Evie Fatz
Politics • Lifestyle • Fitness & Health • Food
Veracity and character rule this space! All authentic truth seekers are welcome. Trolls are bounced. Comment, share, engage and avoid the time suckers on social media. Let's have some fun, refute BS and become better humans together.
Interested? Want to learn more about the community?
December 16, 2021
Truth

You’ve been given a terminal diagnosis, it happened the day you were born.

Most people are terrified of death, or at the very least avoid thinking and talking about it. Not me. Just ask my family. I have a plot, bought and paid for and a selection of songs I’d like played at my funeral. This helps ensure I get the service I deserve and nobody can mess it up by playing some sobby, depressing music.

I’m not entirely sure why I am so comfortable speaking about death. Possibly due to my exposure to the death of those closest to me early in my life. Within a very short window of time, my father commit suicide at age 45, my grandmother died less than a year after a cancer diagnosis at only 63 and my brother-in-law fell to his death on a construction site, in his early twenties leaving my sister and their 2 year old son behind. These were not your “typical” early experiences with death, like the passing of an elderly grandparent most kids experience. These events shaped everyone and everything in my life from those days forward.

I am thankful for those experiences now. Clearly they were teaching me invaluable lessons as well as preparing me for the suffering I was going to face with the death of my daughter.

When I speak of these things, it has a tendency to make people sad or uncomfortable and that is what makes me sad; people pretending as if they aren’t going to die. Acting as if talking about death is somehow going to bring about its premature arrival.

I would go so far as to view the avoidance of the reality of death as somewhat narcissistic. As if you are so special that you will be the first and only human ever born to escape mortality; not going to happen.

Living as if you can avoid the reality of death also allows you to take your life for granted. It allows you to waste time on frivolous and unnecessary things. To lack gratitude and appreciation for even the smallest of things in your life. Look at other peoples tragedies and suffering as somehow removed from you in so much that you will never be in their shoes. You avoid urgency in doing all the things you’d love to do and see all the places you’d love to see. Avoiding the reality of your death is a waste of your life.

I’m finishing up “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl (for the second time but it’s been years since I first read it and I was not nearly in the place I am now to receive the message). As I was reading about the men and women who went bravely into their death in concentration camps (those who went bravely because they knew their lives had meaning so they held their heads high versus those who simply gave up in response to their suffering) I found myself hoping I am not taken suddenly when it’s my time to go. Hoping, as terrible as this may sound, to have the chance to know my death is near rather than being taken out in a firery blaze (note to self: given this desire, ride in the car less with my husband;). Knowing my death is quickly approaching would most certainly mean suffering and as scary as that is, I’d choose that over being gone in a blink.

Today I realized I already do know my death is approaching because I woke up this morning. This came to me while on my morning walk, after talking to my husband about a patient he was called in to help last night. While I was fast asleep, he was working tirelessly to stop the postpartum bleeding of a 19 year old woman. A woman who, although he successfully stopped her bleeding, had already lost so much blood and been given so many transfusions that her new born child will never know her.

I have already been given a diagnosis of death, it was given 49 years ago, on the day I was born. This is why I have a deep desire to fill each day with meaning. Sometimes my meaning comes in the form of laughter; sometimes in the form of sadness like days like today. As long as I have meaning, does it really matter what form it shows up in?

With meaning, we can all walk bravely into the inevitable end of our lives. Start living like you are dying, because you are.

*Disclaimer: writing this didn’t make me die and reading it won’t make you die either. It quite possibly helped both of us live longer, or at least better.

post photo preview
Interested? Want to learn more about the community?
What else you may like…
Videos
Posts
Exclusive Release Daily Truth Inspirational Video

Your happiness is not a gift given to you by others.

00:02:36
April 28, 2022
NEW EPISODE!

Create a mantra for your life. If you aren't writing your story, someone else is writing it for you.

Listen: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/eml-radio-talking-truth/id1498113483?i=1000558947971

00:00:46
April 24, 2022
Daily Truth Exclusive Release!

Today isn't a dress rehearsal.
The latest daily truth inspirational video compilation is here, pre-leased for my peeps on Locals!

Enjoy!

00:06:53
February 13, 2023
LAST CALL! Converting to Substack

Hello my friends!
I'm finishing up the transition away from Locals onto Substack and wanted to be sure each of you have made the necessary adjustments to your accounts. For those of you who have remaining months left on your paid support here, I have comped you the balance over at Substack.
This will be the final week I post content here.
I will resume the live recordings over there, starting with our first call on Friday, March 3rd at 9am/12pm. Invitations to join the Zoom calls will go out on Substack. Mark your calendars!

Also, be sure to download the Substack App! I love the app and find it so helpful in organizing content I want to read later by keeping it on my dashboard.

See you on the other side!
https://eviefatz.substack.com/

January 24, 2023
Get a sneak peek at my book!

One of the biggest challenges in writing my book is not being able to share any of it along the way. Given my narcissistic need for constant approval and attention, not having any feedback is killing me. Even negative attention is better than no attention at all (which explains a lot of my behavior in life), so not only am I missing the praise but I also miss my haters.
I need to break out of this cave. Thanks to Chuck Palahniuk who writes Spoiler Alert on Substack, but you would know as the author of Fight Club, I got the idea to share some excerpts and things that won’t make the final edit. This will give us both what we need. I get some attention and you get some thought provoking words to make you think (and possibly laugh, cry or both.)
Today’s snippet is from the first draft of a chapter titled, Remove Your Kindergarten Name Tag. I am currently on my third revision and we can all be thankful for this. As I walk my readers through the dark hallways of my earliest years, and attempt ...

January 16, 2023
Worth a quick watch

Wanted to pass this short video along. We think of health in very limited ways. Faith, nature, love, communality, shared human experience…all prove to be just as necessary, if not more so, than going to the gym.
I’ve always viewed and taught health from this perspective. It is my belief the lack of these essential elements is as big an issue in our culture as poor diet and lack of movement.
The takeaway-we can do better🙏🏼

See More
Available on mobile and TV devices
google store google store app store app store
google store google store app tv store app tv store amazon store amazon store roku store roku store
Powered by Locals