Friday, February 27, 2015

"She lost her battle to cancer"

Upon the tragic passing of Jess Ainscough yesterday I feel compelled to briefly discuss the importance of death literacy.

Today social media has been inundated with posts, reports and media coverages about her death and I am pleasantly amazed that not once have I come across the phrase "lost her battle to cancer". 

Why do we insist on using this phrase? It is personally degrading, represents failure, encourages negative death literacy and most of all describes nothing of the strength, bravery, self respect, love and freedom that is experienced within one's final moments of life.

It is time to really think about the words we use when describing someone else's death. Death comes to us all and as such we must find a way to talk about it fearlessly and gracefully.

Would you want your own death to be described as 'losing a battle"??

http://www.thegroundswellproject.com/


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