❤️ As a gentle heads-up, this week’s newsletter covers themes like mortality, death, and end-of-life care, through a loving, curious, and life-affirming lens. You are invited to read as you feel called, and take care of your nervous system during & after, by attending to sensory needs, pausing, breathing mindfully, or moving your body.​
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As a kid, I loved books. Books were my friends. Every time I’d get my hands on a new title, I had the odd habit of flipping to the last page, reading the final sentence, and then flipping back to page 1 & starting at the beginning.

For whatever reason, my brain found comfort in knowing how the story would end. It didn’t spoil the plot for me – it actually made the process of reading more rich & delightful; like I could stop and smell the flowers along the way to the final destination.

This is the same line of thinking that motivated me to sign up for an “End-of-Life Planning Made Simple” workshop last weekend. Hosted by the incredible death doula (& “recovering attorney”), Alua Arthur.

You might recognize her name from the New York Times best-selling book, Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life By Getting Real About The End (which I highly recommend reading with a box of tissues nearby).

To remember that every life comes to an end is a wake-up call that invites us to live more fully, now. Just like peeking at the epilogue of a book made it easier for my child self to drop into chapter 1.

Of course, attending an end-of-life planning workshop is no one’s idea of a good time. It’s heavy, dense, and some of the hardest stuff that we could ever sit with.

But in my experience, it can also feel honest, clarifying, and courageous to acknowledge our mortality… because death is the one certainty in life. Paradoxically, death education spaces are some of the most life-affirming spaces I’ve ever spent time in.

To plan for the end of our lives — while knowing that anything could happen & nothing is guaranteed – requires us to reckon with how we are living now. The workshop (a mix of practical planning and experiential processing) had us reflecting on these questions:

🌹 What do I want for myself in life? What do I want for myself at the end of life?

🌹 How do I want to be cared for, when/if I can no longer care for myself?

🌹 What does a good life mean to me? What does a good death mean to me?

🌹 How do I want to be remembered?

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What stood out to me, as participants shared, is that people want to be remembered for who they are, not for what they did or did not do. No one said they wanted to be remembered for being the most productive worker in Q2, or for owning the fanciest home on the block.

Nope. People shared that they wanted to be remembered for:

• their kindness
• their wholeness
• their honesty
• their sense of humor
• their courage
• the way they showed up as a parent, sibling, friend, partner, or community member

People want to be remembered for their humanity.

Though we all know this on some level, it’s worth repeating: the way we want to be remembered starts with how we are living today.

You are a living legacy. Your story is still being written. You are here for a reason.

How do you want to be remembered?

With care,

ON THE PODCAST | EP 7 You're Not Lazy: Your Nervous System Needs Rest Endless productivity is not realistic for most humans, yet many of us carry the burden of feeling “lazy,” like we’re not doing enough. This episode explores why no one is “lazy” in a capitalistic world — but every one of us does need rest, support, and care. I’ll share 5 questions to help you explore your relationship to rest, work, and systemic & cultural expectations. You'll leave with more self-compassion, and practical ideas of supports & accommodations to explore (ex: body-doubling, adjusting expectations, & delegating tasks if possible). LISTEN HERE (17 min) 🌻

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P.P.S. If you’re interested in working together, I’d love to support you.

🌻 For folks who are overwhelmed & burnt out, but too busy for weekly therapy, I offer Nervous System Healing Intensives​ — three 90-minute sessions, using brain-body modalities (Brainspotting, IFS, EMDR) that go deeper than talk therapy & help you feel better, sooner.

Intensives are a type of short-term, accelerated therapy — for folks who prefer a hyper-focused approach to healing; who need longer than 50-min sessions to warm up & process deeply.

👉🏽 If you want to get an Intensive on the books, click here to book an intro call.

I help highly sensitive, neurodivergent adults heal their nervous systems & connect with their authentic selves.

💗 Need a nervous system reset? —> Join me for a Calm Place meditation.
📚 Curious to learn about neurodiversity + holistic healing? —> Peek at my blog.
🗞️ Want to catch up on old newsletters? —> Check out the archive.

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