Becki Hawkins

What can the dying teach us about living?

When you’ve compassionately aided people leave the planet for 30 years—helped them be comfortable, reduced their pain and listened to their words—what emerges is not just a way of dying, but also a way of living.

In her book, TRANSITIONS: A Nurse’s Education About Life and Death, Hawkins, who spent the heart of her career as an oncology and  hospice nurse in Oklahoma, offers 60 tenderly-rendered short recollections of those experiences that stayed with her…the one’s that touched her heart, took her breadth away and opened her to a greater wisdom. It’s that wisdom which she shares with us—how we can live better, more richly, more wisely and with greater love before we, too, transition—and look back to wonder what we missed.