Kind of shocking. Surely they could have found some kind of compromise.

It’s October! We’re pinning a fresh Death Anxiety Megathread here at the top of the board. This will stay up all month long so anyone who needs a place to talk about death dread, panic, or the big questions can always find it.

Resources

Some death anxiety resources are located here in our wiki (which is still under construction, so bear with us!)

Some death anxiety journal prompts to try:

If you’re the kind of person who connects through symbol, inner landscape or ancestral reflection, these prompts may resonate.

• What kind of relationship with mortality would I like to have?
• What does nature teach me about endings and beginnings?
• What do I wish I could know for certain?

Don’t worry about making it poetic or insightful. Just start and follow where it leads. ♥︎

Somatic self-regulation tools

The following aren’t affirmations or thought exercises. They’re body-based ways to regulate your nervous system when death anxiety starts to take over. They work well for anyone living with heightened sensitivity.

• Sit or lie down and press your palms together firmly. Notice the pressure, warmth, and pulse between them. Let that pulse remind you that life is moving through you.
• Slowly trace the outline of your own hand with a finger. As you do, breathe in on the upward stroke, and breathe out on the downward stroke.

These aren’t magickal cures, but they are tools. Use them when you can. The more you do, the better and faster they tend to work.

This thread is open to all death anxiety experiences, whether you’re panicking about nothingness, stuck in existential dread, or just freaked out by the fact that - whatever this is - isn’t forever.

We’ll try to carry it together.

♥︎ Sibbie

Welcome to our October Grief Support Megathread. We’ve created this support space for things that feel too heavy to hold alone, are too hard to say out loud, or feel 'too small' to make a full post about.

Your grief doesn’t have to be new and it doesn’t have to be for a person, it might also be for a pet, life change, etc. You don’t have to explain it, you don’t have to make it make sense and you're not limited by how often you can post here. If it hurts, it matters and you’re welcome in this space.

Resources

Some grief support resources are located here in our wiki (which is still under construction, so bear with us!)

Journal prompts for grief

These prompts aren’t here to solve grief or make it smaller. They’re invitations to sit alongside it in whatever form it’s taking today. Write, draw, or let them just float in your mind...whatever feels possible.

• What did they bring into my life that remains with me?
• What made me feel safest or most at home with them?
• What can I still carry forward from our relationship?

There’s no 'good' way to answer. Simply showing up is enough.

Somatic support for grief

Grief often hides in the body - in the breath, in the spine, in the weight of the shoulders. These small practices can help:

• Press your hand lightly to the center of your chest. With each breath, imagine a small light expanding behind your palm. No pressure to feel better, just observing.
• Wrap a blanket or shawl around your shoulders and imagine it as an embrace from someone who has loved you deeply. Breathe into that warmth for awhile.
• Let your shoulders rise toward your ears, then exhale and let them drop completely. Feel gravity doing part of the work for you.

These aren’t meant to 'fix' grief, they’re just ways to remind your body it doesn’t have to hold everything at once.

This thread is for whoever needs it today. Write a single word, tell a story, post a song lyric, or just be quietly present. We see you.

♥︎ Sibbie

The rapid decline of traditional Shamans is making it harder for Kirat communities to perform ancestral rituals, raising concerns that the erosion of a centuries-old spiritual tradition could also mean the loss of cultural identity and heritage.

Around 400 million people now live in countries which have legalised assisted dying.

Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Spain and Austria are among those which have changed the law in recent years, with some allowing help to die for those who are not terminally ill.

Just last month, France adopted an 'aid in dying' law for adults with incurable conditions causing them unbearable pain.

While most jurisdictions forbid medical help to die, assisted dying laws around the world vary.

A 4,000-year-old burial near Stonehenge has changed the story of one of Britain’s best-known Bronze Age graves. Ancient DNA tests show the person known for more than 200 years as the “Upton Lovell Shaman” was a woman, not a man.

A woman has been buried in a coffin made from mushrooms in New South Wales in an eco-friendly first for Australia.

Carolyn, whose surname was withheld for privacy reasons, was laid to rest on Friday by friends and family at Springwood Cemetery in the Blue Mountains. She was aged in her 70s.

The mushroom coffin, created by the Dutch firm Loop Biotech, was grown from mycelium – the root network of fungi – and hemp fibres.

The coffin is grown in mould in a climate-controlled room, taking just a week to fully form. Once buried, it takes about 45 days to become part of the soil.

The process is akin to composting, as the body and coffin gently biodegrade and transform into nutrient-rich soil in far less time than a traditional wooden casket, which can take up to 50 years to break down.

From the article:

In short:

Archaeologists have found evidence of a person who used a psychoactive drug up to 25,000 years ago.

Tooth fossils in Indonesia suggest that ancient foragers in the region were sucking on betel nut, possibly as a painkiller.

What's next?

Human drug use is probably older than this sample, but evidence is harder to come by.