Directional Synchronicity: 11:11

I looked at the clock at the 11:11 time yesterday morning, last night and this morning. I see that number a lot but three times in a row was a little unsettling.  I suppose it is good news if it means big change is coming, but for someone who believes in signs, something that frequent can be overwhelming.

Trish and Rob have a great write-up about the possible meanings of the 11:11 phenomenon here.

...and don't get me started on the number 3.  Over the past few weeks suddenly I happen to be glancing at the clock at 3:33.  That is a new number for me.

Mirror Synchronicity: Woe of the Road!

My friends Jenn and Kyle are editors of a book titled Woe of the Road: Tales to make you never want to leave your house.  The title of the book is rather self explanatory - the book is about embarrassing or woeful moments that happen while traveling.

Full disclosure - I have an article in the book.  Again, I think the title well summarizes the content:  The Impala, the Valet, and the Everlasting Fart. 

But I digress.

Woe of the Road is a great read, and I'm not just saying that because I'm in it.  It won Grand Prize for the Best Anthology in the Beach Book Festival.

The prize included cash and a trip for Jenn and Kyle to the awards ceremony in New York.

On the way to New York, to accept an award for the book on travel woes, Jenn and Kyle's bus caught on fire.

Truth is stranger than fiction.  As might be expected, this delay gave them a great anecdote for their acceptance speech.

Mirror Synchronicity: Worst Ways to Die

Those who don't believe in synchronicities will surely scoff at this one.  I have a history of being led to  books.  I have written about synchronicities more than once, here, here, and also a synchronicity story I wrote about in my book that I never posted.

I felt directed to Half Price Books, although I wasn't sure why.  There was no book I had in mind except for maybe something related to the Death Cafe.

I was just about to leave the store, figuring my hunch was wrong, when I turned around and found three copies of this book for only $3 each.

The reason I found it to be synchronous is because the Death Cafe was on my mind.  The art images that we printed on t-shirts to raise money for the Death Cafe event were all based on ideas of our worst fear of dying.  (Mine is crocodile, what's yours?)  Here are the images that we are putting on t-shirts:

I had never heard of this book before, but I thought they would be good to have on tables at the event as conversation starters.

Mirror Synchronicity: The Turkey Vulture

A few weeks ago, an animal unfortunately died in our garage. We thought we smelled something bad, but when the turkey vultures started hanging around our back deck, we knew for sure there must be a dead animal. My husband tore apart the garage, found the source of the smell, and relocated it to the woods.

Two weeks later, the smell is gone (at least to us) but the turkey vultures remain. There are two and I see them on the porch several times a day. If I think about it too much it makes me a little crazy. Is there something they know that we don't? Is it a sign that death is on the horizon? They really do feel quite ominous. (Not to mention they poop a lot on the deck and are annoying for that fact alone.)

Or is this a lighthearted synchronicity to acknowledge my work on the Death Cafe? Really the whole idea of the Death Cafe is to raise death awareness. How better to symbolically represent that than to have vultures standing around.

I took this picture of the turkey vulture today and then I got online to one of my social networks.  I had not yet posted anything about my new vulture friends, but one of my connections had linked to a blog that talked about crows and had a beautiful drawing of a turkey vulture. 

It remains to be seen whether there is more to this story regarding an actual death on the horizon.  Let's hope it is not anytime soon.

The first Death Cafe in the U.S.

Hello all!
Sadly, I have had many synchronicities that I have forgotten to blog in the past month.  I have been working on getting funding so that I could host the first Death Cafe in the United States.  A Death Cafe is a pop-up event where people get together to talk about death and have tea and yummy cake.  To learn more about my efforts, click on the image above or here.  If nothing else, I do think I made quite an amusing video about my fear of Death by Crocodile.

To learn about the established Death Cafe events in England, visit Deathcafe.com

As you may know, I am actively involved in hospice and palliative care advocacy and what keeps coming up is that people in general, and specifically Americans, are averse to thinking or talking about death.  We see families at end-of-life who have never had the conversations about their wishes.  Not only that, the individuals who are dying themselves have always avoided contemplating their own deaths.  Now, if you're a reader of this blog, I'm guessing you're far ahead of the general public.  Still, I bet you know people who don't ever want to talk about anything more serious than the weather or last night's game.  To clarify though, this event is free from ideology.  The attendees decide what they want to discuss related to death.  We are in no way drawing them to any kind of conclusion.  I'm looking forward to the synchronicities with the people who attend.

I first heard of the Death Cafe when someone blogged about attending one in England.  Jon Underwood runs them there and he has now had hosted many, with increasing success and attendance.  I am so grateful to him for allowing me to use the Death Cafe name and for his openness in general.  He's one of the good guys and we both passionately believe in the need to raise the roof on death awareness.  He was just contacted by someone in Australia who might host one there.  Imagine if this could be worldwide!

Now back to the synchronicities... I promise to get back to posting them.  Everything seems to have fallen in place so well with this Death Cafe program, I can't help but think that I was guided to do this.