This is a special re-release of an episode featuring guest host Jackson Kroopf speaking with the incomparable Kimberly Ann Johnson and Stephen Jenkinson. We’re bringing this conversation back to let you know about something special happening this weekend from Stephen Jenkinson and the Orphan Wisdom School: Sanity and Soul: Die Wise 10 Years.

Taking place on March 15th and 16th at 10am Pacific, this 6-part online event is a deep dive into the wisdom of death, grief, and the soul, 10 years after the publication of Stephen's transformative book Die Wise. You’ll get to experience the depth of Stephen’s work in a pretty unique way: through 4 recorded grief counsel sessions with dying people, hearing Stephen practice, in 2025, the kind of work described in Die Wise. Plus, he’ll be joined by two brilliant colleagues—a neuroscientist studying human consciousness and a filmmaker exploring the afterlife—to discuss the lasting impact of Die Wise on grief counseling, death doulas, and the way these ideas continue to shape our world.

If you want to learn more and register, visit orphanwisdom.com/events. But now, enjoy this conversation from March 2023, following Reckoning at Mt. Madonna. Please do consider gifting yourself or a loved one this upcoming offering, Sanity & Soul that promises to provide some ceremony in these troubled times in ways only Stephen and the Orphan Wisdom School can.

Link: https://orphanwisdom.com/event/die-wise-sanity-and-soul-ten-years-on/

What You’ll Here in this Episode:

Reflections on witness from retired birth and death workers

The value of disillusionment

The power of loneliness

The proliferation of self pathologizing

The complex politics of feelings

The religion of western psychology

Adolescents grabbing for pop psychology labels

The respect in not offering solutions

The eagerness to escape from pain while grieving

Is love dead?

Blessing not as approval but the emergence of something new

Marriage as both celebration and loss

Matrimony between cultures

An only child and single parent inviting in a new husband

Building an escape route as you enter a union

The no-go zone of contemporary western marriage

15 minute weddings, 15 minute funerals, 15 minute births

The cultural casualties of uniformity

Being healthy enough to tend to home and neighbor

Links

ig @reckoning live

Sanity & Soul Sign-Up https://orphanwisdom.com/event/die-wise-sanity-and-soul-ten-years-on/