Death Midwifery and Compassionate Transitioning

Aired Sunday, 17 April 2016, 2:00 PM ET

We shall discuss the value and necessity of the death midwife as an integral member of a dying patient’s team of caretakers. To discuss the specific area that “The Art of Death Midwifery” addresses. To discuss the spectrum of death. Then to transition into the new area of my work, which is crossing the threshold of death and now building a bridge between the “so-called living” and the so-called” dead, the community being formed.

About the Guest Joellyn St. Pierre

Joellyn St. Pierre is an ordained interfaith minister with a spiritual doctorate in divinity focused on Death as a Transition. For 25 years she enjoyed a professional career in theatre with 7 Broadway shows to her credit, including “A Chorus Line,” and “Pippin,” national tours, regional, stock, dinner theatre, commercials, industrial shows and night clubs. She served as Director of Dance for the Burt Reynolds Institute for Theatre Training, founded a performing arts school in Orlando, FL, as well as teaching, directing and choreographing nationwide.

When many of Joellyn’s dear friends and associates from theatre began dying from AIDS, her entire life changed. Death became an initiation into a new life; that of a death midwife. Since 1991, she served those dying and their loved ones throughout the country with various hospices, home health agencies and AIDS organizations. She also conducted workshops on the Art of Death Midwifery, a paradigm for communing with the dying, in particular, those deemed “unresponsive.”

Now her work is evolving. As a result of her second Saturn return, and once more initiated by the death of a loved one, she was quite surprised to find herself being called to cross the threshold of death, to build a bridge between the so-called living and the so-called dead. She is being asked to develop skills she isn’t sure she possesses, those of a mediumistic nature, but is making that journey of discovery now. Heavily influenced by the work of Rudolf Steiner, she founded the Community of Spirits. Its purpose is to re-enliven, and vitalize the connection to the dead and the higher angelic hierarchies. Through that deep communion, the community will act as a conduit for the unrealized potential of the dead to flow into the physical world, to the evolvement and betterment of all. This is a fledgling community open to all with whom these ideas and goals resonate. It currently resides in cyberspace and will grow as she is inspired by her guides, teachers and angelic mentors.