Dying into Grace is directed to family and professional caregivers, and those who support and train them. Its overall purpose is to inform and inspire you about possibilities at the end of life, and empower you to realize them. Despite our death-phobic culture and medical establishment, it tries to prevent both of you from being cheated of all that could have been, to help you to have fewer regrets in the endless after that follows, and, if you are as fortunate as my mother and I were, to experience yourself and your relationship as forever transformed. To this end,

Dying into Grace offers us:

• A map which brings order out of the seeming chaos of the caregiving experience, allowing us to see its underlying coherence, get our bearings in this unfamiliar territory, and give shape, structure, dignity, and honor to this culturally invisible, devalued role.

• An understanding that caregiving and dying are not separate processes, but form an interdependent relationship through which dying's healing and transformative potential can be released by both partners' letting go and opening to the moment and each other.

• A reframing of dying as a dance between dying and caregiving partners in which the caregiver's overarching role is to create the physical-energetic-emotional space for deeper connection, surprising moments, and mutual growth and healing to occur.

• An understanding of what we need to do (the "4A's" and "3P's" of the Dance of Death ) so that we focus our time and priorities on what truly matters, and can see the coherence and meaning in all the little and seemingly mundane things we are doing.

• A story and guiding principles which illuminate and illustrate how to open our minds, direct our attention, and guide our behavior, while reminding us that there is no perfect here, only doing the best we can with what we have and where we are at the time.

" . . . Gives us the words and a framework to navigate a territory from which we have been isolated and about which we have been silenced, yet yearn to speak." Anne-Marie Audet, MD