Death Cafe profile for Paula Baldwin
Location: United States
http://www.wou.edu/~baldwinp/CV.htm
About Paula Baldwin:
Health and interpersonal communication scholar, Mom, Friend, Professor. Dedicated to continuing the dialogue about end of life concerns.
What brings you to Death Cafe?
The bulk of my research over the last six years has been in the end of life area. I have attended two Death Cafes, one as an attendee and one as a facilitator and I believe this is a tremendous context in which to keep the dialogue active about death and dying.
What would you like your legacy to be?
My legacy will come from those people that whose lives have intersected with mine: students, friends, and relatives as well as the research pathways I leave behind.
As Jim Henson once said, "My hope still is to leave the world a bit better than when I got here."
Thoughts for sharing:
"Au milieu de l'hiver, j'ai découvert en moi un invincible été." (In the depth/middle of winter, I have found in me, an invincible summer.)
— Albert Camus
I often say to my University students, "It may surprise you to hear this, but no one gets out of here alive."
And my personal favorite that I read at the memorial for my best friend who died in April, 2009:
Death is nothing at all
I have only slipped away into the next room
I am I and you are you
Whatever we were to each other
That we are still
Call me by my old familiar name
Speak to me in the easy way you always used
Put no difference into your tone
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow
Laugh as we always laughed
At the little jokes we always enjoyed together
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was
Let it be spoken without effort
Without the ghost of a shadow in it
Life means all that it ever meant
It is the same as it ever was
There is absolute unbroken continuity
What is death but a negligible accident?
Why should I be out of mind
Because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you for an interval
Somewhere very near
Just around the corner
All is well.
Nothing is past; nothing is lost
One brief moment and all will be as it was before
How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!
Canon Henry Scott-Holland, 1847-1918, Canon of St Paul's Cathedral
Contact Paula Baldwin
Paula Baldwin's posts on the Death Cafe website
With Dr. Paula Baldwin, Communication Studies, Western Oregon University & Lisa Catto, PR Specialist, Western Oregon University
Nov. 2, 2014, 2.00 p.m. - 4.30 p.m. (PST)
Free
Come celebrate the Day of the Dead with us! We will provide coffee, tea and cake, but feel free to bring something light to share. This is your chance to ...
Practitioners question: Death Cafe facilitators - opportunity to participate in research
Posted by Paula Baldwin on March 17, 2014, 8:23 a.m.
Death Cafe creates an informal and neutral environment for people to discuss death and dying. The normalization of this topic is an important one as research has shown that the United States, for example, is extremely hesitant to discuss death and dying (Keeley and Yingling, 2007; Levine, 2003, 2007, 2010 ...