Interview with Author and LifeTransformation Expert Melody LeBaron

Interview with Melody LeBaron

Author & Life Transformation Expert

Hello readers and creatives, This interview has been a whole year in the making. I first met Melody over a year ago while researching for my middle-grade novel about death (which is in revisions). That journey led me not only to explore death doula work at CCLD (Conscious Living and Dying in Asheville) but also to delve deep into my own fears surrounding death—and, ultimately, my writing. I’ve come to realize that, like a method actor, I am a METHOD WRITER. I'll explain more in a future blog, but simply put, I immerse myself fully in my research. I take classes, earn certifications, and become deeply involved in whatever subject I’m writing about. Let’s just say, I’ve got the stacks of certificates to prove it! Although I didn't realize this is who I am until most recently.

Life long learning -

It’s a bit of an obsession of mine.

During my death doula studies, I discovered Melody through CCLD, checked out her website, and felt compelled to reach out. We connected, and soon after, we met for lunch. However, not long after our meeting, Melody’s husband suffered a severe bicycle accident. She spent the past year as his devoted caregiver, and now, as he recovers, she’s finding time to write again. I’m so happy for them both. If, like me, you have fears around death or writing about it, Melody is the guide you’ve been looking for.

Melody, what drew you to CCLD? And what is your role there?

I’ve worked with the dying since 1990. As a Space Clearing, Feng Shui, and professional organizing expert, I specialize in creating an optimal environment for the dying person and their caregivers.  Over the decades, I’ve presented to many end-of-life symposiums and conferences, and my book Transforming Death: Creating Sacred Space for the Dying was published in 2020.

I met Aditi Sethi in January 2018, just months after moving to WNC (Western North Carolina), and immediately recognized that Aditi and I share a desire to bring death back into the circle of life and restore the dying person as the locus-of-attention, rather than the medical system. In 2019, I was supporting one of my priestess sisters at Care Partners Hospice, and Aditi was her physician. Watching Aditi in action, I realized she is the MOST connected and compassionate hospice doctor I’d ever met.  

During our long conversations over the years, especially after her mother-in-law Paula died, I realized that our experiences with the dying have taught both of us that...

death, when well supported,

is a family-building and

community-maturing experience.

So, I have been holding the vision of CCLD with Aditi long before the Sanctuary was purchased.  After the closing, Aditi asked me to do a Space Clearing to release all the geo-pathic stress and predecessor energies before the renovations began—and again after they were completed.  I’m called on any time CCLD needs a Feng Shui consult or a closet organized. 

Because of my local racial equity work, I’m also called when CCLD has medical items to donate, which I take to Black Asheville seniors.  With other amazing CCLD volunteers, I also serve on the BE Team at CLLD, which stands for Belonging and Equity, and our goal is to make CCLD welcoming to all.

How do you approach the concept of grief, and what role does it play in our lives according to your perspective?

I’ve endured many painful losses in my 70 years; the most painful was the 1997 death of my 17-year-old son Logan, 3 days after a car accident.  It would have been easy to blame the new 16-year-old driver who caused the accident—but he was Logan’s friend.  Blaming him wouldn’t bring my son back and would only have done damage to the boy and his family.  So we treated it as an accident which had happened to both our families.  His family sat with ours at the funeral; he served as a pallbearer along with my other sons and their friends. 

In the years after Logan’s death, at meetings and conferences, I met many bereaved parents whose unprocessed grief had hardened them—and others whose grief work had softened them and made them more compassionate.  In spite of being a single mom who worked full time while finishing my degree, I knew that my grief work was my most important priority.  I discovered the grief practices that work best for me, and years later I trained with Francis Weller to support the grieving in my coaching practice as well as to facilitate grief retreats.

I believe that when we feel and metabolize (rather than resist) our uncomfortable emotions, we mature ourselves into compassionate humans capable of species-preservation rather than just self-preservation.

In Western culture,

grief is often seen as an individual burden.

How do you believe we can embrace a more communal approach to grief and support each other during times of loss?

My teacher, Francis Weller, believes that some losses cannot be fully grieved alone, and I agree.  For the big losses, we need to grieve in community, which is why, each autumn, I facilitate a grief retreat to allow participants to integrate grief within the safe container of a sudden community of grievers.  

You mentioned that unresolved grief can manifest as depression or anger. How can we recognize and address these emotions to transform grief into a positive force in our lives?

There are many effective grief practices. 

Here are some of my favorites:

1. singing (when I’m sad, my car becomes my sonic sanctuary as I sing along to my Grief playlist)
2. dancing (when I’m angry, I stomp dance along to my Sacred Rage playlist)
3. slamming a weighted dead ball (also good for anger)
4. journaling (using specific prompts)
5. creating grief integration altars

When we open to our uncomfortable emotions instead of resisting them, and when we move our grief and anger all the way through our bodies, we metabolize or integrate the pain.  Which is how we mature ourselves and expand our capacity for compassion (for self and others) and become wise elders.

The idea of transforming grief into fuel for personal growth is intriguing. Can you share some practical steps or techniques to help individuals integrate and work through their grief?

The first step I recommend is to make a list of the losses, big and small, that life has brought you.  Note whether you feel you’ve integrated each loss fully, or it still hurts or angers you. 

Choose some grief practices that appeal to you and begin actively processing those losses so that you can stay clean, clear, and current with your grief.  We live in challenging times, and it may get even more challenging.  

I believe it’s wise for all of us to have a regular ongoing grief practice and to come together in community for regular grief rituals.

In your work with individuals facing terminal diagnoses, you mentioned creating sacred space to support the dying process. Can you elaborate on how this impacts both the dying and their caregivers?

Yes.  In 1990, when my mother was dying, our cultural immaturity with death and resistance to dying was even worse than now.  The prevailing belief was that death is a failure of the medical system (or your religious belief system) to “save” the patient. That never made sense to me;

I knew death to be a natural part

of the cycle of life.  

Hospice nurse Kathleen Dowling Singh, author of The Grace in Dying, contributed to my understanding that death is a multi-layered initiation (for the dying AND their caregivers) which consists of:

• the physical process of dying, which is different for all of us and undergirds the entire process
• the mental (or egoic) process of dying (during which effective grief work can  metabolize all the painful losses, and after which we move toward acceptance)
• the emotional process of dying (which is the work of life- and relationship-completion)
• and finally what she calls the spiritual process of dying (I call this the departing process).

My mother had been given six months to live… 13 years before she died—and we were all grateful for those years of remission.  But when the cancer returned… and spread… she was still in denial and, as her death approached, I realized we weren’t prepared.  

So, I created a life-completion altar on her dresser to remind her of her biggest achievements and priorities.  We kept fresh flowers in her room, a subtle reminder of the fragile beauty of life.  And as gently as possible, I cracked open the door of her denial as I was leaving for my 6-hour drive home to my children, after a week of caring for her.  I asked her if she would consider leaving for a mission for the church (which she’d always wanted to do) without saying goodbye to her 20 grandchildren.  

“No, of course not,” she replied.  “I would want them to understand why I wouldn’t be there for their birthdays and holidays.  Why do you ask?”

“Because you are,” I said, “leaving without saying goodbye.”

It took her a moment to get my meaning, and I could feel her anger rise.  I kissed her on the cheek and left.  A week later, her lungs filled with fluid, and she called the ambulance.  On the bumpy ride to the oncology hospital 30 minutes away, the paramedics pierced her side with a needle to drain the fluid.  All she could think about while she was praying for the procedure to work was that she hadn’t said goodbye to her grandchildren.

At the hospital her wonderful oncologist was honest: “You are in the active dying phase,” he told her.  “We can take good care of you here in the hospital.  Or, we have this new service called hospice, and with their help, you can die at home.”  

She chose to die at home, and in her last few weeks, as she sat with each of her grandchildren, sharing tender goodbyes, the family photos I arranged on the dressers reminded us of the bonds of love that will always be between us.

Finally,  our mother’s last mortal moments were upon us.  Her relational work completed, I’d cleared away the family photos.  Now, the altar on her dresser held only a large painting of the risen Christ that she had chosen as her focal point for her departing process. 

In her last hours, Handel’s Messiah was playing and the June breeze carried the scent of the roses Daddy had planted for her through the open windows.

The sacred space we had created—in her room and in our hearts—aligned with her beliefs and allowed us to bring love, ease and grace to our mother’s death, even as it matured us for our own upcoming role as elders.

Our ancestors held death in a different way, viewing it as an organic and expansive part of life. How can adopting a similar perspective on death positively influence the dying experience?

When we bring death back into the cycle of life, when we speak (yes, even to our children) of death as a natural process, when we turn from resisting death to partnering with death, we release the indoctrinated cultural fear of death as a failure.  

We can open to more expansive viewpoints that can include:

• death does not end life any more than birth begins it

• birth and death are portals through which life flows; in these portals, there is grace and majesty that can be felt—if we can be more present to our love than to our fear

• the death of a beloved can be a maturing initiation into becoming a wise elder, as we come into deeper coherence with the circle of family and friends who, with us, will serve the dying one in their final days.

Can you tell us about your background and what led you to become a professional organizer and space-clearing practitioner?

I’ve been blessed to live in 30 homes around the US and Canada. The oldest of 7 children, as a child, I worked with my mother to pack, unpack, and organize each home. We moved every few years; the one constant was “going home” to my grandparents, who lived in small prairie towns in southern Alberta.

I loved our trips to the Canadian Rockies and as a child, I believed that everyone felt the hum of the mountains in their body. My deep connection to nature led to a natural sensitivity to environment: early on, I realized that in some homes I felt that same peaceful, positive power that I felt outside in nature—but in other homes I sensed only stuck, stagnant, sometimes even disturbing energy.

At 12 years old, excited to babysit for other families (and get paid for my work!), I’d alphabetize the spices and canned goods after the kids were in bed; their thrilled moms booked me months in advance.

As a teen, I had an innate ability to de-clutter and organize rooms, to get the life-force energy flowing again. But in my late 20s, as a mother of 3 preschoolers during a time of stress, I found myself living in a home with clutter in every room. I had to mature my skill set from “having a place for everything” to learning to create systems that grow and evolve.

I made a commitment to get organized for good, and in the 45 minutes a day that all the kids were napping, I implemented a systems approach. In just 6 months, I’d permanently de-cluttered and organized my home and work space, my time and my life.

In 2000, I was the first professional organizer in the US to train with Australian author and Space and Personal Clearing teacher Eric Dowsett. The Space and Personal Clearing training gave me a language to understand—and tools to clear—the subtle and not-so-subtle stresses affecting us and our environments.

My clients and I were getting amazing results; soon my clients requested a Space Clearing and Personal Clearing before we began the decluttering sessions, which made the process so much easier! I learned Feng Shui and 9 Star Ki (the ‘feng shui of the birthdate’), so that I could train my clients and students how to partner more effectively with their environments.

The training you received in Priestess and High Priestess facilitation is intriguing. How does your background influence the way you facilitate these circles?

I grew up in a patriarchal cult—which I now experience as a great blessing: I witnessed and experienced firsthand the damage of one-up/one-down power structures. 

When I graduated myself from the cult, during my deconstruction and healing journey,  I chose to cultivate partnership in all my relationships. Including my relationship with myself (I stopped beating myself up for not being perfect), my relationship with my beloved and our children, our friends and family, our land and home, our community and country, and the joys and sorrows of life. I sought teachers and trainings that cultivated my capacity for partnership.

As I facilitate it, the priestess and high priestess processes are initiatory gestations for women that begins with a deconstruction of all one-up/one-down structures in our consciousness and prepares a woman for leadership in her chosen domain.  Along the way, we create beauty, connection and healing in the strong safe container of sisterhood. 

In your book, "Transforming Death," you discuss the fear and over-medicalization of death in our culture. How can embracing conscious dying empower individuals and their caregivers during this natural passage?

The way the Western world holds death can sit like a crushing weight in your chest if you or someone you love has a terminal diagnosis: Death is the end of life.  Death is a failure. 

But is it? Our ancestors held death in a more organic and expansive way which allowed them to be just as fully present for an elder’s last moments as a baby’s first moments. 

The way we view death matters to the dying—

and to those who care for the dying. 

When we partner with the physical, mental, emotional and departing processes of dying, and when we create sacred space in the room that supports those processes, the dying do better and so do their caregivers.

In my book I share stories and examples of why it’s important and HOW to set up both environment AND expectations in a way that the dying person is honored as the locus of attention, rather than the medical system. 

Whatever part of the dying process you are in, there are ways to partner with the environment to allow more grace and ease.

How do you stay energized and full of vitality when you are working in such energy-taxing fields as death or clearing spaces?  How do you play in the world? What brings you the most joy?

I have a morning practice of standing barefoot on my land, calling in the sacred directions and elements and the archetypes that will support my day.  I do a morning yoga routine and a walking meditation with pranayama (breathwork).  I eat healthy and work out with a trainer 2x a week. 

I enjoy a marvelous relationship with my beloved; we love hiking and bicycling, walking and talking together.  Much of our travel is to spend time with our children and grandchildren who are spread out all over this country.

What one question would you ask yourself if you were interviewing yourself, and what is your answer:  How do I stay resilient during these politically challenging times in which climate change is not being well addressed?

We are entering a time that many of my teachers call ‘the long dark.’  Not that we won’t have happy hopeful moments during this time, but that there will be BIG, seemingly insurmountable challenges, including extreme weather events, that will affect us all, most severely the under- and un-served in our communities. 

It’s one thing to acknowledge that old patriarchal structures and economic systems are collapsing and dying, and quite another to come out of denial about what that means for all of us.

All of my teachers are recommending that we invest in building communities that can support us in the times ahead.  And CCLD is a community.  (Not yet a very diverse one, which is why I’m on the BE Team!)

I thrive in environments of diversity where there is a multiplicity of viewpoints and lived experience.  Until moving to the Asheville area, I’ve enjoyed the privilege of being able to worship, learn and play with a diverse group of friends.  After moving here, I  realized that out of my 30 homes around the US and Canada, Asheville is THE most segregated place I’ve ever lived.  (Asheville used to be 46% Black; now, it’s hemorrhaging people of color and is only 10% Black.)  And the influx of economically advantaged white people to this area is part of the problem. 

So I got involved in racial equity work and was invited to participate in the Asheville Interfaith Initiative on Dismantling Racism, during which I was able to meet Asheville’s leaders in social justice.  

I’m blessed to have a diverse circle of friends and to participate in racial equity, climate justice and social justice work, all of which adds to my resilience and resourcefulness. 

Individually, I can’t solve all the problems, but I can add my efforts to the solutions that will make life better for all of us and I do this together with friends whose liberation is bound up with my own. 

The ‘long dark’ may last beyond my lifetime, but I believe my efforts now adds to the possibility of a more beautiful world for my grandchildren’s grandchildren. 

I take joy in that.

To connect with Melody:

her Transforming Space + Self + Loss business https://www.transformingspace.com/  

Facebook, personal https://www.facebook.com/melody.lebaron.1/

Facebook, business https://www.facebook.com/TransformingSpaceTransformingSelf/

Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/melody-lebaron-96a3a48/

Twitter https://twitter.com/MelodyLeBaron 

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lebaronmelody/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@melodylebaron1961 

Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/melodylebaron/

Mountain Xpress Article: https://mountainx.com/living/coping-with-death-and-dying/

Wow, Melody - this interview was worth the wait. I smiled, laughed, and teared up while reading it. You truly are a compassionate soul. 

Thank you for sharing your life's work with us, and I am so glad that your husband is recovering. If you or your loved ones have questions surrounding death and or transformations, reach out to Melody like I did. She is kind and generous with her guidance. 

And if you would like to be featured on Teazurs Blog - reach out now. Fall is a busy time here for my writing and interviews so get on the list now if you have a book coming out for the holidays. 

Write~on

Angie