You plan everything
except this.

Private advance planning for the end of life. Not the legal documents, an attorney handles those. The room itself. Who's in it. What's said, and what isn't. What someone needs when they can no longer ask.

Based in Austin, Texas  ·  Working with clients globally
What this is

The part of dying nobody plans.

Most people with any resources have an estate plan, a will, and an advance directive. All three matter. None of them say a word about the last room you will ever be in.

An advance directive answers a physician's questions: resuscitation, intervention, life support. It is silent on everything else.

Most people find this gap at the worst possible hour, standing in the room with no time left. This practice asks the questions years earlier, while the answers are still yours to give.

How it works

A small number of clients, served slowly.

Roughly six private sessions, usually across several months. The result is a custom bound book, reviewed each year as life changes, and delivered to the people who will need it in a form they can follow without guessing. It is physical on purpose: nothing about it lives online, and it is never published anywhere.

Before, not during

This work belongs to the healthy years. Clear-headed, able to change your mind, able to sit with a hard question for a week and come back to it. When a diagnosis has already arrived, the work still happens, compressed into weeks instead of months. Nothing is left out, and nothing costs more because the time is short.

An honest evidence standard

Every option offered carries a plain label about how much research supports it. Some things are well established. Some have no clinical evidence at all, and we say so while still offering them.

Presence that doesn't divide

Some clients want a person at the bedside through the final days. We provide that person, for no more than two households at a time. Attention divided among many stops being attention.

Discretion as structure

No client stories, ever. No testimonials. Nothing about who has worked with us appears anywhere. What happens in that room belongs to the people in it.

Free, and freely shareable

Before You Need It

A short guide to the questions worth answering while they are still hypothetical. Nothing to sign up for. If it's useful, use it. If you want to send it to someone, send it.

What's in it

What an advance directive leaves out. Four things most people never hear until they're already in the room. A sample of the questions this work asks. How to choose who speaks for you, and what to do with your answers.

Read the guideDownload PDF
Contact
Maria Long

Maria Long

More than fifteen years producing events where nothing could be left to chance, and one death in hospice, early in that career, which showed her what all the planning leaves out.

If you want to talk.

Write and ask. There is no sequence of intake emails waiting, and no one will chase you if you go quiet. A single question, or asking where to find something the guide mentioned, is reason enough.

Based in Austin, Texas  ·  Working with clients globally