Stories at the Threshold: An Hour with Melody LeBaron and Creating Sacred Space for the Dying

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Stories at the Threshold is our monthly Author Series, a circle that gathers around writers whose work meets death, grief, and the fullness of living. Each month brings a new voice, a short reading, and an unhurried conversation. It is one of the ways we practice embracing death and supporting one another with loving presence.

This month we welcome Melody LeBaron, author of Transforming Death: Creating Sacred Space for the Dying. Melody writes into a culture that has grown afraid of dying, one that has handed the final passage over to fear and to medicine and left many of us without language for it. Her book offers language, and more than that, it offers practice. It treats the room where someone is dying as something living, something that can be tended and cleared and made ready, and it returns conscious dying to its place inside the sacred fullness of life.

Melody has been called to the bedside for thirty years. At thirty-five she walked her mother home, partnering with the room itself and building an evolving set of altars that moved alongside her mother as she made her way toward acceptance. She has since accompanied thirteen of her closest loved ones through their crossings, and companioned many others. Her wider work in space and personal clearing, Feng Shui, and priestess facilitation runs through the book, and it is what gives Transforming Death its particular attention to atmosphere, to what a place holds, and to how the living can shape the ground on which a death unfolds.

Expect an unhurried conversation between Melody and Aditi Sethi, hospice physician, end-of-life doula, and Emberlight's founder, with time set aside for your questions. Come as you are, whether you are preparing for a death, sitting beside one, walking through a loss, or simply curious about what it might mean to meet your own passage with your eyes open. This is a conversation for everyone, not only for those in a dying season.

You can purchase a copy of Transforming Death: Creating Sacred Space for the Dying online here. We encourage you to read ahead and come with questions.

This gathering is hosted online and open to anyone, wherever you are. It will be recorded and made available afterward for those who cannot be with us live. Your join link arrives in your confirmation email when you register.

100% of proceeds go to support the mission and vision of Emberlight: Center for Conscious Living & Dying. This event is open to all, with a suggested donation of $25 so that cost is never the reason someone cannot join us. We encourage you to give what feels right and possible for you. Every contribution is a gift to Emberlight and helps sustain this work and the care at the heart of it.

Please note that all event tickets are non-refundable, except in the case that Emberlight cancels the event for any reason, a full refund will be issued.

Questions? Please reach the Events Team at events@emberlightway.org.