Align v.2
Contemplative care for living with death awareness
Dear community,
My yearly online course Align: Contemplative Care for Living with Death Awareness is back for the second time and I’d like to invite you to join. Scroll down below and you’ll find the course layout and details.
This three session series matures from the pilot course I offered last year, which was built from countless conversations I’ve had revealing the practical and poetic power of establishing a living deathcare practice and perspective – now – and that starts with turning towards death.
Easier said than done, right? Learning how to traverse this path is something we can only do for ourselves in our own time, but it’s emotional, spiritual, and communal knowledge that we build together. That’s why it’s so valuable to experience death and grief education in supportive settings, where death becomes teacher, not enemy.
In The Diary of a Zen Nun (1987), Nan Shin writes, “by not quite accepting things that are so – because they don’t please me – we spend our entire lives making meaningless gestures somewhere next to reality.”
I think death avoidance is that somewhere else than here. If we are not here, how are we supposed to make meaningful gestures with honest recognition of the reality that we are mortal? When we are here with awareness, more options become available to us about how we respond to life. It’s not about doing so perfectly, but about being empowered by what is within our control, enlivened by our intention and purpose, and humbled through trust in the process.
As poet and psychoanalyst Nuar Alsadir writes in Animal Joy (2022), “The goal is less to line up the external chips, to get things right, than it is to be alive while living, alive when you die.”
Or like how psychotherapist and soul activist Francis Weller writes about entering The Long Dark of urgent sacred death and grief tending: certain things can only happen in darkness and that’s where we gather inner resources for resiliency.
Systemically and collectively, such alchemy and shifted attention is part of the dimension of the Great Turning, coined by the late eco-activist, Buddhist and living systems theory scholar Joanna Macy.
This honest effort (I’m thinking of how psychiatrist Carl Jung said, “the brighter the light, the darker the shadow”) gives us the strength and courage to resist total numbness and the false comfort of avoidance. I consider it a compass for life-affirming practices and fuel for resistance to oppressions and violence of all kinds.
Building a personal and intentional relationship with death also helps prepare you for whatever life brings. I think that death is at the core of all other fears and anxieties, and by giving space to the realities of fear, pain, and grief, one can begin to transform these experiences toward more compassion and connection, more nurturance and respect for the sacredness of all life.
With the amount of death, destruction, and negligence we’re witnessing, there is a lot going on which needs our attention. If you are feeling the pull to give more intention to your death awareness, this course will help you be in touch with yourself while you’re in touch with the world. It’s intended as a short but mighty, succinct yet careful study outside of the paces of media at this time: a pause, rebalance, and call to action, from the perspectives of death and grief care.
I’m really looking forward to this course with those who resonate with the effort and commitment, however challenging, that death and grief care asks of us.
If you know someone personally who would benefit from this course, please kindly forward this email to them.
With love and in solidarity,
Staci
Align: contemplative care for living with death awareness
October course series
Online on Zoom, English, closed captioning available
Max 5 participants for each cohort
€300 including VAT
Cohort 1
Thursdays, 19:00-21:00 CET
2, 9, and 16 October 2025
Cohort 2
Mondays, 19:00-21:00 CET
13, 20, and 27 October 2024
To register, simply email me [staci.bushea@proton.me] with “Align Monday” or “Align Thursday” in the subject line and I will send you an enrollment form and an invoice. Paying in two installments is also fine. Once you’ve paid in half or full, you’ve secured your spot. It will be first come, first serve. Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions about the course.
Once at capacity, there will be one solidarity spot available for anyone currently experiencing financial hardship.
Registration closes 21 September.
*
About the course
Align is a series of three, small group sessions focused on establishing a felt-sense and practice for y/our death and grief care. This course series is for those who want to create more meaningful connection and intentional action in their lives. We’ll do this by opening to the truth of impermanence and expanding care for ourselves and others in ways that are both personal and political.
The course is guided by me with presentations, activities and prompts, readings, and discussions. As a focused container of time, this intimate, collective study will support you in many ways:
Week 1: Facing
– In opening up to deathcare and exploring ways to deepen your relationship with life, we will address common fears and concerns. We’ll peel back inherited and learned views and practices regarding death, loss, and endings. You’ll consider what matters most, who you need to be in order to live in the reality of your choices and relationships, and what must be let go.
Week 2: Pausing
– You’ll find preparedness and craft inner resources of strength and courage to face what is difficult but that which we must bear. We’ll explore coping, relating, and reimagining strategies for facing pain, grief, and the unknown. You’ll gather more skills for maintaining presence and sensing aliveness from moment to moment. In building capacity and tending to endurance, you’ll find it more possible to sit back into yourself and do what deathcare worker and former hospice director Frank Ostaseski calls “finding a place to rest in the middle of things.”
Week 3: Doing
– In allowing death awareness to influence how you live your life, you get clear on what’s important to you, and begin to incorporate actions into your life that reflect your alignment with living more fully. We’ll explore practical tools and resources for your body, mind, and environment as well as sustainable contemplative care; ritual crafting for rites of passage and in particular, for endings; memento moris for daily life; and more information about end-of-life planning.
This course is designed for those who want to go a little deeper into their life and reinvigorate their sense of purpose from the angle of mortality and finitude. You lead a creative and inquisitive life and have a big heart for healing and justice. You’re interested in learning within a small group. This is for those who feel secure enough at the moment to navigate conversations and education about life, death, and grief.
If this course introduction resonates for you but you are in the throes of acute grief or navigating a terminal diagnosis, or simply would prefer individual focus, please book a free discovery call to see if you could benefit from private 1:1 sessions.
Keep in mind that this offering does not intend to substitute any legal, medical, psychiatric or other professional service but is complementary to other services of care that you receive.
To learn more about me and my holistic deathcare practice, visit stacibushea.care.
*
Important information for participation:
– No preparations necessary, but there will be some prompts and suggested readings. You’ll receive the syllabus a week in advance.
– Participants should aim to take part in all three sessions. To keep the intimacy of the group, no recordings will be made.
– Interactive and discussion elements will in part be informed by the energy of the group. Your presence and attention is very appreciated, but do not feel pressure to participate with the material beyond your current means.
– Cancellation and full refund is possible until 22 September; half refund until 29 September; no refund 48 hours in advance.
