It). Making the caregiving plan before you are unable to do so is a way to ensure that your wishes will be honored and it takes the responsibility, and oftentimes burden, off of the caregivers of needing to handle this important decision making.

Learn more about How to Make a Caregiving Plan (So It’s Ready When You Need It) here.

Support Caring Across Generations here.

Bonus Resource: Go to Caring Connections and download your state's advance directives. Discuss your wishes with family and friends, give documents to trusted people and have a copy in a safe place.

Often due to construction, ancient burial sites are being unearthed all across the planet, providing us with clues about our ancient human past. Recently in Siberia, a 2000-year old burial chamber was excavated revealing what appears to be a family grave. Painted plaster masks, artworks containing images of animals and bronze tools were also found alongside the bodies, as well as evidence of a funeral pyre. This archaeological find provides insight into little known Tesinian culture; a nomadic group living near the Black Sea from the 7th to 3rd century BCE.

Read a brief overview here. Find the full article here.

East of the Sun and West of the Moon by Kay Nielsen 1914

The use of music is to remind us how short a time we have a body….nothing roots us more firmly into the house of being. Check out this exquisite review of Richard Power’s novel The Time of our Singing, a book that cherishes the power of song and its profound significance in our lives most exquisitely.

Read the article here and find the book here.

“Dance is the hidden language of the soul,” Martha Graham famously said. But why do we dance and what can dance teach us about ourselves? Watch this first segment from the BBC series The Meaning of Life, and discover why dancing is so key to our humanity.

Read the article here.

Something many of us as members of Western Society need to practice is having patience with our grief processes. Oftentimes, grief that comes along with the loss of a dear pet can be minimized, although studies prove that pet parents say that losing their animal companion can be just as difficult, if not more so.

This article Dealing with pet loss: How to help a grieving pet parent offers some tools and some “do’s and don’ts” to help loved ones in their grief process.

Do a ritual to honor the pet. 
Do share your pet grief situation without comparing when accompanying a griever. 
Do share your own memories of the pet. 
Do listen without problem solving.
Don’t use euphemisms such as “they’re running free” 
Don’t minimize the loss or find a silver lining. 
Don’t ask what you can do. Instead, say “I’m here for you.”
DON’T suggest getting another pet soon!

You can read the full article here. 

Dr. Sarah Kerr, PhD at The Centre for Sacred Deathcare is offering a new online course Navigating Pet Death - soul care practices for animals and people and has a free mini course available now. More info here.

Big Thief, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You

Death, like a door

To a place we've never been before

Death, like space

The deep sea, a suitcase

We’ve chosen 2023’s Grammy-nominated indie folk-rock band Big Thief’s song, Change, as our song of the month.

Listen here.