Before forever after

More talking. Less suffering. More living alive with intention and joy. Helena Dolny imagines a world in which people engage in death-in-life conversations as part of everyday living. She believes we’d live better and suffer less if we were to talk about dying more readily. Archbishop Desmond Tutu told her:‘This taboo about not talking about dying…needs to be challenged.’ Helena interviewed family and friends as well as people across continents in diverse professions including the funeral business, palliative care, spiritual leaders and financial advisors. The outcome: 57 stories on nine themes that will stop you in your tracks and make you think about how you choose to live and how you’d prefer to die. This book’s rich cast of storytellers does not provide answers. The gift Before Forever After offers is the inspiration to craft clearer and sharper questions so that you, the reader, may shape your own unique response to this fierce, fundamental and inevitable force of life. From rural development worker, activist and agricultural banker, to leadership coach and aspirant death doula, Helena Dolny facilitates conversations to enhance life and ease death. She works internationally maintaining closeness to her family in the USA and Europe. Home is Johannesburg, shared with her husband John Perlman and Beijinho, aka ‘the big red cat’.