Sheffield — Race Brook Lodge will host the “We Are ReMembering” event, a three-day retreat from Friday, April 11, through Sunday, April 13.
Several organizations will take part in the event, including the Center for Conscious Living and Dying, UnLabelMe, The Seventh Sense Care Collective, and Roots Grown Deep.
The three-day retreat includes a screening of the film “The Last Ecstatic Days,” musical performances, lectures, conversations, art, and yoga surrounding experiences about death.
Event co-organizer and UnLabelMe founder Jonathan Pillot told The Berkshire Edge that collaborators for the event are all “interconnected with the end-of-life world.” “All of these organization leaders are all game-changing humans who are elevating the conversation around death,” Pillot said. “To embrace death is about how you deal with your own life. What is important to remember is that, during times like this, one of the most important things that we’ve forgotten about is how we take care of each other. In a world that’s gone mad, how do we take care of each other at the soul level, the village level, and the community level when it comes to death?”
Pillot explained that our culture tends to stigmatize conversations surrounding death and dealing with it. “For the last few years, I’ve been interviewing people at the end of their lives on camera, along with doulas who care for people at the end of their lives,” Pillot said. “I think many of us live as if death isn’t going to happen to us. But death is universal. It’s the only thing on the planet that every human shares. It’s a human condition that is part of life. But people don’t want to deal with their mortality, and so what we are doing with this retreat is infusing death into conversations through music, culture, and dance.”
Pillot said that the underlying theme of the retreat is to open up conversations around “the reality and humanity of all of us.” “Once we can open up conversations, we can have more empathy and compassion,” Pillot said. “We need empathy, compassion, and kindness because we’re living at a time where kindness is not front and center.”
The three day event includes:
- A “Mindfulness Matters” workshop with Wendy Krom from Community Consulting Services;
- Music and expressive arts featuring Asheville, N.C.-based group G8Keepers, featuring Jay Brown, Aditi Sethi-Brown, JoJo Silverman, and Joel Karabo Elliott;
- A showing of “The Last Ecstatic Days,” a 2024 documentary about a young student with stage-four brain cancer; and
- Workshops, yoga classes, and a grief ceremony.
“What we are doing through these three days is simply opening conversations to people to talk to them about what is on their mind,” Pillot said. “Death is infused into all of this. I’ve never been around more joyous people than the people I know who are dealing with people at the end of their lives. That is because they are infusing the importance of everyday. I have become more in touch than ever with the importance of everyday life because this day could be my last day on this planet, which is true for all of us, not just me.”
For more information about the event, including ticket information, visit Race Brook Lodge’s website.
