Category Archives: Buddhist life

Buddhist life, death

How to Use Beginner’s Mind to Talk about End-of-Life

My end-of-life doula training emphasized from the beginning the importance of bringing curiosity and an open mind to conversations about end-of-life. Even when we think we know how someone feels or what they want, we need to allow room for them to surprise us.

Adopting beginner’s mind is a great way to do this. Engaging your beginner’s mind means letting go of preconceived notions and approaching something with curiosity and openness. When done intentionally, it can allow us to see something familiar in a new way, the way a beginner does.

A recent visit with Shawn, a friend in his 80s with some early dementia, gave me a great opportunity to practice beginner’s mind. I was pretty sure I knew what he wanted in terms of burial. He’s made offhand comments about hating the idea of being buried and preferring cremation. But I decided to be extra curious as we discussed his wishes.

I was surprised when he brought up water cremation and expressed how much he would like his body to be used as compost for a tree.

When I thought about it later, I realized I shouldn’t have been too surprised. He has always been drawn to the outdoors. When I helped him go through old photos, there were more of flowers and nature than of people. I’d ask him about the people in a photo and he’d say, “I don’t recognize them. But that’s a moonflower on a trellis I built of cedar around 1998.” One photo of his wife and then six close-ups of the peonies in a planter at her feet, capturing different angles.

Still, I was surprised that he even knew about water cremation, let alone that he was interested in it. I just learned about water cremation myself a few years ago; if I hadn’t been intentionally engaging my beginner’s mind, I might have let my own arrogance about being more up-to-date about burial practices and my assumptions about people older than me being traditionalists convince me he would want conventional cremation.

In fact, I was so sure that I already knew what he wanted, that I hadn’t even meant to talk with him about burial, but when our conversation went there, I let it. And I’m glad I did! Now I know what Shawn wants and I can help him and his family learn more about water cremation.

If you want to practice beginner’s mind, here are a few of the strategies I used in my conversation with Shawn:

  1. Listening without thinking about my response. This can be tough! I had to remind myself a few times while Shawn was talking to let the responses forming in my brain go. When I felt the urge to interrupt to challenge something he said or point out how it contradicted something else he’d said, I took a deep breath and imagined the words forming in my head leaving with my exhale.
  2. Allowing pauses in the conversation. Another tough one. I fall into the trap of judging the quality of a discussion by how little silence there is. But when I’m really listening to the other person, I need a few seconds after they stop talking to formulate my response, which means there will be silence. I sometimes say, “Give me a moment to organize my thoughts” to acknowledge that pause—to myself as much as to the other person.
  3. Asking questions that elicit more information. “Tell me more about that” is one of my favorites right now. Shawn loves to talk about himself, so when I say “tell me more,” he does! It’s not always on topic, but that’s ok. Whatever he says helps me learn more about him and that’s my real purpose.
  4. Letting go of efficiency. Beginner’s mind means taking the scenic route. It may take multiple conversations or some meandering to get to any meaningful answer to a question. It took me an hour to learn that Shawn was interested in water cremation. Beginner’s mind cannot be rushed.
anxiety, Buddhist life

Dealing with Post-Break Overwhelm + Anxiety

I had friends in town for a few days last week. I worked while they were staying with me but let most everything else slide. Within moments of them leaving, I was overwhelmed with all I had to catch up on. My mind seemed to instantly fill with tasks that felt urgent: vacuum up all the dust bunnies, clean out the fridge, pull the weeds in the sidewalk cracks, read all the texts that came in, reassemble the pull out couch, figure out what the packages are that arrived (WTF did I order?).

Every time I tried to turn my brain off, it just generated more items for my to-do list. I hadn’t done laundry in days or checked my personal email. I needed groceries. A lightbulb needed replacing.

And then my anxiety kicked in. My brain said, “I think I noticed a bit of mold on a lemon in the fridge last night. What if it touches the lettuce and the lettuce gets all moldy? And then what if the mold spreads beyond the lettuce?” Then my mind jumped to the washing machine—it made a scraping sound—what if it’s spinning too fast and catches on fire?

Just like that, the feeling of being behind morphed into fear of a deadly mold infestation and a fire.

In these moments, I know I need to calm down but telling myself to calm down just makes things worse. When I’m upset, if someone tells me to calm down, it has the opposite effect. When I tell myself to calm down, the same thing happens. I want to scream, “How can I calm down when the house is a disaster and about to explode into mold and flames?!”

Decision paralysis takes over. I can’t identify what to do first. Planning a trip to Africa for some future point seems equally important as having to pee right now. It all must get done now!

At some point, I finally remember what works: I tell myself, “Take a deep breath.” Zen Buddhism brings everything back to the breath. All we have is this breath, and then this one, and then this one. The breath is all that really matters. Focusing on my breath calms me. Each deep breath slows my brain down a bit. Sometimes it takes just one breath and sometimes it takes a hundred, but when I let my breath become my focus, all the mental clutter fades away.

I have a tendency to hold my breath when I’m exerting myself, whether mentally, emotionally, or physically. My personal trainer is always cueing me to breathe, reminding me that when I hold my breath, lunges and squats are harder. It’s true for everything: holding my breath makes thinking harder, sleeping harder, conflict harder.

The simple act of breathing with awareness reminds me that none of those things I think need to get done actually need to get done. Life will go on, whether the laundry is done or the email is answered. I can make choices about where to focus my energy.

I remind myself that I will never be caught up. The expected outcome is that I will die with things undone. My husband died with things undone. My mother died with things undone. It’s ok.

Life is not about getting things done. When I remember my husband or my mother, my mind goes to my love for them, the moments we shared, not the things they left undone.

Aging, Buddhist life

Embracing Aging

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This month I’ll turn 55. I hated birthdays as a child because of family dysfunction, but after my stroke when I was 27, birthdays finally felt meaningful. Making it to 28 did seem like something to celebrate. Now I celebrate all birthdays with gusto—mine as well as those of other people. So much can happen in a year and I love taking the time to reflect on that and appreciate it.

Even the difficult events and developments of a year can be seen as milestones worth savoring. Living three years without my husband is a grim milestone, but it’s also motivated me to explore being a hospice volunteer and becoming a living kidney donor, two things I’m very excited about. I’m proud of the ways I’ve grown out of necessity in my 55th year—for example, taking “date night dancing” off my calendar and reframing my relationship with my house. I don’t regret the growth, despite it all coming from adversity.

Aging means facing adversity. There’s no way around it; with aging comes loss—loss of relationships, loved ones, ambitions, and more. Sometimes because of those losses, we grow. Other times, the losses open up opportunities. Other gifts of aging come simply with age itself.

When I hit 47, the age my mother was when she died, I thought about how I was having experiences that come with age that she never got to have, like having a relationship with my teenage daughter. When my sister and I traveled together, I did so with the knowledge that my mother and her sister never got to do that. When I had my first hot flash, I laughed out loud, thinking, “Well, Mom, you never got that treat, did you?”

Once my husband died at 61, the lesson was sharpened: aging is something not everyone gets to do. The aspects of aging I might have complained about in the past now take on a different meaning: they are things he will not get to do. It’s easy to think of aging as a series of bleak losses. Our independence and health may ebb away or disappear suddenly. Loved ones continue to die. With those losses, though, we may find unexpected spaciousness.

I don’t mean that we ever stop missing or loving what we have lost, but that in addition to those losses, there are some gains. And those gains can be appreciated and even celebrated. I welcome my new interest in hospice work, which feels like a calling.

I’m trying to approach aging in both a practical way—it will happen whether I like it or not, so might as well make the best of it—and a Buddhist way, which is to reduce suffering by letting go of attachments. For example, when I recognize myself feeling attached to things my younger body could do easily that are now not so easy, I try to be grateful for the ease of the past rather than angry about the loss. Anger about the loss assumes I have a right to hold on to that ease. But it was temporary, like everything.

I do enjoy many aspects of aging. Feeling less pressure to please others is quite liberating. Being comfortable in my body, familiar in a loving and appreciative way with its quirks, is lovely. I wish my husband had gotten to experience more of aging’s rewards.

Many of the wonderful gifts I am experiencing with aging are available only because I’ve suffered losses. Several of my most cherished relationships deepened with my husband’s stroke and death. The older we get, the more likely it is that we will experience loss. Every loss will hurt—I don’t think that ever stops—and also present opportunities to connect with others.

The loss that comes with aging also provides motivation to reflect on what matters. I have clarity today about what matters that I couldn’t have had earlier in life simply because it took me 55 years of history on this planet to get there. That clarity was earned.  

Buddhist life, grieving

You’re not the only one who is lonely

In his compassionate and deeply thought-provoking book Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World, Vivek Murthy makes clear that nearly everyone is lonely at some point in their life but one of the cruel tricks of loneliness is making you think you’re the only one who is lonely. You are suffering through an almost universal experience yet believe everyone around you feels connected to others. The truth is that if you are lonely—whether it’s a longtime state or a fleeting feeling brought on by a particular situation—others near you probably are, too.

Loneliness often accompanies grief. If you are already lonely when grief hits, your loneliness may be compounded. We don’t tend to talk about either loneliness or grief, and by not talking about these outlaw emotions, we fail to develop not only our skills for talking about them but our ability to tolerate them in ourselves and others. When we see grief or loneliness heading toward us, we hurry to slam the door and lock them out.

We label people who are grieving downers and we urge them to “move on,” “get back to normal,” or cheer up. But being told to move on or cheer up just makes me feel lonely—it’s proof that the person talking to me doesn’t get it. When someone has told me to move on or cheer up, not once have I felt less alone, and more importantly perhaps, not once have I gotten closer to moving on or cheering up.

While I find those comments completely unhelpful and even alienating, I feel for the people making them. I think they are afraid. The next time someone says something like that to me, I hope I have the presence of mind to respond with, “I’m afraid of grief, too.”

It’s not just fear at work, though. I think people equate taking time with grief to a lack of effort or activity, as if the hard work of grieving has no value.

In a culture obsessed with productivity, taking time to grieve seems wasteful. It appears to be “doing nothing.” We think activity is inherently valuable while doing nothing is inherently lazy, but in fact, the opposite is often true. One of my favorite Buddhist sayings reminds me of the folly of taking action in lieu of reflecting: “Don’t just do something, stand there.”

I guess you could say that in my grief process, I’ve done a lot of standing there. I have chosen not to distract myself with activity and instead to turn towards my grief and give it space. I’ve been a downer. And yet, more often than not, when I’ve talked about my grief with others, they’ve reciprocated in authentic and vulnerable ways. Being a downer and standing there with my grief rather than hurrying through it has become a connecting point between me and others.

Often standing there with my grief is difficult. For example, last week I took something off my calendar that was a reminder of the life I had with my husband before he died. Date night dancing showed up every Saturday on my calendar. Taking it off my calendar was the easy part. The hard part, the real work, has been sitting with the hard hollow that forms in my throat every time I see the empty space on Saturday on my calendar. Even harder has been not pushing past those tough feelings with distractions but rather sitting with them, feeling them, acknowledging them, turning toward them.

Standing there with someone else who is grieving means holding space for them, not trying to cheer them up or fix their grief. That person in front of you who is grieving feels lonely and thinks they’re the only person feeling it. But they aren’t. You feel it or have felt it. I know you have. Don’t just do something—stand there.

Buddhist life, death, grieving

Celebrating Special Occasions

Almost any time I have a glass of wine or a cocktail with someone else, I say “cheers” and clink my glass with theirs. I love the “cheers” and clinking ritual. It reminds me that I am lucky to be sharing a moment with whoever I am with and it adds a note of celebration. It’s impossible for me to say “cheers” and clink and not smile.

I recently began wondering why I only do that with wine or a cocktail—why not with cups of coffee or glasses of water?

The only answer I can come up with is habit, which means I can replace it with a new habit—“cheers”-ing and clinking with any beverage.

Ever since my stroke in 1997, I’ve tried to celebrate and appreciate every day. My late husband had a similar attitude. One of the first commonalities we found was that we both believed in keeping a bottle of prosecco in the fridge at all times, just in case. When there’s a chilled bottle of something festive on hand, it’s easy to find excuses to celebrate.

I think the death of a loved one is a reminder that our time here on earth is limited, which to me highlights the specialness of every moment. Any moment with a loved one could be the last one, so why not celebrate it? And if it turns out not to be the last one, well, celebrate that there will be more to come.

Another version of this philosophy is to use the good stuff everyday rather than saving it for “a special occasion.” I was raised in a family that saved many things for “a special occasion,” which meant that sometimes something got thrown out because it spoiled or broke before an occasion special enough presented itself.

When I was in  grad school, I read Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use,” in which two adult sisters present arguments to their mother about which one of them deserves the family heirloom quilts. One sister argues that she should get them because she’ll hang them on the wall where they’ll stay pristine and be admired. The other sister would put the quilts to “everyday use” as bed covers. The mother gives the quilts to the sister who would use them, noting that actually using them is the most authentic appreciation for them one can offer.

I was intrigued by the idea of using something as a sign of respect and it shifted my thinking about my own habit of writing in my books. I had grad school colleagues who sometimes bought two copies of a book so they could keep one clean and write in the other. They were appalled that I wrote all over my books, “ruining” them. But after reading Walker’s story, I realized that for me, a book that looks like it’s never been read is the ruined one. A book covered with scribbles has been loved and considered.

My favorite things of my late husband’s are the ones that bare evidence of his love for them—the sweatshirt that’s a little grungy around the sleeve edges, the flannel shirt that’s missing a button, the life jacket that looks like it had a few close calls.

The idea of using the good stuff everyday aligns with the concept of being choosy about how you spend your time and spending your money while you’re alive instead of aiming to leave a large inheritance.

For me, the point is to be intentional about appreciating the moments that make up a life and acknowledging that what makes an occasion “special” is my recognition of the specialness. If an occasion isn’t special, well, that’s on me for not noticing the specialness.

What, truly, could be more special than this moment?

Cheers.

Buddhist life, grieving

5 Ways Grieving People Can Start 2024 Peacefully

I like to take some time in December and January to reflect on the year that has passed and to use that reflection to think about how I want the next year to go. This is my third time going through that reflection process as a widow. I haven’t changed the process I use in those three years, but I have noticed that the kinds of planning I’ve done for the year ahead has changed in response to my grief.

I end every year with a review of my journal, calendar, and camera roll to identify the key events, challenges, and developments of the year and start planning the next year intentionally. The two times I’ve done this since my husband died have been really helpful in allowing me to realize that I am moving forward even when I feel like I’m not. This year, for example, I was able to appreciate all the work I did to clear out the garage in the spring and become a better steward of my husband’s vines over the summer.

I find the process cathartic—it’s emotionally exhausting and gives me an intense feeling of lightness at the same time. It helps me lay bare the joys and challenges of the last year and gives me a sense of a trajectory for the year ahead.

After I reflect on the past year, I think about how I want the next year to be similar and different, or I what I want to bring forward from the last year and what I want to leave behind.

Before my husband died, I made resolutions that hinged on things I wanted to accomplish in the next year, such as articles to write and fitness goals to hit. Since his death, I’ve been moving toward a different kind of resolution that focuses more on practices than goals. For example, instead of aiming to write and publish a certain number of essays this year (a goal), I am planning to spend one day each month identifying submission deadlines in the next 30 days that I can write toward (a practice).

The concept behind many New Year’s Resolutions is basically, “I suck but I’m going to change that in the new year.” I prefer the attitude described in this beautiful Buddhist story: we can accept ourselves and our imperfections and our resolution can simply be to enjoy our imperfect lives. By committing to the practice of spending a day each month looking for submission deadlines, I’m aiming to shift my writing practice. What I’m not doing is setting a productivity goal that will stress me out and suck the joy out of writing for me.

Here are five practices from the past year I am taking with me into 2024 that I think could be helpful for anyone grieving:

  1. Give yourself amnesty. For email and all the other things that didn’t get done. For all the times you didn’t show up the way you wish. If you’re grieving, some of the time and energy you might normally put into keeping up with daily tasks or being social has gone into grieving, whether that means attending memorial events, dealing with your loved one’s estate or belongings, curing up on the couch and crying, or something else. That’s normal—and allowing yourself the time and space to do those things is more important than keeping up with email or mail or social events or whatever. Feeling bad about letting that stuff go for a while doesn’t do anyone any good, so I say, give yourself amnesty, release the guilt, and move forward. (If the idea of email amnesty is new to you, check this out for inspiration.)
  2. Give everyone else amnesty. If you’re holding onto a grudge because someone else didn’t behave the way you wanted, consider letting it go. That doesn’t mean you are saying their behavior is ok, it just means you are releasing the anger about it. In the year before he died, my husband and I worked hard on forgiveness. We were both holding onto anger that wasn’t serving us. We both found that letting go of the anger allowed us to feel peace that holding onto the anger had kept us from feeling.
  3. Make commitments to yourself for the new year. I suggest gentle ones that will make you feel more at peace. Make commitments grounded in kindness toward yourself and others. In 2023, I committed to talking to myself with the same kindness I talk to others, which meant no calling myself names. It was hard at first, but now it feels natural.
  4. Honor your loss with some time to go down the grief rabbit hole. Near the end of last year, I gave myself a weekend to wallow in grief. I plan to do that again in 2024. I don’t know exactly when, but I’m certain that at some point, my heart will tell me it’s time to take a weekend off. I’ll cancel whatever plans I have and have a guilt-free weekend to cry, look at photos of my husband, and miss him.
  5. Look at the year ahead and block off the days that might be difficult for you. Your loved one’s birthday, your anniversary, whatever it might be. Based on the last few years, I seem to have a pattern of being a mess in the days leading up to special days and then feeling much better afterwards, so I’ll block out the day before each special day and the day itself.
academic life/work, anxiety, Buddhist life, failure, mental illness

Befriending Overwhelm

I spend a good part of my time at the intersection of Depression, Anxiety, and Grief. When overwhelm hits, which it often does, and a wave of panic rises up in my chest, I take a deep breath.

I find my Buddhist practice very helpful when I feel that panic. Panic makes me feel like I should be hurrying—doing something, anything, and fast! But Buddhists aren’t known for hurrying. When my impulse is to move fast, I consciously slow down. With each deep breath, my panic subsides a bit until it is manageable. Sometimes I have to go through the process of taking a deep breath and letting my panic subside multiple times in a day or even an hour. It’s ok, I tell myself, take your time.

I was at a conference last week that put me into overwhelm. I was surrounded by brilliant, energetic, competent people and I felt dull, slow, and outdated in their company. Each session I attended left me feeling more overwhelmed by the feeling that I could never perform my job the way they perform theirs.

For me, overwhelm is often quite sneaky and I don’t always recognize it for what it is. I often notice that I feel a heaviness I can’t quite identify for hours or even days before I realize, “Oh, I’m feeling overwhelmed!” Once I label the feeling, I say hello to it. Really—I say out loud, “Hello, Overwhelm, my old friend.” That may seem ridiculous, but greeting it as a friend helps me not react to it with fear.

Then I sit down with it as I would with a friend having a tough time. If possible, I do this over coffee or tea, just as I would with a friend. “What’s going on?” I ask it. Here’s how my conversation with Overwhelm went last week at the conference:

Me: What’s going on?

Overwhelm: Everyone here is doing such amazing things! I’m so far behind—how can I do cool things with antiracism and undergraduate research and STEM support and all the other things I need to do?????? And I’m behind on publishing and . . . It’s a hopeless situation.

Me, speaking to Overwhelm as I would to any friend: Hmmm. I wonder if being at an academic conference is kind of like scrolling through Facebook. Presenters are showing their best work, just as most people on Facebook are showing their best moments. Just as the happy family photos don’t tell the whole story of a person’s daily life, a brilliant conference presentation doesn’t tell the whole story of an academic’s work.

Overwhelm: Huh . . .

By that point, Overwhelm started to lose its energy.

Of course, that wasn’t the end of it. The next day I went to a session where I heard about an amazing and elaborate program that I would love to replicate. Afterwards, I was overwhelmed with thoughts that quickly led me to a downward spiral: I will never be able to replicate the program, but I should try, but I can’t ever do it like she did, I will fail, I suck . . . and I’m behind on email and . . .  So I took a deep breath. And another one. I’ve learned I must regulate my breathing before I can regulate my thoughts. Another deep breath.

“Hello again, Overwhelm,” I said in between deep breaths.

Once I was breathing in a non-panicked way, my thoughts were already a little more manageable. I wrote them all down in a list. All the thoughts went on the list: I’m behind on email, I have a report due in November, if I don’t stain the back fence before it gets cold it will rot away this winter, I will never be able to replicate the program I heard about, I suck . . .  Giving each thought its own line on the list gives it some space. It can exist. It is an ok thought. When all the thoughts were on the list, I gave one breath to each thought, taking the length of one complete breath, an inhale and an exhale, to acknowledge the thought and linger on it. Sometimes that lead to more thoughts, which went on the list.

Sometimes all the thoughts want is a little space to be acknowledged and then I can let them go. The thought that whatever I come up with will never be as great as what this other woman came up with was one I could easily let go of once I gave it a breath. No, what I do won’t be as great as what she did. I’m not in competition with this other person, who is at a different institution in a different state. OK. Good bye, thought.

Other thoughts are useful and become items on my to do list or bucket list. The report due in November and staining the back fence went on my to do list.

Thoughts like “I suck” just want space. I give that thought a breath and then cross it off my list. I know it’s not true in any meaningful way. I used to have to fact check those thoughts—do I suck? I’d ask. And then I’d write down the evidence for and against that verdict. There was always more evidence against the verdict. Now I don’t have to do the actual fact-checking, I just have to remind myself that I’ve held this trial many times before and always the verdict has been, no, you don’t really suck.

Buddhism tells me that any time I want to hang on to a thought, hold it in a tight grip, I should instead open my hand and give it space, let it float away if it wants to. It usually wants to float away. Thoughts that float away sometimes come back, but if I again loosen my grip on them, they float away again. Sometimes they float back and I let them float away several times a day for years and years. It’s ok. I can keep letting them float away. Once I learned how to let them float away, I began to trust that they will float away if/when they return.

Letting the thoughts float away doesn’t “cure” me of my grief, depression, or anxiety. All it does is make the overwhelm go away. And I’ll take that.

Buddhist life, grieving, mental illness

Welcoming Depression Back into My Life

A couple weeks ago I realized my grief was veering into depression. Depression has been a constant in my life since I was about 8, but at that time, the world thought 8 year-olds couldn’t have depression, so I was just considered moody and bitchy. I was finally diagnosed in my teens and got on anti-depressants, which I took until my early 20s, when I was able to taper off of them and mange my depression with meditation, exercise, and lots of intentional choices about food and alcohol.

I was always aware that I was off medication “for now” and knew that I might need to go back on it at some point. Last year, when I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and panic attacks, I started taking a low dose of Escitalopram, which can help with both anxiety and depression.

Over the last few months, many of the things I’ve attributed to grief had started to happen less frequently. I was still feeling intense grief but not every minute of every day, and sometimes I could go entire days without feeling intense grief. My appetite returned. My sleep was mostly regular. The sneaker waves of grief came less often. I didn’t feel compelled to visit my late husband’s bench every day.

But last month, I started wanting to sleep all the time again. I slept through my alarm in the morning. I craved sugar. I didn’t want to work out, which is one of my favorite things to do.  

A couple weeks ago, I noticed that instead of feeling my normal grief mindset of “life is hard today but it will pass,” I was thinking “life is hard.” I didn’t have my usual sense of temporariness. I felt a kind of doom I’ve come to understand as anxiety, but it wasn’t anxiety. Anxiety shows up in my stomach and chest, but this doom was showing up everywhere. It was all encompassing, like a weight holding me down. It felt physical, as if a heavy blanket had been thrown over me and I had to drag it around with me all day. I couldn’t shake the heavy blanket or get out from under it.  

It happened slowly enough that I didn’t quite recognize that anything was different. Then I started reading Depression: A Public Feeling by Ann Cvetkovich, which is part memoir about her own experience of living with depression. Some of her descriptions of how depression felt resonated intensely with me. She uses words like “pervasive” and “relentless” and describes being unable to work on a project she had been passionate about and “the impossibility of physical relaxation.”

My first thought was, “It sounds like grief,” and then I realized grief hadn’t felt at all like that in a long time. I went back through my journal and saw the proof there that I had not always felt like I was dragging a heavy blanket around.

I’m now taking an increased dose of Escitalopram. The increase pretty much made me sleep for two days straight, but now I can stay awake all day and I’m starting to feel more like myself.

Just as I tried to make friends with my anxiety (we are closer now but not quite friends), I am trying to take a non-combative approach to my depression. It is part of me and if I love myself, I must love the depression in some way.

Two ideas have been helpful to me in this regard:

When I started grad school in 1993, nobody knew me or my past as a person with depression, so I didn’t mention it to anyone. I wasn’t consciously trying to hide it, but I also wasn’t bringing it to anyone’s attention. A few months ago, I added “I live with low vision” to my online bio, and soon after that I added anxiety to the list. A week or so ago, I added depression to the list.

Acknowledging publicly that anxiety and depression are part of my identity feels risky. Mental illness is still stigmatized and often seen as opposed to critical thinking, which is prized in academia. But I know from casual conversations that many of my students and colleagues live with mental illness. (I have tenure and am a full professor, so if I feel nervous about the disclosure, imagine how folks with less job security feel.)

Acknowledging depression in my bio is one way I am being compassionate towards myself and owning my depression.

Buddhist life, grieving

There Are No Bad Days

One of my favorite Buddhist writers, Sallie Tisdale, advises that we not label days bad but instead call them challenging or hard days. This philosophy is in keeping with what I’ve practiced since my own stroke in 1997 which I was not expected to survive. While in a medically-induced coma, I had a “going towards the light” experience that forever changed me. When I came out of my coma, I had the unshakable feeling that I had been given a choice: that I could continue on toward the light or I could come back to the life I had been living. Both were presented as neutral, equal options. 

At the time I wasn’t thrilled with my life—I had some troubled relationships and felt a lot of angst and ambivalence. I was not someone who loved life and I did not feel deeply connected to anyone beyond my sister and then-husband. But at the moment when I made my choice, I felt *invited* to continue my life. That feeling of being invited has made all the difference in the time that followed. Rather than being sulky and resentful, I have been grateful and connected. 

I have recognized each day as an invitation to live. There have been no bad days since I accepted the invitation to live in 1997. Even the day my husband had his stroke, even the day I made the decision to remove him from life support, even the day he died—these were not bad days. These were days that were difficult, sad, heartbreaking, even—but not bad. 

I think of those days as ones in which I got to do the most loving things I have ever done. The day my husband had his stroke, I committed to being his caregiver. The day I made the decision to remove him from life support and the day he died, I let him go—absolutely the most painful thing I’ve ever done, but after fighting against it with every ounce of my being for a year, it was what I needed to do. 

This attitude has made it possible for me to be present and grounded in even the most difficult of moments. I’ve been able to be fully present with my husband when he needed me most, rather than turning away in fear and denial. I’ve been able to experience the full, beautiful depth of human emotion, even when it physically hurts.

Instead of labeling a day good or bad, I find it more useful to think about how I showed up for the day. If a day was challenging, did I show up with curiosity and patience or anger and irritation? Did I recognize the difference between what I wanted to do and what I needed to do? I find that when I label a day “bad,” I dismiss it in its entirety, but when I identify a day “challenging,” I recognize its complexity and my own role in that complexity.

The day my husband died was the most difficult day of my life, but not a bad day. It was a day of intense love and connection, as well as nearly unfathomable heartbreak. I don’t wish a day like that on anyone, but I know people I love will have days like that. These days are as much a part of life as the ones we readily label as good. I celebrate every day I get to live. 

Buddhist life, grieving

Showing Up for Death

Watching someone die is hard. Sometimes we know we are watching someone die—perhaps they are in hospice or a medical professional has estimated how much time they have left. Other times, we may notice a slowing down and have a creeping realization that this person is moving toward death.

I watched my husband die for 53 weeks after his stroke. He faded very slowly, in fits and starts, so that it was possible for me to convince myself that he wasn’t actually dying at all. He maintained his vigor and bravado right up until the end, even when he had stopped eating. His death was a shock to me, although I knew that from the moment of his stroke, I was “walking him home,” an expression spiritual teacher Ram Dass used to express the shared experience of embracing the inevitability of death.

As painful as it is to watch, I think being with someone in their final months, weeks, days, or moments is an honor and even a responsibility. As much as we may want to turn away, I think we need to bear witness to death. Death is a totally natural part of life. Witnessing it normalizes it. Showing up for a person who is dying is one way to show respect for life itself. A person who is dying isn’t dead yet and many of their needs are like those of the rest of us: they need to be seen, heard, and acknowledged; they need to feel loved and valued; they need to feel remembered; they need to not feel abandoned.

I think one reason people avoid showing up for death is that they don’t know what to do. People who are dying are often less able to participate in conversations. We may wonder what to talk about with a dying person or how to engage them. We may feel pressure to keep a conversation going but feel nervous about which topics are “safe.” Here’s what I learned in my husband’s last year: it is easy to meet the needs of people who are dying if we focus on those needs rather than our fears.

Every one of those needs can be met by simply showing up. What is the most basic way of letting someone know they are seen and heard? Being there in person or on the phone with them. What is the most basic way of showing love? Making the effort to be there in person or on the phone. How can you let someone know you remember them? Be there. How do you let someone know they haven’t been abandoned? Sit with them.

Simply sitting in silence with someone who is dying is completely ok. I spent hours and hours in silence with my dying husband, simply holding his hand. When he had lost consciousness and was being kept alive by a ventilator, I told him over and over, “I’m right here.” In other words, I was not a brilliant conversationalist. Cake’s post on watching a loved one die emphasizes that it’s your presence that matters, not the conversation, and that silence is completely ok.

If you’re interested in learning more about dying and showing up for dying, I highly recommend Sallie Tisdale’s book, Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them). Tisdale is a Buddhist and brings Buddhism’s characteristic lack of sentimentality about death to the subject. (In my introduction to Zen Buddhism in 1997, the teacher led with, “Let’s face it: we’re all on a one-way trip to the boneyard.”) She offers concrete suggestions for what to say and not say. She recommends being kind to yourself, cutting yourself slack when you don’t show up exactly as you wish you had.

Perhaps the advice of Tisdale’s that was the hardest for me was to let the dying person talk about death and dying. My husband wanted to talk about it, but I was afraid that if I acknowledged he was dying, he would slip away faster. If I could change one thing about how I showed up for his death, it would be to not change the subject or dismiss his worries when he wanted to talk about dying. All I had to do was listen.

And now, as Tisdale advises, I need to cut myself a little slack.