SERIES CONSCIOUS AGEING: EPISODE 7
March 27th at 10 AM PT/ 7 PM CET

GETTING OLDER, INTEGRATING CHALLENGING EXPERIENCE

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GETTING OLDER, INTEGRATING CHALLENGING EXPERIENCE – A PANEL DISCUSSION

We met for a panel discussion within the CONSCIOUS LIVING, CONSCIOUS DYING SERIES where we talked about our experience in taking care for a dying person, about losing someone we loved. The question came up: How do we integrate challenging experiences like that into our lives? And generally: how do we deal with severe challenges we meet along our own life journey?

This conversation will be about us, about our lives and how we deal with our getting older ourselves and sooner or later have to accept destiny in all its forms – and make the best out of it to the best of our abilities. What keeps us alive, active, interested despite all we are confronted with?

STREAMS LIVE HERE on March 27th, 2019

Video 1

0:00 Heidi’s intro

2:20 Barbara introduces herself and shares about her becoming homeless because of the fires which destroyed her home in Paradise and the loss of her husband previously and his dog. Her present situation of living in a house of friends. LIfe is upside down. The total destruction was unexpected, many people didn’t believe and died there.

9:55 Marianne talks about her life- challenges. She uses the gratefulness principles. She has friends who have lost children – that would be the biggest challenge for her. Comparing herself and what she has to people who haven’t even clean water to drink or live in food insecurity. “Grateful to be able to breath”.

15:00 Heidi reads the comment by Lowell Ann in the audience.

15:40 Hanna in Germany after 2 months in Nepal. She acknowledges Barbara. From Paradise nothing is left and she smiles!  Hanna underwent challenges voluntarily to be able to grow. Feeling guilty of being so privileged in her family. Material positions without emotional ground is not really privilege! Hanna’s life story. Learn to live on little money to be free!

22:00 Tech challenges and then the call ended. See the next video. https://youtu.be/WMybwBhGQTE

Video 2

0:00 Hanna continues what she exposed in the previous video https://youtu.be/RZznGsjqPCA

4:20 Heidi’s biggest challenge the loss of Mark. Heidi has talked about that in a separate video with Jane Rogers

5:30 Barbara, how did you cultivate this positive energy? Moments of loss, her son, husband, 2 grand babies, but life goes one. She listens to people and people feel connected to her. She is not counseling people, but consoling them – that is a difference! Stories from her life. Many people in her surrounding had bipolar disease, her mom dementia, her husband Parkison and heavy dementia. Being around these things made her  easy going and resilient and positive. Her dog, a story. Some days are tough, like the continuous rain right now which is unusual in California.

12:50 Conscious Ageing: how to find meaning in life in old age. Is the helping people your way Barbara

13.30 “If I can help someone else feel good, I feel even better”. The story of her scarf and she is happy about it and grateful. “Adopt a family” in Facebook, she reads the stories of other people and is glad if they get help. She lives in uncertainty about what the can do, they would love to go back on Paradise which was positive for her

17:30 People tend to want to help. MArianne about the meaning in her life: her family and community, but in the moment she needs to be more for herself, focus on her and less on others as it was life-long. Tries to figure out what she is really wanting to do and be.

19:40 When we get older the small things don’t matter so much anymore. Letting go of stuff, try to find people who need what I want to get rid off. Being ok with idea of not lasting forever = incentive to enjoy every day.

21:45 Heidi talks about the conversations with Marianne about their upbringing in Post war Germany.

23:10 Hanna about life purpose. Story about her mother who found her purpose after retirement for a third of her life. 60 is the chance to have the leisure to live your own thing, not anymore out of obligation.

25:50 What it means to be a mature human being? Waking up and growing up. Her strength: listening. Purpose: learning to live in a more humane life, natural birth, family life, death, in a big world family/community.

29: Last question: what is your desire for this coming year?

30:00 Barbara: wants to have a home again. Story about the community which still a lot people stick around and want to get back to Paradise. Life is out there, waiting.

32:45 Heidi’s situation is the opposite: she owns a huge home and doesn’t know what to do with it.

33:10 Marianne wants to travel, her yard should give her joy instead of the duty to work on projects. More self care.

34:30 Hanna: plans another spiritual group journey to India. Work together with her husband. More joy, less obligations. Helping others and communities.

36:25 Heidi: wants to find more perspective about what to do. Project to go to Africa at the integral conference. Conversation groups. Conversations energize her. FInd the right people for be together in the future.

38:45 Good byes.

RECORDED on March 25th, 2019

ABOUT OUR PANEL MEMBERS (Please click on their names)

Jane Duncan Rogers

Jane Duncan Rogers was devastated when her husband died in 2011. Little did she know that 3 years on she would be publishing a book called Gifted By Grief, (and truly felt she had been) and then to become founding director in 2017 of Before I Go Solutions, a not-for-profit that helps people to make good end of life plans.

In August 2018 her second book, Before I Go: The Essential Guide to Creating A Good End of Life Plan was published, and the Before I Go Academy was also started, enabling health professionals to become licensed facilitators of the BIG Method, bringing this much-needed work to their local communities. Jane lives in the north of Scotland, and has a new partner with whom she is building a house together.

See a previous event with Jane in The Wisdom Factory

Hanna Hühndorf

Hanna writes

For 36 years I have been practising Tibetan Buddhism as main focus of my life, including two traditional 3-year retreats.
The first 15 years I spent in the Samye Ling community in Scotland, where I came to know a totally different way of dealing with death and dying. 1997 I began teaching meditation and Buddhism in Hamburg – with a preference to very practical application in daily life  – and accompanied a young man in his last weeks before his death of cancer.
From 2006 I lived with my mother for 11 years, who with my assistance gave an example of how to age and die in a dignified and conscious manner.  During this time I was also able to ease my fathers passing and the last difficult year in his life. Working in a commercial old people’s home I experienced how growing old and dying is often done in our society these days – which I consider to be inhumane.
I would like to contribute to finding our way forward to a more natural, conscious, compassionate and calm way of life which is partly still found in more “primitive” cultures.
Barbara Quick

Barbara Quick is a senior with a younger, positive attitude about life.  For many years she had been her husband’s caregiver as he became more disabled with Parkinson’s and some dementia and finally died. In November 2018 she lost her home when huge fires destroyed her home town Paradise.

Barbara loves to write and has some books planned with stories from her 61 years of marriage. Another book will be about their late son and living with his mental health problems, The other book she is planning now is one about all of the dogs my late husband and I had as part of our family during our almost 62 years together.  Most of them had some cute stories about them.

Barbara writes:

Cliff and I were just one month shy of 62 years of marriage at his passing.

Cliff’s dementia turned very bad, and was so scary for him, the last year or so of his life.  He was seeing and hearing people who weren’t there, was convinced we had an “upstairs” that didn’t exist, thought we lived in a town or on a street where we had never lived, would awaken and think he was alone in a strange place, even thought there was a gang of murderers at the hospital who were going around and killing people, etc..  He was often terrified of “something.”  He often said he didn’t want to live that way any longer.

Barbara in a previous episode of The Wisdom Factory

Marianne West had her first experience of being with a person during their transition as a young adult. Her father was ill with cancer and for many days, his passing was imminent. She happened to be in his room at night when he transitioned. Later, she was also present at the passing of her mother. This time, she was much more prepared and was with her sister and sister in law during this time. In her opinion, death as well as birth, need to be part of our daily lives again and not events happening in isolation far from all other aspects of life. That said, witnessing the recent decline of her daughter in laws father and the impact witnessing his passing had on her daughter in law, we also need to have much more support for the caregivers of the dying person.

Marianne works as a
Co-host of The Sustainable Living Podcast, Writer,
Hatha, Laughter and Kids Yoga, Hormone Yoga Therapist,
www.sustainablelivingpodcast.com
Mariannes “Sustainable Living Podcast” – Page on PATREON

Watch an episode with Marianne on “CONNECTIONS” (with Margherita Crystal Lotus as co-host)
Full conversation   (Riposted on Heidi’s personal Youtube Channel(

Gifted By Grief: A True Story of Cancer, Loss and Rebirth by Jane Duncan Rogers (2015-08-07)
Before I Go: The Essential Guide to Creating a Good End of Life Plan