“That’s where all its beauty lies, you know. The mortality of the thing.”

by Kristie West November 6, 2020

A very beautiful quote for you. If you’re not a fan of horror – the scary, jumpy, ghosty kind – then you’ll want to avoid the series I recently watched – The Haunting of Bly Manor. (And you’ll definitely want to avoid it’s even better – or much worse, depending on how you look at […]

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Why am I grieving old losses more during the pandemic?

by Kristie West November 3, 2020

Previously I’ve written about covid-19 (here and here) and how constant fear and lack of perspective is affecting people this year, and that a lot of this has to do with your own relationship to the idea of death, specifically your death and the deaths of those around you. But there is another element of […]

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Talking to a 5-year old about death

by Kristie West October 28, 2020

This is not my first blog about talking to kids about death. I wrote on the topic even before I had a child of my own and, now that I do, there seems to be an updated blog around this theme for me to do every year or so, as my daughter gets older. She […]

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Grace and death in 2020

by Kristie West October 20, 2020

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog about Covid-19 and how fear of death is blinding the world. In it I outlined the reality of the numbers and how unspectacular they really are when compared to many other causes of death, and daily deaths in general. I talked about how part of the […]

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Covid-19: How fear of death is blinding the world.

by Kristie West September 22, 2020

There is much written at the moment about our current worldwide situation around covid-19, lockdowns, and general reactions to it. Now before you think you reeeeeally don’t need to be reading yet another article on the topic…bear with me. What I want to share here is particularly around fear of death and how this impacts […]

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You need to consciously cultivate joy.

by Kristie West April 7, 2020

I was watching a video of a friend yesterday and he said something that really struck me. He was talking about the importance of consciously turning to what you want, rather than always focusing on what you’re unhappy with and complaining about it. And he said that you have to consciously choose fun and happiness […]

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“Tradition is just peer pressure from dead people”.

by Kristie West March 16, 2020

Tradition is just peer pressure from dead people. I don’t know who first said this – likely none of the people who shared it on facebook, where I saw it – but it’s true nonetheless. Tradition “is the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation.” Some of these can be wonderful, beautiful customs […]

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Letting fun and joy and laughter back in

by Kristie West March 1, 2020

Letting fun and joy and laughter back in When you’re grieving the death of someone you love it can be very natural to feel a lot of negative emotion…and not a lot of positive. This isn’t everyone’s experience but it’s probably true for most people. For a while we think there is actually no fun […]

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Dr Shefali’s thoughts on death

by Kristie West February 23, 2020

Dr Shefali’s thoughts on death I watched a brilliant video by Dr Shefali recently. I’m a big fan, but I usually go to her for her parenting wisdom. This time though she was talking about death and was pretty spot on. “Death is one of those taboo topics that no-one really wants to talk about […]

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The stories we tell

by Kristie West February 11, 2020

 The stories we tell   Ooo, don’t we humans love our stories? We use them to explain who we are and why we do what we do. We use them to make sense of the world. We use them to connect  to others. There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s one of the beautiful things about […]

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