Book Feature Friday - The Amateur's Guide to Death and Dying: Enhancing the End of Life - Richard Wagner

Title:  The Amateur's Guide To Death and Dying: Enhancing the End of Life

Author:  Richard Wagner

Synopsis:  A new interactive workbook designed to help us define and achieve a good death for ourselves.

Lessons In The Art of Dying...and Living

Thousands of people will receive a devastating medical diagnosis this year. And for most, what follows is a nightmare of anger, shame, loneliness and passivity. Instead of being encouraged to take a lead role in orchestrating their finales, they are expected to wait patiently for the curtain to fall.

The Amateur's Guide is on the cutting edge of death and dying work. It provides an opportunity to break free from the painful silence our culture imposes on death talk. Whether filling out a durable power of attorney form, completing a death anxiety survey or personally designing a unique end-of-life plan, you will be totally involved and engaged.

This unique seminar/support group format exposes you to a myriad of life situations and moral dilemmas that arise as one faces his/her mortality head on.

Learn from and with people just like you. Ten diverse fictional characters provide essential role models for enhancing life near death. Additionally, six presenters, experts in their field, offer timely advice to help make the end of life less intimidating and more of a rich, poignant transition.

This is about achieving a good and wise death in the context of real dying, with all its unpredictability, disfigurement, pain, and sorrow.

This workbook is primarily for those currently facing their mortality. But concerned family and friends, healing and helping professionals, lawyers, clergy, teachers, students, and those grieving a death will all benefit from joining in. Because, as we all know, none of us is getting out of here alive.

October 24, 2012 (Seattle, WA). Let’s face it. Death is unavoidable.  None of us is getting out of here alive. Each year, tens of thousands of us receive a devastating or even a terminal prognosis. Yet, because the subject of death in our society is taboo, few opportunities exist for us to prepare for this inevitability in a purposeful life-affirming way. Instead of being encouraged to take a lead role in orchestrating our finales, we are often lost in a nightmare of fear, anxiety, and loneliness as we wait for the curtain to fall. All that is about to change.

The Amateur's Guide To Death and Dying: Enhancing the End of Life (www.theamateursguide.com) is a fascinating and useful new tool to help us address the questions and emotions that arise as we face our mortality.  It is designed primarily for sick, elder, and dying people.  However, concerned family and friends, healing and helping professionals, lawyers, clergy, teachers, students, and those grieving a death will all benefit from reading this book.

The topic of death and dying is experiencing a cultural revival not seen since the groundbreaking work of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross in the early 1970’s.  End of life issues are being explored in films and on TV as well as in every other media.  Even the Supreme Court has addressed the issue.

From the Author: Dear friends and colleagues,

I am pleased to announce the publication of my new book The Amateur's Guide To Death And Dying: Enhancing The End Of Life.

The Amateur's Guide To Death And Dying is specifically designed for terminally ill, chronically ill, elder, and dying people from all walks of life. But concerned family and friends, healing and helping professionals, lawyers, clergy, teachers, students, and those grieving a death will also benefit from reading the book.

The Amateur's Guide To Death And Dying is a workbook that offers readers a unique group/seminar format. Readers participate in a virtual on-the-page support group consisting of ten other participants. Together members of the group help each other liberate themselves from the emotional, cultural, and practical problems that accompany dying in our modern age.

The Amateur's Guide To Death And Dying helps readers dispel the myth that they are incapable of taking charge during the final season of life. Readers face the prospect of life's end within a framework of honesty, activity, alliance, support, and humor. And most importantly readers learn these lessons in the art of dying and living from the best possible teachers, other sick, elder, and dying people.

The Amateur's Guide To Death And Dying engages readers with a multitude of life situations and moral dilemmas that arise as they and their group partners face their mortality head on.

The Amateur's Guide To Death And Dying offers readers a way to share coping strategies, participate in meaningful dialogue, and take advantage of professional information tailored to their specific needs. Topics include spirituality, sexuality and intimacy, legal concerns, final stages, and assisted dying. The book does not take an advocacy position on any of these topics. It does, however, advocate for the holistic self-determination of sick, elder, and dying people, which can only be achieved when they have adequate information.

Facing your mortality with the kind of support The Amateur's Guide To Death And Dying offers does not eliminate the pain and poignancy of separation. Rather it involves confidently facing these things and living through them to the end.

This innovative workbook on death and dying is now available on Amazon and in bookstores. I welcome your thoughts, comments, and reviews.

All the best, Richard Richard Wagner, Ph.D. richard@theamateursguide.com

Our website: theamateursguide.com/

Author Bio:  He is psychotherapist/clinical sexologist in private practice since 1981.  Seattle, WA

He has been working with terminally ill, chronically ill, elder and dying people in hospital, hospice, and home settings for over 30 years. He facilitates support groups for care-providers and clinical personnel, and provides grief counseling for survivors both individually and in group settings.

He founded Paradigm Programs Inc, an innovative nonprofit organization with a mission to be an outreach and resource for terminally ill, chronically ill, elder and dying people.

He was honored with the prestigious University of California San Francisco Chancellor's Award for Public Service in 1999 for his work with sick, elder and dying people.

He designs, develops, and produces long and short term in-service training seminars and workshops for helping and healing professionals. He often speaks in the public forum on policy issues related to religion, human sexuality, aging, death and dying, surviving chronic illness, and moral development.

You can reach Richard at: richard@theamateursguide.com

Reviews:
IAHPC Book Reviews
Marian Ronan