What would it look like to be fully ALIVE?
Waking up early to watch the sky painted purple, pink, peach, gold. Goosebumps on your skin from the sheer awe and wonder of it all.
Moving slowly. Savoring your coffee. Greeting your partner, your kids, with a good morning kiss or hug that imprints in your bones.
Feeling energized about the day in front of you. Work that doesn't feel like work.
Making an impact doing the thing that genuinely lights you up — living from your divine design.
Finding time for hikes, roller skates, pickleball, a BBQ with friends, or a whole afternoon lost in a book.
Allowing grief and disappointment to surface when life doesn't go as planned — feeling it all.
Experiencing the full spectrum of LIFE!
That's aliveness. Can you feel it?
Or, are you living... But not actually ALIVE?
The one that promised happiness, freedom, fulfillment. So you followed it faithfully and now you're here — more numb than alive.
Maybe you've got the high-status career, the pristine home out of a design magazine, the family that completes the image of "the dream." But despite all of it, you sometimes feel empty. A quiet voice keeps asking, is this really it?
Or maybe a milestone birthday hit differently this year. A parent had a health scare. Your kids are brushing you off to hang with their friends. Suddenly you're looking at the second half wondering where the time went — and whether this life was ever actually yours.
Or maybe life burned the script for you — a loss, an ending, a diagnosis that changed everything — and now you're standing in the ashes asking, who am I now? Where do I go from here?
Three different doorways. Same room.
You’ve Probably done everything according to the playbook …
The life you were living — the one that worked, you inherited, or you lost — has ended. And you're being invited to stop resuscitating it and start living the one that's actually yours.
Sit with that for a second. Do you have an answer? Your answer?
Most of us don't. We inherited one instead — from our parents, religion, culture, the algorithm. Ready-made scripts about how we "should" spend our time here: the degree, the ladder, the house, the highlight reel. And we follow them faithfully, never realizing it's all made up.
That's how you ended up living a life you never consciously chose...
What is my one life actually for?
There’s one question you’ve never asked yourself:
....on autopilot instead of lit up and fully alive!
Not because you did anything wrong…you just haven't fully woken up yet.
No one ever handed you the mirror that cuts through it all: YOUR MORTALITY
That's because we're so afraid of our own ending, we never even stop to ask the question at the root of it all.
Most people don't find their answer until they're lying at the end of their life.
You don't have to wait that long.
We live in a culture that largely denies death. And in doing so, we’ve forgotten how to fully live.
When you live with the end in mind, everything changes:
Your mortality becomes a mirror: reflecting back what matters, motivating you into action, and magnifying the magic of simply being alive.
You stop delaying your dream life for someday and start living it now.
You slow down. You become present. You see every sunrise as a privilege, your beating heart as a miracle. You marvel at the magnificence of each living moment.
Abundance stops being something you chase and becomes something you notice — it's literally everywhere.
What if facing death was the fastest way to start living?
You stop bracing against life and start dancing with it – endings become doorways.
You play every note on the piano — the somber and the sweet — because aliveness lives in the full range.
And when you really sit with the mystery of it all, the constructs dissolve entirely. You realize you give life its meaning — you get to make it up, however you want."
In the end, you discover the great paradox...
The more fully you face death, the more fully you live.
INTRODUCING...
It's a place to come back to, again and again, to remember how precious our time here is, and that there is no better time than now to live the life you came here for.
Through a hub of Death Medicine teachings and practices, and gatherings both online and in person, we fill each other's buckets — offering our expertise, our resources and our support to turn each other's bucket list dreams into real, lived life.
Inside, we get real about DEATH — asking ourselves the big questions about existence, living from those answers, and releasing any beliefs, behaviors, roles, and dynamics that were never ours to begin with.
Because everything you're seeking has always been there.
You just forgot.
A community and container for remembering what life is truly about – and finally living from that answer: awake, aligned, attuned to the magic … fully ALIVE!
This is a movement of seekers, high-achievers, adventurers, and conscious parents – soul-led humans – intentionally choosing to live with the end in mind and letting that ripple out into how we think, what we believe, how we treat each other, and how we spend our one wild, finite, miraculous life.
Together, we remember.
We Start With the End in Mind
Imagine you only had one year to live...
What would change?
Would you quit the soul-sucking job and take the trip with your family? Repair the relationship you've let go quiet? Finally write the memoir you've been sitting on for a decade?
That's where we begin…and it's not where we end.
Because this isn't about checking boxes before you die. It's about living in alignment with what actually lights you up, and releasing whatever's in the way: A relationship that's run its course. An identity you've outgrown. A belief that was never yours to carry.
And it's about being here. Present, awake, undone by the miracle of the life you're already living.
None of this happens in a weekend. Illusions don't dissolve on a schedule, and shedding takes as long as it takes. Which is why this isn't a one-time workshop — it's a community you come back to, again and again.
By the end of it you've released what no longer serves, aligned with what matters, taken action on what counts, and woken up to the miracle of being here.
You're not just living.
You're ALIVE.
What would change?
Would you quit the soul-sucking job and take the trip with your family? Repair the relationship you've let go quiet? Finally write the memoir you've been sitting on for a decade?
That's where we begin…and it's not where we end.
Because this isn't about checking boxes before you die. It's about living in alignment with what actually lights you up, and releasing whatever's in the way: A relationship that's run its course. An identity you've outgrown. A belief that was never yours to carry.
And it's about being here. Present, awake, undone by the miracle of the life you're already living.
None of this happens in a weekend. Illusions don't dissolve on a schedule, and shedding takes as long as it takes. Which is why this is a full year, in a small group, with a rhythm you return to.
By the end of it you've released what no longer serves, aligned with what matters, taken action on what counts, and woken up to the miracle of being here.
Every member names the bucket list dream they'd regret leaving undone. Then the circle gets to work.
Say your dream is a month in Bali — but the flight isn't in the budget. Someone drops 50,000 airline miles into your bucket.
Say you've been sitting on a website for years and don't know where to start. Someone else puts ten hours of their time into it.
A connection. A spare room. A skill. A pep talk at 10pm.
We each bring our own gifts and strengths — our unique threads — and weave them together until every bucket list becomes a bucket life.
Together, we fill each other's buckets.
In the Bucket LIFE community:
- You actually do the thing. Writing the bucket list is easy. Living it takes people who ask, "Did you book Bali yet?" Together, we make it real.
- You're never alone. Your success is the next person's success. We share resources, effort and dreams, and no one gets left behind.
- You're held through the highs and the lows. The leap and the grief. The yes and the night you want to quit. The circle holds all of it.
- You're present for the ordinary magic. We celebrate the big leaps, and we slow down to savor what's already here.
- And the energy is contagious. A whole circle going for it at once. Their courage becomes your permission.
Because aliveness is amplified when shared.
The circle is what keeps you going. The container is what changes you.
What I teach inside the container is Death Medicine.
The Triangle of ALiveness
Death Medicine is the practice of using your mortality now, before the deathbed, to access the clarity, courage, and reverence for life that changes how you think, what you believe, and how you spend your finite time here.
It's also the practice of dying while you're alive.
Shedding the identities, beliefs, and chapters you've outgrown. Alchemizing what's heavy or ended into gold.
All of it runs through my signature framework:
✓ TWO live group calls per month — one live training to learn, one integration circle to apply and embody what we've learned
✓ Seasonal ceremonies to journey into the subconscious, somatic & spiritual realms, facilitating deeper transformation and self-discovery
✓ Bucket LIFE Budgeting Workshops with a guest financial advisor, to help you fund your bucket list now while still planning wisely for the future
✓ Live, in-person gatherings for deeper, more intimate connection — because some things can only happen in circle, heart to heart
✓ A growing library of recordings, visualizations and resources to continue practicing the work at home
✓ A private Telegram community to connect with your circle between calls
✓ Plus: a community that holds you accountable for taking one thing off your bucket list and making it real!
Because that list was never meant to stay a list.
What's included:
Imagine One Year From Now…
This is your one precious life. And you're finally living it.
You wake up, and the first feeling that hits is sheer gratitude for being alive. Awe floods in as you slowly surface — sunlight entering the bedroom, birds chirping, the coziness of your own bed.
The people, pursuits, and places that light you up take full precedence… and what drains you, you've laid to rest. The soul-sucking obligations, the relationships that ran their course, the shoulds…all released, with love.
You spend your time on what matters.
That promotion you've been grinding for? Suddenly it's not the thing. You've healed the parts that needed to prove and perform to feel worthy and now, walking your kid to school? That's the thing.
You know who you are beneath the roles and scripts.
That promotion you've been grinding for? Suddenly it's not the thing. You've healed the parts that needed to prove and perform to feel worthy and now, walking your kid to school? That's the thing.
You know who you are beneath the roles and scripts.
Your ambitions aren't emergencies anymore. You still go after the dreams, but the fuel has changed: love instead of lack, essence instead of ego, soul instead of society. Pure wants, not unconscious wounds.
You and your life are already enough.
When the dream rises — the podcast, the month in Bali, the backyard garden — you don't wait for permission or the perfect moment. You feel the embodied yes, trust that life has you, and go.
You go for it.
When the rejection, the ending, the plot twist hits you don't spiral. You feel it fully, find the gold, and release the rest. Failures become feedback. Rejections become redirects. Nothing can take you out anymore.
You alchemize whatever life throws at you.
The sunset brings streams of tears — grief and gratitude in one. Your heart bursts at the ordinary miracles you used to sleep through: your pulse, your people, the light hitting the trees. You linger longer with the ones you love because you know, in your bones, that this all ends.
You savor the miracle of simply being here.
Attuned to the present, aligned with your soul, acting on what matters… fully ALIVE.
And your bucket list? You're living it —
⟫ You've checked all the boxes or manifested society's version of "success,” but you've known for a while that something needs to shift. You're done pretending you’re fine and ready to change.
⟫ You feel time speeding up, life slipping by; and beneath the busyness, a question you can't shake: did I ever actually choose this? You're ready to stop avoiding it and live from the answer.
⟫ You've outgrown the life you were living — a loss, a divorce, an ending — and you're asking what's next? You're craving direction, meaning, and the motivation to get moving again.
⟫ You've done the work — the books, the retreats, the courses — but it feels like an endless cycle of seeking, always one more modality from "complete." You're ready to stop chasing and come home.
⟫ You have a dream you keep deferring — the trip, the project, the leap — and you're done filing it under "someday" and ready to live it now.
⟫ You're craving real conversations about the meaning of life, the mystery of existence, and what actually matters; and you’re tired of being the black sheep at the dinner table for wanting to go there.
⟫ You want a community that actually holds you through the work; not just more awareness about what needs to change, but the space and support to deeply transform
THIS IS FOR YOU IF...
❌ You're looking for a quick fix, a hack, or a 5-step formula
❌ You want to bypass the dark to get to the light
❌ You're not willing to be seen — this work happens in circle, witnessed and held
❌ You're not ready to devote real time and energy — the ceremonies, the calls, the work between them
This is not for you if:
I'm a Certified Dharma & Spiritual Life Coach, Certified Temple Guide, Certified Grief Educator trained under David Kessler, author of Love & Grief, and host of the Death & Disco podcast.
But my real credential is my life.
At 30, my husband Ian was diagnosed with terminal cancer — one phone call, in the middle of a golden San Diego beach day, and everything changed. In the fifteen months he had left, we learned how to fully live — so that when he passed, he could go in peace, with no regrets.
I became a 32-year-old widow, a solo mom to our one- and three-year-old… and a student of my greatest teacher: death. It handed me piercing clarity on what matters, dissolved the fears keeping me small, flooded me with appreciation for simply being alive, and left me holding a blank canvas to paint my own masterpiece.
Now, after reaching millions of grievers online, serving hundreds of clients, and hosting sold-out retreats, I distill everything death has taught me into medicine for others.
Because you don't need a loss to learn how to live.
Hi, I'm Emily…
MEET YOUR GUIDE
I suddenly understood how I wanted my story to be written—and that I was the one who had to write it. That realization became the catalyst for everything that’s followed. I started my own screen-printing business and began doing the heavy work in therapy to finally heal all the parts of me. The future is still unknown, but I don’t fear that anymore. I’ve embraced it, knowing that the only real regret would be not doing the work, not taking the leap, not living fully while I still can."
Ginna Roe
"Seeing myself at the end of my life shifted something…
Confronting the unknown timing of my death—especially as I passed my current age—made life’s brevity visceral. The hospice reflection brought unexpected peace: few regrets, clear priorities. What stayed with me most was the legacy I saw people thanking me for making them feel seen, heard, cared for, and for bringing joy. In that moment, it felt like enough. Emily’s sound journey was a 10/10; the music and guidance moved as one. I left with a deeper appreciation for life, a calm around death I never expected, and a renewed commitment to live with more intention, gratitude, and love."
Cody Galloway
"The Death Ceremony was one of the most profound experiences I’ve ever had…
At fifty-five, I felt the pull to create, to express myself, to come alive again. I started a small Instagram account to share my boudoir photography—something that thrilled and terrified me at once. Emily helped me move through the fear and self-doubt that kept me playing small and reminded me how short life really is. With her support, I found the courage to go for it—to stop waiting for “someday” and start living fully now. Since then, that little account has grown into a thriving creative community. I’ve written my memoir, Widow in the City, and launched my Substack, Absolute Pleasure, where I write about self-expression, feminism, and midlife reinvention."
Amy Gabrielle
"It became the wake-up call I needed to start truly living…
And if you decide to stay on in The Bucket LIFE, your full $1,111 goes toward it.
THE BUCKET LIFE FOUNDING CIRCLE
✓ Six 90-minute live calls of death medicine teachings and real-time coaching, so your dream comes to life while you stay connected to what matters
✓ Weekly dares that move your dream forward in small, doable steps, so momentum builds long before December
✓ A private 1:1 somatic session with me to release fears, rewrite limiting beliefs and begin healing whatever’s standing between you and your dream ($555 value)
✓ A Bucket List Budgeting Workshop with a financial advisor, so you can fund your dreams now while still planning for the future ($1,000 value)
✓ A private Telegram group for accountability on the hard days, and a whole circle cheering when you finally book it
✓ Journal prompts plus mortality and gratitude practices that keep you awake to your life between calls, not just during them
✓ Recordings of every call, yours to keep, so a missed Tuesday never means a missed lesson
$1,111
Tuesdays, Nov 3 – Dec 15 · Live on Zoom
Six weeks to turn the thing you'd regret not doing into something you actually did.
You already know the thing you'd regret never doing — the trip, the project, the conversation, the leap.
The Bucket LIFE Founding Circle is your chance to see how quickly it becomes real when you have a community holding you to it, right through the holiday season.
This is the very first time I'm opening The Bucket LIFE as a living, breathing community, so you'll be part of the founding circle that helps shape what it becomes.
You've probably tried the other doors.
The mindset work. The morning routines. The productivity systems, the manifestation courses, the gratitude journals. Maybe they helped for a while and then the old pattern crept back.
Here's why: they all work on the branches. Death works at the root.
Ernest Becker argued in his Pulitzer Prize–winning book The Denial of Death that beneath all human striving is one primal fear — death — and that our worldviews, belief systems, and systems of self-worth are simply the psyche's way of keeping that terror at bay. Every limiting belief, every fear of failure, rejection, or not being enough — they all trace back to that single root. Which means any modality that doesn't touch death is managing symptoms.
WHY DEATH IS THE WAY
CLARITY ON WHAT ACTUALLY MATTERS — Your mortality becomes a mirror. Deathbed perspective cuts through the conditioning, ego desires, and societal shoulds, and connects you straight to the callings of your heart and soul. True alignment comes from facing your death.
MOTIVATION TO ACT NOW — When you realize there are no guarantees — that life can drastically change with one phone call — you stop betting on an uncertain future and stop waiting for someday. You take the trip, launch the project, go for the dream… now, while you're here.
DISSOLUTION OF FEAR — Your fears of failure, rejection, and not being enough are survival patterns rooted in the fear of death. Face the root, and the smaller fears lose their grip. You stop being ruled by what you might lose and start being guided by what makes you feel alive.
GRATITUDE & REVERENCE FOR LIFE — When you stop believing tomorrow is guaranteed, you see the privilege in just being here — your breath, the sunrise, a child's laughter. You notice and savor more. Abundance is suddenly everywhere.
THE TRUE MEANING OF LIFE — Sit with your mortality long enough and the man-made constructs dissolve. You realize life is literally what you make it. You only get one shot; and that's what gives life its edges.
BUT WHEN YOU FACE IT? Everything shifts at once:
No other modality delivers all five — because no other modality goes to the root.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
The doorway in right now is the Founding Circle, which begins Tuesday, November 3. Founding Circle members will be the first to hear what comes next.
Not at all. If you came to No Regrets, you'll arrive with your bucket list item already in hand. If you didn't, we'll find yours together in the first call.
No. While this work is deeply healing, it's not a substitute for therapy. If you're in acute grief or crisis, this container may not be the right fit right now. That's not a rejection; it's care. When you're ready to rebuild, we'll be here.
Completely. Death is a confronting topic. We've been conditioned to avoid it our whole lives. This container is built to be a safe, ceremonial space, and you'll never be pushed past your readiness. Most members find the fear transforms into something unexpected within the first season: peace.
Every call is recorded, so you can catch up anytime. That said, this is a live container — the magic happens in ceremony and in circle, so plan to attend what you can.
For the Founding Circle, one 90-minute live call a week for six weeks, plus whatever practice you bring home between them. This isn’t another course or homework — your life is the curriculum.
This is an intimate circle, kept small so every member is genuinely witnessed and held.
No. All ceremonies in The Bucket LIFE are substance-free — visualization, ritual, sound, and somatic practice are the medicine here. And death is potent enough.
That's what the application call is for. No pressure, no salesy pitch — just an honest conversation about whether this is your container and your year.
LIVE WITH THE END IN MIND — AND YOUR LIFE TRULY BEGINS
The truth is… we are all dying.
Every day you live is one day closer to death.
You can wait until you're lying on your deathbed to realize what life was actually about… Or you can face death now, and let the answers guide how you spend your time here.
You can keep living on autopilot, hydroplaning through your days… Or get crystal clear on what matters and fill your time with the people, places, and passions that light you up.
You can let your vision boards, journal entries, and business plans keep collecting dust… Or let the finitude and fragility of life become the fuel that finally brings them to life.
You can let the fears of failure, disappointment, and rejection keep you playing small… Or face the ultimate fear, and watch your fear of regret grow greater than any fear of going for it.
You can keep chasing more — more money, more impact, more milestones… Or remember the miracle of simply being alive: the taste of a juicy peach, the aspen leaves shimmying on the trees, the gift of your beating heart.
You can keep following the script — religion, self-help hacks, societal trends — searching for answers outside yourself… Or you can sit with your mortality and burn the script altogether.
Life becomes a blank canvas, and you hold the brush.
✓ So paint your masterpiece.
✓ Write your story.
✓ Do whatever makes you feel radically, unapologetically ALIVE.
Because when nothing means anything, everything is available to you.