A few words of thank you…
As 2015 comes to its natural close and we begin to prepare for the brand new 2016 I want to thank all of you who joined me on the unique path of working with dying, death, grief, and loss. We have made some fantastic inroads over this year and 2016 promises to be even more exciting!
Here is some of what we accomplished this year:
- We launched We Can Die Better eMagazine
- We co-hosted a weekly Death Matters Live Radio Show
- We Can Die Better – Death a Community Development Opportunity got rolling
These are all in addition to our foundational End of Life Guide Training Programs.
Below is a bit about each of these impactful projects:
We Can Die Better
“The mission of We Can Die Better is to generously serve readers with contemporary, accurate, and well researched information regarding the intimate and important process of dying, death and grief and to do so with boldness, compassion, creativity and humor.”
Magazine editions are formally published October, January, April, and July at the end of each month and feature a core team of contributors along with articles written by experts in the filed of dying, death, and grief. There are also monthly posts to keep the magazine fresh and current with new information for our readers.
Go to We Can Die Better and subscribe now and you will receive three All Ready to Go Kits – one for getting ready to talk with the children, one for preparing to chat with funeral directors, and one for financial planning.
Death Matters Live Radio
With the generous support of Vancouver Coop Radio, a membership driven station, Death Matters Live aired in July and was initially schedule to be bi-weekly. The shows great format and popularity opened the way to a weekly show airing every Wednesday from 12:00 noon to 1:00pm PST.
A five-member team hosts the show and focuses on bring dying, death and loss back to life. The show features a weekly guest, along with a Dying to Ask segment, an inspiring poem, the reading of a eulogy, and a resource section. You can find all our shows archived at Death Matters Live and if you would like to tune in each Wednesday you can go to Coop Radio and hit the listen now button at the top left of the splash page.
We have featured guest like Lucy Sharpe, a clutter-clearing specialist, Nicole Renwick, the Executive Director of the Memorial Society of BC, and Carol Todd, the mother of the late Amanda Todd. The show is chalk full of helpful and supportive information regarding all matters of dying, death and loss.
We Can Die Better – Death a Community Development Opportunity
is a process that communities can follow to prepare well for the end of life issues we are all facing. Being well prepared and organized as communities is a gift we can give to each other – dying, death, and grief are, after all, a community affair.
Launched in Prince Rupert earlier this year we are excited to report that The 75-20 Initiative was passed by Mayor and Council and reported on by Shaun Thomas of the Northern View this past July. This brave rural coastal community has taken on the challenge of getting 75% of its residents end of life prepared by the year 2020. The plan is to continue moving this community development opportunity forward throughout rural British Columbia during 2016.
End of Life Guide Training
We had a successful year of training and now have eight graduates, with another twenty-seven people at various stages of the self-paced dying, death, grief training program. I will be reviewing the basic training to ensure it is still current and relevant and will be putting the finishing touches on a new six-week program called Alive in Death that will be launching next spring. You can visit End of Life Guide Training.
Web Sites
Given all the additions to what we are doing and involved in, a renovation of our three websites is in order. We have secured www.stephengarrett.ca and this site will be the entry point for all the services, resources and training we offer. Look for the new web site in the spring of 2016.
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