Dynamic Journey, End of Life Practitioner

08/01/2026

☀️🌻A Special Summertime Invitation to
Gentle Conversations: Tea with a Death Doula
🫖
You are warmly invited to a peaceful gathering dedicated to thoughtful conversations about life, mortality, and the natural journey of ending. Hosted in a supportive atmosphere, this open-circle event offers a safe, judgment-free space to discuss grief, end-of-life wishes, and the resources available to families navigating loss.

* 🗓️ Date: Tuesday, August 4, 2026

* ⏰ Time: 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM

* 📍 Location: Vancouver Island Regional Library – Comox Branch

* 👥 Audience: Open to all adults and seniors

* 🎟️ Admission: Free, public drop-in event

Whether you come with deep questions, personal experiences to share, or simply a desire to listen and sit in supportive community, your presence is welcome. A cup of tea awaits you.

VI Regional Library Comox

07/31/2026

✨🤍🪽

No One Warned Me About the Secondary Losses

When someone dies, we expect to grieve them.

What we don't expect are the dozens—sometimes hundreds—of smaller losses that quietly follow.

No one warned me that I would also grieve...
..having no one to share ordinary moments with.
..losing the person who knew my history better than anyone else.
..making every decision alone.
..holidays that would never feel the same.
..inside jokes that no one else would understand.
..the future we had planned together.
..the sound of hearing my name spoken in their voice.
..the loss of feeling like part of a couple.
..the person I used to be before grief changed me.

These are called secondary losses, and they can be just as painful as the primary loss itself.

They're often invisible to everyone else.

Friends see the funeral is over and assume the hardest part has passed.

But secondary losses keep unfolding...

Weeks later.

Months later.

Even years later.

Each new milestone, holiday, life event, or ordinary Tuesday can uncover another loss you never imagined you'd have to grieve.

If you've ever wondered why your grief seems to keep changing...

Or why you're suddenly devastated by something that seems "small"...

You're not grieving too much.

You're discovering another piece of what was lost.

And that's a normal part of loving someone deeply.

Be patient with yourself.

Grief isn't just learning to live without the person.

It's learning to live with all the losses their absence created. ❤️

07/24/2026

💀😱Is death meant to scare us ALIVE?

Yes — death can scare us alive. When my heart stopped in that ambulance last year, life stopped being an idea and became a miracle I had nearly lost. Turning 50 last month felt like another jolt — a hard, holy reminder that time is not waiting for me. Fear did not weaken me; it awakened me. It stripped away the trivial, sharpened what matters, and dared me to live with the urgency, gratitude, and courage I should have had all along.

For so many, death is something we AVOID discussing until we are forced to face it. But community and end-of-life education invites us into a different relationship with mortality, one rooted in honesty, compassion, dignity, and choice. It reminds us that preparing for the end of life is not about giving up. It is about living with greater intention, having courageous conversations, honouring our values, and supporting one another more fully.

Death can frighten us. But it can also awaken us — to love deeper, plan wiser, listen closer, and live more truthfully.

From “You scared the death out of me!”
➡️ “ Death scared the life into me!”

07/23/2026

🩵An end-of-life doula is, in some ways, a witness against disappearance.

💫Not against death itself, but against the flattening that can happen around it: the hospital wristband replacing the person, the paperwork replacing the story, the diagnosis replacing the voice. A doula steps into that narrowing space and says, in effect, this life is still particular. This person still has preferences, humour, memories, rhythms, unfinished sentences, favorite music, people they cannot bear to see, and people they long for.

🩵What’s fascinating is that end-of-life doulas work in the borderland between logistics and meaning. They may help arrange practical things, but their deeper work is often to protect the texture of someone’s humanity when systems tend to reduce life to tasks and timelines. They help preserve the small, stubborn details that make a person irreducible.

💫In that sense, an end-of-life doula is not only a support person. They are a kind of keeper of personhood at the threshold where personhood is most at risk of being overlooked.

07/22/2026

Touch Wood Memorial Rings ✨

Our website has lots of information and ideas for designing your custom ring. At the bottom of this page, you'll find links to Your Design Ideas. You can download your Design Worksheet directly from our site. And I am always happy to have a conversation. Be in touch. Anytime.
https://www.touchwoodrings.com/designing-your-ring

07/21/2026

🌡️Vulnerable seniors are especially at risk during summer heat because high temperatures can cause blood pressure to drop, leading to dizziness, weakness, and confusion. Heat also increases the chance of dehydration, which can happen quickly and make existing health problems worse. When seniors become lightheaded or unsteady, their risk of falling rises significantly, sometimes resulting in serious injury. Regular hydration, cool indoor spaces, and checking in often can help protect older adults during hot weather.

🚒🚑Calling 911 is the best way for immediate support after a fall happens. Professionals will come and safely help. That is their job! That’s why they get up at 2:00am- to provide care and support when needed.

Check in on your neighbours!

One day it could be you!

✨

07/20/2026

📝T.S. Eliot

✨

What we often fear is not death itself, but the quiet thought of being forgotten—that our presence might slowly fade, and the memories we leave behind may one day grow distant. At the heart of it is a gentle human longing: to matter, to be loved, and to leave a small piece of ourselves in the lives we’ve touched. In being remembered, there is a kind of comfort, as if some part of us softly remains.

You will always be rippling!
You matter!

07/18/2026

🌼 Redefining End-of-Life Care: 4 Ways to Honour the Whole Person” explores how compassionate care goes beyond physical comfort to support emotional, spiritual, and relational well-being. By listening deeply, respecting personal values, involving loved ones, and creating space for dignity and meaning, end-of-life care can become a more human and healing experience. This approach recognises each person not just as an individual receiving care, but as a whole person with a unique life, story, and needs.
🌼

Which of these elements have you found brings the most peace to a room?
🌼

07/17/2026

🤍 Even in Your Absence, You Teach Me
My father’s death changed me in ways I never expected.

His death taught me that grief does not only break us, it also reveals us. In the quiet aftermath, I learned how to be more patient with myself, more gentle with my own heart, and more honest about the pain I had spent so long trying to ignore.

My father’s death taught me to live with more intention, to carry less regret, and to walk with greater humility. It taught me to stop placing myself second in my own story. It taught me to make room for more life, more love, and more forgiveness, especially for myself.

As a deathcare educator, I speak openly about death because I know how deeply it shapes the living. My father’s death is not only part of my personal story, it is also part of the legacy I now carry forward. Through grief, I have come to understand that talking about death is also a way of talking about life: how we love, how we heal, how we remember, and how we continue.

I would trade every lesson to have him here again. But since I cannot, I choose to honour him by living what my father’s death has taught me: with deeper mercy, quieter strength, and the courage to finally choose myself.

Thank you, Dad, for the legacy you left behind. I am still learning from you. I am still living it.

✨🌊🤍

07/15/2026

PSA 🤍