Trembling, Still: The Awful Clarity of a Mind in Eclipse

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An evening with Stephen Jenkinson and Kimberly Ann Johnson

Hosted by Aditi Sethi

Wednesday, October 7, 2026

7:00 to 9:00 pm conversation

9:00 to 9:30 pm book signing

Some books are written from a distance. This one was not.

In January of 2024, Stephen Jenkinson received a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease and began keeping a journal. He had spent decades walking alongside dying people and their families, first as director of palliative care at a Toronto hospital and later through the Orphan Wisdom School. Now the country he had guided so many others through had arrived at his own door.

What he wrote across that first year became Trembling, Still: The Awful Clarity of a Mind in Eclipse. It is a dated chronicle rather than a memoir, written in real time, with no benefit of hindsight and no idea yet how the year would end. He has said that he did not so much write the book as panic it onto the page, and that he had to invent words to carry what the ordinary ones could not. There is a glossary of them in the back. What began in devastation opened, unexpectedly, into mystery, and into a kind of mercy that did not depend on hope.

Much of it was written while Stephen was staying with Kimberly Ann Johnson, his friend and the co-author of Reckoning. On the evening of October 7 they step back into that time in person, on stage, here in Swannanoa.

The evening is a conversation between the two of them. Aditi Sethi, hospice physician and Emberlight's founder, will welcome Stephen and Kimberly to the stage, open the evening, and hold its shape. Then Stephen and Kimberly take the conversation from there, in front of us, for two hours. Afterward they will be signing books and available for brief exchanges.

They will talk about the experience around making this book, and how it has evolved since it was captured on the page in that moment in time. What was happening in the rooms around the writing, and what did not make it onto the page. What has held true in the two years since, and what has quietly fallen away. They will look at that season from where they stand now, and let us listen in.

At Emberlight, we practice ways to embrace death and support one another with loving presence. Deep listening, compassion, and bearing witness are how we meet people at the bedside, and they are what this evening asks of all of us in the room. This is not a lecture about mortality. It is a chance to sit in the company of someone speaking plainly from inside his own undoing, alongside a friend who was there for the writing of it, and to let that honesty do what honesty does.

You can purchase a copy of Trembling, Still online here if you would like to read ahead, and bring it with you to be signed. Stephen and Kimberly will also have copies available at the event.

Where and when

We gather at the Kittredge Theatre in the Kittredge Arts Center at Warren Wilson College,

701 Warren Wilson Rd, Swannanoa, NC 28778.

Doors open at 6:30 pm. The conversation runs from 7:00 to 9:00 pm, followed by the book signing until 9:30 pm.

About Stephen Jenkinson

Stephen Jenkinson is a culture activist and ceremony man, a practitioner of the eloquence of tongue and hand. He is an author, storyteller, musician, sculptor, raconteur, and off grid organic farmer, and has published seven books over a public life spent advocating for conscious living and dying. He worked extensively with dying people and their families, formerly serving as director of palliative care at Mount Sinai Hospital of Toronto. He is the creator of the Orphan Wisdom School, cofounded with his wife Nathalie Roy in 2010, and co-founder of the Nights of Grief and Mystery with singer songwriter Gregory Hoskins. He holds a master's degree in theology from Harvard University and a master's of social work from the University of Toronto. In 2023 Harvard honored him with a Distinguished Alumni Award for helping people navigate grief and connecting humanity through ceremony and storytelling. He is the subject of the documentary Griefwalker, and author of the award winning Die Wise.

About Kimberly Ann Johnson

Kimberly Ann Johnson is a somatic practitioner, postpartum advocate, and culture worker. She studied yoga directly with the three main lineage holders of the Krishnamacharya tradition and taught for fifteen years while running a Structural Integration practice. When her life was rearranged by childbirth, she turned toward the cultural chasm around postpartum care and trained in Somatic Experiencing and Sexological Bodywork to support women through birth injury, gynecological surgery, and sexual boundary violation. She is the author of Call of the Wild and the early mothering classic The Fourth Trimester, and co-authored Reckoning with Stephen Jenkinson. Her next book, Erotic Seasons: Tuning into the Rhythms of Women's Sexuality and Spirituality, arrives in November from St. Martin's Press. She hosts the Sex Birth Trauma podcast and is the steward of Mothering the Bones.

About Aditi Sethi, MD

Dr. Aditi Sethi is a hospice and palliative care physician, end of life doula, musician, and the founder and Executive Director of Emberlight: Center for Conscious Living & Dying. Her accompaniment of Ethan Sisser in the final weeks of his life is documented in the film The Last Ecstatic Days, and the question Ethan asked her then, whether dying might be a communal experience rather than a solitary one, became the seed of this organization. She is an emerging and important voice for shifting our culture's approach to dying, death, and grief tending.

This is a Pay What You Can event, and all proceeds support Emberlight. The care we offer is free to every resident and family who comes to us, and it stays free because this community holds it up. Your ticket goes directly into that work. We invite you to give what feels right for you, and if you are able to give beyond the suggested amount, that generosity is what keeps a bed open and a hand held for the next person who needs one. We would love to welcome you into this circle whatever the amount.

Please note that all event tickets are non-refundable, except in the case that Emberlight cancels the event.

Please contact events@emberlightway.org with any questions.