The Nature of the Journey: A Trail Guide for Companioning Your Person on the End-of-Life Journey

by Tracy L. Chalmers

Overview

Imagine guiding your person through their final journey with acceptance, empathy, connection, and presence. The Nature of the Journey is your heartfelt guide for this deeply personal experience. Crafted with the care of a trusted trail guide, Chalmers offers a holistic approach to cultivate the end-of-life journey.

Discover how the senses of sight, smell, taste, hearing, touch, and beyond can inspire opportunities for moments of meaning, connection, presence, and pleasure. This book also explores the grief we carry, both before and after, the importance of worldview on how we face death, and how personal experiences shape this profound time.

At its heart, The Nature of the Journey underscores the importance of community. It reveals that dying is a deeply social event, highlighting the vital role of leaning on others and the comfort found in shared support. Let this guide be your gentle map to creating meaningful connections and finding solace during the final stages of life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781998129447
Publisher:	Pownal Street Press
Publication date:	10/28/2025
Pages:	392
Product dimensions:	7.50(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

End-of-Life Doula Tracy Chalmers is a facilitator at Endwell and Douglas College, co-founder and grief educator and tender at The Grief Well, Certified Forest Therapy Guide, and Hospice Volunteer. She is grateful and humbled to be living on Coast Salish land known as the North Shore of Vancouver, in British Columbia. A friend to grief and death and servant to many, Tracy also considers herself a perpetual student. She is of Norwegian, Swedish, Scottish, and English ancestry, and values her roles as mother, daughter, wife, sister, friend, listener, and lover of the natural world and all of life. The work that Tracy does honors and is supported by countless ancestors.

What People are Saying About This

Sheona McDonald is an award-winning filmmaker known for Transplant Stories

"The Nature of the Journey by Tracy L. Chalmers is a rich blend of inspired, personal and intimate content based on the author’s own profound experiences of working with people in the final stages of their lives. No matter where a reader is, this book offers a deep intellectual understanding of the process of dying and the work of caring for the dying across physical, mental, emotional & spiritual planes. This book has the unique ability to meet the reader where they are. This complexity means that this guide is one that can be returned to and revisited over and again, in journeys of grief and loss, throughout a lifetime. In a fast-paced world with quick hit interactions and frantic, go-go-go lives, this book encourages the reader to slow down, pay attention and be aware of themselves and others."

Angela E. Morris is the author of Love Notes to Grievers. Her work has appeared in The Globe and Mai

"A tender and wise guide, The Nature of the Journey supports you through the deeply relational experience of dying. With tenderness and wisdom, Tracy Chalmers reminds us that none of us has to navigate it alone. This book gently guides you in bringing someone to their final resting with care and grace."