New course offering: Align
Contemplative care for living with death awareness
Reading time: about five minutes
Dearest reader,
Thanks for signing up for my newsletter from the initial call and being one of the first to become part of this new community. It means a lot to me.
It’s with weighted intention from this full heart that I share with you my first public, online course, Align: Contemplative Care for Living with Death Awareness. This move comes after years of 1:1 death and grief support, one-off group study sessions in art and culture contexts, and two cohorts of the class Dying Livingly that I designed for Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. The focus for this course matures from countless conversations I’ve had revealing the practical and poetic power of establishing a living deathcare practice and perspective. It 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. As poet and psychoanalyst Nuar Alsadir writes, “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 work, that certain things can only happen in darkness. Systemically and collectively, such alchemy and shifted attention is part of the dimension of the Great Turning, coined by eco-activist, Buddhist and living systems theory scholar Joanna Macy. This honest work (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. I’m really looking forward to piloting this course with those who resonate with the effort and commitment, however challenging, that this work asks of us.
I’m sharing the opportunity to be part of this experience with you first. Further below you’ll find the layout of the course and some of what we’ll learn together. If you are interested in joining, send a note to staci.bushea@proton.me and I will send you an enrollment form and payment link. Once you’ve paid in full, you’ve secured your spot. It will be first come, first serve. Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions.
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
€240 including VAT (initial, low price!)
Cohort 1 - fully booked!
Thursdays, 19:00-21:00 CET
10, 17 and 24 October 2024
Cohort 2 - fully booked!
Tuesdays, 19:00-21:00 CET
15, 22, and 29 October 2024
Register via staci.bushea@proton.me
Once at capacity, there will be one solidarity spot available for anyone currently experiencing financial hardship.
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
– 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
– 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
– 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. 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 services.
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 3 October; half refund until 8 October; no refund 48 hours in advance.
