What Death Teaches Us About Being Alive

(everything stated in this blog is based upon my own research, personal practice, and opinion)

No one really talks about how walking closely with death makes life louder. Not gentler. Not softer. Louder. Laughter lands heavier in your chest. Warmth feels startling. Joy can sting, like your body isn’t sure it’s allowed to hold that much aliveness at once. Once you’ve spent time with death’s silence, really sat with it, listened to it, everything that still moves feels electric by comparison.

That’s why I talk about death the way other people talk about the weather. Not to be shocking. Not to be grim. Death changes how you see things. You don’t stand at the edge of endings and come back looking at the world the same way. Blooming flowers stop being decorative and start feeling defiant. Breath stops being automatic and starts feeling sacred.

In my personal practice, I work with death energies and death-aligned entities. I work with psychopomps, and with their crossroads aspect. The guides, the carriers, the ones who walk with souls at thresholds. I spend time in liminal spaces, where something is no longer alive as it was, but not fully gone either. The places in between, where change hasn’t settled yet, and choice still hums in the air.

Late autumn into winter makes people deeply uncomfortable. Spring sells hope. Summer sells confidence. Autumn gets an aesthetic. The fallow season, the stretch where everything looks like it’s dying, doesn’t perform. Trees stop trying to impress you. Flowers disappear without apology. The earth stops producing and starts resting. Rotting. Becoming quiet. The world exhales, and if you let yourself follow its lead, so do you.

We humans, hate that. We hate stillness. We’ll scroll ourselves numb rather than sit long enough to notice the hollow places inside us. Empty feels too close to dead… and dead is a word everyone pretends to understand until it gets uncomfortably close.

There’s a strange peace in this season. Not the polished kind sold as self-care, but the muddy, compost-scented kind. The kind that reminds you rest is not failure, and decay is not the enemy. Sometimes things have to die, or they rot from the inside instead. You are not meant to bloom all year.

Death, physical/spiritual/seasonal, is the most honest teacher I’ve ever encountered. It doesn’t flatter you. It doesn’t negotiate. It doesn’t care about your plans, your productivity, or how well you’re performing “having it together.” Death asks one question, over and over: Did you live while you were alive? Not “did you achieve things.” Not “did you stay busy.” Did you actually inhabit your life? Did you feel your body, your breath, your relationships? Did you notice yourself being here?

Standing near endings changes how you answer that. When you truly sit with the reality that things end, your own breath suddenly feels louder. Stranger. Sacred. Sometimes miraculous. Sometimes uncomfortable. Often both.

The winter solstice marks the official beginning of the fallow season. The time when the world grows quiet and cold and looks, at first glance, like nothing is happening. I love it because it’s honest about emptiness. It doesn’t distract you or dress endings up as something else. Leaves fall. Fields go bare. Soil stops producing. Everything says, “Pause.” Not forever. Just now. When you unclench, slow down, and let yourself feel the ache of what you’ve lost instead of immediately fixing it. When you stop resisting, something shifts.

 People think death work is only about grief. Grief is part of it, yes. There’s also absurdity, tenderness, dark humor, and a joy that feels almost rebellious. Not the joy of perfect circumstances, but the joy that shows up when you realize life is fragile, unfair, temporary, and still so beautiful it makes your chest ache.

Death doesn’t remove beauty. It sharpens it. It teaches you to pay attention. You start noticing how warmth feels in your hands. How someone’s laugh changes when it’s genuine instead of polite. The hush before snow falls. The smell of cold earth after rain. The quiet intensity of someone really listening. The sound of your own heartbeat when the world is asleep.

When I work with death energies, when I stand at crossroads with beings who understand the weight of endings, they don’t tell me to be fearless or enlightened or wise. They tell me to wake up. To stop treating life like a rehearsal I’ll get to redo later. They don’t ask me to stop fearing death. They ask me to stop being afraid of life. That’s why the fallow season feels like an invitation instead of a threat. It whispers, “Come sit with what’s ending.” Not to fix it. Not to rush through it. Just to witness.

Stillness is uncomfortable. That’s why we stay busy. Busy is armor. Busy keeps you from noticing the loneliness under your ribs, or the way your days have started to blur together. Busy keeps you from admitting you’re tired of pretending. The earth isn’t afraid of endings. It doesn’t cling to summer. It lets leaves fall without drama. Then it does something deeply patient… it turns what died into soil. Into nourishment. Into the conditions for spring. We keep trying to skip that part. We want harvest without winter. Rebirth without decay. Transformation without letting anything die first. Spiritually? Emotionally? Magically? That’s not how it works.

The world runs on cycles, not straight lines. No spell, no ritual, no manifestation practice will spare us grief, loss, or endings. Those aren’t mistakes. They’re nature.

Crossroads are messy places. They’re not beginnings or endings. They’re both and neither. They’re transition. Choice. The held breath between steps. In journey work, I often find myself standing there, and death doesn’t always appear as something grim or ominous. Sometimes it feels like quiet hands. Like someone turning down the noise so you can finally hear yourself again. That silence feels like kindness.

We’re taught that life and death are opposites. I don’t believe that. I think the opposite of death is denial. Numbness. Refusing to feel. Real life, life that warms your chest and makes your teeth hurt a little, only shows up when you stop running from what scares you.

Which brings me back to the fallow season. This season isn’t dead. It’s preparing. Under frozen ground, seeds are holding their breath. Roots are conserving strength. Animals burrow down not because they’re weak, but because they’re wise. The world isn’t gone. It’s gathering itself.

What if humans did the same?

What if rest wasn’t punishment?

What if quiet wasn’t failure?

What if you let part of your life go fallow, not permanently, just long enough to breathe?

Living in alignment with death (seasonally, spiritually, magically) doesn’t make you morbid. It makes you grateful in a way nothing else does. You realize joy doesn’t have to be loud, it just has to be real. You learn that some things can end and still be sacred. That some doors close because you’re meant to walk somewhere darker and deeper before the path rises again. That love hurts precisely because everything ends, and that’s also what makes it precious. Death work doesn’t make you fearless. It makes you brave enough to love things you know won’t last.

Working with death-aligned energies taught me that these forces aren’t interested in fear or worship. They’re interested in truth. They don’t ask you to bow. They ask you to notice that you’re still breathing and not waste it. When I journey with them, I don’t come back with “everything will be fine.” I come back with something truer, “everything ends”, and that’s why it matters. Strangely, that makes life feel softer. Not easier… softer. Like something worth touching instead of rushing past. We resist that wisdom. We want to be spring all the time. Blooming. Thriving. Producing proof we’re doing life correctly. Nothing in nature functions that way. Perpetual summer is a desert. Endless blooming is rot. Even stars collapse.

Why do we think we should be different?

This is why burnout happens. Why people feel hollow even when their lives look fine. Why grief hits like a truck. We were taught to love what stays, not what ends. Death work, winter, and decay teach you how to love things because they end. Loss still hurts, but it hurts cleaner. Not festering, but rather in a way that cracks you open and lets more light in. Death made me fall in love with life. Not because it’s pretty, but because it’s temporary. That’s what makes it sacred.

The fallow season offers permission. Permission to not be blooming. To lay down what’s heavy. To let exhausted parts of yourself die. Permission to not be useful, impressive, or “on.” Permission to rest without earning it. You are part of nature too, and nature rests. If death has taught me anything, it’s that life isn’t something you can hoard. You can only live it now, messily, honestly, with dirty hands and laughter that sometimes sounds like crying.

When things go quiet inside you, don’t panic. You’re not broken. You’re in a season. Let yourself be fallow. Sit with what’s ending. Bury what’s dead. Light a candle for who you used to be. Stand at the crossroads without rushing through it. There are lessons in thresholds you can’t learn anywhere else.

When the frost melts, when the light returns, when something small inside you stirs and whispers “maybe,” you’ll rise. Not because you forced yourself to, but because you honored the dying first.

Death isn’t the opposite of life. It’s what shapes it.

Life is a miracle, not because it lasts forever, but because it doesn’t.

Blessed Solstice to you all!