Please pla
n to listen to our podcast this Friday when we welcome Marilyn Geary and Jacqueline Janssen as they discuss their new book LeaveLight: A Motivational Guide to End-of-Life Planning. This guide addresses all of the practical issues that we must face as we consider our own mortality, such as the type of care desired in your last days, wills, and funeral arrangements. But, LeaveLight also asks its readers to focus on what kind of legacy they hope to leave and how their mind 
and spirit are coping with the eventual reality of death. LeaveLight is intended to be a resource both for those who want to plan for the issues surrounding their own death, as well as loved ones who are affected by this moment.
To learn more about LeaveLight and its authors, please visit the book's website.
Please visit the Amazon website to purchase LeaveLight.
Title of Document: Book Review
Book Title: LeaveLight: A Motivational Guide to Holistic End-of-Life Planning
Authors: Marilyn L. Geary & Jacqueline Janssen
ISBN Number: 978-0-9825378-1-7
Publisher: GingerAle Press
Genre and Target Market: mind, body & spirit
Publication Date: 2010
Book Length in Pages: 220
Reviewed by: Sarah Moore
I currently sit before my computer screen presented with the challenge of reviewing one of the most beautiful books I have had the pleasure of reading in quite some time that confronts an issue most of us would rather ignore—death. The reality is that every single one of us will reach a day when we no longer exist on this earth. Why are we so afraid to discuss an activity in which everyone must participate? Perhaps it is because we fear what happens to us after we end our time in this physical realm. Perhaps we fear that nothing happens at all. However, through their new release LeaveLight: A Motivational Guide to Holistic End-of-Life Planning, authors Marilyn L. Geary and Jacqueline Janssen approach the sensitive subject of dying with compassion and what amounts to a literary embrace. It did not take much time spent in the pages of the book to discover the happiness and peace that can come with accepting and even engaging the issues that arise when we reach the end of our lives.
LeaveLight is divided into sections that allow the reader to plan for every aspect of her death, from the distribution of the physical property to the decisions concerning relationships to the way in which she wants to be remembered. And, each step is introduced with an understanding of the difficult emotions that accompany the reality of these choices. Geary and Janssen always keep the focus on the human who is behind the power of attorney paperwork and the organ donations. The authors include exercises which require the reader to focus solely on herself, if only for fifteen or twenty minutes of the day, including a quiet moment to enjoy a visual that brings peace or allowing some time to reflect on the personal meaning that a specific chair has in her life. LeaveLight ends with more than seventy pages of resources for the reader, including helpful book and internet resources and forms that will help to organize all of the end-of-life details.
One of the target audiences for LeaveLight is people with aging parents, and I am a member of that demographic. For several years, I have been searching for the “right” way to broach some difficult subjects with my parents and my efforts were always ignored with a palpable sense of discomfort concerning the topic. I believe that LeaveLight may be the tool that I need to start these necessary conversations. With compassion clearly at the core of the book, my parents and I should be able to use its pages to break down the walls that have previously stalled a discussion of this inevitable journey.
While I understand this is not the intended purpose of the book, having recently experienced a painful divorce that left me the single parent of two small children, I also found applications within the text to my own life and the death of how I expected my family to develop. Who among us could not spend some more time discovering forgiveness and gratitude? These should be lifelong endeavors. I cannot say enough about LeaveLight and I sincerely hope that anyone who is searching for peace in the face of death—of themselves or a loved one—will purchase this book and start their planning today.
n to listen to our podcast this Friday when we welcome Marilyn Geary and Jacqueline Janssen as they discuss their new book LeaveLight: A Motivational Guide to End-of-Life Planning. This guide addresses all of the practical issues that we must face as we consider our own mortality, such as the type of care desired in your last days, wills, and funeral arrangements. But, LeaveLight also asks its readers to focus on what kind of legacy they hope to leave and how their mind 
and spirit are coping with the eventual reality of death. LeaveLight is intended to be a resource both for those who want to plan for the issues surrounding their own death, as well as loved ones who are affected by this moment.To learn more about LeaveLight and its authors, please visit the book's website.
Please visit the Amazon website to purchase LeaveLight.
Title of Document: Book Review
Book Title: LeaveLight: A Motivational Guide to Holistic End-of-Life Planning
Authors: Marilyn L. Geary & Jacqueline Janssen
ISBN Number: 978-0-9825378-1-7
Publisher: GingerAle Press
Genre and Target Market: mind, body & spirit
Publication Date: 2010
Book Length in Pages: 220
Reviewed by: Sarah Moore
I currently sit before my computer screen presented with the challenge of reviewing one of the most beautiful books I have had the pleasure of reading in quite some time that confronts an issue most of us would rather ignore—death. The reality is that every single one of us will reach a day when we no longer exist on this earth. Why are we so afraid to discuss an activity in which everyone must participate? Perhaps it is because we fear what happens to us after we end our time in this physical realm. Perhaps we fear that nothing happens at all. However, through their new release LeaveLight: A Motivational Guide to Holistic End-of-Life Planning, authors Marilyn L. Geary and Jacqueline Janssen approach the sensitive subject of dying with compassion and what amounts to a literary embrace. It did not take much time spent in the pages of the book to discover the happiness and peace that can come with accepting and even engaging the issues that arise when we reach the end of our lives.
LeaveLight is divided into sections that allow the reader to plan for every aspect of her death, from the distribution of the physical property to the decisions concerning relationships to the way in which she wants to be remembered. And, each step is introduced with an understanding of the difficult emotions that accompany the reality of these choices. Geary and Janssen always keep the focus on the human who is behind the power of attorney paperwork and the organ donations. The authors include exercises which require the reader to focus solely on herself, if only for fifteen or twenty minutes of the day, including a quiet moment to enjoy a visual that brings peace or allowing some time to reflect on the personal meaning that a specific chair has in her life. LeaveLight ends with more than seventy pages of resources for the reader, including helpful book and internet resources and forms that will help to organize all of the end-of-life details.
One of the target audiences for LeaveLight is people with aging parents, and I am a member of that demographic. For several years, I have been searching for the “right” way to broach some difficult subjects with my parents and my efforts were always ignored with a palpable sense of discomfort concerning the topic. I believe that LeaveLight may be the tool that I need to start these necessary conversations. With compassion clearly at the core of the book, my parents and I should be able to use its pages to break down the walls that have previously stalled a discussion of this inevitable journey.
While I understand this is not the intended purpose of the book, having recently experienced a painful divorce that left me the single parent of two small children, I also found applications within the text to my own life and the death of how I expected my family to develop. Who among us could not spend some more time discovering forgiveness and gratitude? These should be lifelong endeavors. I cannot say enough about LeaveLight and I sincerely hope that anyone who is searching for peace in the face of death—of themselves or a loved one—will purchase this book and start their planning today.
No comments:
Post a Comment