Loretta is interviewed on the Butterflies and their People website. The interview is entitled “Giving Your Life Story a Good Ending: Loretta Downs on Monarchs, Mexico and Death”. You can read the full interview at https://butterfliesandtheirpeople.org/loretta-downs/

Lake Chapala Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, Ajijic, Mexico Presentation by Loretta Downs, MA, CSA on October 24, 2021

My Opening Statement, not on the video:

Facing the constant flow of changes within and around us is the universal lesson of impermanence. How we perceive, how we cope, and how we process the resulting transitions creates the state of dis-ease or ease in which we live our lives. Loretta will talk to us about eight practices that will help make those transitions more manageable and more peaceful for us and for others involved.

My Closing Statement, not on the video:

Let us allow ourselves to forgive our inability to be perfect, our failures to rise to every occasion, our lack of awareness, our seemingly bottomless pit of self-abuses. Let us embrace these oh-so-human conditions as inspiration to be intentional in our search for peace and happiness in ourselves and model it for the entire world.

Author Katy Butler wrote a groundbreaking expose’ of modern medicine, Knocking on Heaven’s Door, The Path to a Better Way of Death in 2013.  The Chicago End-of-Life Care Coalition sponsored a book signing event on her national tour.  As President, I spent the day with Katy and we talked about end of life issues, including my Chrysalis Room concept.

I am proud to announce that in her new book, The Art of Dying Well, A Practical Guide to a Good End of Life, she devotes a section to The Chrysalis Room:

Chapter 7 Active Dying, Preparing in a Nursing Home

“If someone you love is dying in a nursing home, ask for a temporary private room. (You may not prevail, but it never hurts to ask.) Or improvise.

When Loretta Downs’s mother was dying in a nursing home in Chicago in 2006, Loretta got permission to transform an unused storage room into a sacred, private space, which she decorated with her mother’s possessions. Friends and family came to share their memories and bring food, and other residents dropped in to say goodbye.

Loretta, an experienced hospice volunteer with a professional background in interior design, named the space she’d created the “Chrysalis Room” after the pupa that holds a caterpillar as it is transformed into a butterfly. The room became a permanent and beloved feature of the nursing home and set in motion a cultural shift.

Before the room was arranged, nursing home staff feared death—and the crowded conditions in which it was taking place—and sent most dying residents to the hospital. Only a few died in the nursing home under hospice care, and their families were forced to keep vigil in a room barely big enough to allow one relative to sit comfortably at the bedside. As soon as the resident died, the room would be emptied and the body taken away. The person would silently disappear from the community they’d long called home, as if they had never lived.

After the Chrysalis room opened, more residents enrolled in hospice care prior to death, and more died in the place that had become their “home,” rather than in a hospital. Other residents became more likely to participate in the final goodbyes, and some became less fearful of their own deaths.

Downs has since helped create similar Chrysalis rooms in nursing homes in Wyoming, Indiana, and the Chicago suburbs. The ideal spaces, she says, are quiet, with natural light, a view of nature, floor lamps, an adjustable bed, a recliner, soft music, and folding chairs. But with a little imagination, almost any private space can be made more humane than a shared room. For more information on how to improvise or build a Chrysalis room, consult Downs’ endoflifeinspirations.com.”

Order the book on Amazon.

I recently published an article entitled “Making Friends with Death” in the expat magazine El Ojo.

You can read the article at https://www.chapala.com.

Compassion & Choices has produced a new End-of-Life Decisions Guide and Toolkit that includes a Dementia. Provision: https://compassionandchoices.org/end-of-life-planning/.

Touched by a Butterfly is a documentary film by artists Cindy and Kirby Pringle (http://www.dogtownartworks.com/site/About_Us.html), and Monarch Butterfly conservationists. The 29-minute film shows butterflies as symbols of hope and joy, in life and after death. The film features 8 people describing their spiritual experiences with butterflies: Randy Hauser, Holly Borukhovich, Heidi Richter, Dr. Sally Foote, Rev. Kenneth Roedder, Rowena Gates, Kim Saari and Loretta Downs.

Order the DVD for $13 including S & H: http://www.touchedbybutterfly.com/store.html.

Loretta Downs was recently featured in an article in the Guadalajara Reporter. The article is entitled, “Death & dying: spreading a positive message”.

“Downs believes that there is bliss to be found at the end of life. ‘Some of us have a choice to leave behind a legacy of peacefulness by dying well. I’ve witnessed many people embody this peacefulness at the end of their lives. The Buddhists talk about right action and right speech. I talk about right death. It’s an individual decision but we all need to be talking about it and making dying a significant part of life.'”

Click here to read the article.

Advance Healthcare Planning has evolved from being a casual part of an estate plan to becoming a lifelong practice and medical necessity. It is a personally transformative process that increases the likelihood of having a gentle death. The Five Wishes is a helpful tool for exercising control over your end-of-life care. These wishes will clarify who and what matters most to you when you reach the end of the life line.

Order The Five Wishes at www.agingwithdignity.org and get your state-specific statutory advance directive form at www.caringinfo.org.

This story is an example of the positive effect that offering a private room with space and peace and comfort for loved ones to support a person who is dying can be transformative. This is the essence of eating sacred space for dying. This is the essence of the Chrysalis Room concept.

Click here to read the article »