Thanatology, Deborah Golden Alecson

Thanatologist | Educator | Poet | Author | Speaker

DEBORAH GOLDEN ALECSON

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    Please reload

    Musings on Mortality: Good dying time results in good death

    December 4, 2017

    Musings on Mortality: Combat stress by embracing whatever brings joy

    November 8, 2017

    Musings on Mortality: Being open about death helps everyone

    July 22, 2017

    Musings on Mortality: Current events can escalate death phobia

    April 29, 2017

    Musings on Mortality: To die or not to die? The answer isn't so simple

    April 19, 2017

    Thanatology and Poetry: A Conversation Between Deborah Golden Alecson and Thomas Fink

    February 11, 2017

    Musings on Mortality: Plan a dignified death on your own terms

    February 7, 2017

    Musings on Mortality: It's OK if grief creeps in during holidays

    December 10, 2016

    Musings on Mortality: Maybe if we celebrated death we wouldn't fear it

    November 8, 2016

    Musings on Mortality: Difference between suicide, medical aid in dying

    September 6, 2016

    Please reload

    Musings on Mortality: Good dying time results in good death

    4-Dec-2017

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    Deborah Golden Alecson

    The very first module for my medical humanities course is called "Good Death: Oxymoron or Possibility?" A good death implies a good dying time leading up to death. The question is, can dying ever be good or is this unacceptable given it is, after all, dying — the end o...

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    Musings on Mortality: Combat stress by embracing whatever brings joy

    8-Nov-2017

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    Deborah Golden Alecson

    There is a term used in the field of thanatology called "mortality salience." It comes out of a theory called "Terror Management Theory" that American social psychologists proposed based on the brilliant work of the cultural anthropologist, Ernest Becker, presented in...

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    Musings on Mortality: Being open about death helps everyone

    22-Jul-2017

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    Deborah Golden Alecson

    When death is in the house you feel the impermanence of life. When you feel the impermanence of life, you feel truth. When death is in the house, you have a keen sense of the present moment and it feels like wonder. When you are with a person in his dying time, there i...

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    Musings on Mortality: Current events can escalate death phobia

    29-Apr-2017

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    Deborah Golden Alecson

    It starts with the denial of death. We are pretty sure that we won't die anytime soon so we don't give it much thought. Why obsess over it? It will happen one day, but not today. So, we make decisions about our lives that do not include dying. As far as figuring out wh...

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    Musings on Mortality: To die or not to die? The answer isn't so simple

    19-Apr-2017

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    Deborah Golden Alecson

    "To be or not to be, that is the question," Hamlet articulates in Shakespeare's play "Hamlet." We can reword this question for those of us in the grip of the medical industrial complex: To die or not to die, that is the question. We have achieved the capacity to stave...

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    Thanatology and Poetry: A Conversation Between Deborah Golden Alecson and Thomas Fink

    11-Feb-2017

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    Deborah Golden Alecson

    Thomas Fink: The thanatologist Deborah Golden Alecson is the author of Complicated Grief: A Collection of Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2014), We Are So Lightly Here: A Story About Conscious Dying (IntoPrint, Second Edition, 2014), Lost Lullaby (IntoPrint, Second Editio...

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    Musings on Mortality: Plan a dignified death on your own terms

    7-Feb-2017

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    Deborah Golden Alecson

    Many people have expressed to me their desire for a dignified death for themselves and their loved ones. This is a challenge in a death-phobic culture where life at all costs (physically, emotionally and financially) is the norm. Too many of us know someone whose dying...

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    Musings on Mortality: It's OK if grief creeps in during holidays

    10-Dec-2016

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    Deborah Golden Alecson

    I was recently invited to speak at a Death Cafe in Kingston, N.Y., about grief and the holidays. The Death Cafe is a movement throughout the country where people come together of their own free will to talk about death, loss, end-of-life care, etc. These are not macabr...

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