Stardust Meadow

When you are heavily grieving, you need space. You need an extra allowance from the pressures and impatience and rigid schedules of society. There is a time warp when you are extraordinarily sad and very little makes sense at this stage. Once upon a time, wearing the color black signified that you were in mourning and it was a signal to all - family and strangers alike - to give you a little leeway. Perhaps even show you a little kindness. You don't outwardly *see* it in our culture, but literally everyone will be mourning the death of someone at one time or another in their life. It may be their friend, their partner, their parent or even a beloved pet. You may not be so quick to lash out at someone who is acting irrationally or "crazy" if you knew that their world was turned upside down by a recent death. Maybe you don't *give* them anything extra, but you might bite your tongue so not to worsen things. We need to be *taught* how to mourn. Very few actu...

Simple Ceremonies for Tiny Deaths The Tiny (physical) Deaths that we experience are insects, mice, roadkill.  Deaths of pets can range from a Small Death to a Big Death depending on how much of a part of our daily life they were.  The Very Big Deaths are the deaths of our human companions, caretakers, and children that we love.  Of course, sometimes the death of a pet can feel bigger than the death of a parent. It's all very individual. Here are some simple suggestions for commemorating the Tiny Deaths in our every day life. This is appropriate for toddlers, teenagers and adults. Noticing A Tiny Death Make sure you are in a safe place to look at the tiny death and use relative caution without paranoia. Dead creatures can still have ticks and mites on them and although it's not likely that you would contract rabies from a dead animal it is possible if you rub your eye or another mucus membrane after coming in contact with the animal's fluids. So, use gloves, stic...

This morning we woke up late to the sun pouring in our windows. Our toddler was mostly cooperative about letting her parents linger, but when I say we "woke late" understand that we pounced upon at 7:30 and laid in bed until eight. It's Christmas morning but we don't celebrate it in all it's glorious craze like so many. Instead we wandered downstairs, made coffee, started a fire in the stove, gave a cuddle to our cat Cuchatta and right there at her feet with a smile upon her face was a neatly dead Christmas mouse. Cuchatta was proud to offer this gift in exchange for some pretty talk... The only one in the family to do a gift exchange.  But, as a death doula, I know that this is actually the best gift our family could've been given. My father-in-law was diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma this summer. He has lived with us in the past, and got quite close to our toddler, then moved back to Chile for a year and now is living near us again while undergoing tre...

A couple of months ago on a gorgeous summer evening I had this amazing encounter with a bat.   It really moved me so I did what most ridiculous people do these days and I posted on social media. “I just happened upon a bat trapped in my living room. I was so startled I dropped the hummus I was carrying. Swiftly, I fully opened the outside door, leaving the lights off and lay down on my back to watch echolocation in action. What a perfectly elegant creature... Swooping, signaling, receiving and exiting. No drama. They are quiet, gentle animals and I’m thrilled that they’re dwelling near my house” There were a great deal of “likes” and support for my statement but one woman asked me later, “How could you do that?”   Confused I asked her what she meant and she replied, “Most people panic and freak out. Even the ones that don’t freak out definitely do not see it as something amazing or beautiful.”   I thought about this before I replied to her. ...

I was recently at a witches gathering where I attended a Spirit Gallery and the psychic there told me my dead grandmother was going to help me unravel a family curse. Yeah, if your life is boring, give something like that a whirl. Whether you believe any of that first sentence or not, what is coming next is exceptionally important. It has to do with feminism, and patriarchy, politics and history, lost arts, money, time, death, religion and the proof of paternity. When tracing your ancestral line, papers and websites are convenient for tracing the paternal line- it goes by last name of course, and connecting the belts can get you to a previous century without much confusion or detective work. And, of course, the more money the family had, the more "things" were passed down and the more proud the families were about where they came from.  However, what I am following is the umbilical cords-- my mother lineage-- My, mother’s mother’s mother’s mo...

Death can be a cloak of hard and heavy lead. It can accumulate the Big Deaths, and become the pain you trudge with,  weighing on your spine, crumpling your legs and twisting your ankles- and the hardest part is that it is invisible Death can be a cloak of quills- the Little Deaths. It can poke and prickle and make thousands of tiny piercing wounds over your whole body- and the hardest part is the invisibility Death can feel like a cloak of the sweetest baby’s breath nestled into your neck with tiny dreaming eyelids fluttering and you just want to hold it close  and never move in fear that you will remember the impermanence The Cloak of Death can look like a dare devil. It can look haughty, indifferent, miserable, miserly, aggressive, criminal… it can look like rigor mortis in the form of an over-priced garment or a car that the owner cannot afford Death’s cloak can smell like decaying hopes, untilled fertile fields and like too many out- breaths trapped in a ...

A Psychopomp is someone who can help one transition from the land of the living to the land of the dead. The Greek word “pompos” means guide and “psyche” is also Greek for breath, life soul or mind . In the Death Doula uprising, Psychopomp or soul care is just one of the many things a Death Doula can be trained in.   Shaman have long been doing this work and many other groups and religions also have those whose job it is to escort the spirit or the soul to a particular place after death. Since I am presently alive and do not recall anything before I was born, and I do not presume to know what will happen to “me” after I die, I do not solidly believe one thing or another. I don’t know about an after-life or the after life or bridges that must be crossed to realms that need to be sought. I don’t know about souls or spirits or ghosts or haunted houses. I don’t know about heaven or hell or places where the dead convene. But I do know that variations of all of those e...