We really need to be able to talk about…
Following on from my post yesterday I'm going to share (for as long as people are engaged and want to see this stuff) some of my favourite teachers, mentors, books, resources, podcasts etc that will help us to build compassionate communities who care and who will innately know how to care for each other in those challenging times that come with death, dying, caregiving and bereavement.
There is a huge amount of information that is valuable and useful, and they are all important so I'm not even going to suggest that these are being shared in any linear fashion or order of importance. I'll use my internal gauge of what it is I feel most passionate about on any given day (I think this approach gels nicely with my inconsistent nature )
Engagement will also keep me motivated and I think sometimes it's not the actual information that is most useful, it's the dialogue and conversation that happens around it, so please feel free to share thoughts in the comments on my Facebook page here or even just message privately.
Or even more importantly, let it be a conversation starter with your friends and family, and may you have rich, meaningful connection around what matters most in life.
I'm going to start with this screenshot of a slide from a presentation from Dr Kathryn Mannix who visited NZ earlier this year. Dr Mannix is a retired Palliative Care specialist from the UK and the author of "With the End in Mind" and "Listen" (I totally recommend these books, also google Dr Kathryn Mannix on YouTube “Why don’t we talk about dying?”).
Source: Dr Kathryn Mannix. (2025, March 31). Presentation to University of Auckland Faculty of Health and Medical Science [online].
It's probably a good place to start here, because truly, if we can't talk (or even think) about important end of life issues then we are denying a fundamental part of our living:
“Virtually every great thinker (generally early in life or toward its end) has thought deeply and written about death; and many have concluded that death is inextricably a part of life, and that lifelong consideration of death enriches rather than impoverishes life. Although the physicality of death destroys man, the idea of death saves him.”