Walk With Me

A number of things collided last month, and by the end of it I heard myself say it out loud: I want to bring the joy back. For those of us who have spent our lives in schools, that joy drives us, but lately it has been hard to hear the soundtrack of laughter and curiosity over the constant hum of risk and anxiety. So I can think of no better way to sing the praises of independent education than to sing it from the mountaintop, or at least from center stage at the Rosemary Heyl Theatre at Carlow University. That’s where the curtain goes up on Schooled: The Musical. Yes,  a musical written by a lifelong educator that shares the joy of impacting a life.  I walked with its creator, Peter Nilsson, to find out how a boarding-school English teacher ended up telling the most honest, hopeful story about school we’ve heard in years.

Liz: So when I grow up, I want to be you.

Peter: Come on.

Liz: I want to be writing and then producing a musical, writing and publishing a book, consulting and writing an amazing newsletter that gives everybody purpose and points them in the direction of what they should read. And I’m only touching on the things I know about you, but doing it with such an attitude of optimism that I wish we could clone you.

Peter: I don’t know if you want a lot of me’s running around. That’s very kind. Just trying to do the things we love, right?

If you do what you love, you will never work a day in your life. I mistakenly called my time leading a school as work. Now that I no longer spend my days surrounded by the joy of young people, I realize I never knew what work as a grind was. I think that is true for all of us who work in schools. Yes, it can be thankless. Yes, it is undervalued. Yes, it is under-compensated. But we change lives and live in the arena of hope for the future everyday. Allow Peter to remind you of your impact.

Peter: Going to a place like Andover was just like a kid in a candy shop. There are so many cool things I could do and be a part of. And I loved that. And I remembered after going to college, music and English double major, I said I’ll work at Middlebury for a year doing music stuff and then I’ll do a teaching fellow year as an English teacher and I’ll see which one I like more. And one year turned into two, turned into three, turned into five at Deerfield. I was really fortunate to land a teaching fellowship there. And what I loved about the work was that at a boarding school was that if you’re in a residential community like that, the school is going to draw on every part of who you are. … as a musician, I was advising a cappella groups, I was writing compositions for student groups, classical compositions. I’m also playing in bands on weekends and having a great time, but I was loving the intellectual life of being a teacher. I was loving the community that I was in.

Liz: But I love that you say that because we often say that in such a negative mindset that when you’re at a boarding school, you’re just asked to do everything. And you flipped it to say it was positive because it tapped into all of your passions.

Peter: Yes, 100%. If you think of this as a job, you’re going to resent it, the way that it sort of creeps into all what you do. But if you think of it as a way of life, then you will find it extraordinarily fulfilling. 

Ah yes – the purpose. I didn’t mention that as one of the profound benefits of teaching. You know your work matters. To be a catalyst for another person to find a passion, to overcome a challenge, to reach higher than expected – most people have to manufacture that in their jobs. Teachers live it.

Peter: The things you mentioned— book, school, the musical, and Educator’s Notebook. So I was at Deerfield for 5 years. Music was getting bigger and bigger and bigger in my life, and I kind of had this moment— it was a gradually accumulating moment where I realized that if I never tried to make music my main thing, I’d always regret it. So 5 years at Deerfield, starting my career at a place where many people finish it. I was also single at a boarding school in western Massachusetts, which is a great formula for being single at a boarding school for the rest of my life.

Liz: Imagine single at a boarding school in Wheeling, West Virginia.

Peter: Yes, fair, understood. So I said, you know what I’ve gotta try the music thing. I’ve got to put myself in a different place and see where it takes me. So I uprooted myself, much to my parents’ chagrin… and moved to New York City to be a musician.

In New York, Peter was picking up experiences throughout the next few years that all lead him to where he and his musical about school are today. 

Peter: I wrote a one-act Hamilton-style musical celebrating and satirizing boarding school.

I wanted it to authentically call out the good things and the bad things.

People often bring pre-conceived notions to what a musical is. From the very beginning, this production has been about telling authentic stories of students, teachers, and school leaders — and their experiences in schools today. Peter tells me it is meant to highlight the personal and professional challenges of being in schools in a time of turmoil, while also being engaging and fun. He staged it as a love letter to Deerfield as he was preparing to leave for a second time.

Peter: So I wrote this musical and put it up in spring of 2019. Total surprise again to the community except for the 25 teachers who were a part of it. And recorded it and we put it up on YouTube afterwards. And what was surprising to me was how it actually changed the lives of people in ways that I didn’t expect. A guy from the class of 1965, over 50 years since he graduated, writes an email to his classmates, and he says, “You know, Deerfield sometimes sends these newsletters. I sometimes open them, sometimes I don’t. I opened this one. There’s a link to a musical and I watched it. I wanted you to see it.” 

I was in a coffee shop a few months later, and this woman comes up and says, “Did you do that musical?” I said, yeah. She said, “I felt comfortable sending my son to boarding school because I saw that.”

I said, what? She said, I just saw the love and the positivity and energy in that room, and I did not know that that’s what it would be like in a place like that. Oh my goodness. What I realized from that was when I was a musician in New York City, I had musicianship, but I didn’t have anything to say. 

And 15 years in boarding schools, I had a lot to say about boarding schools. And I said it in a way that sort of felt like that music class in high school… oh, this is who I am.

Your passion meets your purpose and the energy is magnetic and felt far and wide from a single performance. This was just the beginning.

Peter: I saw a post on LinkedIn asking “Does anybody know any innovative performances in education?” 

So I sent him the musical. This is late August, summer of ’23. He sends me an email back saying, “I love it, let’s chat.” We chat Wednesday, 2 minutes in, he says, “I love your show, can you put it up in New York City in 5 weeks?”

So, I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. First, my show’s about boarding school and you want something about schools generally for your conference, right? He’s like, yeah, yeah, we’ll be at the conference, we’ll be at the New York Times Center, it’ll be blah blah blah, we’ll have all these people there. Um, and I say, second of all, I don’t even know if I can do that. Like, at Deerfield, I can be the composer, director, stage manager, whatever. But this is New York City, right? So give me 2 days. So it’s a Wednesday, so we schedule a call for Friday. I just call everybody I know for 48 hours. And a friend of mine from college is a theater professor at Carnegie Mellon, which has a good musical theater program. Yeah. And it’s like, yeah, we’ll get you some Tisch kids, we’ll get some Carnegie Mellon kids. Like, I think we can probably do this, or you can probably do this. 

Seeds turn up throughout Peter’s story, and if you listen closely, you’ll find one planted in our conversation too. When Peter had just five weeks to put Schooled on a New York stage, one of the first calls he made was to a college friend teaching theater at Carnegie Mellon. When we talked this past February, it seemed like a passing detail. Neither of us knew it was a breadcrumb leading straight to Pittsburgh. On October 18, Schooled takes the stage with a cast from Carnegie Mellon’s celebrated musical theater program, and a conversation between two people who love schools was the moment that seed was planted.

Peter: I learned in New York City you need to first hire a general manager because they’re gonna have contracts, they’re gonna manage contracts, right? And rehearsal spaces and unions and whatever. They’re gonna find you a director through their networks and a casting director. And they’re gonna find you a cast. Takes me 2 weeks to find a general manager. It takes them a week to find a director and a casting director. Takes the casting director a week to find a cast. 

So I have 4 days of rehearsal.

Liz: But you’re not using Carnegie Mellon and Tisch Kids.

He can’t say the names of the performers because of the nature of the contracts, but it was leading performers from leading shows that would knock your socks off, I promise. In the six degrees of Kevin Bacon, we were one step away from the broadway legends.

Liz: Oh my gosh, off the chain amazing.

Peter: It was, it was incredible, and I was in seventh heaven, and I felt so out of my league and so spiritually drunk.

It was absolutely incredible. And the response from the educators in the room was, we’ve never seen school presented like this, where it is authentic to the experience. Like, there’s real kid challenges, right? But it’s joyful, right? It’s good pedagogy even in the classes that are in it. I just felt like we need more narratives like that, that are lifting educators, that are lifting education, especially in a time when schools are, like, quite literally in the crosshairs of culture, right? Um, coming out of the culture wars, coming out of everything that’s been happening recently. And so I said, I need to spend more time on this.

In Schooled, teachers and leaders will see themselves and their students in ways that both bring joy and surface questions about what we do every day. Indeed it deserved more of Peter’s time. There was more story to tell.

Peter: I realized I want to make this into a full-length show to really tell the story of what it’s like to be in schools today in a positive way, not some like Dangerous Minds kind of thing again, or even Abbott Elementary, right? If you watch Abbott Elementary, it’s like Gosh, schools are terrible. Yeah, people in schools are terrible. Schools themselves are terrible. Let’s make it comic and maybe have some empathy for it. But there’s so much joy, there’s so much youth, there’s so much investment, there’s so much care from adults, and there are problems. And the key is not to shy away from those, but the key is also not to paint it as one large failed system, which is the narrative that is told over and over again. 

So I’ve started after New York in ’23, reconceiving the whole story into a full two-act, full-length, 2-hour narrative for a show.

And October 18th will be its premiere.

Peter: I think it kind of comes back to the same mission and goal from when I was a musician in New York City. Like, I want to leave the world better than I found it. I want it to have its best positive impact, whether that means it goes onto Broadway. Yeah. Or whether that means it is licensed to schools and colleges around the country. Wow. Yeah. Or whether that means it becomes part of regional theater houses. I don’t know. 

So I think coming back from that experience was a lesson in like, wait a minute, what’s good for me? Sounds very selfish now when I say it.

Liz: But it’s interesting because even as you said it was selfish. Your being selfish is giving the world Schooled and Irreplaceable and these two things really expand your classroom. And it was only possible because if you want to use your words, you got selfish.

It’s just all those little seed moments that you walk right by and you don’t realize what was planted.

Peter: Yeah, the things we’re pursuing now are like things that were planted decades ago. 

Near the end of our conversation, Peter and I kept returning to the idea of seeds: Andover’s required music class, the college friend teaching theater at Carnegie Mellon, the late-night pianos scattered across a boarding school campus. None of those moments looked like much at the time. That’s the thing about schools. We plant seeds every day and rarely get to see what grows. 

Sometimes, though, we do. A conversation in February becomes a curtain rising in October. So when I said I wanted to bring the joy back, maybe what I really meant was that I wanted to remember where it had been all along: in the work itself, in the kids, in the adults who show up for them. Schooled just happens to set it to music. 

Peter: Look what street we’re on.

Liz: Well, there you go. I mean, There you go. 

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My daughter was four when the first signs of dyslexia appeared. By the end of middle school, I thought she had made it through.

So when she started coming home junior year with stories that made the educator in me sit up straight while the mother in me wanted to look away, I didn’t know which voice to trust. Was someone just asking her to be compliant and she didn’t want to be? Or had she been coping so beautifully for so long that I’d mistaken survival for thriving?

I carried that question along with a dozen others into a walk through downtown Philadelphia with Zaretta Hammond. If you know Zaretta, you know what happened next. If you don’t, let me tell you: she took every one of those questions, turned them sideways, and gave it to me straight… made me think… with no chaser.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I first met Zaretta in a group Zoom call full of innovative educational entrepreneurs. I needed a listener. She needed nothing from me. And yet she pulled our conversation out of that crowded digital room and became a personal advocate, a mentor, and what she would call a thought partner.

Zaretta: I call it thought partnership. We don’t make enough time for that because we live in such a transactional world that the degree to which we don’t see the immediate return from something gets problematic. I would say it is a core value for me.

Liz: There’s grace in what you said. If it’s not transactional, then you don’t have to carry this weight that I owe you.

Zaretta: Absolutely.

Liz: Every conversation that I sit and listen and offer to be a thought partner, I get a gain, too.

Zaretta: That’s right. We all get smarter in the process. But I also think there’s an element of freedom in it. I say my middle name is Straight up, No Chaser, and this brown liquid just might burn your throat going down. So I reserve the right to tell the truth and ‘shame the devil,’ as my grandmother would call it. And I think that is what makes partnership powerful, as someone is willing to tell you what you need to hear because you’ve left yourself open. The intent is to invite them to reframe it.

I used to thank people for asking good questions to clarify my thinking. I would amend that now that I know Zaretta to invite others to ask me real questions to reframe my thinking. Trust me, there are few people better at that than Zaretta Hammond, a best-selling author and a champion for equity, literacy and the science of learning. 

And boy did I have questions for her. Each of the following topics we discussed could be the fodder for a full blog on its own. For instance, after 17 years why is my daughter, who seemed to overcome challenges with dyslexia, once again struggling as a junior in high school? …or… What would it cost independent schools—really cost them—to choose equity? …or …  How do you take care of yourself in your grief?… or … When your son’s teacher insisted he sit in a circle instead of reading, what message did that send?

And she lent her own questions to the conversation: If we stopped talking about management and assessment, what would we talk about instead? … or … What’s the difference between a teacher learning something and a teacher being transformed by it?

Contained in our dialogue is a wealth of insights for any of us in education to glean greater wisdom. If this were a live blog, you could tell me where to start. You could click on the question that invigorates you. Instead, you will have to comment on what seems pertinent to you. Maybe there are multiple blogs that come from this one.  In the meantime,  I will follow my own heart, which will not surprise you, and we will start with my daughter.

Liz: Now, as a junior in high school, she’s coming home and telling me things that the intellectual and the educator knows, ‘Oh, that is a red flag.’ And as a mom, I keep asking myself, ‘Wait, is someone just really asking her to be compliant and she can’t be? Or is there really something going on that started back when she was four and she’s just really done well coping all these years?’ 

Zaretta: You’ve been an observer of that child for a very long time. So what we also know is whatever those coping mechanisms, as the cognitive load gets greater, which it does by junior year, it’s going to then leap forward again in the middle of freshman year. This is why more schizophrenia happens for young adults, because they go to college and they think, ‘Oh, I’ve got this wonderful social life,’ but if they are underprepared for the cognitive load, then it is going to put a stressor on their brain in a way that disrupts. 

Liz: I have never heard it explained that well before. 

Zaretta: The research is really clear.

Liz: I’ve had so many people talk to me about why 25-year-olds have mental health crises, but you just made it really clear.

Zaretta: And what we don’t do is we don’t teach them the craftsmanship of learning… when we’re learning in the wild and it gets to be too much, we go back a step. We sit that down like, ‘Okay, I haven’t understood this. I’m at my point of frustration.’ But we’ve told kids, particularly high-achieving kids, ‘Oh, you can keep taking all the classes.’ The idea of taking less classes means somehow I’m less capable. So we’re selling them this at the expense of their mental and physical health. And they see their peers doing that, and they don’t want to lose a step.

This disconnect between how we naturally learn and the forced conditions of schooling creates an anxiety that lives in a student’s body and mind in ways we can’t always see. I think about the students who can’t sleep, who develop headaches, who sit in class exhausted but keep pushing because slowing down feels like falling behind. What breaks my heart is how they start to override their own internal wisdom—that quiet voice that says “this is too much” gets drowned out by the louder message that more is always better. 

I had to walk out of the Head of School’s office to finally learn that more is nothing but… more.

Taking an advanced class schedule was never a discussed goal in our home. Spending your time to fill all of the blanks on the college application was not a spoken priority. Not for Grace. Not for Ella. But even without that dialogue, the unspoken expectation was there. I have to pause and unwind my own thinking as a parent to learn to reset the mindset. 

There are a lot of common mindsets that Zaretta’s work resets. She urges us to question. Her words compel us to think critically, to challenge the status quo…and when we do that, it can be uncomfortable, but growth and learning often are.

Liz: In the simplest of terms, do you see a way forward for independent education to get it more “right?”

Zaretta: That’s a complicated question. 

Liz: Oh, yes, I know. 

Zaretta: Because the answer requires people to do things that they’re not willing to do. So the path is clear, but it means you’re going to have to change your behaviors. I have continued to work with independent schools all the way up to last year. I have continued to consult, provide professional learning. But the prestige that people think they have because they’re an independent school prevents them from making changes to accommodate the diversity. We’d like to talk about neurodiverse, gender fluidity, and economic diversity, and their accommodations around that. Independent schools still have a long way to go to talk about the racial rebalancing that needs to happen in terms of who can come, who can succeed and how teachers respond to students who are performing the same but happen to have different racial backgrounds. That is different, more complicated, because white progressive educators are not acknowledging what it means to be socialized into whiteness and how that then flows into our systems. It’s complicated.

In all those examples of diversity, it is complicated for teachers and leaders to know what a child is experiencing. I didn’t even know what my own daughter was experiencing.

Zaretta: All brains survey. Meaning you let stimuli in. You have filters for what you don’t pay attention to. For certain people to not pay attention to certain things can be dangerous. Emmett Till. You don’t pay attention to these rules. These rules aren’t designed to keep you in the box. Black people didn’t design those rules. Black people learned. You do these things, white people interpret that and you may lose your life. Same thing with reading. ‘Don’t look like you can’t read that note. You got to keep that under cover.’ 

What Zaretta is naming here is something most of us don’t want to look at directly: we’re all walking around with filters or bias shaped by our lived experience, by what we’ve had to pay attention to in order to be safe, to belong, to survive. Those filters are the architecture of how we make sense of the world. For some students, noticing certain things, reading certain social cues, staying hypervigilant to particular dynamics isn’t optional; it’s survival. For others, those same things can remain invisible their whole lives without consequence. This matters enormously when we think about learning because what we notice, what we filter out, what we believe to be true based on our experience—all of that becomes the foundation, the schema, through which we understand new information. We don’t come to learning as blank slates. We come with these deeply ingrained patterns of what to pay attention to and what we’ve learned it’s safe to ignore. 

If we’re not aware of our own filters, if we’re teaching from our own unexamined schema, we can’t possibly create the conditions where all students can actually learn.

Zaretta: When you understand how the brain learns, culture is called schema. Meaning this is the knowledge tree. All that we’re taking in, we assign it meaning, and we put it in a place. That is what culture is.

Liz: And you don’t learn anything without bringing what you already know to it.

Zaretta: More importantly, all new learning must be coupled with existing learning. So when you want to learn something new, your brain opens up the synapses because you now started thinking about, ‘What do I already know about that? I heard that in a movie.’ You don’t even have to know exact definitions. You now just are making a connection to, ‘I saw that word before.’ Now your brain literally opens up the synapse, and there’s a chemical reaction where it’s ready to receive new information. All new learning must be coupled. It’s not like it’s a nice thing. It’s essential if you want it to be retained and for new meaning and new understanding to develop. So what ends up happening is because we teach without the science of learning, we’re just covering content.

Certainly, content has its place, but “covering content” is not synonymous with learning. 

Zaretta: When I do training, sometimes I start with the game Taboo, one of my favorite games of all time. 

Liz: Me too. I love taboo. Worst buzzer, though. 

Zaretta: It really is. But the reality about Taboo is a fairly cognitively complicated game. And I have people play it and then we break it down. Like, what did you have to do first? You have to access your schema because now it’s telling you, ‘Oh, here’s the word. Oh, what do I know about that?’ Now you have to look at the five words that you cannot say. So you have to go back to your schema, the branches of your knowledge tree, and say, ‘What’s another way? What’s another branch or understanding or set of schemas that actually are about that, right?’ And now, when you’re able to do that, you have to now look at someone else and say, ‘Where is our communal schema, right?’

Liz: Our schemas have to match for me to guess your word?

Zaretta: It doesn’t have to just match. I have to know where our communal schema is. So I actually… this is the responsive part. In order to help you move forward to get unconfused, I have to sync up our schema, but I have to know where to locate us. It’s not your job as a learner. That’s the responsive part. This is where knowing how you make meaning …what’s going to help you break your cognitive log jam. That is the piece people miss about culturally responsive teaching.

Liz: The metaphor you gave me for Taboo works so well for me to see that what I bring to connect new learning isn’t what my student brings to connect new learning.

Zaretta: Well, here’s the thing. I think that is very true, but I don’t think it’s the whole thing, because then you’re going to discount what you bring. Your communal shared schema is why you want to build relationship, because the more we talk, the more we’re going to see that. These are actually things in Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain that I break down that come from other fields. 

We have a tendency to keep thinking this is something unique to education that we have to learn. All humans do this. When you meet somebody on the plane, all that small talk is to figure out where our shared schema is. 

This is what thought partnership looks like when someone is willing to tell you the truth with no chaser. Zaretta doesn’t just hand you frameworks and research—though she does that brilliantly—she hands you a mirror and asks if you’re ready to look at what you’ve been avoiding. She connects the dots between a mother’s worry about her daughter, the architecture of our schools, the filters we carry from our lived experience, and the neural pathways that make learning possible. And she does it with such clarity, such compassion, and such unflinching honesty that you can’t help but be changed by it. 

I walked into our conversation carrying questions about my own child, about the work I’m trying to do at PAIS, about equity in independent education. I walked away understanding that all of those questions are actually the same question: are we willing to teach and lead from an examined communal schema, one that has room for every teacher’s and student’s humanity and every student’s brain? 

Zaretta’s work—her books, her consulting, her willingness to be a friend and advocate—invites us into that reframing again and again…as many times as we need it. And for that gift, I am straight up grateful …beyond measure.

Building on the framework from her bestselling book Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, Zaretta Hammond offers a brain-based approach to strengthening students’ cognitive abilities in Rebuilding Students’ Learning Power.

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I am doing something I never did before. I don’t mean these walks. I mean celebrating the completion of a challenging goal. I am not running past the finish line – panting for what’s next. I am sitting in the glory of setting a goal that only became harder as the weeks wore on and rising to that challenge for no one else than myself… and being willing to do it all with an audience. Three things made it possible. 

1. Luke Hladek as my force multiplier/producer/friend. Hands down – best partner I could ask for.
2. Grace and Ella as my north star. You are your own sentient beings – already more than I could have ever dreamed of being…brave, curious, creative and imperfect…but you still need your mom. These walks became a way of leaving some bread crumbs of wisdom for you. Maybe someday you will listen to them all.
3. Mom and Dad as my quiet muse. I did not set out for you to be part of the walks. How naive. You are part of every breath I take, yet somehow I just kept moving forward when you died. That was wrong. I am glad I finally stopped, so to speak. These walks allowed for the pause to grieve.

I thought one last walk with them might be necessary to complete this transition.

Liz: I remember wondering if I could really take a head of school job with a one-year-old and a kindergartener. And she wasn’t one. She was six months when I was making that decision. And you said to me, “Family dinners can be at the Alpha.” And it just took so much pressure off. Whoever or whatever had instilled in me what good mom, good parenting, good leadership looked like. It didn’t have to look that way. 

The pauses I take … you can almost hear me thinking… and hear so much of what remains unsaid as I come to terms with the fact that my path could be mine. It didn’t have to look like anyone else’s. My mom lived that. I never got the chance to tell her how crazy proud I am that she marched to the beat of her own drummer.

I’m glad you wore a thong on the beach, even though it embarrassed the hell out of me. I’m glad your retirement party was a dunk tank. I’m glad you traveled the world. Literally. I’m glad you went without us. I don’t have to ask, did I make you proud? I know I did. But I don’t think you know how proud you made me.

Virginia Ann Dulany was a breath of unexpected joy and unbridled empathy. Her sage wisdom guided more lives than she will ever know.

I remember telling you that I really wanted to have another baby. And you told me I had to do whatever it takes. And if that meant nine months of bed rest and somebody else taking care of Grace during that time, then that’s what it meant. I couldn’t wrap my head around that. But it was, again, that thing that opened the door and allowed me to fight through some crazy adoption process to get where I was supposed to be… the mother of Grace and Ella. I asked you once to retire  and come take care of Grace so I could go back to work, and you told me you made more money than I did. So I should take care of my baby. I’m really glad you did. 

We shared that – motherhood. I understood her so much better once I had children of my own.

And I think now, as Grace is about to graduate from college, what it must have felt like to see me choose to go back to Wheeling when you had chosen to leave. And you needed to for you. And I’m not sorry. I like the way my life twisted and turned. I like where I am…maybe there’s another reality…there’s a Midnight Library somewhere where I open a book and I make a different choice. And I go to Scarsborough, New York, right out of Princeton, instead of coming back to Wheeling, where I go to the Olympic development training camp one summer instead of coming back to hang out with my high school friends. But I didn’t make those choices. And every choice I made led me to where I am, and where I am is pretty incredible. But there had to be all these silent moments of disappointment that you never opened up to me. You just let me live my life, right up until the end. 

Mom used to say, “There are worse things than being alone.” She said it so often, I didn’t hear it and unpack it until she was gone and I learned to love being alone. And then I heard it differently when I heard Kaci Bolls sing Somebody’s Somethin’ – she sang.

… She’s always been somebody’s something.
She’s been everything but alone.
A daughter, a lover, a wife, and a mother–
She’s lived every life but her own.

I think that is what my mom was teaching me all along – go live my life. I’m doing that now more than ever. It’s awkward. I was used to living every life but my own… putting myself last. After a lifetime of doing that, I can see why my mom would nudge me  “when is it your turn?” 

I carry the very best of you. I know I do. Some of it I’m just learning now. At 58, I listen. I try to get people to center on what’s important. I’m trying to get better at writing handwritten notes… but I know there was pain, and I know you passed some of that down, too. And I know you tried not to. And I know I try not to. And for a little while, I thought my job was just to make sure my kids didn’t have the pain, but that’s not a mother’s job. 

Nor is it a father’s responsibility.

And dad,  It’s taking me 58 years to know that there’s no night in shining armor coming over that hill because you made me feel like you could fix anything. And I think you believed it. And I think all of our frustrations and battles were really about your very deep love and desire to make sure things turned out okay. Control. But you were never in control. But the truth is, you lived your life more fully than the generation before you. It’s okay that living mine more fully than you did. I know how hard you worked to be 10% better, to give me a life 10% better. And I didn’t recognize it. And we laughed at you when you made us look at where the fire exits were or when you worried that the snowstorm was going to come in April. But I do that. I walk into a room and I see all the things that could hurt my kids. But then they’re not toddlers anymore, and the room gets too big and you can’t do it. 

I just need to be there. I understand why dad took every one of my calls no matter what – just like I do now – because the moments when it is palpable that you still matter in the lives of your children are priceless. 

To know we matter. Isn’t that the gift?

Grace said to me the other day, heading out to breakfast. I’m paraphrasing. I wish everybody wasn’t going to know you. She just wanted to have breakfast with her mom. Oh, I get that. You would come home from work, and I would want you to see me, not the people who are coming to run with you or the football players from Linsly that were going to come over and watch the game with you. I just wanted you to see me. But that’s just the selfishness of the moment. It’s just the innocence of questioning for ourselves how much we matter. I knew I mattered to you dad. 

And honestly, you taught me some life lessons in so many ways, but never as well as you taught me on the golf course. Find a little tuft of grass. Put the ball on it. Make the shot just a little easier on yourself. Get your balance. Focus. Keep your eye on the ball. Keep your head down. But just before that, look out at where you want to hit the ball. See your vision. Know where you’re going. Take a breath. Calm. As you pull the club into your backswing …right at the top…pause ever so slightly in a nod to the gods… 

If I could just do that in all my decisions, I think I’d make good ones. Sure, I’m going to hook it. I’m going to hit a worm burner. But I’m going to hit some good shots, too. And I will learn from the ones that don’t go where I want them to. It’s why we chase the little white ball around the course.

I actually play golf with my dad every time I tee off. I don’t know who said golf is a good walk spoiled, but from where I stand today, no walk can be spoiled… not even when playing a shitty round of golf.

Arthur Brooks says, When you’re in transition, you should walk. Best walk I could have imagined. 

And as I walk, I become again the child who never left me… a towhead girl with blonde curls reaching skyward, pumping my legs harder, higher, while a paternal hand guides the swing and a voice sings, Up, up and away in my beautiful balloon… That song lives in my bones. My father wrote it into my origin story, a melody that shaped the architecture of who I would become.

Hearing it again makes me want to dance. And isn’t that exactly what my mother is doing? 

The night she was dying, I saw her in an ephemeral dress. The skirt flowing in circles as she twirled toward a waiting partner. The image was hazy at first, dreamlike—but it sharpened into clarity. There was a line. A receiving line of those who had gone before… Troy, Howard, Darryl, Bill, Jean, Dick, Churchie, Uncle Dave, Uncle John, Uncle Charley … Pop- pop… my dad. They weren’t impatient. Time had no home in this dimension. They were throwing her a welcoming. I walked her as far as I could go …  and that peaceful image is where I go every time I hear…

I’ve been dreaming of friendly faces
I’ve got so much time to kill
Just imagine people laughing
I know some day we will
And even if it’s far away
Get me through another day

Cover me in sunshine

These walks have been my sunshine. They have taught me a few lessons I wish I had learned while my parents were alive: 

• Listen. 
• Be present. 
• Show up … especially when it’s inconvenient. 
• At some point you might be broken open … that discomfort is where growth begins. 

So this is a celebration of the series I set out to do, but it’s not really an ending. It’s a thank you……to everyone who listened…. to Luke… to my girls … to my mom and my dad… and mostly to everyone who walked with me. Thank you for your trust… your openness… your unconditional love…for holding up a mirror for me while I thought I was holding up a mirror for you… for matching my steps and keeping the cadence until I could more clearly see my path. I love you all.

It is also an invitation. An urging. Walk with someone. Ask them about their life. Listen like you’ve never heard anything more important. Tell them what they mean to you… while you still can. Let them see you—really see you—in all your imperfect, glorious humanity. 

Liz: I don’t know what comes of all this. But if I look back at all the times in my life when I didn’t know what comes of all this, it all worked out pretty damn well.

As Jon Hume sings, “Don’t forget where you came from…Don’t forget what you′re made of…” Don’t forget to sing when you win

Thanks for walking with me.

---

There are people who walk into your life like sunlight streaming through a window. They don’t arrive with fanfare. I don’t even remember the moment I met Jeff Greenfield. He simply showed up in my life during Kay Merseth’s class at HGSE —Harvard Graduate School of Education –  radiating this inexplicable warmth that makes everything feel lighter, brighter, more possible. 

This is my very last walk of this series. Jeff is perfect for this moment. Some people are meant to bookend your story— Barb was there at the beginning to nudge me on and Jeff is there at the end to send me off to my next adventure. Together they remind me of all I have learned and all I have to give.

Jeff and I are teachers, school leaders, and occasional goofballs. We both started our educational career in middle school. Do you know middle schoolers? As Wendy Mogel said, “They are the best people on the planet. It is the period of their greatest anguish and ecstasy of life.” And they are good at it. They’re old enough to understand complexity but young enough to believe in magic. That’s this friend. When I’m with Jeff, it’s magic.

Jeff: I mean, you can play any role you want with this on. It’s great. Like secret service. Liberty moving, liberty moving. Do you follow?

Liz: Except their mics are on their wrist. Don’t you always see them?

Jeff: Yeah, they talk into their hand.

Liz: We could do that. You could be the first person who puts his mic on his wrist and has to- 

Jeff: ..walk around like this for that for a while? Na

Liz: So this is it.

Jeff: Oh, are you getting sentimental?

Liz: I am a little sentimental. And I’ve been thinking about the fact that if I make a big deal that I chose you to be the last walk, does that offend 49 other people?

Jeff: I’ll keep it a secret.

Liz: Yeah, except I just said it on the mic.

Jeff: Well, only Luke will know.

Liz: I wanted to walk with you because every time I see you, you make my heart sing. I feel like a kid all over again when I see you. And I wouldn’t do all those silly things with just everybody.

Jeff: Is that because I just pull you down to my level of emotional maturity?

That of a middle schooler, no doubt.

Jeff: I didn’t have the right certification and no teaching experience, it was a bit of a risk for the school to hire me on as a middle school teacher. And they were worried about my expertise in subject area, which, frankly, so was I. I was like, now, what is that slide rule thing again?

Liz: You were hired as a math teacher?

Jeff: I was, which is a little frightening. But the thing that I always just love so much about that age is that they really become what you expect of them. So if you talk to them like the young adults they want to be, then you really get the best out of them. And if you don’t think they’re capable of much beyond what they are in that moment, then that’s what you’re going to get. 

There is so much wisdom there. Every parent and teacher of a middle schooler should have to repeat those words as a mantra…daily. They really become what you expect of them.

Jeff: What I didn’t anticipate was how much education parents needed, which I should have. I mean, I knew I’d be working a lot with adults in my role as a middle school director, which I wanted to do. I love the idea of working with both kids and people who love kids. I didn’t want to teach the same thing all day, just to kids, but got really fired up about the idea of a teaming model and everybody pulling in the same direction, even if they have different ideas about what’s best for a child. But it’s parents … It’s not so much that they’re hard. I mean, everything is hard from time to time. The best stuff is always the hard stuff at some level. But it was more a matter of them just… It’s just funny, even the smartest, most common sense people, when it’s their kid involved, they just can’t… I mean, I’m sure the same is true for me. You just can’t see it the way sometimes your kid really needs you to. So setting up education for families and trying to stay ahead of the thing that they were going to fear next. 

You see… I’m tempted to just let this entire walk be nothing but the raw audio from our walk. It is a natural conversation between two people who fit that category of “people who love kids.” But I have to highlight some of the good stuff. Reiterate it for emphasis. In school leadership, parents can be hard. This is true because they love their children so fiercely …and because they are afraid. Love and fear are not opposites—they’re partners. Jeff says it was his job to “stay ahead of the thing that they were going to fear next.” What brilliance in that simple statement. Instead of waiting for parents to bring their fears to him wrapped in anger or accusation, he anticipated their worries and addressed them proactively. He understood that fear from a parent’s perspective. As parents, we send our most precious cargo into these buildings every day and trust strangers to care for them, teach them, challenge them. We drop them off at car line with backpacks that are too heavy and hearts that are too tender, and we drive away hoping—no praying—that today will be a good day. That someone will notice if they’re sad. That someone will celebrate when they finally understand fractions. Just love them.

When love meets love, fear has nowhere to weaponize.  Rose Helm shared the same idea.

Rose Helm: …when we see parents who are manifesting crazy…I like to say it’s actually rooted in fear…which is actually rooted in love. And if we can meet them in the love place… We can bring the crazy level down.

It is as if they were all talking to one another. Jeff agrees, “Everything about good education is personal. You just can’t have a great school without meaningful and strong relationships all around, starting with the adults in the building.”

Jeff: The blessing and the curse of being a school person. That the best learning happens in relationships. The deep joy comes from… You have to be there. COVID and all this virtual learning has taught us so much because especially for younger kids, it’s so dependent on… You got to have 20 kids or 15, whatever, in a room with a caring adult. That also means that the head of school or the division head has to have their ass in building, too. 

I’d like to do the math of the collective wisdom of the school leaders with whom I have walked. I know there is well over 100 years of experience of creating positive cultures with meaningful relationships… the joy of being there… being present for all of the best people on the planet. 

Jeff: It’s just the fact that you accumulate so much knowledge, whether you mean to or not, when you’re at something a long time and you make a lot of mistakes and you learn from them. And I’d love to be able to put that to use in some way. While I’m thinking about ways to make best use of what I’ve learned to help others or help a school community, I also have learned how important it is to keep learning. After I retired, I started woodworking. It was just liberating to not have to be right, to not have to do things perfectly. And I mean, I realized, of course, that’s the pressure I put on myself. But it just struck me when I was really starting from scratch on something that has a steep learning curve.

Liz: You really do have to humble yourself to learn something new.

Jeff: Yeah, especially something like that. I just hadn’t… So often you have skills that transfer from something else that you’ve done. Oh, my God. Nothing. Transferred. You pick up these tools, and I don’t even know what it is. So you have to be willing to start at the beginning… the excitement of learning something that’s brand new.

And I’m realizing, too, these are not linear things. These are not either ors. You could come there to be the best school administrator you could be, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t pick up these interests and these values along the way. …Life is just so much more nuanced than we, and I especially, tend to give it credit for.

Maybe the boards of our schools should require us as school leaders to learn – not through a professional development budget that sends us to conferences – to humble ourselves to learn something brand new. Embody the child who slides into a seat in a classroom every day. Develop that empathy muscle – that authenticity of making mistakes without wearing a mask of perfection. When you have worn the armor of “getting it right” for so long, it is hard to take it off. We may need to practice more often. I have mentioned before that we spend a lot of time on the launch of emerging leaders and zero time on the landing. What if transitions during leadership succession were more about the people than the position? What if we cared about the wellbeing of the outgoing leader as much as we care about the support of the new hire?

Jeff: My first two years, after I left USN, I felt like I was… It just… I mean, I would wake up constantly in the middle of some dream that was exactly what my job used to be. And that still happens today, but not with the same frequency.

Liz: What are you doing? Crossing guard or fighting with a teacher?

Jeff: It wasn’t always bad.

Liz: Oh, some of the dreams are good.

Jeff: Yeah, but they’re still so… Just my entire being was so entrenched in that role, in that identity. I’d think in the middle of the day when I was awake, would I be in a seventh grade… It’s Thursday at a quarter of two. I’d probably in a seventh grade team meeting right now. And I know that’s pretty typical. But after 20 months, and I’m still thinking that way, I thought, oh, my gosh, is this a forever thing? But surely there’s more to me than that. How do I clear my head? 

Liz: So how did you clear your head?

Jeff: I just lived a little further into it, I guess. I mean, it still happens, and it probably always will, but I don’t feel controlled by it like I did before, where I’d be. I just thought, my God, if I’m going to think about this so much, why don’t I at least go into school and make some money? It’s going to be on my mind anyway. And now that I’m getting a little more distance, I’m just thinking… the big things on my calendar in the coming weeks have nothing to do with Parents Night and Alumni events and whatever. It was about something fun for me or a trip with Carolyn or seeing the kids… So that’s refreshing.

Liz: You and Carolyn really hit a nerve when you said, ‘Why do we have to wait until we’re older to do the things we want to do?’ 

Jeff: I’m going to be 60 in a few months. And these are supposed to be the go-go years before you get to the slow-go years. And then eventually, the no-go years. But that shit can… I mean, you don’t know.

Liz: That shit can change on a dime.

Jeff: It can.

So many walks have included the line, “Life is fragile.” We do not know what tomorrow holds. So what are you going to do with today? With this moment?

Liz: I think we should turn around. 

Jeff: Is this not…

Liz: You don’t think we can go that way? You think there’s a path over there?

Jeff: I don’t know. Does it look like there’s a sidewalk?

Liz: A sidewalk. hmph

Jeff: Does it look like there’s a path over there?

Liz: Maybe

Jeff: Because if we can stay along there, I have a feeling that’s where we want to be, right?

Liz: Yeah. Oh, wow. Look, and then you get yourself lost, and then you find this amazing vista.  Your call… So that’s what scares me, is they can’t…

Jeff: All right, let’s go back.

Are we talking about our walk or our life decisions once we step out of a school? Either situation fits the dialogue.

Liz: I always used to say the school would be okay if I get hit by a bus, but I don’t think that’s how the walk should end.

Jeff: No, really. It was going to be her last walk anyway.

Speaking of walks…

Jeff: It’s funny we’re walking because one year somebody else, I can’t even remember what it was, but I heard somebody talking about … the walk and talk. And so I had goals meetings in the fall with faculty, and they were all going to be walk and talks. And it was great because we could do this loop around Peabody, and it was a 25 minute thing.

… I’ll never know the road not taken, but it sure seemed like they were speaking a little more from the heart, a little less guarded, maybe because they didn’t have to sit in an office and look their supervisor in the eye.

Liz: That’s part of the goal right now. You and I are not looking at each other.

Jeff: I’m sure it is. And I look back and I’m like, why did it take me 20 whatever years to realize they don’t have to sit in a fucking office to have conversations that probably aren’t going to be even as good? But now there’s some meetings that need to happen there, but most of them probably don’t.

Liz: You’re not going to counsel a family out of your school on a walk and talk. Although maybe it would have been beneficial.

Jeff: These walks are different. 

Liz: Yeah Oh.

Jeff: Very different. 

Liz: Very different. And I didn’t give myself credit that this really was an occupation for the past year. But I never felt like I was working.

Jeff: That’s great. 

I lose myself when I write these blogs. Every. Time. A man sitting next to me on the plane commented that he didn’t want to interrupt me. He had never seen anyone so invested in what they were doing. I hadn’t even said hello to him in what turned out to be a five hour flight. I wasn’t in seat 12C. I was walking through Central Park in my mind. I was immersed in getting Kermit’s story out of my head and onto the page…more gift… than work.

Jeff: Do you have another project bubbling in your mind? This has really inspired you or fueled you.

Liz: Sure. I have… That’s the one thing about doing Edge, is it unlocked the little piece of me that says, oh, you don’t just have to ask what if, you can try it. Hit that entrepreneurial go button. So I don’t know that I want to be a founder of a software company, but I certainly am not going to take the status quo. And I like the fact that I interviewed and presented authentically for this new position. So there’s no façade.

Jeff: Yeah, you’ve said that before. And that’s surprising because I think of you as one of the most authentic people I know. Have you felt pressure in the past to not do that?

Liz: Oh, I completely lost myself as a head of school. 

But not this time. Not for PAIS.

Liz: …because I was with you, there was not a single moment that I worried about what somebody was going to think of the Executive Director of an Association being dragged along in a radio flyer.

Jeff: In a radio. I forgot that’s who they were called. That’s awesome.

Liz: But that’s because I was with you.

Jeff: Well, you’re sweet. Well, we go way back. That’s for sure.

Liz: Yeah.

Jeff: It just always felt like there’s just no pretense.

Liz: I’m not sad that this is The Last Walk. Luke will say of Chapter One, who knows what Chapter Two is going to look like.. Because without knowing it, and I know that you love me, but you haven’t listened to a single walk. That’s okay.  You have actually brought up almost everything that all these walks have been about. Completely unintentionally, and I didn’t direct the conversation. I feel like you grabbed a sound bite from almost every single walk.

55 walks. One year of my life. Eric, Luke and I determined it takes almost ten hours for each walk. 33,000 minutes. More if you count the hours I spend thinking about each walk when I am not writing. And I would not have wanted to spend my time any other way. What do you want to do? They asked. I want to walk with people who want to help me figure that out, I said. I could not be more grateful. This amount of love is actually immeasurable.

Liz: Thanks, buddy. 

Jeff: I love you. 

Liz: I love you, too. 

Jeff: That was good.

Liz: It was good. 

Jeff: I’m honored to be 

Liz: My Last

Jeff: …the temporary last one. 

Liz: That’s it.

I started walking because I had left the job that had defined me for years, lost both of my parents within a crushing span of time, and woke up one morning not knowing who Liz Hofreuter was if she wasn’t a Head of School, wasn’t someone’s daughter, wasn’t moving through her days with the certainty of purpose. I found that I am still a learner, still curious, still willing to not know. I found that I am still a teacher who believes every single child… and adult… deserves to feel seen and celebrated and safe. 

What I hope you learned… when you lose your way—and you will, we all do—find someone to walk with…and laugh. God, please laugh as much as you can. Let it transport you. Let it heal you. Let it remind you that joy is transformational and connection is everything.

Because here’s what I know for certain after fifty-five walks: We are not meant to do this alone. We are meant to walk together, to lean on each other, to hold space for each other’s joy and grief and questions and blunders. As Parker put it so well, we need to leave room for wonder.

We are meant to be each other’s sunshine.

---

TROY: Death ain’t nothing. I done seen him. Done wrassled with him. You can’t tell me nothing about death. Death ain’t nothing but a fastball on the outside corner. And you know what I’ll do to that! Lookee here, Bono… am I lying? You get one of them fastballs, about waist high, over the outside corner of the plate where you can get the meat of the bat on it… and good god! You can kiss it goodbye. Now, am I lying? If I’m lying… that 450 feet worth of lying!

Death ain’t nothing to play with. And I know he’s gonna get me. I know I got to join his army… his camp followers. But as long as I keep my strength and see him coming… as long as I keep up my vigilance… he’s gonna have to fight to get me. I ain’t going easy.

Such is the literary description of death as masterfully crafted by August Wilson in the play, Fences. Death is to be wrestled with. It is a fight. Indeed, we often read that one lost a courageous battle to death. 

At the end of Act Two, Troy assumes a batting stance, and starts to taunt  Death, “Come on! It’s between you and me now! Come on! Anytime you want . . . but I ain’t gonna be easy.” The actor stands alone on stage, the lights go down, and the scene ends. I have never sat in the audience witnessing the theatrics of this play out on the stage. I have only taught this play to my English students decades ago. I can only imagine the emotion that Denzel Washington could stir in his audience. The heartbreak for this man whom you have grown to love from the third row, fourth seat from the right. When the lights once again come up, Troy is dead. Opportunities are missed. 

August Wilson’s genius lies in showing us that our mortality gives weight to our choices. Every conversation matters because the number of them is finite. Every relationship shapes the future because our time to influence it is limited.

I have often said I didn’t know it was my last conversation with my mom or my dad. My last chance to say I love you or to hear them say it.  What I did know was that the last chance was approaching. Life and literature had taught me to brace myself against death. Life was to be extended as if hours clocked was the metric that mattered most. I watched my father lean into his prescribed medical thinking to extend his wife’s life. I witnessed his frustration then anger as he could not save her… or should I say fix her… or maybe keep her with him. As his hours unexpectedly waned, I did not have the medical background to know how to extend his time or to improve the quality of his life remaining. I turned to a friend from graduate school, William Peters, Bill, as I knew him, who had developed a template for a peaceful crossing from life into death for us both.

Liz: I started to say to you the other day … I think I lose my mind as my dad was dying if I didn’t have you on speed dial. I had very little understanding of how to come to the end of his life and be the main person there. I wasn’t at all prepared. I didn’t feel like I had treated him well as my stepmother was dying. I mean, I would have been a mess. And you, that’s why I called … I had to get the words right. You helped me so much just taking all the nonsense away and literally telling me what to do.

William: I remember. The truth of the matter is I have been so involved with studying and being present to many hundreds and hundreds of deaths. And probably the most important thing that was shocking to me about this was how little people actually know about what happens at the end of life… you have super smart people like you who have an aging parent…

…and all we know is the unwelcome nature of death. The language we use betrays us: we “fight” cancer, we “battle” illness, we “lose” to disease. 

William: You have a medical model who sees death as a failure, and they want no part of that. They are committed at all costs to keeping people alive, even when they know that the quality of life is awful.

Liz: You also… You just called death a failure, but recently in a conversation, you said we have this cultural norm that you fight death.

William: Exactly.

Liz: And that’s wrong, too.

William: That’s wrong, too. I mean, dare say I, because I haven’t, fortunately, at this point, faced my own death. But everything I know about myself is that it is going to be something like this… Well, I have this diagnosis, and I have these choices. And what is the best thing to do here might be that doing a medical intervention is the right thing to do. But as I say that, what really goes through my mind is really very little about me. It’s really about who are the people in my life who need me? Because for me, death is no big deal. I mean, it’s just to transition into another state of being. But for my daughter, for my mother, for my partner, for some good friends, I have to take that into consideration and want to take that into consideration. But I don’t have a personal… How would you say this? Imperative to stay alive. Or even to see my grandchildren. I don’t have that. That, to me, is not… That may not be my destiny. But I do have what I would call a relational imperative to check in with and dialog with my loved ones, honestly, about my situation and make a familial communal decision about what is best for all involved here.

William Peters’ work with the Shared Crossing Project encourages a conscious, connected, and loving experience shared between the dying and their loved ones. Where August Wilson gave us a frantic last stand, alone and without family, Peters’ research reveals something closer to a gentle crossing over, often filled with unexpected calm, bliss, and joy. The three essential expressions he advocates—”Thank you, I love you, Goodbye” as I shared in an earlier walk, allow us to open our hearts for one final act different from the fate that awaited Troy.

Liz: So how did you create the Thank you. I love you. Goodbye. How did you create that? Because if someone else doesn’t have the gift of knowing you or of being part of the work that you’ve done, it’s still so simple that anybody could do it. 

William: So for me, when I first got into this, the work with the shared death experience, my aspiration was, well, I know that if people knew this experience was possible, they’d want to say, how can I have it with my loved ones? So I started developing methods to enable the shared death experience, because in my mind, it was the best death possible. You have a shared death experience. You realize that your now departed loved one is alive and well. They’re happy. They’re experiencing joy. Joy and love. They’re reunited with previously deceased relatives. You have a sense you’ll see them again. So this feels like more of a vacation, if you will. A time apart is temporary, not permanent. You have no question about whether they’re alive or nonexistent. You know they’re alive, and your grief is much better. So your grief is just contextualized in the understanding that death is a natural part of life, but you’ll see your loved ones again. So my goal was to give this to people. The truth of the matter is I didn’t even have to think about it. All of a sudden, it just became three things right away. First was to affirm these experiences. You first have to convince people that the shared death experience and other spiritual end-of-life experiences are normal. They happen with great frequency, and you can anticipate that you’ll have those if you are open-minded, if you’re more accepting of death as a natural human process. The second thing that came into my mind is we have to deal with our unfinished business. So you have to really deal with any sense of relational dissonance, acrimony. Those are emotional blocks that will prohibit the SDE. And I learned that, you’ve got to help people die.

Liz: I think those emotional blocks are where this element of fighting death comes from, because even the person that’s dying, they have unfinished business. 

William: Correct. In a certain way, some people could say, well, I have more to do here. And that could be unfinished business. But that’s also a misunderstanding that at some point we have to die. And your list is less important than your natural life expectancy. Once you realize that you’re not in control of that, then there’s a real freedom. But for some people, it’s a real frustration, something they resist. Like, I don’t want to die now. But that’s also a cultural piece of the Western mind, which is diluted into this notion of rugged individualism and self-determinism.

… to answer your question, specifically, the thank you, I love you, goodbye, is the last step in dealing with unfinished business before you start doing the choreographed guided visualization. That’s the step of saying, Hey, I know you’re going to die, or, Hey, you know I’m going to die. I want you to listen very closely to me. I want to thank you for having shared this life with me. I want to tell you that I love you, and I’ve cherished most moments with you and any tension, disagreements, misgivings, regrets that I have for us, for you, for me. I now forgive myself and you of any of that. I absolve us from our relationship, of any of that. And that we are now free to accept one another 100 %. And with that, I want to let you know that I have no illusions that I am not going to be dying soon or that you’re not going to be dying soon.

So I want to say thank you and goodbye. And now that goodbye, I don’t want to miss the opportunity to say goodbye. I hope that we have more time together. But I want you to know as I look at you, our end is near. And so there’s a really beautiful way of just stepping into that. And so doing that, that opens us up to the next and final step is, how do you prepare for the greatest transition in a human life outside of or equal to birth coming in. So that’s how I came to all that.

This gentler notion of death has its roots in William’s own life.

William: My grandmother was dying and when I was with her, I realized she was having these conversations with people, and they felt real to me. And I’m like, ‘What the hell is this?’ And I started getting interested in what is happening at the end of a human life. I had already had two near-death experiences, one when I broke my back on a ski slope, and a second one when I had a rare blood disease, idiopathic thrombocytopenia, where I was drowning in my own  blood, and so I had an out-of-body experience.

While I was watching my grandmother, I was like, ‘She’s both here and somewhere else.’ And that was very interesting to me. And she was having conversations with what I would call a being from another dimension. I couldn’t see this person. Maybe this person was in this dimension. I couldn’t break through to even get to my grandmother. I walked in, she didn’t even know I was there. So with that, I got interested in the end of life.

I decided to join Zen Hospice in San Francisco. And when I did that, here I am sitting at the bedside of many, many people dying, 24-bed, open ward hospice, public hospice, county run. So indigent people with nowhere to go. And we get the opportunity to sit with these people at the end of life because no one else is there for them. Think homeless people, what have you. So I start having these experiences where I’m sitting with somebody, and all of a sudden, I’m out of my body, looking down at them and my body, and the whole shape and dimension of the room is completely different. I’m in a different dimension. And I’m like, this is really interesting. Well, It’s interesting in and of itself, but it’s also like, hey, wait a minute. I’ve been here before in my two previous NDEs, and this is really interesting. And why isn’t anybody talking about this? So this began a very deep exploration of what really is death and dying, what does happen to us. But it took a while because I was reticent to go off in this direction because it’s pretty extreme. 

Talking with Bill had me thinking about death from a new perspective. One my father didn’t have. As a doctor, death must have felt like the ultimate professional contradiction. He spent years learning to read vital signs as data points—when blood pressure drops, you give pressors; when the heart stops, you start compressions. My step-mother’s death must have been not just a medical failure but a personal one, the moment when all his knowledge and skill proved insufficient. What pain that must have been for him. I am rethinking our final weeks together.

My mother, on the other hand, spent the last decades of her medical career bearing witness to many deaths. Perhaps she understood better than anyone the strange mercy in knowing when to step back from the machines and medications, when to shift from curing to comforting. 

Liz: I think my mom had done her own training throughout her medical career once she left my dad and was working at that state hospital where no one got discharged. Every single patient died because it was major head trauma or end of life or dementia. And what she was so good at was helping the families accept it. And I think it’s a shame that she never got to talk to you about her work as a physician doing that, because I think she would have had a great deal of wisdom.

William: Yeah. Well, your mom sounds like she was one of those angels in the system who had found her place where she was more than her role.

Liz: …she was throughout her career. My dad would be furious with her because she would spend so long talking to the patient and asking the patient questions. She wouldn’t see as many patients in a given day as he had created the business model for them to see.

William: Well, and there you see it. When medicine is a business model, I think you’re at odds with humanity. And then, of course, then again, maybe it’s not on medical doctors to do the rest of that. Maybe the best use of them is to use their training and just do the diagnosis and treatment models and offer them that, but then get out of the way and let someone else engage them in their choices. If that’s the case, I’m perfectly fine with it. 

Liz: As you’re talking, I’m thinking about metrics and how this cancer center tells you working with us gives you five extra years of life. Well, if that’s your metric, that’s great. But is your metric how much quality of life you had in those five years and how peaceful the end was?

William: I always say two years of fun and enjoyment to each other with a swifter, nonmedicalized death is better than five years, of which five of that is on medication, and throwing up, and sweating, and losing hair, and aches and pains… a lot of the dying will say, I don’t want to do this to my partner.

Liz: My mom said all the time, I don’t want to be a burden.

William: Exactly. And that’s not an unhealthy response. Sometimes it can be a little bit based on shame of not feeling they’re worthy of care. But a lot of times it’s just like, yeah, I’ve lived a full life. And I don’t want it to be a burden to my family who’s got bigger fish to fry than taking care of somebody who’s lived their life. Go hang out with the grandchildren and know that I love you and support you. And we’ll be cheering for you from the other side. Let’s do a hug and a kiss. And I love you and thank you. And you go live your life fully and don’t stay a day longer than you have to.

Liz: My mom was ready to die. She would say, the Lord will take me when He’s ready. I knew that, and she said that a lot. And I know in the quiet of her place, she had to pray. Aren’t you ready yet?  And yet it was very difficult to administer morphine at the end of her life.

William: Well, this is a very sensitive area in end-of-life care. 

Liz: I feel like I killed her.

William: So there it is, right there. Terminal sedation is one of those things that happens quite regularly… I always say, treat the pain. And if you end up sedating them so much that it hastens death, then you need to understand that that’s compassionate care. If death comes, death comes. A lot of people come into my office feeling guilty, ashamed, like they did it wrong. And my job in those situations is, “Yeah, I see how you struggled with this. And you did the right thing. You did the right thing.”

Liz: We just all want somebody to tell us we did okay.

William: Exactly. 

Liz: There was a point, and I think even you were surprised how quickly I was calling you because my mom was dying soon after my dad died. And you said, What’s going on? And I told you what was going on. And in the tone of voice that only you can have, you said, ‘Oh, yes, she’s dying.’ And I told you she had just said to me, ‘Elizabeth, everyone will know your name.’ And I had said back to her, ‘That’s because you’re my mama.’ And you said, ‘No, she is trying to give you a gift. You have to accept it.’ And I was so glad you said that to me. 

When my dad died early, early, early on a Sunday morning, and I left Saturday morning when the caregivers got there. I’d spent the night, and I went to his bedside, and he said, Am I dead? And I said, Dad, I know I have the face of an angel, but no, This is not heaven. You are not dead. And he chuckled, and I chuckled. And I went into the kitchen to do the thing you do. Here’s the last time he had his meds. Here’s where we are, all those things. And because he and I had just had this exchange, I expected to come back later that day to still have my father. As I was getting ready to go, with as much strength as I’d seen him have in months, he screamed, Elizabeth, I love you. And I didn’t go back to him. I screamed it right back. I love you, too, dad.

When I got back, he no longer was communicative. 

William: Unresponsive.

Liz: Completely unresponsive. And that night, I was changing his diaper. I was using the glycerin lollipops to moisten his mouth. And he willed his death quickly in my mind because there was no way that was the relationship he wanted with me. You had told me about soft lighting and good music. And I sat down on that bed next to him, and turned the lights down. And I played the music that I played when my son died. And I wouldn’t have done that if you hadn’t told me to. 

Bill walked me through my parents’ deaths. I cannot think of a more profound gift.

William: People say, oh, my God, you’ve made such a contribution. I mean, we go to these conferences and there’s hundreds of people after we give a talk. It’s even sometimes hard for me to take it in because I do what I do because this is what I’m called to do. But when someone comes to you and says, you, your book changed my life. Your talk made all the difference in the death with my mom. And we hear this all the time. I’m grateful that my life has had that effect on people. And at the same time, I say, it’s not really my business. I did what I came here to do. And I think I just followed the breadcrumbs and made the best … I mean, look it. I made the best of it. But I think it’s really important to note that I would be not authentic if I said this was the life I wanted, I planned, I worked hard, I manifested. None of that is true. This was the life that was the process of taking the best available option, knowing what my knowledge base was, knowing what my gifts were, knowing what I was capable of doing. And yeah, I definitely work hard. I was going to work hard no matter what. That’s just who I am. I work hard. But like I said. I don’t know. I just did what I could do.

That’s all any of us can do.

Standing alone on that stage production of Fences, taunting death with his baseball metaphors, the character of Troy embodied everything our culture teaches us about how to face the end. Fight hard. Go down swinging. What if, rather than seeing death as the pitcher trying to strike him out, he had recognized his family as the teammates ready to walk him home? Troy’s defiance, though dramatically compelling, left him alone under those stage lights—isolated in his struggle, cut off from the very connections that might have made his crossing something shared rather than solitary. And for those who’ve never sat vigil in those quiet hours, trust me, it’s there, in the dim light of 3 AM when the rest of the world sleeps, that you discover death isn’t a violent intruder we’ve been taught to expect. Instead, you find yourself not in the audience but in a supporting role for one final act of profound connection.

Thank you. 

I love you. 

Good bye.

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