The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many Americans into sudden intimacy with difficult feelings: anxiety, fear, and grief. In this story from The Spiritual Edge, we get to know a North Carolina woman whose Buddhist practice has helped her navigate fear and grief.
"What I realized was that people were unprepared for death. Almost everybody was unprepared for death."
Caroline Yongue is the founder and director of the Carolina Memorial Sanctuary, a small cemetery offering environmentally-friendly burials in Western North Carolina. The Sanctuary is grounded in a Buddhist ethos and committed to restoring native ecosystems. It’s part of a larger project to change how Americans approach death and grief — creating new ways to live with loss, from the ground up.
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This is part of a series called Sacred Steps from KALW's The Spiritual Edge. It was produced in collaboration with USC's Center for Religion and Civic Culture and Religion News Service.