Rest in Peace: How Dying Can Help You Live More Fully

“Hey sunshine, guess what?” I open my eyes and smile to myself, “You’re one day closer to the day you’re going to die.”

Thank God, I sigh.

As long as I’ve been alive, a part of me has wanted to die. I’d sit in my bedroom as a child and wail, “I want to homeeeeee.”

Feeling overwhelmed and under-resourced, I struggled with suicidality into my twenties, but eventually I realised, staying alive is a choice I wanted to make. Over the last decade, cultivating a conscious relationship with death and learning how to die without leaving my body has helped balance out the desire to end my life.

You can live with anything when you know how to die. 

I’ve experimented with lots of different ways of thinking and living over the years to see what feels natural. I’ve also let go of a lot, grieving versions of myself and paths I didn’t take. Seeing how drastically my world view and self-image shifted in each of these identity deaths has shown me nothing is permanent. 

Knowing I’ll die is like knowing a workout will end, it makes it easier to get through the hard parts. 

Seeing suicide as an escape hatch served me when I felt powerless, but now, harnessing the transformational power of death gives me more energy for life. I don’t choose life over death; I choose life with death.

Every month or so I come to the altar of my body and breathe. I celebrate how far I’ve come and give away what I no longer need. I shake, stretch and allow images and sensations. I release attachment to ideas and creations. I think of these inner Winters as practice for leaving my physical body. Hopefully, when the time comes, I’ll be more prepared.

Like truth, death is inescapable and I love that about it. Like a dream where you know you’re dreaming, there’s freedom in knowing this life will end. Death is also a break, a release of tension. Knowing that rest and renewal will come around again means I can take more risks and tolerate uncomfortable things in other seasons.

You don’t have to wait until the end of your life to die. You can gather important people, celebrate how far you’ve come, redistribute what you no longer need. You can excuse yourself, shut out the world, and sleep for a long time.

You can rest in peace.

What needs to die in your life? What are you ready to let go of? What’s asking for more energy to grow?