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Free SDI Event – Shared Crossing – Exploring Shared Death Experiences for the Dying and Their Loved Ones
January 21, 2022 @ 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm PST
This free event is for you if you offer end-of-life support as part of your calling or you know someone who is dying, or who may die in the next few years.
William Peters is a global leader in shared death studies. He’s the author of new book about his latest research into end-of-life companioning, which will be published this month by Simon & Schuster. On Friday January 21, he will offer a free hour-long introduction to his life and work.
SDI is making this event available to our community because it believes spiritual companionship – with its deep listening, deep respect for the other and contemplative practice – is an ideal modality to support a positive shared death experience.
In this presentation, William will share his life’s path that yielded the creation of the Shared Crossing Spectrum of End-of-Life Experiences (SELE). A grief therapist, author and  founder of the Shared Crossing Project and director of its Research Initiative,  William’s journey began with a near-death experience from a high-speed skiing accident at 17 years old. He later served as a Jesuit volunteer for three years working as a teacher and social worker with refugees in the war-torn countries of Guatemala and Peru. William returned to the San Francisco during the AIDS Epidemic of early 1990s. As a social worker and assisted persons ravaged by and eventually dying of HIV. Later he volunteered at the Zen Hospice Project and accompanied many through end of life and across the threshold. As a psychotherapist specializing in end of life, he uses grief and bereavement as a means for psycho-spiritual evolution. Through his more than two decades of clinical work, many personal experiences with death and dying, and his extensive research as director of the Shared Crossing Research Initiative, William crafted SELE to assist professional and lay people in understanding and navigating the profound and healing spiritual experiences that occur for the dying and the loved ones at the end of life.  There will be time for Q&A as he welcomes inquiries about his soon to be released book, At Heaven’s Door: What Shared Journeys to the Afterlife Teach about Dying Well and Living Better (Simon & Schuster 2022). Â
William Peters is the founder of the Shared Crossing Project and director of its Research Initiative. Recognized as a global leader in the field of shared death studies, he has spent decades studying end-of-life experiences. Previously, Peters worked as a hospice volunteer with the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco and as a teacher and social worker in Central and South America. A practicing grief and bereavement therapist, he holds degrees from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and UC Berkeley. His work on end-of-life is informed by his therapeutic work with individuals and families, personal experiences with death and dying across cultures, and his family’s own end-of-life journeys.
