Barbara Becker | Living with the End in Mind

From her pregnancy losses to accompanying her parents and aunt through Alzheimer’s to her work in human rights advocacy and the hundreds of people she’s sat with at the end of their lives as a hospice volunteer, my guest Barbara Becker, shares what she’s learned about the art of living with the end in mind.

She is the author of the extraordinary book Heartwood: The Art of Living with the End in Mind which won the Nautilus Gold Book Award and was featured by Katie Couric Media in her "Books That Will Change Your Life."

Both in her book, and in this episode, she offers us the wisdom she has gained as someone who has dedicated more than twenty-five years to partnering with human-rights advocates around the world in pursuit of peace and interreligious understanding. She has worked with the United Nations, Human Rights First, the Ms. Foundation for Women, and the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, and has participated in a delegation of Zen Peacemakers and Lakota elders in the Black Hills of South Dakota. She is an ordained interfaith minister who bridges the sacred and the secular and has sat with hundreds of people at the end of their lives.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Pick up a copy of Heartwood: The Art of Living with the End in Mind  at your favorite local bookstore or online here

JUMP STRAIGHT INTO:

(20:00) Barbara shares what she’s learned about living with the end in mind from her colleagues in her work with global activism. I asked her to expand on a a particular story she shared in her book, about the lessons she learned from Console, a woman who survived the Rwandan Genocide.

(42:00) When we come back, Barbara shares what’s she’s learned in her work as a hospice volunteer about what it means to show up alongside someone in their suffering, and how that conflicts with our notion that it’s our job to fix, when it’s not.

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