Which brings to mind the old adage “Live each day as though it were your last because one day you’ll be right.” At face value, it’s a powerful sentiment. But Burkeman talks about how that’s an unrealistic goal. Reality sets in. How can we live so carefree and with abandon when we have bills to pay and families to feed? So instead we’ve focused on “optimizing” our time – how can we be more productive, so that we can accomplish more, while also finding that elusive “work-life balance”?

He argues that optimizing your life to find time for fulfillment is a fool’s errand. The real goal should be to live each day with the intention of simply being truly present - enjoying the simple things, moments, connections. That is a life well lived.

In the work that we do, Karen and I believe that accepting our death allows us to embrace our life. Oliver Burkeman shares this belief – confronting the finitude of our lives is what allows us to be truly present. To do that, we need to face the certainty of death, not turn away from it. Understanding that our time here is finite is the most prescient shift we can take toward living a fulfilled and richly nourishing life.

-Jen

The New York Times just published a 30-page special section on end-of-life care, alternative burials, and the growing role of death doulas. Major podcasts are tackling mortality. The conversation is shifting.

At The Heartwood Collective, this is exactly what we’ve been working toward—bringing death out of the shadows and back into our lives where it belongs.

When did we become so afraid?

Death has always been part of life. But as medical technology advanced, giving us the power to delay the inevitable with machines and medications, something shifted. We began to see death not as natural, but as failure. As something shameful. Something to be avoided at all costs.

Academy Award winner Chloé Zhao recently spoke about this on The New York Times podcast The Daily. She described her own debilitating fear of death—a fear so consuming that it prevented her from living fully. “Death is no longer seen as a natural part of life,” she said. “Now it’s about staying alive as long as we can. There’s almost some kind of shame around death, because it’s weak or something, or it shouldn’t happen.”

Her solution? She’s studying to become a death doula.

We know that’s not a practical path for most people. But here’s what we’ve learned: you don’t need a certification to make progress. You just need to start.

Listen to one podcast about end-of-life planning. Have one conversation with someone you trust. Read one article. Allow yourself just a moment to sit with the discomfort instead of pushing it away.

That’s a win.

Why this matters

When you become a little less fearful and a little more open to talking about death, something profound happens. Not only do you benefit—you become a source of strength for the people in your life who will one day need you when death is near.

We help people tackle practical tasks, yes. But what brings us the most joy? Witnessing that first moment when someone realizes they’re no longer paralyzed by fear. When they discover they can actually talk about this.

That moment changes everything.

What’s one small step you could take this week?

We’d love to hear from you.

We recently recorded an episode with Diane Hullet, host of one of our favorite podcasts: Best Life, Best Death. (Of course that’s one of our faves.)

We chatted with her about our journeys into this work and gave her listeners some of our top tips on end-of-life planning. We called these the “If Nothing Else” tasks.

Here’s the episode on her website. Also: Spotify, Apple.

Please share with anyone you know who may be interested. Word-of-mouth from our community is so helpful to us as we continue to grow.

I recently read about a global art project started by the artist Candy Chang in which she created a space on a public wall with the prompt “before I die_______. The idea came to her after the death of someone she loved and was imagined as a way for people to reflect on life and death.

It took only a matter of days for the entire wall to be filled with answers. Some that might be considered things on one's “bucket list”: traveling to all the continents, straddling the international date line. Others were more simple desires: to be a good dad, to have a better relationship with my sister.

While they all seem feasible and attainable, we tend to put things off for the future, when we have more time or more money. We dream without doing. When death feels a long way off, it’s easy to say “tomorrow”.

It feels like it's only when we think about the end that we give ourselves the lens to articulate what we really want in our life. If so, how can we keep our mortality top of mind? Not to bring us down, but to help us be bold and brave enough to start to tackle the “bucket list”?

If you were told today that you had only a few short months left, what would you change? How might you approach the decisions you make? Giving ourselves the time and space to think about our death can shed light on how to live in the present with more authenticity and purpose, how to make the most of our finite time, and in the end, create the legacy we’d be most proud of.

How would you finish the sentence, “before I die I want to________”?

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