Dr. Weymouth researches and writes about people’s experiences of going through the death of a loved one; the grief process and ways to help move through it, including the grief of losing people who are public figures or the grief of loss from mass events; the role of alternative and complementary methods in conjunction with standard medical practice to ease pain and anxiety and experience a more peaceful death; and the important personal and legal things that people need to know to prepare for death and it’s aftereffects.
We often hear that people don’t want to talk about death, but Dr. Weymouth has found that people are actually eager to talk about it, they just don’t want to talk about their own death. With very few exceptions everyone has a story that they want to tell; it’s as if a reservoir of memories, emotions, and events have been stored inside just waiting to come out. There are many reasons why someone may not want to talk about a death; it may be too soon and the emotions are too raw, for example, but the primary reason is that in our culture, with our attitudes toward loss, death, and grieving, we are not given permission to talk about it at any length or in any depth except in grief groups. Finding a safe person to talk to, and a safe place to express yourself are important in the healing process.
A few years after her father’s death, Dr. Weymouth was inspired to begin the work of research and writing about death experiences. She had many questions that seldom appear in the literature on death, and what really happens when someone is going through their final months, weeks, days and hours is never known except to the people closest to that person. Obituaries may give either a brief or a detailed look into the person’s education, work history, membership in organizations, and family constellation, but never even hint at what really happened behind the scenes, so to speak. Cause of death is seldom reported and the “he (or she) died peacefully with their loving family by their side” is what the reader hopes is true but often is not. Her first book, What Obituaries Don’t Tell You: Conversations About Life and Death is a compilation of thirty-five interviews in which you get that very personal, private, behind-the-scenes look at the terminal illness and death experiences for the patient, family, friends, and professionals. This book led her to write the workbook A Way Through: Healing From Loss, followed by the book The Gift of a Peaceful Death which tells the reader about complementary and alternative medicine practices that can be used to reduce the pain, anxiety, and restlessness experienced during a terminal illness and during the death process to make it easier and more peaceful for the patient, friends, and family. Her fourth book, If You Love Me You Will Talk to Me About Dying is a discussion of the five most important things that people need to know about dying and death, plus a list of topics to discuss with loved ones so that you will be as prepared as possible when the time comes.
Δ
Dr. Weymouth lives in Portland, Oregon where she has a private counseling and healing practice. She is the mother of two sons and grandmother of two grandsons. She joined a local Toastmasters International group in 2001 where she has served three terms as president, wrote the manual on mentoring, and heads the mentoring program. For many years she taught the 16-week-program that she wrote called Beyond Diets to help people change their relationship with food and eating and to get off the cyclic pattern of dieting. She grew up in Boise, Idaho but left Idaho when she enrolled in Linfield College where she did a double major in psychology and sociology. Her graduate degrees in psychology are from Saybrook University. She has been a Healing Touch Certified Practitioner since 1997 through the Healing Touch Program™, and is an Advanced Clinical Hypnotherapist trained at The Wellness Institute in Issaquah, WA.
To learn more about Dr. Weymouth and her counseling and healing practice, go to http://kweymouth.com
To contact her fill in the contact form on the Home page, or email her at kfweymouthphd@gmail.com