Welcome to Passings
Welcome to Passings.
No matter what brought you here, you will find support as you navigate any of life’s multitudes of transitions.
Some of you may be experiencing Passings that are absolutely devastating, such as a diagnosis with a terminal illness or the death of someone you love. Others are undergoing Passings we may consider to be more generative, like welcoming a baby or beginning a new career.
Each of these transitions is a Passing, a moving into a different world of sorts. Some way of life we have known is no longer present, and something new is appearing in its place. Each new phase of life involves the dying of something.
And humans struggle with dying. We tend to grasp for things that are not present, like the next phase of our life or a previous period when we were content. This grasping causes great suffering for us. Learning to embrace what is present and honor it and release it as it leaves our lives takes great commitment and support.
At Passings, we believe that it is vital to Pass THROUGH these transitions rather than Pass BY them. We honor dissolution, dying, and grief; we also honor creation, birthing, and joy. Each of these experiences is vital to being human, and they are intricately interwoven.
We allow ourselves to be changed by each of the losses in our lives, so we also view transitions as life Passing THROUGH us.
At Passings we are devoted to:
People: their experiences, their growth, their transitions, and their companionship.
Wisdom: from a vast variety of resources. We seek insight from elders and babies, from our ancestors, from spiritual traditions, from popular media sources, and from the Earth and all living things. We work to integrate information into experience.
The Big Stuff -- love, God (in and beyond the million names for the Divine), and truth.
Connections -- among all beings at all times in all places.
No matter what form your Passings are taking in this moment, we would be honored to travel with you.
And now....... Becoming a Loser
At Passings, we acknowledge how challenging loss can be. The loss of a loved one, of our health, of anything we hold dear -- each of these can be devastating. What compounds our experience of loss, though, is that we live in a culture that underplays, even ignores, the significance of loss. Most of us do not know how to support ourselves or one another through any of life's multiple endings. We believe, therefore, that each of us benefits from learning to lose. This is courageous, counter-cultural work; and we are inspired by your willingness to do it!