Here

This month I had the immense privilege to lead a two-day seminar and workshop for MA Fine Arts students at Institute Art Gender Nature, Basel Academy of Art and Design in Switzerland.

I gave a workshop on presence, attention, and preparedness that centered on a cube of ice melting into water. It’s the third time I’ve facilitated this workshop, and I continue to be amazed by how this space is able to hold so much education, empowerment, and healing for the group. The ice melting–you guessed it–is a metaphor for the event of dying and death. If we haven’t already, at some point most of us will find ourselves in the presence of someone who is facing death. Accompanying the dying challenges us to be authentically and compassionately present.

Using improvisational theater and engaging with discussion and collaborative ritual, I designed this workshop as a kind of low-stakes, safe rehearsal; a way of looking into the mirror of death ourselves and confronting this uncomfortable truth. It’s inspired by a line from Rainer Maria Rilke: "the future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens."

Across my practice as a death doula, I turn away from “Yes, but-” and aim to facilitate opportunities for “Yes, and-.” The workshop includes education on death and dying, but it is also a lot of silence, sitting, waiting, allowing, intervening, and not only bearing witness to the ice, but also to ourselves and each other. Careful with judgement, just as we are. Before the ice arrives, we get ready. We prepare. There’s always something that doesn’t go to plan, always something unexpected. Each time I’ve facilitated this workshop, at least one person begins singing at just the “right” moment.

The workshop is a reminder that with intention and awareness, each day is a practice of presence. And with more practice, the more we are able to savor what nourishes us and face with courage what we look up against.

Now

• Try this contemplative practice by Kirsten DeLeo for finding a place of calm:

  When you notice a wave of sadness, fear, negativity, or anxiety rising, pause for a moment, sit down, and just watch what is happening like a neutral observer.

  Feel yourself centered in your body–notice the feeling of your feet on the floor, the air on your skin–and stay with the natural flow of your breath. In and out. And again, in and out. Allow the experience to wash over you like a wave, and keep breathing deeply. Like waves, these feelings rise and they subside again. Try to neither follow your thoughts or emotions nor indulge in them. Simply be aware. Observe and be mindful of your experience, without evaluating what is happening as good or bad.

  If your thoughts and emotions are particularly strong, imagine yourself like the ocean looking at its own waves. Your awareness is as vast as the ocean. There is the natural movement of the ocean’s waves, and at the same time underneath the waves, there is a deep stillness. Or you can imagine yourself like the sky gazing down on the clouds that pass across it. Imagine being as expansive and open as the sky, and allow the cloud-like thoughts to come and go.

  Choose the image that resonates with you the most and stay with it for a while. Notice the atmosphere it evokes in your mind, your body, and your heart, and remain mindful, open, and aware. Try to remain in this atmosphere for a few moments longer.

• I often reflect on how we are transformed when caring and being cared for. Part of that process is the discovery of our inner capacity for kindness, compassion, and wisdom, which helps us stay resilient and to grow at times when we most need it. Of these, kindness is a special one. Kindness not as in being nice or polite, but as an action that comes from a deeper place for another’s/one’s benefit. Being a little extra kind to yourself can also be a powerful antidote to the stress of caregiving.

  At some point during the ice melting workshop, I read the poem Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye:

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

From Words Under the Words: Selected Poems, 1995. 

Close

• I will be joining Riad Salameh in conversation for the vernissage of his Open Letter Night of Remembrance on 8 May from 18:00 at Page Not Found in The Hague. It would be lovely to see you there!

• Sometimes when the opportunity allows, I exchange deathcare for an artwork. This was a perfect case with Maike Hemmers, an artist whose work and practice I love. Some of you might be interested to join her upcoming workshop with Savannah Theis called This Deep, Between Us in Rotterdam. In the workshop, Hemmers and Theis will facilitate a collective exploration of our relationship to life and death through movement and spatial drawing. There are two opportunities to join: 19 and/or 20 May. Learn more about the workshop here.