Advance Directive Planning
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Planning Forward with Advance Directives
There are some documents we complete because someone tells us we should, and there are others we complete because someday they may need to speak when we cannot. Advance Directives belong to the second kind. Their purpose is not to predict exactly how our lives will unfold, but to leave the people who may someday… Continue reading
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The Certificate Was Never the Destination
Two years ago today, I posted a certificate on Facebook with a very simple caption: “Sleepless nights lead to online classes completed.” It was August 8, 2024, and I had completed the Five Wishes Advance Care Planning Facilitator Foundations course. At the time, it felt important. Official, maybe. It was a step toward something I… Continue reading
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When Loving Someone Has to Look Different
There are kinds of grief that arrive after someone dies. And there are kinds of grief that begin while someone is still very much alive. When someone we love is living with dementia, the losses rarely arrive all at once. They come in pieces. A conversation that no longer happens the way it once did.… Continue reading
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When We Become the Legacy Tool
Today I caught myself. Someone asked me recently about legacy work, and it made me realize something I had never really examined before. If you were to ask me what someone should leave behind, I probably wouldn’t begin with a memoir. I wouldn’t immediately suggest writing a book or creating a collection of stories to… Continue reading
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Planning for the Human Experience
Most people think advance directives begin with healthcare. I believe they begin with humanity. The word advance simply means before. The word directive simply means guidance or instruction. Long before any medical decisions need to be made, each of us is already writing directives through the way we live. We discover what comforts us, who… Continue reading
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The Human Needs
Behind the Puddle began with a place. It began with a chair, a shallow body of water, familiar wildlife, changing weather, and the decision to become more attentive to what was already happening around me. But over time, it has become about more than the puddle. It has become a way of noticing what it… Continue reading
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The Human Need To Be Heard
There is a difference between someone hearing our words and feeling heard. Most of us know the difference. We know what it feels like when someone is waiting for us to finish so they can speak. When our story becomes an opening for theirs. When we answer a question only to realize the answer was… Continue reading
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The Human Need To Be Loved
Love is one of the first words we learn for connection. We say it easily in some relationships. With difficulty in others. Sometimes we say it every day. Sometimes we assume it is understood. Sometimes we struggle to say it at all. And yet beneath so many of the things humans seek, connection, reassurance, closeness,… Continue reading
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The Human Need To Have a Place
There is something deeply human about knowing where we belong in the world. Not only in the large sense. Sometimes in very small ways. A chair that is always ours. A place at the table. A side of the bed. A familiar path. A room where we know where everything is. A person we can… Continue reading
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The Human Need To Be Witnessed
There are experiences in a human life that seem to ask for something more than being seen. We want someone to know that it happened. That we experienced it. That it mattered. That it changed us. Sometimes we need another person to stand beside the reality of our experience and not immediately explain it, minimize… Continue reading
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