Our October 21st speaker!
Leaning Into Death:
The fear of death shapes how we approach life, coming at us with the force of a sledgehammer or creeping into our interactions with the subtly of a master manipulator.
Stan Goldberg, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus of Communicative Disorders at San Francisco State University. He taught more than 3,000 graduate students in speech-language pathology to implement techniques contained in his books. He developed many of the techniques over years serving the needs of adults and children with communicative disorders. The techniques were field-tested in his private practice.
He is a prolific internationally award-winning writer, editorial consultant and recognized expert in the area of cancer support, end-of-life issues, caregiving, chronic illnesses, aging, and change. His original research and writings appear in six professional books, seven trade books (three written by him and four as an invited contributor), and in more than a two dozen diverse publications ranging from USA Today to Shambhala Sun Magazine to Saltwater Fly-fishing. After writing four professional books, he wrote Ready to Learn: How to Help Your Preschooler Succeed (Oxford University Press, 2005), a book for parents of pre-school children who learn differently.
His second trade publication was Lessons for the Living: Stories of Forgiveness, Gratitude, and Courage at the End of Life. An Op-Ed. Editor from USAToday called Lessons “Inspiring and compassionate.” Myshelf.com wrote it was “A book that will change how you live out the rest of your life.” It garnered five awards, including the London Book Festival’s Grand Prize for Best New International Book of 2009. Translations appear in Bahasa in Indonesia, Portuguese in Brazil, and Chinese in both Taiwan and Mainland China. An excerpt is the lead chapter in Melvin McClead’s Best Buddhist Writing of 2010.
Goldberg was a bedside volunteer at the internationally renowned Zen Hospice Project in San Francis co for two years until its Guest House closed. He held similar responsibilities for the next six years with Hospice By The Bay (the second oldest home hospice agency in the country), George Mark Children’s House (first free-standing hospice for children in the United States), and Pathways Home Health and Hospice. Goldberg ended his hospice volunteering in 2010 when the effects of his cancer treatment made providing patients with the attention they needed difficult. Still wanting to contribute, he began writing about caregiving issues and coached caregivers and cancer victims gratis.
In 2006, through Hospice By The Bay, he worked with the Los Angeles stage company, Cornerstone Theater, as a dialog consultant on aging and death. Also in 2006 AHE Productions, based in Toronto, Canada, asked for his input on a documentary television pilot portraying forced transitions.
Based on his publications and presentations in 2006, Goldberg was asked to author an article for Topics in Stroke Rehabilitation. In “Shedding Your Fears: Bedside Etiquette for Dying Patients,” he addressed the timidity of some neurologists, speech-language pathologists, and physical therapists when dealing with losses experienced by patients and families. Following the article’s publication, the author of a major counseling book in the area of communication disorders asked him to write a chapter on death and dying (Counseling in Communication Disorders: A Wellness Perspective, by Audrey Holland, Plural Publishing, 2007). His name is given prominence on the author’s page, although he wrote only one chapter.
Goldberg’s three-act play, Choices, is based on his hospice experiences and was awarded first place in the 2007 Festival of New Work at the Oxford International Institute for Documentary and Drama in Conflict Transformation.
With more than 300 publications, presentations, workshops, and interviews, he garnered 22 national and international awards for his writing. His essay, “Fixing? Helping? or Serving?” was one of 17 winning essays out of more than 8,000 entries in the Templeton Foundation’s World-Wide Essay Contest on Purpose in Living. The essay, which in an expanded form appears in Lessons for the Living (Chapter 2: Letting Go). The judges were Nancy Brinker, Founder, Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation; Hugh Delehanty, Editor-in-Chief AARP Publications; Marian Wright Edelman, Founder and President of the Children’s Defense Fund, and Reverend Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life.
The Hospice Volunteer Association named Goldberg Volunteer of the Year in 2009. In 2010, in recognition of his contributions in the area of cancer support the South Korean Government invited him as an honored guest to the opening of its Proton Beam Therapy Center. In 2014, Cargiverspace.org gave him his latest award; Top 10 Caregiver Advocates.
In June of 2015, about.com asked Goldberg to become the site’s Caregiver Expert. Within three weeks of accepting the position and publishing only four articles for them, the site’s daily page views soared from less than one hundred t o more than one thousand.