Alua Arthur

In this extremely personal memoir, the author shares her mental health struggles and her journey towards her purpose in life. Encouraged strongly by her family to pursue a legal career, Alua spends most of her free time travelling the world. But despite working part time hours, she finds her job to be an overwhelming source of distress.

Interspersed throughout her journey are excerpts from her death doula practice. She shares the lessons she has learned from witnessing the deaths of many show more people. Each death is special, each relationship taught her something and she can pass on those treasures to the reader. Piece by piece, she teaches us to witness our own lives and live them in light of our oncoming death. show less

Meandering memoir by someone who has travelled a lot and who wants to make sure her reader knows she has travelled a lot.

She is a fluffy writer. For example, “On May 29, 1978, weighing in at a hefty ten pounds, my body arrived on Earth to play.” She uses the word “dance” a lot: dancing with death, dancing with life, etc.

If you identify as a person who is ‘spiritual, but not religious,’ you will enjoy this book.

I was interested in this book because I thought it was a self help guide to accepting death, but when I started to read the book, it's all about somebody's life. It's a memoir. Why would I want to read a biography from somebody who I don't know who they are in hopes that they're gonna give me some advice about death? I believe the cover is completely deceptive. It would have been different if they started the book out talking about death and then gave examples from their life. That could be show more a self help book. But this is just a biography of a totally unknown person. Now I'm upset that I lost precious seconds of my finite life checking it out.

Further investigation shows that this is the biography of a spiritual leader whose role is to help people accept their death. Now that is a super depressing subject. I don't wanna hear about examples of how other people accepted their death so very merrily or something like that. I want clear instructions for me. show less