My Story The memory is like a short clip from a movie: cue the rising earnestly fervent piano music as the camera pans a sunlit Southern California beach zooming in on a young Black woman, arms raised to the sky as she exhales gleefully into the ecstasy of the morning rays bathing…

Queen, this piece is a tour de force on the perspective of the seminal importance of embodied liberation. Like yourself and others who have commented here, I gave my life force to a staggeringly futile cause of "diversity" work (betraying my age here). After a mere couple years, I saw…

My many years as a sensualist have provided me a unique perspective on physical (bodily) pleasure as an innately healing force. For our purposes here, I am defining physical pleasure as finding expression of emotion through the body. For me, the expression of emotion through the body is not only…

When it comes to death, many people think it’s a taboo to discuss their death, or they make the mistake of believing they are too young to plan for it. As demonstrated by recent events, however, there is no time that is too soon to start thinking about your death…

If I’m quiet and interested, I can feel a ball of pressure in my chest. It could be described as heavy — that would be a familiar association. Looking out across the landscape of my recent past, I could easily interpret the heaviness as sadness and I would get a…

Embracing the Death Angel aka Death Doula We’re all going to get a chance to die. With some awareness and planning, we can design for ourselves a meaningful and possibly beautiful end of life experience. I’m becoming something akin to the Angel of Death among my friends. It’s their fault…

A few days ago, my husband and I spent some time with a close friend who was surprisingly skeptical about my description of a sacred passage doula course I had just attended. While I waxed on over a birthday dinner about how transformational and life-affirming the work had been, I…

This Just here Right now End of Life Doula training has already changed my life. Having been with several people and animals at the moment of their passing, those were certainly huge experiences. Each one left an indelible impression. Yet it is this study regarding the end of life and…