End of Life Planning & Paperwork Workshop

Workshop with Sandy LaGrega

The Social Art of Natural Death Care

In Swannanoa, NC (at the Center for Conscious Living & Dying)

Join us for this IN-PERSON Workshop.

Includes the following times:

Friday, March 24, 2023. 6:30 to 9:30pm

Saturday, March 25, 2023. 9am-4pm.

Sunday, March 26, 2023. 10am-1pm

Times are Eastern Time Zone.

“Let love be your guide.” Beth Knox

Description:

Natural Death Care teaches us to care for our loved ones at their time of death. Bringing death care back into the purview of our families and communities allows us to infuse the process with beauty, reverence, and meaning. Home death care is legal in most states and is an emerging and alternative approach to the conventional funeral home process. Home death care is both an ancient and new tradition.

This “do-it-ourselves” methodology, seen in the expanding green burial and home funeral movements, stems from a desire for a more affordable, personal, and honorable process that is infused with our deeply held values and desire to care for our own at death. These systems practices are easy to learn, empowering, and deeply rooted in community.

With a deeply reverent and hands-on process, through working with a living body, we will model and practice the ritual of body care after death (as well as experience a vigil space). We’ll explore the legalities and logistics of body acquisition, appropriate paperwork for ease of transition, as well as the how-to’s of building a death literate and natural death care supportive community environment.

Many people believe that earthly death is our birth into the spirit realm just like birth is a death from the spirit realm to the earthly world. This workshop is an invitation to step into “time out of mind” or Kairos time: a place where the mystery looms large and the veils between the worlds are partially lifted.

Schedule

Friday, March 24. 6:30-9:30pm. Introductions and social container creation. Video on Natural Death Care. Map of the human being.

Saturday, March 25. 9am-4pm. Body Care. Legalities and Logistics. Support Systems.

Sunday, March 26. 10am-1pm. Echoes from the night. Closing Circle.

Instructor: Sandy LaGrega

Sandy LaGrega is the founder and board president of The Sophia Center for Life Studies. She travels the country educating, learning, and connecting with others in the natural home funeral movement. Sandy is a true pioneer in this field, yet is willing to learn more and to share her knowledge, wisdom, and experience with families and individuals who want to honor their loved ones in this way. As a visionary and , (biography and social artist. Sandy is always dreaming up creative ways for us to connect to ourselves and to others interested in personal and spiritual growth. Sandy draws her spiritual wisdom from years of study and practice within the Anthroposophical context. https://sophiacenterforlifestudies.org/.

Why Death Education

“Death education is for everyone, because it relates not just to death but to our feelings about ourselves and nature and the universe we live in. A prime function of death education is to help us to think and feel deeply about the meaning of life and its many relationships–to help mature our own values…confronting death imaginatively through experience, reading, thinking, lectures, and discussions often has the paradoxical effect of enriching life.”

“As we pass beyond the fear and avoidance of death, so common in our culture, we can learn to accept death as an appropriate culmination of life. to do this we need to be able to talk freely with our loved ones about death—both our own and theirs.”

“Whether immanent or remote. death education does not avoid grief—and should not if it could—but it can help us to cope with grief in a creative way so that we may grow in the quality of our lives. It can help us also to relate meaningfully to dying persons and to meet the social and emotional needs of the survivors, including ourselves.”

~Ernest Morgan from Dealing Creatively with Death, a Manual of Death Education and Simple Burial.

Assistants & Supporters

Jen Fox

Jennifer is a life-long seeker, elder, grandmother of five, and great-grandmother of three. Upon meeting the being of Anthroposophia many years ago, Jennifer devoted her life path to deepening her understanding of these “great mysteries of comings and goings” – diving into them anew through studying, practicing and teaching Biography and Social Art locally and nationally and through the blessing of accompanying many family members and friends, (most recently, mother, husband, three brothers, sister-in-law)) cross the threshold with consciousness and reverent care. These souls have been and remain her greatest teachers. Jennifer founded The Tucson Natural Death Care Circle several years ago and supports this growing movement locally and nationally.

Carole Shoaf

Death Doula

My parents, John and Janet Hampton were my death teachers. With the help of Sandy La Grega and others, their wishes for a conscious death and three day vigil were fulfilled. Following our move back to Asheville in 2009, I began to look for opportunities that would fulfill my desire to help others with natural death care. In 2017, I enrolled in the end of life doula program through the Conscious Dying Institute and finished the program with them. Since then, I have supported many people in their end of life transitions and have enjoyed talking to others about home funerals as a meaningful alternative to after death care.

Lee Warren

Death Educator

Lee Warren has been fortunate to learn from the dying in the context of a village. Over the course of two years, from 2016 to 2018, there were six deaths at Earthaven Ecovillage, the place she’s called home for more than two decades. Those deaths, and the generous people who experienced them, were incredible opportunities for service to the great mystery. Lee has woven end-of-life education into her community building work as foundation to becoming alive, present, and embodied humans.

Meredith Parker Springs

Funeral Director

Meredith Springs has been a licensed funeral director since 2018 and works at West Funeral Home in Weaverville, NC. She is eternally grateful for the fact that, as she began attending mortuary school in 2015, she met Sandra LaGrega and learned about home funerals. Meredith‘s contribution to this community is in offering practical advice about options, and in being a “thought partner” for those thinking through their final plans and wishes. She is passionate about the special opportunity that vigil time around death and dying affords us in our life journey.