Metaphors are “pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system… is fundamentally metaphorical in nature” (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003, p. 3). Yet what part might fiction itself play toward healing a person bereaved? Even a constructivist psychological approach to loss might hesitate at outright ghost stories, […]
Stand by Me, the classic Hollywood movie set in 1959 small-town Oregon and released in 1986, is characterised by director Rob Reiner in his DVD commentary as a personalised indulgence of his own youth: his favourite slang of the era, his favourite childhood TV shows, cartoons and comics, and indeed his favourite music from the […]
This three-part series is inspired by training in June 2023 as an end-of-life (EOL) doula with Henry Fersko-Weiss. Henry is a key pioneer of the modern death doula movement, with more than 20 years experience not only serving hundreds of people at their deathbeds, but also training thousands of people in EOL doula work, contributing […]
This three-part series is inspired by training in June 2023 as an end-of-life (EOL) doula with Henry Fersko-Weiss. Henry is a key pioneer of the modern death doula movement, with more than 20 years experience not only serving hundreds of people at their deathbeds, but also training thousands of people in EOL doula work, contributing […]
This three-part series is inspired by training in June 2023 as an end-of-life (EOL) doula with Henry Fersko-Weiss. Henry is a key pioneer of the modern death doula movement, with more than 20 years experience not only serving hundreds of people at their deathbeds, but also training thousands of people in EOL doula work, contributing […]
Deep in long retreat, on my favourite bench under the sheltering boughs of an oak, an inch-worm drops onto my arm. Such life seems miraculous: green thread of a body, delicate but dexterous, knowing red head negotiating through a forest of hairs. After appropriate, humblest reflection upon his beauty, upon our equality in sentience, I move […]
The eye is led wide, along the utility line that runs beside the winding driveway, off towards the tiny white faces of the Rocky Mountains in the distance. It is immaculately frigid, the long landscape swaddled in dry, thigh deep powder, the low midday sun bleaching the snow blinding. In the open, swirls of stinging […]
Ivan was right. The rain has not lasted. But here along the southern edge of Lake Wabamun, the suffocating sky remains low above us. As though it truly is falling. As though this is the way that the life of centuries was pressed into the coal which runs in rich veins through this land. Among […]
THE REVOLOCUTIONARY PATHETIC MOVEMENT 