PODCAST · society
Journey Home
by Dan Gaffney
Journey Home is a collection of essays about living and dying with an open heart. While many of us fear death and dying, these essays argue that embracing these events can help us reclaim a richness we’re denied in a death-phobic culture. What’s more, opening our hearts can help us celebrate the preciousness of life and craft a life-affirming legacy for our families and loved ones. This is the journey we are all called to.Author Dan Gaffney is a former psychologist, teacher and journalist. His writing has been published widely, including in The Australian, Australian Doctor, Hospitals and Aged Care, The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, The Australian Journal of Public Health and Sydney Alumni Magazine. He has also been a health broadcaster for ABC Radio National. For the past 20 years he has mentored groups about how to live and die more mindfully. His interest in writing about living and dying well was sharpened five years ago when he was diagnosed with an incurable blood
Episodes
-
ARS VIVENDI
The art of dying is the art of living.
-
RITUALS OF THE BODY
What becomes of our body when we die needn’t preoccupy us but we can ease the burden on loved ones by letting them know what to do with our corpse.
-
ARS MORIENDI
Dying is a series of destructive events that by its nature strips our humanity and obliterates our hopes for dying with dignity.
-
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
Dying doesn’t have to mean foreclosure or that our last days need to be congested by regrets, or unspoken words and unrequited feelings.
-
ORPHAN WISDOM
Some older people are waking up to their elderhood, but if the vanishing of our elders is any measure, it’s a rare epiphany.
-
EUTHANASIA
People living with chronic or terminal conditions have a host of reasons for wanting to die before death claims them.
-
COMPETENCE
Competence is a highly valued quality in our culture. But our store of knowledge and well-honed competencies don’t serve us so well in human affairs or the messy business of dying.
-
END OF LIFE DISCUSSIONS
People who have practical conversations with doctors about their preferences for their end-of-life care are more likely to die a ‘good death’ while sparing their families a lot of preventable heartache and distress.
-
NO MUD NO LOTUS
Mindfulness means being aware of what’s happening in the present. It’s a way of coming home to ourselves that deepens our understanding and ends suffering.
-
PAIN AND SUFFERING
Despite assurances from doctors who say they can mitigate the pain of disease and the decline of a failing body, nobody should plan on pain-free living or dying.
-
LIVING OUR DEEPEST TRUTH
Each of us is called to particular work, according to our biography and talents and circumstances. Answering that call is to lay claim to our deepest truth and our kinship to each other.
-
IDENTITY
Our fear of death is based on a fundamental misconception about who dies, and what is deathless.
-
INITIATION
The purpose of culturally endorsed puberty rites is to end childhood and start personhood. These rites forge an ability to prize life and begin a kinship with death that says, ‘Your life has limits’.
-
WHITE HELMETS
To save a life is to save all of humanity.
-
THE ROAD FROM DAMASCUS
THE ROAD FROM DAMASCUS by Dan Gaffney
-
HOMELESS
One of the unique and troubling challenges of being human is our separation from nature. We harbour this separation in our heads, hearts and souls, a quandary that has rendered us homeless in a most profound way.
-
PRIVATE MYTHS, PUBLIC DREAMS
Old myths taught people respect and reverence for life and the natural world. Like poetry and parables, the myths were pointers to a deeper wisdom about the nature of life, love, death and the unique privileges and burdens of being human.
-
RECIPROCITY
Our pursuit of pleasure and fulfilment is costing the earth. Yet our needs are small compared to what the world needs from us. Learning the wisdom and ways of reciprocity mean answering the call to become elders.
-
DESIRE
The idea of doing our bucket list before we grow old and die raises the question of whether we can live a full and happy life without satisfying all of our desires.
-
GRIEF
Death disrupts the habits of a lifetime. It’s arrival grieves us because it reminds us of what we’d shared, what we haven’t, and what has ended.
-
A YEAR TO LIVE
Taking a year to live could be an opportunity to make heartfelt changes that renew and refresh our purpose and goals—long before death comes knocking.
-
ANNIHILATION
The secret theology of our rational, secular age is that death ends relationships and reciprocity. But consigning our dead to the gone-ness of the past has far-reaching consequences.
-
TYRANNY OF HOPE
Some health professionals encourage hope when they speak to a terminally ill person about their prognosis and end-of-life care. But investing in perpetual hope means dying people may never learn how to die.
-
YOUTH AND AGEING
Few of us want to admit our age in a Botox culture where it’s a compliment to be told we look youthful. This might be a clue as to why it’s difficult to talk about ageing and advancing frailty as inescapable facts of life.
-
IF WE CAN WE SHOULD
Faced with a choice between death, or chronic poor health, and the tantalising prospect of a cure, few of us can resist choosing more treatment. But the experience of many who choose new drugs and medical interventions isn’t what they imagined.
-
UNCERTAINTY
UNCERTAINTY by Dan Gaffney
-
TESTING NEW THERAPIES
Patients who receive new treatments in clinical trials do little better than those on existing therapies.
-
SURVIVING THE ODDS
Some diseases have a better prognosis than others but when the odds of survival are slim, health professionals can feel pressured to offer further treatments despite their low chances of success.
-
AVERTING DEATH
Our desire to live longer, even at the end of life, has driven a multitude of ways of averting death. Yet people who accept their prognosis and who choose palliative care are happier and live longer than those who pursue life-extending therapies.
-
LONGER LIVES PREDICTABLE DEATHS
Many of us are living long enough to become interested in adding vitality, meaning and life to our years rather than merely adding more years to life.
-
A STRANGER AMONG US
The removal of death and dying from our homes and families is slowly eroding our affinity and kinship to events that have been seminal to culture since the dawn of humanity.
-
JOURNEY HOME - FOREWARD
Living with an open-hearted acceptance of death, whether our time is near or far, could be a way to craft a life-affirming legacy for our families and loved ones that’s nearly unimaginable in today’s world. It could also be a path to reclaim a richness we’ve been denied in our death-phobic culture.
We're indexing this podcast's transcripts for the first time — this can take a minute or two. We'll show results as soon as they're ready.
No matches for "" in this podcast's transcripts.
Loading reviews...
ABOUT THIS SHOW
Journey Home is a collection of essays about living and dying with an open heart. While many of us fear death and dying, these essays argue that embracing these events can help us reclaim a richness we’re denied in a death-phobic culture. What’s more, opening our hearts can help us celebrate the preciousness of life and craft a life-affirming legacy for our families and loved ones. This is the journey we are all called to.Author Dan Gaffney is a former psychologist, teacher and journalist. His writing has been published widely, including in The Australian, Australian Doctor, Hospitals and Aged Care, The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, The Australian Journal of Public Health and Sydney Alumni Magazine. He has also been a health broadcaster for ABC Radio National. For the past 20 years he has mentored groups about how to live and die more mindfully. His interest in writing about living and dying well was sharpened five years ago when he was diagnosed with an incurable blood
HOSTED BY
Dan Gaffney
Loading similar podcasts...
Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Journey Home have?
Journey Home currently has 32 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Journey Home about?
Journey Home is a collection of essays about living and dying with an open heart. While many of us fear death and dying, these essays argue that embracing these events can help us reclaim a richness we’re denied in a death-phobic culture. What’s more, opening our hearts can help us celebrate the...
How often does Journey Home release new episodes?
Journey Home has 32 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Journey Home?
You can listen to Journey Home on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Journey Home?
Journey Home is created and hosted by Dan Gaffney.
URL copied to clipboard!