Jungian Coaching Room Podcast EP3 – Returning Death to Community

Written by Dana Kabaila

In this episode, Linda Ruff from Woven In (@woven.in) shared her wealth of knowledge about life cycles and ways to honour death in practical, personal and collective ways. As is so often the case with taboos, hearing Linda speak about death was fascinating, reassuring and opened the door the many more questions. Linda is experienced in accompanying people journeying through Rites of Passage including menstruation, parenthood, eldership, illness, grief and death. It has been my great fortune to be welcomed into Linda’s home to talk about deep (and light) topics – a place of ritual, art, books, animal and plant companions and emotional support beverages. It perfectly captured the sanctuary and the valuing of unique beauty and sentimental treasures.

As the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors on my mother’s side and Soviet Union occupation survivors on my father’s side, the words “death” and “tragedy” were often closely linked in my understanding. Deaths were often shadowy, with gaps in knowledge and separation, sometimes across oceans. The other deaths in my early life were my beloved pets – seeing a guinea pig in the morning, hard and stiff, its little nose upturned. I was allowed ceremony and funeral with a burial plot in the backyard. There were tears and I might get a note to take to school. This conversation with Linda brings these snippets of contact and expands them to include all people and all things, while also touching on the personal aspects of death and dying. She explores questions like death choices like how would someone like room to be – what sort of lights, sounds and touch, how many people gathering and in what forms of company, what topics might soothe and might time alone be sought? Much as birthing folk approach giving birth as an almighty unknown, many create birth preferences only to surrender to the waves of sensations and efforts, the athletic surge and otherworldly possession.

Years ago, a friend who is deeply initiated in illness, death and loss, invited me to a Death Dinner Party. It had fancy food and gorgeous floral table arrangements. There were little cards with conversation prompts around the topic of death. Two speakers represented differing places in death discussions. The first, a death doula, spoke of taking people to visit their burial grounds while they were still alive. The second speaker was from a startup attempting to make immortality a possibility in our lifetime. While the latter sounded rather unlikely and, in many ways, problematic to me, it captured the response to death so often felt in the metropole at this point in time. The idea that death must be fought, evaded, cured – that it is to be primally feared, as is the case with so many experiences of uncertainty and mystery (think “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” in Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas). In popular culture, depictions of death (such as Bergman’s 1957 portrayal of Death in the film The Seventh Seal) point to the absurdity of attempts to outwit death.

Linda offered an approach much more akin to the first speaker, with a focus on respectful preparation and acceptance. For this sort of approach, we might look to Markus Zusak’s Death as the compassionate yet resolute narrator in The Book Thief or turn to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series with a lovable Death character, who is fascinated by humanity including the occasional enjoyment of eating curry (despite being a robed skeleton with no stomach). This seemed to reflect Pratchett’s real-world sense of death – he stated in a 2011 interview, “Who can be afraid of death? What’s there to be afraid of? I treasure the unknown.”

Perhaps the combination of human striving and death acceptance can be weaved together, like Jung’s description of death as “growing beyond oneself” (Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 12). Or Linda sharing Jung’s description of death as a form of fulfillment as in this passage from the Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 8:

“…it would seem to be more in accord with the collective psyche of humanity to regard death as the fulfillment of life’s meaning and as its goal in the truest sense, instead of a mere meaningless cessation. Anyone who cherishes a rationalistic opinion on this score has isolated himself psychologically and stands opposed to his own basic human nature.”

Linda highlighted how this aligns with Indigenous cultures in their antidotes to hubris and grandiosity by centring human experience in greater cycles like the breath in and out, all creatures and plants, shifts in seasons and tides, coming and going of landscapes over time. Death as guide and companion, Mother Death, what Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés refers to as the wheel of life teachings whereby “Lady Death enfolds the already dying, easing their pain, giving them comfort” (Women Who Run with the Wolves).

Linda then guided our conversation to tending to the body of a loved one in forms of personalised vigil – how funeral directors (especially death disruptors and reclaimers) can advise if and how sitting with the body could be possible. This could involve taking a body home from hospital for speaking and singing with, bathing and shrouding – time for goodbyes. As with every offering, there are no set rules or expectations. In the case of some deaths, Linda advises, loved ones will be utterly exhausted and recovery and sleep may make immediate vigils not be possible or appropriate. Listening back, I am reminded of the treasure trove of resources that Linda shared to deepen learnings (Further Resources list below) and words from the Mary Oliver poem White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field.

maybe death isn’t darkness, after all,
but so much light wrapping itself around us —

as soft as feathers —
that we are instantly weary of looking, and looking,
and shut our eyes, not without amazement,
and let ourselves be carried,
as through the translucence of mica,
to the river that is without the least dapple or shadow,
that is nothing but light — scalding, aortal light —
in which we are washed and washed
out of our bones.

Please share, like, and subscribe. I invite you to email me with any questions or reflections at dana.kabaila@iajcc.org. Our next episode, ‘When we Gather’ explores group constellations, permutations, and possibilities with the authors of ‘Gods, Heroes and Groups: Relational Dynamics through Mythic Archetypes‘.

Further Resources

Website
Sarah Kerr – The Centre for Sacred Death Care

TED Talks

• Alua Arthur (2023) – Why thinking about death helps you live a better life

• Zenith Virago (2021) – Disrupting Death: A guide to dying well

Readings

• Pema Chödrön (2022) – How We Live is How We Die

• Atul Gawande (2015) – Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End

• Stephen Jenkinson (2015) – Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul

• Paul Kalanithi (2017) – When Breath Becomes Air

• Kathryn Mannix (2017) – With the End in Mind: Dying, Death, and Wisdom in an Age of Denial

• Frank Ostaseski (2017) – The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

• Francis Weller (2015) – The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief