Tag: stories

EOLPodcast

Ep. 318 How to Use Stories to Teach About Death and Dying

kwyattmd

Learn how telling stories can make you a better and more effective teacher about end-of-life issues.

In this solo episode I share some of the research around the power of stories to teach and to change behavior, which is why we should all be using stories when we are working with people around end-of-life issues. You can harness the “magic” of stories to motivate your students to take action and to develop greater empathy for others. Find out how to become a better storyteller in your work, no matter what role you play.

Listen here:

This episode includes:

  • The neuroscience of stories and how they work to change our thinking
  • Why stories are “empathy machines”
  • Why everyone should use stories in their work, but especially in work that involves death and dying
  • How stories help with healing
    • Teach about the past
    • Increase empathy
    • Make sense of life
    • Reveal what is hidden
    • Engage the imagination
    • Enhance memory
  • Characteristics of a good story
  • Tools needed to become a great storyteller
  • Types of teaching stories
    • Personal
    • Witnessed
    • Borrowed
    • Nature
    • Historical
    • Myth and legend

Links mentioned in this episode:

If you enjoy this content please share it with others and consider leaving a review on iTunes. Thanks again to all supporters on my page at Patreon.com/eolu! Your contributions make all the difference.

EOLPodcast

Ep. 289 Echobox: Preserving the Story of Our Lives with Tim Roberts

kwyattmd

Learn about an innovative new app for storing and sharing image and stories of our lives and those of our loved ones.

My guest Tim Roberts is an artist, musician, app developer, idea our and dreamer who lives in Calgary Canada. He created the digital legacy project Echobox Memory Vault™ and worked with a developer to turn it into an app. Today he will tell us how the app works and why it’s important for us to save and share our memories as stories and images for our loved ones. Learn more about Echobox Memory Vault™ at the website:

https://echobox.ca

Listen here:

This episode includes:

  • How Tim was inspired to create Echobox
  • Who can benefit from using Echobox and how it works
  • How privacy and security are maintained in the Echobox app, unlike many social media sites
  • Why it can be helpful to preserve memories digitally
  • The importance of stories to help us makes sense of the past and inspire future generations
  • The positive response of the healthcare world for Echobox
  • How Echobox helps connect people who can’t be together because of COVID
  • How Echobox can help with grief and bereavement

Links mentioned in this episode:

If you enjoy this content please share it with others and consider leaving a review on iTunes! Thanks again to all supporters on my page at Patreon.com/eolu, especially my newest supporter Carrie Andrews! Your contributions make all the difference!

EOLPodcast, mortal wisdom, Spirituality

Ep. 284 The Hero’s Journey at the End of Life

kwyattmd

Learn what the Hero’s Journey can teach us about the dying process and how to support someone on that journey.

In this solo episode I share some thoughts about the archetypal Hero’s Journey, conceived by Joseph Campbell as a template for the transformative experiences of our own lives and those who are facing the end of life. Each of us has the opportunity to be a mentor for someone who is going through the ordeal of their own hero’s journey and this model can help us understand how to offer support and what is needed from us. Download a one page handout at the link below:

Heros-JourneyDownload

Listen here:

This episode includes:

  • Why the archetypal Hero’s Journey applies to people at the end of life
  • Why things generally have to fall apart before transformation can occur
  • How dissolution of life’s equilibrium can lead to either transformation or regression
  • The importance of a mentor for people experiencing the sacred end-of-life journey
  • The most important tasks of the end-of-life hero’s journey
    • Reframing Suffering
    • Strengthening Connections
    • Finding Meaning
    • Facing Fear of Death
  • How unaddressed shadow issues can sabotage transformation at the end of life
  • The benefits of stories as tools for a mentor
  • How to utilize stories to assist with transformation

Links mentioned in this episode:

If you enjoy this content please share it with others and consider leaving a review on iTunes! Thanks again to all supporters on my page at Patreon.com/eolu! Your contributions make all the difference!

EOLPodcast, Spirituality

BONUS 15: Love Over Fear – Stories for Precarious Times

kwyattmd

Welcome to this weekly bonus series of brief stories designed to touch your heart and offer you comfort, joy, laughter, and inspiration as we face uncertain times together! Remember always to choose LOVE over fear!

Story 15: You’re Already There

You’re Already There

Featured Poem:

Journey by David Whyte

Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again

Painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.

Sometimes everything
has to be
inscribed across
the heavens

so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.

Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that

first, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.

Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out

someone has written
something new
in the ashes of your life.

You are not leaving.
Even as the light fades quickly now,
you are arriving.

EOLPodcast

BONUS 14: Love Over Fear – Stories for Precarious Times

kwyattmd

Welcome to this weekly bonus series of brief stories designed to touch your heart and offer you comfort, joy, laughter, and inspiration as we face uncertain times together! Remember always to choose LOVE over fear!

Story 14: Connecting the Dots

Connecting the Dots

Featured Quote:

By Steve Jobs

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

EOLPodcast

BONUS 13: Love Over Fear – Stories for Precarious Times

kwyattmd

Welcome to this weekly bonus series of brief stories designed to touch your heart and offer you comfort, joy, laughter, and inspiration as we face uncertain times together! Remember always to choose LOVE over fear!

Story 13: These tricky roads of grief

These tricky roads of grief

Featured Poem by Meggie C. Royer

Color of Grief

As a child I was constantly sticking my fingers in sockets

and trying to figure out if grief had its own color

so my mother sat me down on the sofa and took out the Pantone book,

paged through it for an hour until we found the blues.

There, I said, that one, and pointed to cerulean.

Oh honey, my mother replied, That’s not grief. That’s just a paint swatch

and it will never amount to all the pain in your heart.

Sometimes I feel the urge to go wade out into the lake

after filling my pockets with stones,

but then I remember my father and how he wore his grief

like a too-tight sweater, something given to an awkward child

by a grandmother who doesn’t even know the right size,

so I take the stones back out of my pockets

and I place them on his grave instead. 

EOLPodcast, Spirituality

BONUS 12: Love Over Fear – Stories for Precarious Times

kwyattmd

Welcome to this weekly bonus series of brief stories designed to touch your heart and offer you comfort, joy, laughter, and inspiration as we face uncertain times together! Remember always to choose LOVE over fear!

Story 12: There’s something greater than us

There’s something greater than us

Featured Verse from The Tao of Death by Karen Wyatt

Verse 25

There is something greater than all the laws of Nature –

greater even than the Universe itself.

It exists outside of time,

perfect in its serenity, emptiness and wholeness.

It will never change and never die.

It is the source of all creation and all creativity.

We have no name for this infinite source and so we call it

The Way of Death.

The Way of Death exists within all things,

gives Life to all things, and

returns everything back to the original source.

The ancients say that there are four great powers in existence:

the Creative Force,

the Universe,

the Earth,

and Humankind.

Humankind must yield to the laws of the Earth.

The Earth must yield to the laws of the Universe.

The Universe must yield to the laws of the Creative Force.

The Creative Force operates through the Way of Death.

EOLPodcast, Spirituality

BONUS 11: Love Over Fear – Stories for Precarious Times

kwyattmd

Welcome to this weekly bonus series of brief stories designed to touch your heart and offer you comfort, joy, laughter, and inspiration as we face uncertain times together! Remember always to choose LOVE over fear!

Story 11: To everything there is a season

To everything there is a season

Featured Verse: Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

EOLPodcast, Spirituality, Tragedy

BONUS 10: Love Over Fear – Stories for Precarious Tims

kwyattmd

Welcome to this weekly bonus series of brief stories designed to touch your heart and offer you comfort, joy, laughter, and inspiration as we face uncertain times together! Remember always to choose LOVE over fear!

Story 10: What Life is Bringing Me Now

What Life is Bringing Me Now

Featured Quote:

Viktor Frankl – Man’s Search for Meaning pp. 98-99

What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. … Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. … When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.”

Viktor Frankl
EOLPodcast, Grief

Ep. 246 Mother’s Day Grief Dialogues for Motherless Daughters with Elizabeth Coplan

kwyattmd

Learn how stories heal grief in this special episode for Mother’s Day.

My guest Elizabeth Coplan is a playwright, educator and speaker who created the non-profit Grief Dialogues where she uses theatre as the artistic expression to open new conversations about dying, death, and grief. Today, on Mother’s Day, we will talk about the grief experience of motherless daughters and she will share some stories from Grief Dialogues: The Book. Stories of Love and Loss. Learn more at her website:

www.griefdialogues.com

Listen here:

This episode includes:

  • How Elizabeth used writing to work through her own grief issues
  • How stories help us heal grief
  • The unique grief of motherless daughters
  • How Grief Dialogues is reaching out to healthcare professionals to address grief
  • Two stories from the book Grief Dialogues:
    • I am a Marionette by Megan Vered
    • Grief is Like Swimming in the Middle of the Ocean (and I hate the ocean) by Alica Forneret
  • How to submit your own story to Grief Dialogues

Out of grief comes art.”

Motto of GriefDialogues.com

Links mentioned in this episode:

If you enjoy this content please share it with others and consider leaving a review on iTunes! Thanks again to all supporters on my page at Patreon.com/eolu! Your contributions make all the difference!

EOLPodcast, Spirituality

BONUS 8: Love Over Fear – Stories for Precarious Times

kwyattmd

Welcome to this weekly bonus series of brief stories designed to touch your heart and offer you comfort, joy, laughter, and inspiration as we face uncertain times together! Remember always to choose LOVE over fear!

Story 8: Everything is Perfect

Everything is Perfect

End of Life, EOLPodcast, Spirituality

BONUS 4: Love Over Fear – Stories for Precarious Times

kwyattmd

Welcome to this weekly bonus series of brief stories designed to touch your heart and offer you comfort, joy, laughter, and inspiration as we face uncertain times together! Remember always to choose LOVE over fear!

Story 4: Why Me?

Why Me?

Featured Poem:

A Blessing for Courage by John O’Donohue

When the light around you lessens
And your thoughts darken until
Your body feels fear turn
Cold as a stone inside,

When you find yourself bereft
Of any belief in yourself
And all you unknowingly
Leaned on has fallen,

When one voice commands
Your whole heart,
And it is raven dark,

Steady yourself and see
That it is your own thinking
That darkens your world.

Search and you will find
A diamond-thought of light,

Know that you are not alone,
And that this darkness has purpose;
Gradually it will school your eyes,
To find the one gift your life requires
Hidden within this night-corner.

Invoke the learning
Of every suffering
You have suffered.

Close your eyes.
Gather all the kindling
About your heart
To create one spark
That is all you need
To nourish the flame
That will cleanse the dark
Of its weight of festered fear.

A new confidence will come alive
To urge you towards higher ground
Where your imagination
will learn to engage difficulty
As its most rewarding threshold!

EOLPodcast

BONUS 3: Love Over Fear – Stories for Precarious Times

kwyattmd

Welcome to this weekly bonus series of brief stories designed to touch your heart and offer you comfort, joy, laughter, and inspiration as we face uncertain times together! Remember always to choose LOVE over fear!

Story 3: Loving the Unlovable

Loving the Unlovable

Featured Poem: Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems

EOLPodcast, Spirituality, Tragedy

BONUS 2: Love Over Fear – Stories for Precarious Times

kwyattmd

Welcome to this weekly bonus series of brief stories designed to touch your heart and offer you comfort, joy, laughter, and inspiration as we face uncertain times together! Remember always to choose LOVE over fear!

Story 2: Love is the Purpose

Love is the Purpose

Poem by Fr. Richard Hendrick, OFM

Yes there is fear. 
Yes there is isolation. 
Yes there is panic buying. 
Yes there is sickness. 
Yes there is even death. 
But,
They say that in Wuhan after so many years of noise
You can hear the birds again.
They say that after just a few weeks of quiet
The sky is no longer thick with fumes
But blue and grey and clear.
They say that in the streets of Assisi
People are singing to each other
across the empty squares,
keeping their windows open
so that those who are alone
may hear the sounds of family around them.
They say that a hotel in the West of Ireland
Is offering free meals and delivery to the housebound.
Today a young woman I know
is busy spreading fliers with her number
through the neighbourhood
So that the elders may have someone to call on.
Today Churches, Synagogues, Mosques and Temples
are preparing to welcome
and shelter the homeless, the sick, the weary
All over the world people are slowing down and reflecting
All over the world people are looking at their neighbours in a new way
All over the world people are waking up to a new reality
To how big we really are.
To how little control we really have.
To what really matters.
To Love.
So we pray and we remember that
Yes there is fear.
But there does not have to be hate.
Yes there is isolation.
But there does not have to be loneliness.
Yes there is panic buying.
But there does not have to be meanness.
Yes there is sickness.
But there does not have to be disease of the soul
Yes there is even death.
But there can always be a rebirth of love.
Wake to the choices you make as to how to live now.
Today, breathe.
Listen, behind the factory noises of your panic
The birds are singing again
The sky is clearing,
Spring is coming,
And we are always encompassed by Love.
Open the windows of your soul
And though you may not be able
to touch across the empty square,
Sing.