Walking the Threshold: Tending Life, Death, and the Wisdom Beyond
Learning to die well is also learning to live with awareness, compassion, and grace. In this conversation, Irene Weinberg talks with Nancy MacMillan, a spiritual health practitioner and psychotherapist, about walking the threshold between life and death and the deep wisdom that arises in that space. Together, they explore how illness, loss, and tending to her mother’s final days revealed the sacred work of dying well, the continuing bond with our loved ones, and how embracing death as part of life opens us to greater healing and connection.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL HEAR ABOUT THINGS LIKE:
- Encountering mortality as portals to wisdom and insight.
- The ancient art of caring for the dead at home and green burials.
- Grief as a natural release that helps both the living and the newly departed.
- The possibility of continuing connections with loved ones after loss.
- Approaching death with intentionality and making conscious choices for our dying time.
- Simple practices like deep breathing and mindful body attention to stabilize the nervous system.
- Awakening to the ever-present help of ancestors through gathering stories, lighting candles, and expressing gratitude.
- The three themes of the book “The Call to the Far Shore”: leaning into death while living, trusting the dying time, and remaining connected with loved ones.
- Healing as a continuous journey that leads to being more fully alive.
- Finding joy in life by allowing ourselves to be broken open by grief.
SOME QUESTIONS IRENE ASKS NANCY:
- Could you describe your early explorations of dreams and meditation that laid the foundation for your life of service and how these were deepened through illness?
- Why was it important to you to bring your mother’s body home after she died?
- What new insights and great healing did you derive through the caring of your mother’s body after her passing?
- How is grief a call to our soul?
- How can we each awaken to the ever-present help of our ancestors?
- Can you explain the ancient wisdom of “learning to die before you die,” and death is a homecoming?
- Why do you say that healing is a journey and why should each of us heal in this lifetime?
- What does the phrase “dying well” mean to you?
Grab Nancy’s The Call to the Far Shore: Carrying Our Loved Ones Through Dying, Death, and Beyond: https://bookshop.org/a/93249/9798888501092
GRIEF AND REBIRTH LINKS
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Walking the Threshold: Tending Life, Death, and the Wisdom Beyond
I hope this message finds each of you very well. I’m speaking to you from my studio in West Orange, New Jersey. I could not be more delighted to have the pleasure of interviewing Nancy MacMillan, who earned a degree in Economics, followed by graduate work in Adult Education. Years later, Nancy pursued graduate studies in theology, specializing in spiritual care in a pluralistic society. Through advanced clinical training, she also became a certified spiritual health practitioner and a registered psychotherapist.
Nancy’s professional path has taken her through acute care, palliative care, and long-term care settings, where she worked intimately with the sick and dying. In private practice, she writes and teaches on subjects close to her heart, such as re-imagining death, dealing with our ancestors, raising healthy children, and listening to the whispers of the earth and the unseen realms.
Nancy has a very compelling personal story that includes early explorations of dreams and meditation, and the profound experience of tending her mother’s long dying time. Having walked the threshold between life and death with grace and insight, Nancy’s journey formed the basis of her book, The Call to the Far Shore: Carrying Our Loved Ones through Dying, Death, and Beyond.
I’m looking forward to a meaningful conversation with Nancy, who is joining me from Ontario, Canada, about how her lifetime of service deepened through both illness and the profound experience of tending to her mother’s long dying time and the pivotal experience at her father’s deathbed that opened up the realm of a continuing connection with the dead for her. We will also talk about how she has experienced the language of images, felt senses, and synchronicities that form the language of the dead, practices that stabilize the nervous system, what it is like to die well, and much more. This will be an interview that will surely be a testament to living with reverence and purpose.
Nancy, my warm, heartfelt welcome to the show.
Thank you. I want to say that I can feel this community building through your leading these conversations. It’s making us all be able to go to these hard topics of death, grief, and rebirth. It’s making it a little easier for us all. Thank you.
Nancy’s Journey: Illness, Dreams, and the Foundation of Service
Thank you. You’re welcome. I see us all as such a part of a collective. All of us are lightworkers who want to help people, enlighten people, and show them all kinds of new ways to cope with their lives and move forward in their lives. What a pleasure to introduce everyone to Nancy MacMillan. Let’s get into your story. I know you faced a potentially devastating illness when you were a teen and a life-threatening cancer diagnosis at age 41. Could you describe your early explorations of dreams and meditation that laid the foundation for your life of service, and how these were deepened through illness? Tell us your story.
A little bit of it, at least. These big punctuations of encountering our mortality and our limitations are portals. They’re little initiations that open up some great wisdom and some insight if we’re open to it. At seventeen, I came down with a mysterious illness. I don’t know exactly what was going on. I was too young. A message seemed to come that it was about my soul being born.
Even in hindsight, we can still draw out meaning by revisiting these early experiences, fleshing them out, and trying to perceive what was going on there. At each of my encounters with that experience and then a few others with car accidents and my cancer diagnosis, which is a bigger story, it was like I was being shown that there’s a numinous thread, a light thread, that is woven around each encounter with death that shows us that there’s always somebody there. It breaks open that imagination and reality that we’re not alone. We get a glimmer of the other side. Repeating that over and over again opened up the pathway for me to go into this professionally.
My story with cancer was that it happened at a young age, with two young children. That was a couple of years of almost like a near-death experience, but in this prolonged way. I think of it as I could absorb the amount of experience and messages in a way that I could maybe integrate. Sometimes, with near-death experiences, you get a big shock, and it may take a lifetime. This allowed me to gradually accustom myself to the terrain of grief. The idea of potentially leaving my children was the hardest part, and then going through the difficult treatments. It was through that deep experience of being at the bottom of what I felt I could handle that I saw an image of my grandmother.
Did you have your eyes closed when you saw your grandmother?
Yes. I was in an ultra state, for sure.
You’re clairvoyant.
Who knows? We are all breaking open to some level of clear thinking. I wouldn’t say I’m a big psychic, but we get broken open through difficult experiences, and that creates a bridge to the other world. I was being broken open. I was like, “I can’t go on anymore.” It was that kind of despairing feeling. Then, I could sense this mirage. It felt like it was on the wall. It was the picture that I had grown up with of my grandmother on the wall. It was like she was there for me, saying, “Whatever’s going on, go through it. It will keep changing.” She was an ally from that moment on. I have her picture on the top of my altar. It was a meeting. I don’t know how we have to cultivate these meetings if we don’t get them in these drastic situations, but the twin thing of hardship, suffering, and opportunity, they go together.
Through difficult experiences, we are broken open, creating a bridge to the other world. Share on X
Honoring the Transition: Bringing Mother Home for a Green Burial
You had an experience where your mother was dying. It was important to you to bring your mother’s body home after she died to wash and tend to her body for three days before the funeral and give her a green burial. I know all of this comes from your wealth of experiences and knowledge that you’ve gathered in your life. Could you share with us the new insights and the great healing you derived through the caring of your mother’s body after her passing? What led you to do all of this?
I’ve been exposed to the idea, which is a radical idea in our world, that a few generations ago, this was how we did death. We were up close to death. That taught us so much about the fullness of life and death, the full cycle, and getting further and removed from it. I was fortunate in that I had a profession that had me experience with people who are dying and dead bodies, so I had a sense of comfort with that.
I formed a small group of women, and we gathered for several years to talk about how we can do death better. One of the things was, how can we maybe consider bringing back some of the ancient art of caring for our own dead at home? I had a little preparation there, and I had a small group of friends who were also interested in it. We had some preparation, because you do need a little preparation. It’s remarkable how we can do this. I wasn’t sure how my mother would feel about it, so I had to carefully approach it with her. I had this little recording because I needed to share it with my sister.
I remember reading in your book how accepting your sister was of it. She was wonderful about that. A lot of other siblings would’ve said, “Are you kidding?”
That’s right. It was hearing my mom, at age 96, lean into the camera and say, “You want to bring my body home? I would be so honored to think that you would do that for me.” She had her mother on her dining room table when her mother died when she was eighteen, so she knew that that was a way of doing it. That opened the gates for me, feeling full-hearted that I could do this. Leading up to it, there was some trepidation and thinking, “Can I do this?” It was arduous caregiving at the end of a loved one’s life.
It’s not easy.
I don’t know if I will have the capacity and energy. Strange things happened. The funeral home that I was working with, which was a local funeral home, was very accommodating. They were the ones who encouraged me to keep going. They said, “Nancy, it’ll be so beautiful. Keep going.” I gathered myself together. My mother had that last day of her life, and she died. I went through the whole immediacy of the grief that was breaking me open.
We were up close to death, and that taught us so much about the fullness of life and death. Share on X
How did that engage your grief in a powerful way? Your tending to her is both difficult and, in some way, rewarding for you, too. I love that you say that it showed you that grief is a call to our soul. That’s beautiful. Could you please explain that to us?
When I got the call that my mother had died, because I had stepped out of the room for a couple of hours.
That’s the way it often happens.
That’s when it happens. I get to remind people that that’s okay. Sometimes, our closest ones need that space to take that next big step on their own, without their closest ones there, maybe pulling them back. Be grateful with yourself and the other, if that’s the way it goes. That is what happened. I remember running out and that quality of keening, which is letting our bodies release that howl that is a natural part of our grief opening to our soul. I allowed myself the grace of keening, which was a new idea for me back then, but an ancient art as well, allowing the fullness of our grief to come through our voice and our body.
It must be an amazing release.
It is. Afterwards, it was like a clear river ran through me because I had allowed it to be with me. We’re going in a few directions, but it allowed me to feel the power of grief to move me and keep me moving and not stuck, numb, and paralyzed. Also, I’ve come to understand that it helps the person who’s newly dead to know they’re dead.
This is indigenous wisdom coming from many different countries and parts of the world. It’s through our tears and coming together communally to raise up and praise the person who has died that allows them the energy to keep moving on. It allows them to keep going where they need to keep going and not linger where it might not be so great to linger for too long. Lingering for a little while to say goodbye, yes, but after that period, it is to help them keep moving on. Grief is a big topic that serves us to discover our feelings and our bodies, and allows that to be opened up. That reveals so much to ourselves about our souls. It lets us keep moving on, and it helps our loved ones that died.
Grief as a Portal: Waking Up to Our Feelings and Moving On
With the way you’re talking about it, I think that a lot of people are not in touch with their feelings. When this happens, it wakes them up, right?
That’s right. It is the opportunity to wake us up to them. There’s also a risk that we’ll try to avoid it, and I see that happen. We can’t, in the immediacy, but there are often ways at that brink of death where we might go into busyness or we might go into fastness. Death is not an emergency. It’s a time to slow down, to perceive the opening that is happening before us, and to lean into it a little bit. We get glimpses of the other side that will give us the energy and the capacity of wonder to keep carrying on through the hardships that will come. There will always be a glimmer that there’s something else.
Death is not an emergency; it's a time to slow down, to perceive the opening before us and lean into it. Then we glimpse the other side, which gives us the wonder and energy to carry on through hardships. Share on X
There’s something else in that. It’s not over when it’s over, by any means. This brings me to the fact that you had a very pivotal experience at your father’s deathbed that opened you up to the realm of a continuing connection with the dead. Tell us about that because I love that.
That was when I was in my early 30s. It was tending to my dad in the six months he was in the hospital with a broken hip. The one amazing thing about that is that I got to renew my relationship with him, which I didn’t have much of. I thought, “If I’m going to be here a couple times a week, let’s do something together that is meaningful.” We would talk about our lives, and I would ask him questions that we never got to those deeper conversations about. I was like, “What do you think about death and the other side? Do you remember when you were a kid?” It brought us together.
I was there on the night that his breathing started to change. I stayed overnight with him. I was following his breath very carefully because it was getting staggered and rattling from gasping for breath. I was almost staring at him, and then it was like, “I need to lie down.” I lay down on the cot that they had brought in. The hours went by, and I thought I heard his breathing stop. I got up out of the cot and went and stood by his bedside, leaning forward, anxious, and trying to be helpful. Then, these words came. “Get back. Stand back. Give your father room. This is not for you.” The only thing I could characterize this as was that it was the Angel of Death.
It could also be his guardian angels or whoever was tending to him there.
That was such a powerful thing. I almost felt this force pushing me back. I was like, “Okay.” I lay back down on the cot, and I was a bit nervous, but somehow, I fell back to sleep. Some more time went by, and then my cot collapsed. It woke me up. Then, I heard him take his last breath.
They were working with you.
I was young. I wouldn’t have maybe known as much of the courtesy that we need to understand at the end, but I learned there. I stayed again, because even at that point, I knew death was not an emergency. As soon as I ring the bell, people will come in, the lights will be turned on, and the atmosphere will change. I sat by his bedside, and I tried to talk to him and say, “You’ve died. Good work.” I feel him saying, “I’ll always be with you, my little girl.”
How beautiful. He is, as is your mother, I’m sure.
That’s right. Since we had developed this routine of meeting together regularly while he was in the hospital, I thought, “I’ll continue that after he’s dead.” Every Sunday night, I said, “We’re going to have coffee, Dad,” and I lit a candle and read something that I thought might be of interest to him that had some spiritually nourishing thoughts. It was not that he was spiritual at all, but who knows?
He is on the other side, so he knows.
That developed this relationship and this understanding that we can keep a connection with our loved ones after death. Our loved ones are not gone. They are in the next room.
They have left their body suits.
That’s right.
The Work of Dying Well: Intentionality and Consciousness in Our Final Moments
I want to ask you also. You’ve had personal and professional experience working with individuals and families experiencing illness, dying, and death. Can you describe some of the modalities you use that contribute to your approach in working with them? What does the phrase dying well mean to you? There’s another thing you said that I wanted you to talk to us about. It is work to be born, and it is work to die. Take it away.
I was fortunate in my work in the hospital that I was called a spiritual healthcare practitioner, which in other hospitals might be called a multifaith chaplain. Along with being a psychotherapist, I had the permission to go into conversations about, “What do you think happens at the end?” or, “Have you ever had an experience when a loved one has died of something synchronistic happening that helped you wonder what might be going on?” It was amazing to me. I could have psychological modalities.
The most powerful modality, I believe, is being able to go to that edge where we don’t go as comfortably and wonder out loud together about what more is there and what has been your experience of that. People, even if they would not consider themselves religious or spiritual, would almost uniformly have some uniquely strange experience of having encountered something when somebody has died. I’m trying to open that up so that it’s not an isolated experience. If that is true, and if it’s true for many of us, then what does that say, and how can we live our lives as that is part of our reality?
It’s a fact. Why do you say it is work to be born, and it is work to die?
We have to approach our death with some intentionality if we want to honor that portal or that opportunity that’s given to us. As we are born, it’s an initiation. We’re incarnating. It’s like, “Wow.” It’s huge.
It’s a brave new world.
Likewise, at the end of our life when we excarnate, there’s so much that will help bring us to some understandings and completions. The work is, can we anticipate some of that so that we’re not caught so unaware that we’re blindsided and we’ve missed the opportunity to have the conversations that bring some level of completion with our loved ones, speak about what we want for ourselves at the time of our dying, imagine it, make plans, and communicate that with our loved ones? If we don’t, then we will be at the mercy of whatever happens in our medical system at that time.
Most people will say, “I want to die at home,” but the vast majority will die in the ICU. If we’re not communicative at that point, then it’s not going to be the way that we most want to die. We’ve missed an opportunity for some awareness, too. That was the blessing of tending to my mother. I go back to a bit of that story of allowing my mother to die in as natural a way as possible. That meant challenging the healthcare people about giving her medication all the time, pressing that she was in pain and suffering. I wanted to say, “I don’t see my mom suffering. I see her dying, and there’s a difference.”
I see the huge differences in your consciousness. You’re aware of what’s going on. You’re consciously making choices that are in line with that knowledge. That’s what we’re doing on the show, and that’s what you’re doing in your work. We’re helping people to become more conscious, aware, and make different types of choices.
Fear and miseducation might close us down, so a part of what we’re doing is reminding people that there might be some discomfort and some pain at the end of life, but our bodies have died for millions of years. Trust the process. There are ways that our bodies know how to give us some natural endorphins so that we don’t need to be medicated, unconscious, and unaware. Traditions from across the world have a map that shows us that our consciousness at the time of death can influence the next steps.
There might be some discomfort, some pain, at the end of life. But our bodies have died for millions of years; let's trust the process. Share on X
That’s huge.
For me to be able to hold off medication for mom, she was going into an unconscious state, for sure, by the time, but it was her body naturally letting go so that she could die perhaps more joyful at the homecoming or at the ecstasy. She’s going home, and she’d be aware of it. I’ve come to wonder or believe that it will influence those next steps or the next journey on the other side.
It certainly brings them over in a more enlightened state.
Instead of thinking, “I don’t know where I am.”
Grounding and Grace: Simple Practices to Stabilize the Nervous System
It makes a big, huge difference. There’s another thing you talk about that fascinates me. You say you create the space for self-reflection and insight through simple practices to stabilize the nervous system. Tell us what that’s about. Help everyone who’s nervous that’s reading this.
Our bodies are the source of where we can move and trust some deeper relaxation. There are many ways we can do it, but breath is the most natural one, and yet we take it for granted. I can forget to breathe deeply. When I’m starting to feel shut down, I take three deep breaths and feel my feet on the ground. Better yet, be in my bare feet on the earth outside so that our electrical system is grounded into the good earth, and that the sun is helping us discharge things that accumulate in us. It’s very simple, mindful things like that.
For me to be aware of my seat on the chair, my back resting against the chair, and then looking around the room. Especially if I’ve been a bit intense or inward, it is to look around and see what draws my attention to beauty and something of interest. That pulls my awareness out. I see things of beauty and also safety. Our nervous system is designed to look for signs of danger and nervousness. We almost have to consciously, with awareness, look for the signs of beauty, goodness, and safety. We can do that very simply by looking around us and seeing the trees changing color or the art on the wall. Mindful body attention and awareness of our heart and our respiration.
That’s beautiful. In other words, not to be consumed with what’s making you nervous, but to love yourself enough to self-soothe and help yourself.
A few simple words to say to yourself, like, “I give myself grace.”
That’s beautiful.
Isn’t that beautiful? The other person whom you may have some nervousness about, you say, “I give you grace.” It’s grace to be human and grace to make mistakes and be vulnerable. We then soften and don’t have to hold so much.
You’re right.
Sometimes, we can’t do it all on our own. Often, we can’t. Can we ask for help? Can we say, “I need help,” from others in our life, but even more so, asking for help from those of the invisible world, like our beloved dead, ancestors, spirits, guides, and angels. Ask for help. There’s always a helping hand.
Connecting with Ancestors: Awakening to Their Ever-Present Help
They’re listening. How can people awaken to the ever-present help of their ancestors? Someone is reading this, and they’re going, “I’d like to believe it’s true, but my grandfather never contacted me.” How do people awaken to that?
It’s a newer thought. We do have to start from some basics if we haven’t had a natural encounter that would wake us into that realm. There’s the outer world of gathering their pictures, gathering their stories, and giving them a seat at our table, literally or metaphorically, so that they’re brought into our celebrations. The Day of the Dead is coming up. Can we light a candle, say their names, and bring a picture out? That starts drawing them to us. We can’t expect them to knock us on the head and wake us up all the time. Sometimes, that will happen. We have to start opening the door, do it in gentle ways, and bring them food in the sense of our gratitude, curiosity, and wonderment.
They only want the best for us. They don’t bring judgment and all those other things to the other side at all. They’re there. They’re cheering us on.
Some people will say, “I don’t have a great relationship with my immediate ancestors.” That can be a little trickier. You have to know one thing that they’re not the same as they were here. They still need our love, attention, and gratitude. We can offer it and maybe not engage so directly if we’re nervous about that, but acknowledge and let them belong. Can we imagine going back to our farther distant ancestors and imagining this bright light that is behind us all the time? That is the light of our ancestors who have traveled well to the far shore and are sending us their love and their life for us to keep moving forward.
They are cheering for us in a lot of ways. I want to talk about your remarkable book. It was remarkable. The title is The Call to the Far Shore: Carrying Our Loved Ones through Dying, Death, and Beyond. It weaves around three themes. Would you want to review some of the three themes for us? It’s a wonderful book. It’s a very uplifting book, in a way, even though it’s about what happened with your mom and all of that. It gives you a lot to think about. What are the three themes so people know what they’re going to be reading when they read this book?
The first one is to lean into death while we’re living, so that we can meet it with a little more preparedness. There are the little bits of learning how to die before you die, which means letting go with grace and ease. Getting practiced with that helps build our muscles while we’re well. It is so that when the heavy lifting might come down the road, we’re a little more prepared and a little stronger.
Also, to trust the dying time. We have a natural way that our bodies know how to die. Although we’ve been sold that it’s all about pain and suffering, there’s something more there, too. The remarkable thing is that beauty can coexist with death. The third thing would be that we can remain connected with our loved ones. We can cultivate that connection for our own help and to help them. They want to remain connected with us, to help us, and to help the world. They have a place where their wisdom and insight will help us make sense of our world again.
I would like to add one other thing. I know for a fact that as we heal and we are on our healing journeys, they are with us, and they are healing alongside us. I had a very tough childhood of my own. My father was a troubled, rage-filled man. After he died, I always say to people that there wasn’t a wet eye at his funeral.
After he died, I happened to meet with a medium. I never wanted to entertain my father coming to me, but he came and said, “I understand more now. I’m so sorry. Please don’t stop what you’re doing because I am listening, learning, and healing as I am with you and see what you’re doing in your life.” I know that as we stop the legacy, in a way, of pain and we begin to heal, they are, too, because we are all connected.
We break that cycle of being the victim, the perpetrator, or the rescuer. That’s a perpetual cycle. We get to be the link that can help break that cycle.
The Healing Journey: Finding Joy Through Brokenness
That’s beautiful. Why do you say that healing is a journey? Why should we each heal in this lifetime? Why should we go out of our way to do this? It’s not easy.
That’s right. The journey is made by walking. We keep walking, and our stories will unfold. By paying attention to our dreams and the synchronicities that happen, we’ll be led to how we can be more whole and more complete. We’re not going to be perfect, but we’re going to be more fully alive. What was that last part?
The Call to the Far Shore: Carrying Our Loved Ones Through Dying, Death, and Beyond
The last part is, what is the Nancy MacMillan tip for finding joy in life?
Ironically, it’s by letting ourselves be broken open by grief. It’s to be rung open so that the howl at the bottom of our cellar can find a way out. The miraculous thing that happens is that we might be in stillness then, and something stirs. That might be joy.
That’s wonderful. I’d like to close with an impressive testimonial from author Efu Nyaki about your book, The Call to the Far Shore. Here’s the quote. “This book brings a great lesson and healing to the world. One can feel the impact of what it will bring to so many people who are suffering because of disconnection from life itself. Hence, a fear of dying.
When we realize that we are one and that we are connected deeply through the breath we take, life is inevitable, and death is the transformation of it. Nancy describes this phenomenon very beautifully in her inspiring book.” This has been such a meaningful interview that I know is going to help many to release their fear of dying. My heartfelt thank you to you. Many blessings.
Thank you for having me. May it ripple out into the world and meet people where they’re at.
Thank you so much. To be continued, as I like to say.
Guest’s Links:
- Connect with Nancy MacMillan on her website
- Connect with Nancy MacMillan on Instagram
- The Call to the Far Shore: Carrying Our Loved Ones through Dying, Death, and Beyond
About Nancy McMillan
Nancy is a Registered Psychotherapist and former Certified Spiritual Health Practitioner who has worked in acute care, palliative care, and long-term care. Now in private practice, she also writes and teaches on her favorite topics: re-imagining death, healing with our ancestors, raising healthy children, and listening to the whispers of the earth and the unseen worlds. From an early age, I explored the inner realms through dreams and meditation. Illness brought its own unique lessons, ones that ultimately lead me to work with the sick and dying in hospitals and long-term care. Tending my mother’s long dying time was both very difficult and greatly rewarding, and forms the basis of my book.
