Death By Design

In her writing, Amy Wright Glenn draws upon the best of heart and mind, combining a rigorous commitment to academic excellence with compassionate reflections on the human story. Amy’s work has appeared in many online publications such as: Holistic Parenting Magazine, Philly.com, Attachment Parenting International, A Network for Grateful Living, Birth Institute, and Kindred Media.

Currently, Amy is an active contributor to PhillyVoice and wrote 6 of their top 10 most-read stories for 2015. She was recently quoted in a Wall Street Journal article on meditating with children. Amy published her first book Birth, Breath, and Death: Meditations on Motherhood, Chaplaincy, and Life as a Doula in March 2013 receiving substantial praise from key leaders in the fields of conscious birthing, living, and dying.

Amy’s second book Holding Space: On Loving, Dying, and Letting Go, published by Parallax Press, is now available.

http://www.birthbreathanddeath.com/

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Erica Buist is a writer and on a mission of discover of what happens between life and death.  She plans to travel to seven death festivals and write about her experience.  You have the opportunity to follow her around the world without dealing with the motion sickness, currency issues and all of the additional travel headaches by signing up to receive her newsletter; This Party’s Dead.

Visit her website at www.thisisnotajourney.com

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Thomas Andrew Daschle is an American policy advisor, lobbyist, former U.S. Senator from South Dakota, and former U.S. Senate Majority Leader. He is a member of the Democratic Party.

A South Dakota native, Daschle obtained a degree at South Dakota State University, and also served in the United States Air Force. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1978 and served four terms. In 1986, he was elected to the Senate, becoming minority leader in 1994. Defeated for re-election in 2004, he took a position as a policy advisor with a lobbying firm, and also became a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. He co-authored a book advocating universal health care.

Tom is the co-chair of the 2017 C-TAC Summit in Washington DC.

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Tina Ketchie Stearns worked for a hospice in NC or over 12 years educating medical professionals, as well as the community at large, about end of life care, advance care planning, care giving, and grief. She produced a tele-summit in September 2017 featuring 21 experts in these related fields, and people from 25 countries around the world registered to take advantage of this amazing free series.

Tina is willing to speak to your group offering comprehensive training programs to help you take the fear out of conversations about hospice care, advance care planning, caregiving, palliative care and grief.

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Amy Pickard is the creator and CEO of Good To Go! She is not a doctor or lawyer, Amy is just someone who has lived through loss and wants to help alleviate some of the uncertainty that arrives in the aftermath of death.

Amy's mother died unexpectedly in late 2012 and left behind no paperwork that might help her take care of the hundreds of details that were left the day she died. On Sunday, My mother was here and on Monday she was not. In the midst of shock and grief, she was forced not only to deal with the intensity of my DNA leaving the planet, but she had to become a detective and administrator in order to eliminate her ‘paper presence’ on Earth. What bills needed paying? Did her mother have online accounts and what were the passwords? What happens to her mother's bank account? What did she want Amy to do with her personal belongings? Her laptop? Her photos?

When Amy realized that there wasn’t an instruction manual on how to get through it all, She decided to write one! 

Amy's exclusive Good To Go! paperwork eliminates stress, guilt and doubt, and provides those you leave behind with the certainty of knowing they are carrying out your wishes. Amy's personalized Good To Go! Death Directive will assure that everything will be just as you would like it. 

Your personal priorities, made clear today, will guide your family and loved ones on how they should take care of everything when the time comes.

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Freeman says, everyone has to change how we think about death if we really want to change how we care for the dying. “Death is not a sign that we have failed,” she says, but a summons to rise to the needs of the moment. “In the care of the dying, you will witness the most courageous, most loving acts you will ever see. And the greatest tool you possess is still your humanity. You should never­­­ be afraid to demonstrate that.”

Death offers no second chances to get it right, not for the patient, the family or the caregiver. It’s a difficult experience for everyone, but Freeman has witnessed how every decision in end-of-life care has the power to make things better or make things worse.

“I once watched a mother try to touch her dying son through the gown and gloves they made her wear,” she said. But a call to the Infectious Diseases Department for new orders meant a mother’s last caresses didn’t include latex after all. It’s that individual approach that makes all the difference.

https://www.cityofhope.org/blog/cares-tool-nurse-practitioner-end-of-life-care

The Elephant In The Room, originally known as Resilient Hearts, is a film based on a novel of the same name I wrote in 2015 to share experiences encountered by members of a hospital team that care for the terminally ill and dying. This special form of medicine is called Palliative Care. I realized many healthcare providers did not know what we provided and the community was even less informed. I wanted to educate in a way that was both entertaining and informative. I felt a film would reach a broader audience and could be a tool to promote discussions about effective ways to communicate, the need for compassion, and show the difference a dedicated Palliative Care team can make in the lives of patients and their families. 

Palliative Care is a new branch of medicine designed to bring back the communication and the humanity often missing in today’s technology-based health care. Our focus is to help with symptom management and to address the physical, psychosocial, and spiritual needs of patients and families affected by illness. You do not need to be dying to benefit from palliative care, but the need for our services seems to be the greatest for the terminally ill and dying. 

From Bonnie Freeman:

I found in my role as a Nurse Practitioner on a Palliative Care team not only included providing emotional and physical support of patients and families dealing with death and dying, but I also needed to include the medical staff and members of the Palliative Care team. It can be difficult to work with sadness and loss on a daily basis without it taking an emotional toll. 

The need for self-care is a huge focus as many providers deal with emotional fatigue, over-identification, and burn-out. All too often the cure for this emotional strain has been to change jobs, quit, or just stop caring. Far too much time and money are invested in health care providers to have them quit or provide low quality care, so learning to become resilient is essential, and is a major theme for this movie. 

I wrote Resilient Hearts to emphasize the importance of humor and playfulness, and to remind us that it is one of our greatest coping mechanisms. It can provide a means for a patient to retain one’s dignity, regain self-control, and to feel “normal”, even if it is only for a few moments. I do not use humor to make light of the sadness and loss experienced during the dying process, rather I want to show the importance of making personal contact and helping them enjoy the time they have.

Health care providers need to stop equating death with failure, and focus on making the time remaining for our patients a celebration of their life. The dying need to be respected and honored. All too often the terminally ill and dying are isolated and made to feel devalued and untouchable. Resilient Hearts reminds us about the importance of our humanity.

The final journey our terminally ill and dying patients travel can be transformed to a loving and often joyful experience that family members will cherish. Death does not need to be dark and frightening if we can talk about it openly and work to make every moment special. This is what I want to convey in Resilient Hearts. Love and laughter can co-exist with loss and heart-ache.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=814Ean2lpuE

Dr. Bonnie Freeman is a Supportive Care Nurse Practitioner at the City of Hope in Duarte, California. She obtained her Adult Nurse Practitioner education with a secondary focus in Palliative Care from Vanderbilt University, a Doctorate in Nursing Practice from Azusa Pacific University, and she holds an advanced certification in Hospice and Palliative Care Nursing through HPNA.  

Bonnie has received awards for her teaching efforts in Critical Care end of life education from ELNEC in 2009, and for excellence in pain management from the Southern California Cancer Pain Initiative in 2012 and the Margo McCaffery Award of Excellence in 2014. 

Bonnie lost her life in an unexpected medical event prior to the film being completed.

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Claire Bidwell Smith, LCPC, is a therapist specializing in grief, and the author of three books of nonfiction: The Rules of Inheritance (Penguin, 2012), After This: When Life Is Over Where Do We Go? (Penguin, 2015) and Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief (Da Capo, 2018).

The Rules of Inheritance, a coming-of-age memoir about grief, was a Books for a Better Life Nominee, a Barnes & Noble Discover pick, has been published in 18 countries, and is currently being adapted for film. After this chronicles Claire’s journey as a grief therapist searching for meaning as she explores various beliefs about the afterlife.

Claire has written for The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Salon.com, Slate, Chicago Public Radio, The Guardian, Psychology Today, Yoga Journal, and BlackBook Magazine.

Claire has a bachelor’s degree from The New School University and a master’s degree from Antioch University. She is a licensed therapist (LCPC) and has a thriving private practice in Los Angeles with offices in both Santa Monica and Beverly Hills. She also works remotely with clients around the globe via Skype and phone.

Since the publication of her books Claire has made many media appearances on both television and radio, gone on to speak and lecture at numerous events, and regularly leads dozens of workshops and retreats on both writing and grief.

Claire is also very involved in the literary community, speaking on panels every year at conferences like AWP, the LA Times Festival of Books, Bindercon and BlogHer. Claire also curates the Los Angeles branch of the popular Happier Hour literary series. She has a vibrant social media life and large community of professional support.

Claire deeply loves her work and seeks to further the conversation about death in order to help our culture reach a healthier understanding of how to move through grief.

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Jake Velie has spent the last 13 years in the integrative and functional healthcare setting working with physician groups, health systems, universities, companies and families all over the world.

Jake has served as Founder and CEO of several integrative medical clinics and led multiple other healthcare companies. Jake’s companies practiced family medicine, physical medicine, rehabilitation, lifestyle education and psychotherapy, as well as fitness and personal training. Jake has worked with thousands of patients with his physicians and practitioners to develop clinical systems that employed functional medicine concepts which resulted in outcomes successful beyond conventional treatments alone.

His clinics also served as an internship and experiential learning location for medical and pharmacy students as well as an educational center for graduating nurses and family practice medical students.

Jake now serves as the CEO and Chairman of the Clinical Advisory Board of National Integrative Health, where he also authored the organization’s official Health Foundation System. Jake also serves as the Director of Corporate and Family Health at Bearence Management Group out of Minneapolis, MN, Des Moines, IA and Kansas City, MO.

My Prescription Plan isn’t just a company—it’s a story that starts with a member of our team.

In 2009, our co-founder’s father fell ill. Things grew worse, and within a couple years his father was taking over 20 medications per day. His health wasn’t improving, and he felt sluggish all the time. Eager to find a better way, the father and son came across pharmacogenetics, a personalized approach to medications and a hopeful answer. His father was skeptical at first, but he took the test.

The results surprised them both: the test showed that most of the medications were working against, not with his DNA. With some help from his doctor, his father went from taking over 20 medications to six. Not only did his father feel better than he had in a long time, he now had a personalized roadmap to show which medications were effective, which were not, and which were potentially causing future damage. 

They had found answers in one simple test.

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Melissa Grahek Pierce clearly remembers the morning everything changed for her and her family. It was a snowy Saturday when she discovered her husband dead in their mountainside home.

As Melissa began to process her deep grief, she knew that she simply couldn’t fall to pieces. She had two sons to take care of, and they needed her support more than ever. In this inspirational memoir, Melissa details the challenges of transitioning to single motherhood.

Several years earlier, Melissa and her husband had adopted their two sons and left Portland, Oregon, seeking a quieter life. As Melissa began struggling with her bereavement, the isolation of her remote community made things even more difficult. The couple had planned to raise their family in the country, but that was one future that would never come to pass.

Melissa invites you into the toughest time in her life as she struggled to make decisions that would bring her the support she needed and give her sons the stable environment they craved. Her new book, Filled With Gold, was written with the help of Christine Fadden. It will be a welcome read for any parent struggling with bereavement and the challenges of moving forward.

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