Learn how to articulate your own legacy with purpose, delight, and joy during this 90-minute workshop designed to help you conduct a life review and start the practice of writing a living obituary.

A living obituary—something you start writing now, at whatever age, and update regularly—can be a guide to identify or change the direction you choose for the rest of your life. It is also an opportunity to write the first draft of how you want to be remembered and to say "Let me tell you about my (mostly) well-lived life" to loved ones and anyone else you want to include in the conversation.

Workshop participants will receive a free copy of Jumpstarting Your Own Legacy: Writing a Living Obituary Now by Paul Mast. This book will be used during the workshop and will be yours to keep.

This event is made possible in part through funding from the Kent County Health Department's FY25 Health Disparities Grant.

Space is limited and registration is required.

Author/Presenter Bio

Paul Mast is an author, retired clergyman, and spiritual director who focuses not on how or when we will die but on how we can enhance our legacy by pondering this question: Knowing you will die, how then will you live the rest of your time on Earth?

In his 2023 book, Jumpstarting Your Own Legacy: Writing a Living Obituary Now, and through interactive workshops, the tool Mast uses to explore this question is the process of writing a Living Obituary—something you start writing now, at whatever age, and update regularly. He points out, “While the subject of the book is about writing our own death notice, the focus is really about persuading us to engage with our death as part of viewing our entire life (that is, our legacy) as a work-in-progress.” Along the way—in stories and examples always touching and often funny about a very serious subject—the author gives a short history and many examples of obituaries, including how the practice started, continues to develop, and has become a way of making profit for the funeral industry, the media, and even professional “obit writers.”