We Learned So Much From Death

Written by NikiAnne Feinberg on June 16, 2021. Posted in Conscious Dying, Earthaven Education, Online Events, People Care, Spirit and Culture.

It’s hard to convey just how much we have learned from the deaths of a few of our beloved community members.

Over a two-year period from spring 2016 to spring 2018 we had six deaths in our community.

These beloveds all had home funerals and home burials. And several of them died at home after being tended to by our fellow villagers.

A few of the take-aways:

A good death is possible. In fact, it’s actually accessible.
The dying give a tremendous gift to the living before, during, and after their death.
Death brings the community together in a way nothing else does.

Our experiences were so profoundly positive, including learning to grieve our losses, that we’re offering some of our wisdom to you in July through a two-part, eight-hour workshop called End of Life Planning & Paperwork: Honoring Your Life and Your Loved Ones.

Have you thought about your death?
Are you able to talk about your death or the deaths of your loved ones?
Have you considered what you would like if you become injured or so ill that you can’t speak for yourself?
Have you thought about your wishes once you are gone?
Have you shared these desires with the people closest to you?

This workshop is a beautiful way to invest in yourself and your circle of family and friends. In fact, it may very well change your life.

Here’s what some past participants have to say about this workshop:

“This workshop offers a bounty of resources, including the participants who lend support, education and direction. It’s truly a beautiful unfolding of community in process! I feel so much more well-equipped to address the issues of approaching my end-of-life.” — Benita Silver, LCMHC

“I highly recommend this workshop to absolutely everyone. And ASAP too! None of us can know when the moment will come that we must leave our body (and life as we know it) behind forever. Being as prepared as we can be for such creates more grace and ease in one’s living.” — 2020 Workshop Participant

“The workshop was comprehensive and impressive in regard to the content shared. The workshop was as thorough as it was spacious. I highly recommend this.” — Dr David Nygaard

“I was surprised at how quickly the time went, and I felt completely engaged throughout. This workshop was organized, informative, motivating — and most of all, human.” — Kitty Schaller

We hope you’ll consider joining us in July for this heart opening, playful, important, and inspiring journey. The workshop has a sliding scale from $96 to $170.

As an incentive, we are offering our newsletter subscribers a 50% discount for this two-part workshop, making the workshop as low as $48!

To receive the discount, use coupon code ELP-EBird when you register. The discount is available through June 22.

Find more information about the workshop and register on our website.

Interview with the workshop instructor Lee Warren

end of life paperwork, end of life planning, good death, Lee Warren, online workshop

NikiAnne Feinberg

NikiAnne (she/her) was born and raised on a horse and cattle ranch on the ancestral lands of the Salinan people in the Central Coast of California. She currently lives at Earthaven Ecovillage on unceded lands of the Catawba and Cherokee (Tsalagi) people. Her ancestors come from Eastern and Western Europe — France, Germany, and English Isles as well as Belarus, Lithuania, and Russia, from Ashkenazi Jewish heritage. Throughout the last two decades, NikiAnne has been immersed in community and in service to a wide range of educational endeavors focused on nature connection, personal empowerment, and community resilience. NikiAnne considers herself the grease and glue – that which helps things run smoothly or holds things together. Before co-founding SOIL in 2012, she worked and traveled through much of Asia, the Americas, and Europe, which made her formal education at George Washington University in International Affairs come alive in ways that can only happen through personal experience and relationships. Collectively, these experiences have undeniably shaped her cooperative cultural values and commitment to supporting leaders to think, feel, act and design from a foundation rooted in interrelationship. No matter what she’s teaching, NikiAnne is always on the same mission: to raise awareness of our whole selves – gifts, passions, blind spots, shadows – and help those whole selves find and fill niches in their communities. This is how the web of life is woven, and the fabric of culture repaired. She’s especially eager to support those in transition – between vocations, stages of life, and stories of world and self. Within this context, she is particularly passionate about community grief tending and death care midwifery.