Finding the Words

Reena Lazar, co-founder and CEO of Willow End-of-Life Education and Planning, sent a group email which I’ve summarized in this article.

Earlier this week, I received an email from Reena Lazar, who had been reflecting on the recent deaths of two remarkable women: Dolly Parton and Gloria Steinem.

As Reena thought about the lives of these two very different women, she was particularly struck by something Steinem once said: when she began her work, “there wasn’t even a term for sexual harassment. It was simply called ‘life.’”

What does it mean for something to have no name?

Without language, an experience can remain invisible. We may live through something again and again without having a way to describe it, share it, or imagine that it could be different.

Steinem helped give people that language. Through her journalism and activism, she brought experiences that had long been endured privately into public conversation. She helped people see that what they had assumed was simply “life” could be named—and therefore questioned and changed.

Reena sees a similar need around death.

Death is something we all encounter, yet our culture often leaves us with remarkably little language for it. We may experience the death of someone we love without knowing what to expect, how to talk about what is happening, or how to make sense of it. Grief, too, can be difficult to name.

This is the territory Reena has chosen to work in. Through Willow, she helps people develop the knowledge, language and confidence to think about death and dying before they are in the midst of a crisis. Reena reminds us that talking about death is not only about preparing for an ending. It is also about finding the words to understand our lives more deeply.

The DeathCare Collective shares Reena’s belief that the more comfortable we become talking about death, the more choices we have in how we live, die, grieve and care for one another.