Briefly Perfectly Human : Envisioning a New Way of Living by Getting Real About the End: Envisioning a New Way of Living by Getting Real About the End

A deeply transformative memoir that reframes how we think about death and how it can help us lead better, more fulfilling and authentic lives, from Americas preeminent death doula.

By envisioning who I want to be on my deathbed, I invited life in. Alua Arthur

For her clients and everyone who has been inspired by her humanity, Alua Arthur is a friend at the end of the world. As our countrys leading death doula, shes spreading a transformative message: thinking about your deathwhether imminent or notwill breathe wild, new potential into your life.

Warm, generous, and funny AF, Alua supports and helps manage end-of-life care on many levels. The business matters, medical directives, memorial planning; but also honoring the quiet moments, when monitors are beeping and loved ones have stepped out to get some airor maybe not shown up at alland her clients become deeply contemplative and want to talk. Aching, unfinished business often emerges. Alua has been present for thousands of these sacred momentswhen regrets, fears, secret joys, hidden affairs, and dim realities are finally said aloud. When this happens, Alua focuses her attention at the pulsing center of her clients anguish and creates space for them, and sometimes their loved ones, to find peace.

This has had a profound effect on Alua, who was already no stranger to deaths periphery. Her family fled a murderous coup dtat in Ghana in the 1980s. She has suffered major, debilitating depressions. And her best friend and brother-in-law died of lymphoma. Advocating for him in his final months is what led Alua to her lifes calling. She knows firsthand the power of bearing witness and telling the truth about lifes painful complexities, because they do not disappear when you look the other way. They wait for you.

Briefly Perfectly Human is a life-changing, soul-gathering debut, by a writer whose empathy, tenderness, and wisdom shimmers on the page. Alua Arthur combines intimate storytelling with a passionate appeal for loving, courageous end-of-life carewhat she calls death embrace. Hers is a powerful testament to getting in touch with something deeper in our lives, by embracing the fact of our own mortality. Hold that truth in your mind, Alua says, and wondrous things will begin to grow around it.