OrphanWisdom.com This week I had the privilege of supporting three young women, adults in their early 30s, each coming to terms with the death of a parent who died too early, too young - in their early 60s.
The most obvious point of connection between their experience and my own is the fact of my father's death in his early 60s. But I realized as one young woman's story became two and then three, that I'm now closer in age to the parents they're mourning than to the place of bereft child. In fact these women I serve with my listening are the age of the child I myself might have had but didn't.
Understanding the passage of time and one's place in the cycle of life is perhaps more confusing when one hasn't raised children.
And so I find myself in my sixth decade wanting to know more about what I am here to do.
"Who is doing the food making while you've been eating this whole time? Our consumptive way of living is a trespass. Grief is the awakening. Grief is a sign of life stirring towards itself." ~ Stephen Jenkinson
In April I will travel to the remote reaches of the Ottawa Valley in Ontario, Canada, for the first of four residential sessions at the Orphan Wisdom School run by Stephen Jenkinson and Nathalie Roy.
Best known for the documentary Griefwalker about his rejection of the contemporary "death trade" in which he worked as the director of a major palliative care program, Jenkinson poses radically provocative questions about how we're living our lives and the consequences that has for our deaths.
If you're interested, watch The Meaning of Death, a 5 minute clip, and another short outtake, linked below. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
The most obvious point of connection between their experience and my own is the fact of my father's death in his early 60s. But I realized as one young woman's story became two and then three, that I'm now closer in age to the parents they're mourning than to the place of bereft child. In fact these women I serve with my listening are the age of the child I myself might have had but didn't.
Understanding the passage of time and one's place in the cycle of life is perhaps more confusing when one hasn't raised children.
And so I find myself in my sixth decade wanting to know more about what I am here to do.
"Who is doing the food making while you've been eating this whole time? Our consumptive way of living is a trespass. Grief is the awakening. Grief is a sign of life stirring towards itself." ~ Stephen Jenkinson
In April I will travel to the remote reaches of the Ottawa Valley in Ontario, Canada, for the first of four residential sessions at the Orphan Wisdom School run by Stephen Jenkinson and Nathalie Roy.
Best known for the documentary Griefwalker about his rejection of the contemporary "death trade" in which he worked as the director of a major palliative care program, Jenkinson poses radically provocative questions about how we're living our lives and the consequences that has for our deaths.
If you're interested, watch The Meaning of Death, a 5 minute clip, and another short outtake, linked below. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Click on the image to go to Orphan Wisdom to view 5 minutes of previously unreleased footage from the filming of Griefwalker.
RSS Feed