A message from the Engage With Grace team:We make choices throughout our lives - where we want to live, what types of activities will fill our days, with whom we spend our time. These choices are often a balance between our desires and our means, but at the end of the day, they are decisions made with intent. But when it comes to how we want to be treated at the end our lives, often we don't express our intent or tell our loved ones about it.
This has real consequences. 73% of Americans would prefer to die at home, but up to 50% die in hospital. More than 80% of Californians say their loved ones "know exactly” or have a “good idea” of what their wishes would be if they were in a persistent coma, but only 50% say they've talked to them about their preferences.
But our end of life experiences are about a lot more than statistics. They’re about all of us. So the first thing we need to do is start talking. Engage With Grace: The One Slide Project was designed with one simple goal: to help get the conversation about end of life experience started.
The idea is simple: Create a tool to help get people talking. One Slide, with just five questions on it. Five questions designed to help us get talking with each other, with our loved ones, about our preferences. And we’re asking people to share this One Slide – wherever and whenever they can…at a presentation, at dinner, at their book club. Just One Slide, just five questions. Lets start a global discussion that, until now, most of us haven’t had.
Here is what we are asking you: Download The One Slide and share it at any opportunity – with colleagues, family, friends. Think of the slide as currency and donate just two minutes whenever you can. Commit to being able to answer these five questions about the end of life experience for yourself, and for your loved ones. Then commit to helping others do the same.
Get this conversation started. Let's start a viral movement driven by the change we as individuals can effect...and the incredibly positive impact we could have collectively. Help ensure that all of us - and the people we care for - can end our lives in the same purposeful way we live them. Just One Slide, just one goal. Think of the enormous difference we can make together. (To learn more please go to www.engagewithgrace.org. This post was
written by Alexandra Drane and the Engage With Grace team)
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4 comments:
What a brilliant idea.
I agree... wish I'd thought of it!
I have spent the last 12 years of my life “working” as a Hospice nurse. Hospice nurses seldom think of “what we do” as a “job” – it is as big a part of our lives as the color of our skin – something you cannot change or deny. It has only been within the last month that I “discovered” (quite by accident) the “Dethmama Chronicles”. In this short period of time, I have eagerly read each new post by “Dethmamma”. I have laughed until tears were rolling down my face (and my poor husband wondering if I had finally cracked!), and I have also learned here. This is one of those posts that has taught me something, and I will carry this new knowledge, this new way of looking at how we rate our wishes, into the lives of the people that I see everyday. Thank you Dethmamma! And if you are ever in need of a job in Louisiana, PLEASE look me up! I sincerely hope that the people Dethmamma works for appreciates her!
Gosh, Pam. I don't know what to say. I am totally blushing here. Thank you so much.
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