A compassionate, clear-eyed companion for navigating life’s final chapter with purpose and peace.
A comprehensive workbook for approaching the end of life with clarity, love, and grace.
Belul approaches a universal yet often-avoided subject with tenderness and practicality. This heartfelt guide serves as both workbook and reflection journal, guiding readers through the logistical, emotional, and spiritual preparations surrounding death. Divided into eight themed sections, the book begins by helping readers frame their “legacy of love,” emphasizing that planning for death will provide “friends and family great solace in the midst of their grief.” Subsequent chapters cover the essentials, offering guiding questions, free resources, and forms for medical directives, financial and legal arrangements, household continuity, and comfort measures during illness. The author’s compassionate tone and structured checklists make difficult tasks feel manageable, transforming bureaucratic duties into acts of care. Belul suggests making a “go bag” filled with comforts for unexpected trips to the hospital or hospice and holding a celebration of life while you can still enjoy it; a chapter on decluttering and memory-keeping reframes organization as emotional generosity, a way of easing the burden on loved ones while celebrating a life well lived. Belul also encourages creativity and personal expression in end-of-life choices. Her inclusion of unconventional ideas—such as eco-friendly burial options like the mushroom suit or combining cremains with redwood trees—characterizes her open-minded, life-affirming approach. The final section, “There’s Still Time,” reminds readers that preparation isn’t just about closure; it’s about living fully while we can. Though the topic is heavy, the author’s gentle guidance and practical tools offer comfort. The worksheets are comprehensive, the resources reliable, and the tone imbued with warmth and empathy. Belul normalizes what most avoid discussing, transforming the process of dying into an extension of mindful living. The guide also acknowledges readers without close family or partners, offering specific resources for facing illness and death with dignity and support. Thoughtful and necessary, this book helps readers prepare for one of life’s hardest transitions while giving those left behind a meaningful roadmap.
A compassionate, clear-eyed companion for navigating life’s final chapter with purpose and peace.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781684816996
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Books That Save Lives
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.
The late actor offers a gentle guide for living with more purpose, love, and joy.
Mixing poetry, prescriptive challenges, and elements of memoir, Heche (1969-2022) delivers a narrative that is more encouraging workbook than life story. The author wants to share what she has discovered over the course of a life filled with abuse, advocacy, and uncanny turning points. Her greatest discovery? Love. “Open yourself up to love and transform kindness from a feeling you extend to those around you to actions that you perform for them,” she writes. “Only by caring can we open ourselves up to the universe, and only by opening up to the universe can we fully experience all the wonders that it holds, the greatest of which is love.” Throughout the occasionally overwrought text, Heche is heavy on the concept of care. She wants us to experience joy as she does, and she provides a road map for how to get there. Instead of slinking away from Hollywood and the ridicule that she endured there, Heche found the good and hung on, with Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford starring as particularly shining knights in her story. Some readers may dismiss this material as vapid Hollywood stuff, but Heche’s perspective is an empathetic blend of Buddhism (minimize suffering), dialectical behavioral therapy (tolerating distress), Christianity (do unto others), and pre-Socratic philosophy (sufficient reason). “You’re not out to change the whole world, but to increase the levels of love and kindness in the world, drop by drop,” she writes. “Over time, these actions wear away the coldness, hate, and indifference around us as surely as water slowly wearing away stone.” Readers grieving her loss will take solace knowing that she lived her love-filled life on her own terms. Heche’s business and podcast partner, Heather Duffy, writes the epilogue, closing the book on a life well lived.
A sweet final word from an actor who leaves a legacy of compassion and kindness.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781627783316
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Viva Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
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