Holding Space Las Vegas

02/04/2026

What would your perfect final day look like?

02/04/2026

A meditative experience that invites players to explore the serene beauty of a living, breathing cemetery as it changes with the seasons.

02/02/2026

To all experiencing compound grief, we see you. 🩷

One thing we don’t talk about much is compound grief.

It’s the grief that doesn’t come on its own.
It arrives in layers
and settles quietly on your heart.

There is your own loss:
the person you loved, the relationship you had.
The way your life changed the moment they left.

But there is also the loss of the future you imagined.
The plans you never realised were promises.
The moments you assumed would come later and now never will.

Compound grief is grieving for other people too.
You carry your children’s loss, even when they can’t name it yet.
You feel the weight of your parents’ grief,
your siblings’,
your partner’s.
Their pain becomes part of yours.

It is the loss of who someone was to you,
and the loss of who they would have been
to the people you love.

The grandparent your children won’t know.
The friend your partner never met.
The versions of them that would have existed in other people’s lives.

This grief feels heavy because it keeps meeting itself.
One loss touches another.
One moment opens the door to many more.

This grief shows up on birthdays that you still get to celebrate –
the birthday of a loved one still here
that echoes with the absence of a loved one lost.

It shows itself in the moments where someone forgets
or doesn’t quite understand
that another person isn’t coming back.

It whispers loudly at the times you hold someone tight –
your heart breaking as you try to hold theirs together.

And yet, as heavy as they are, these layers of grief don’t need removing as such.
They need to be shared and named and lightened a little
by the joy that memory can bring.

Because this kind of grief means you love deeply,
and loving deeply means creating layers of loss.
It means your heart is holding more than just one goodbye.

It means that love is continuing. Deeply.
Not just in one place,
but everywhere.

*****

I wrote this recently after a conversation with a friend experiencing compounding grief. Sending my love to anyone in this situation ###

Becky Hemsley 2026
Incredible artwork by Olga Shvartsur

This poem is not in any of my books currently, but similar poems can be found in my grief collections (details on my website, beckyhemsley.com)

01/28/2026

UPDATE: There were TEN attendees. Eight female, two male. (I write that to encourage more men to show up. Your presence is wanted and much needed.)

The 90 minute conversation consisted of:

❣️ communal and individual grief

❣️ secondary grief (domino effect of the grief of losing a loved one)

❣️ proxy grief (grieving another person's loss)

❣️ loss from su***de

❣️ suicidal ideation

and more...

We cried. We laughed. We connected.

We wrote down the names of our loved ones who died. When this white sheet is totally filled with "their" names, it will be turned over to a local artist to create something that alchemizes our grief. Thank you for all that participated today. 💜

❣️💀🍰☕️❣️💀🍰☕️❣️💀🍰☕️

Death Café Las Vegas is TODAY!

A huge thank you to Enchanted Forest Reiki Center, Spiritual Items 'n More for providing such a beautiful, comfortable container for this free event!

Isn't it time you:

- confronted the concerns you might have around death and dying?

- found a communal space to talk about life's final journey?

- to meet like-minded people and feel safe expressing your views?

Death Café Las Vegas is a heart-centered, safe container in which we share these thoughts over some life-affirming cake!

Please join us! ❣💀🍰☕

01/26/2026

🙏🏼🦋💙

01/24/2026

"Are Men and Veterans Being Left Alone in Grief and at the End of Life?
Or Are We Failing to Give Them the Support They Deserve?

There is a quiet reality in end-of-life care that is rarely spoken about:
many men—and especially veterans—carry grief, trauma, and emotional pain in silence.
In this episode of Ask a Death Doula, Suzanne O’Brien, RN and founder of Doulagivers Institute, sits down with end-of-life doula Adam Daviau (Beautiful Existence Doula Services) for a powerful and deeply human conversation.

Adam shares his personal journey into this work after caring for his father at home at the end of life—without guidance, without timely support, and with lasting emotional impact. From that experience, a calling was born: to ensure no family, no man, and no veteran has to walk this path alone."

Are Men and Veterans Being Left Alone in Grief and at the End of Life?Or Are We Failing to Give Them the Support They Deserve?There is a quiet reality in end...

01/21/2026

Happy Anniversary...to !

01/15/2026

"Welcome to the EndWell Summit, a gathering of more than 700 caregivers, clinicians and advocates who've grieved, are grieving or are working with those at the end of their lives. Speakers included a pediatric palliative care physician, a global health economist and a prison hospice advocate, not to mention celebrities like Emma Heming Willis (Bruce Willis' wife) and Katherine LaNasa ("The Pitt"). It's an inviting space – smiles abounded despite the uncharacteristically cold, somber and wet Los Angeles weather, and thousands joined virtually – where casual conversations and formal talks about death are tear-jerking one second and laugh-out-loud funny the next."

Why was a death conference so funny? An attendee told a USA TODAY editor: "Being around death makes you really appreciate life."

01/07/2026

"What do I carry forward? First, practical discipline: arrive, observe, invite, witness. Arrive fully and leave the clinical scavenger hunt at the curb. Observe the room, or in this case, the backyard. What is the light doing? Who is near the window? What’s humming? Invite, with a question calibrated to their agenda, not mine. What would make today a good day? Stories or symptoms first? Then witness, which requires the hardest skill I know—silence.

Second, change the interview script. Less “Why didn’t you…?” and more “What felt right to you then?” Less abstract meaning-making, more concrete dignity.

Third, permission to let endings be ordinary. A firm handshake is not a failure of depth. It is an honest form of it."

https://www.walking-home.com/blog-end-of-life-care/the-hidden-curriculum?fbclid=IwY2xjawPKhrVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeNEkzK4z2AXm8EI96f9xG7tWOlpmM7UUQrlJQ6yQU4r2YN8hXpfaS3kmfR34_aem_SJGH4jZnYghlWcDTmPOZDQ

There have been a few physicians that have validated my growing realization that our opportunity, our duty, our privilege as physicians to be at the bedside of a dying patient needs to be honored, not hidden or denied.

01/06/2026

I applaud Anderson Cooper's work as a grief educator!

01/06/2026

Your grief is as valid years later as it is when your loved one transitioned. 💜