Emberlight: Center for Conscious Living & Dying

Emberlight: Center for Conscious Living & Dying Emberlight is a nonprofit center for conscious living and dying. Community-centered end-of-life care, death doula education, and grief support. Asheville, NC

Donor-supported residential care is provided at no cost to those in their final weeks of life. The Founder of CCLD, , is featured in the new documentary film . CCLD has a vision for death, dying, and grief that involves greater community involvement and connection to the mystery of this season of life. Death is a mirror in which our own lives are reflected. VISION:


To nurture a community that celebrates the sacredness and creativity of the human spirit, honors diversity in its many forms, and dignifies the final stages of life. MISSION:
To facilitate the collective shift towards an integrated approach to death, dying and grief through education, community support and contemplation.

The labyrinth does not reveal its center until you are already walking it.The Grandmother Oak does not explain her age. ...
08/02/2026

The labyrinth does not reveal its center until you are already walking it.

The Grandmother Oak does not explain her age. She simply stands, having outlived certainty many times over, still growing.

Every death is its own country. Every family grieves in a shape we have not seen exactly this way before.

The land here has been teaching this longer than we have.

Curiosity is one of our four guiding values. Read the full reflection at https://www.emberlightway.org/post/emberlight-2026-2027-values-series-curiosity-embracing-the-unknown

We get this question often: isn't Emberlight just a hospice?Hospice is a model of care, not a place. It is insurance-cov...
07/29/2026

We get this question often: isn't Emberlight just a hospice?

Hospice is a model of care, not a place. It is insurance-covered, available to people with a life expectancy of six months or less, and it follows a person wherever they live. Nurses manage pain. Aides help with bathing. Social workers navigate the systems. It is essential work, and it is not what Emberlight does.

Most people who come to live in our Sanctuary Suites arrive already enrolled in hospice. Their medical team continues. What changes is everything around that care.

They wake in a home, not an institution. Volunteers sit through the night, not because it is a shift, but because they chose to be there. The gardens are tended outside the window. The Blue Ridge is the backdrop. Family stays on site and walks the labyrinth when they need to step away.

There is no charge for any of it.

Fifty-two years ago, Florence Wald left her post as dean of Yale School of Nursing to co-found the first hospice in the United States, convinced that the medical system was doing everything to keep people alive and almost nothing to help them die well. Her answer was not more treatment. It was more presence.

The unmet need now is not clinical. It is relational.

What hospice provides, we do not replace. What we provide, hospice cannot replicate.

Read more of "What Is Hospice and How Is Emberlight Different?" on our website at https://www.emberlightway.org/post/the-embers-that-light-our-way-in-june -kqi2j7664

Wonder and grief are not opposites, but companions.From our founder and Executive Director, Aditi Sethi's newest letter ...
07/27/2026

Wonder and grief are not opposites, but companions.

From our founder and Executive Director, Aditi Sethi's newest letter to our community:

"There is a profound tenderness in acknowledging the uncertainty of our lives. Yet it is often within that very uncertainty that we discover resilience, connection, and meaning."

A reflection on paradox, on the humbling experience of not knowing, and on what opens when we stop trying to control what cannot be controlled.

Read the full letter at emberlightway.org/post/reflections-from-aditi-doorways-to-connection-meaning-and-love

What does it mean to sit with someone all the way to the threshold?Jane K. Callahan has spent years at the bedsides of t...
07/17/2026

What does it mean to sit with someone all the way to the threshold?

Jane K. Callahan has spent years at the bedsides of the dying, and she writes about what she has found there with a journalist's honesty and a doula's tenderness. In her book, A Death Doula's Guide to a Meaningful End, she does not offer certainty. She offers presence.

On Tuesday, July 28, Jane joins hospice physician and Emberlight founder Aditi Sethi for an unhurried hour: a reading, a conversation between two people who sit with the dying, and time for your own questions.

This is not a conversation only for those who are dying. It is one for all of us.

Online, 12:00 to 1:00 PM ET. All proceeds support Emberlight's mission. We would love to welcome you into this circle. Link to register below.

https://www.emberlightway.org/events-1/stories-at-the-threshold-jane-k-callahan-and-a-death-doulas-guide-to-a-meaningful-end

July 17th is Omega Home Network Day!Nine years ago, a small circle of community homes made a quiet commitment: that peop...
07/16/2026

July 17th is Omega Home Network Day!

Nine years ago, a small circle of community homes made a quiet commitment: that people in their final days would be met with care, with company, and with a place that feels like home.

Emberlight is proud to be a North Carolina's only Omega Home, one of 116 now carrying that commitment across the country.

Together with Omega Homes Network, we envision a world where every community offers loving care in a home-like setting, where people can live fully and die well.

Learn more about the Omega Home Network at https://www.omegahomenetwork.org/

06/26/2026

Join us for a screening of The Last Ecstatic Days and a community discussion on death, presence, grief, love, and community-supported dying.

Some of the most important conversations we will ever have are the ones we keep putting off....We invite you to gather w...
06/22/2026

Some of the most important conversations we will ever have are the ones we keep putting off....

We invite you to gather with us on Tuesday, June 23rd for one of these conversations, in community.

Emberlight is honored to launch our new monthly Author Series, Stories at the Threshold, with two voices at the forefront of conscious dying: Trish Rux and Janet Booth, co-authors of Dying Matters: Eight Conversations That Can Change Your Life.

Together, they bring over seven decades of combined experience at the bedsides of dying people, and a shared conviction that these conversations don't belong only to the dying. They belong to all of us, right now.

Join us for an in depth conversation between hospice physician and Emberlight founder, Aditi Sethi, and these living legends on death on dying.

MORE DETAILS AND RSVP TO ATTEND ONLINE: https://www.emberlightway.org/events-1/the-emberlight-author-series-dying-matters-eight-conversations-that-can-change-your-life

06/17/2026

Morrie discovered something that most of us spend a lifetime missing.
That, the fullest experience of being alive often comes not in our busiest, most productive years, but in the moments when we finally stop, and let love in.

One of our residents said it in a way we will never forget.

"𝐈 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐟𝐞𝐥𝐭 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐈 𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐰𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞."

At Emberlight, those who are dying are not waiting for life to end. They are living, perhaps more fully than ever before. Surrounded by volunteers who come simply to be present.

By music, by nature, by the kind of unhurried attention that the rest of the world rarely offers.

By a community that believes, as Morrie did, that love is not a sentiment. It is a practice. It is a presence. It is the gift we give one another.

This is what becomes possible when a community gathers with no agenda other than love and service. Emberlight exists because generous and devoted people believe this is worth sustaining, worth sharing, worth carrying into every corner of the world.

𝐖𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐝𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐝𝐨𝐦 𝐢𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐝.

𝐖𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐨 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠.

𝐒𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐁𝐂 𝐍𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐫, 𝐂𝐮𝐫𝐭 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐧, 𝐨𝐟 𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐞’𝐬 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰𝐬, 𝐒𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐞 𝟐𝟏, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔.

Details and RSVP here:

https://www.emberlightway.org/.../tuesdays-with-morrie...
🔗 Link in bio.




The man who filmed Morrie Schwartz (of Tuesdays with Morrie) is coming to Emberlight next week.For those that don't know...
06/14/2026

The man who filmed Morrie Schwartz (of Tuesdays with Morrie) is coming to Emberlight next week.

For those that don't know the book or the film, Morrie Schwartz lived what Emberlight is built around: that dying openly, with curiosity and community, changes not just the end of life but how we live it.

On next Sunday June 21, we're screening the original ABC Nightline interviews that inspired Tuesdays with Morrie. Curt Worden, the Emmy-winning cameraman who was in the room when they were filmed, will be here in person to share what he witnessed. After the screening, we'll open the floor for a guided conversation about the questions Morrie never stopped asking.

If this work calls to you, please join us from 3-5 PM at the Lighthouse on Emberlight campus in Swannanoa, NC. Details and RSVP here: https://www.emberlightway.org/events-1/tuesdays-with-morrie-schwartz-lessons-on-living-and-dying

Address

83 Sanctuary Road
Swannanoa, NC
28778

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