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A Deadly Taboo: Why are we so afraid to talk about death?

A free, bilingual public conversation organized by University of the Streets Café


Date & time
Monday, January 26, 2015
7 p.m. – 9 p.m.
Cost

This event is free

Contact

Susan Edey
514-848-2424 ext. 4893

Where

Le Milieu
1251 Robin St.

We live knowing that eventually everything dies. Like the sun, death is a fact of life and, like the sun, we tend not to look at it directly. Unless you've experienced a death recently, it is probably not a topic you discuss. Where does this discomfort with death come from? Our fear of death haunts us and impacts our vocabulary. We don’t say some one died – we say they passed, or we lost them, or more crassly ‘they kicked the bucket’. But the fact is our lives are finite. This public conversation invites participants to contemplate this fact and consider why most of us live our lives in total denial of our mortality. What are we really afraid of? Why is this such a taboo subject? What would change in the way we live our lives if we normalised our relationship to death and accepted dying as a natural and integral part of life?

Guest

Kit Racette’s life changed radically in 2007 with the death of a loved one. She was precipitated into a journey of grief and discovery. Through books, courses and conversations she asked the difficult questions: what is death, what happens after death, what is grief and how do people grieve differently. Recently Kit joined the world-wide movement of Death Cafés and has facilitated several events that encourage people to talk about death and to come to appreciate their finite lives.

Moderator

Minda Bernstein is a life coach and a listener, a vocation she shares with Kit at a Montreal crisis telephone line. She is passionate about accompanying people in the exploration of the curious conundrums we face between life and death. She enjoys the way this discussion will bring welcome light to a taboo subject


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