The following was written by Quadra resident and death doula Joanna Lumley, who buried her father in June 2025. Daisies, foxgloves, and the bright yellow flowers of broom will forever remind me of my dad. They lined the roads, as I raced back and forth between my home and his, early this summer. He taught me the names of things….
In the Mel Robbins Podcast episode What Nobody Tells You About Grief and Loss, host Mel Robbins speaks with renowned grief expert David Kessler about the true nature of grief and how to navigate it in a way that honours the experience rather than minimizing it. David Kessler, a bestselling author and one of the world’s leading voices on grief…
The holiday season can be especially difficult when you are grieving the loss of someone close. Whether the loss is recent or happened long ago, this time of year often intensifies feelings of grief. Holidays are woven with tradition, memory, and togetherness, and when someone is missing, that absence can feel sharper than at other times of year. Activities that…
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross didn’t just study grief—she transformed how the world talks about it. Before her, death and dying were often taboo topics, quietly avoided in hospitals and living rooms alike. But through her empathy, curiosity, and deep respect for human experience, Kübler-Ross opened the door to honest conversations about loss and healing. Born in Switzerland in 1926, Kübler-Ross trained as…
In 2010, Sasaki Itaru of Japan, grieving the loss of his cousin to cancer, discovered something beautiful: a poem his cousin had written, titled The Phone of the Wind. The poem spoke of a mysterious phone, one that had no line, no connection—only the wind, which carried thoughts and feelings directly to the heart. “Whisper to the wind,” the poem…
Philip Simmons died 10 years after his diagnosis of ALS, at the age of 45. During this period of his life, he wrote the book Learning to Fall: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life. Philip Simmons wrote, “Only by letting go our grip on all that we ordinarily find most precious—our achievements, our plans, our loved ones, our very selves—can we…
The five stages of grief were first identified by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross in 1969 as Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. Grief isn’t a linear process. It isn’t as if we experience stage one, followed by stage two, etc. When we’re struck by grief, we’re all over the map, consumed by one major feeling and cycling through different aspects, moment by…
A Way To Go intention, within and for our community, is ‘death as part of life’. Death is often difficult, scary, and overwhelming. It is natural for us to want to distance ourselves from the pain of it, and there is an underlying belief in our culture that suffering can be avoided. It takes a lot of courage, and usually…
The holiday season can feel like a punishment when you’re grieving. Forced festivity seems like it was created just to make the knots in your stomach even tighter. Seeing other people throwing parties and decorating trees and wearing ugly sweaters on purpose might make you want to crawl under your bed…and stay there until January 2. So how can you muster…
The book with this title Megan Devine is about meeting grief and loss in a culture that doesn’t understand. She writes: Most of what passes for grief support these days is less than useful. Because we don’t talk about loss, most people—and many professionals—think of grief and loss as aberrations, detours from a normal, happy life. We believe that the…