Denise Carson, Author of Parting Ways. Photo by Elaine Reid

Denise Carson is a journalist and the author of Parting Ways: New Rituals and Celebrations of Life’s Passing. She is a columnist for the  Orange County Register in California, where she writes about how individuals, families and communities celebrate in life’s final frontier.

Most recently, she launched a blog Celebration2Life.com, a community online resource, sponsored by Hospice Care of the West for patients, families and professionals searching for new ways to prepare for, celebrate and honor a person with a life-limiting illness. Carson teaches seminars about innovative ways to approach end of life for hospice professionals, caregivers and seniors.

Carson has a Masters of Science in Journalism from Columbia University, where she received honors on her thesis project about the emergence of new end-of-life rituals in America. She was in Samuel Freedman’s renowned book seminar.

Her background is in newspaper journalism, a great medium to serve an inexhaustible curiosity about people and subcultures. She has written mainly feature news stories and profiles for the Westside section of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register. The transition from newspaper to writing narrative non-fiction for the book indulges a passion to deepen her interviews and connections with sources in an effort to reveal a larger story through their experiences rather than just reporting facts, quotes and statistics. She often throws on the hat of investigator, psychologist or sociologist while conducting research. She also has a B.A. in sociology and communications-journalism.

About Denise

The summer of 1999, I was working in Paris, France after college when my mother told me about the terminal cancer.  The same disease, that had taken my father’s life, was on move in her body.  I knew well how this story ended. We argued about me returning home. She wanted me to stay. I wanted to go home. I insisted. Then she paused, in her resolute British accent, she said,

“If you come home, I want you to interview me on our down time together…you can write my life story.”

Her request turned out to be the seed to my book Parting Ways. She revealed herself to me in our interviews. She shared her innermost fears, regrets, last wishes and her hopes and dreams for me. My mother trusted me to care for her and entrusted me to tell her story.

That gift of intimacy given in the last months, days and hours of her life helped me to gain a greater understanding of the fragility and force of people’s needs, wants and desires at the end of life. I used that bestowed wisdom and personal knowledge to guide me in discovering a new way to accompany loved ones on this journey to the last breath. After losing my mother, I took a year out to backpack around the world and learn about other people, cultures and religions. And in many ways, the traveling helped me to contextualize our experiences as Americans living and dying in such a culturally porous country where cultural rituals are borrowed and personalized. I believe these personal experiences invited me into the lives and living rooms of families in their most intimate and vulnerable stages of life. I traveled from the East to West coasts to report what I discovered to be an “End-of-Life Revolution” happening all across America.

If you wish to reach me please do at denise@denisecarson.com