Words and artwork by Mara Hoffman
This past January, I finally arrived at the decision to let go of one of the most defining parts of my being thus far. On Sunday May 19th, I let the world know that I would be closing my eponymous brand, Mara Hoffman, after a robust and gorgeous 24-year run. I wrote a letter expressing my truths, speaking to both the grief and the gratitude of it all, citing the parts that broke my heart and the parts that filled me with peace, hope, and expansion. It was an extraordinary relief to not keep it to myself anymore. It was finally something that could be shared and mourned together with my community, both my dearest close ones and the extended collective of friends and fans of the brand. There was a freedom in that—a deeply generous unlocking of the next part of the shedding I have been so intensely focused on.
On that Sunday afternoon in May, I was not aware that an enormous part of the transformation I was about to undergo would also involve my father’s passing, which would take place six days later. The week leading up to his death was filled with so much intimacy, rawness, deep love, and sadness. I was given one of the ultimate gifts within this human experience—to be able to hold my parent, my dearest father Monte, as he separated spirit from body and took his last breath. It was always something I hoped I would be able to do for him, and it was an extraordinary honor to be a loving witness to his release and to help walk him home.
As I spent that week sitting and sleeping beside my father during his most profound transition, I stayed tuned in to the cacophony of eulogy-like testaments that poured in from the internet around the closure of my business. I sat there holding both of our deaths. So intertwined, more connected than I ever could have imagined, our timing bound to a shared contract around our individual rest, and with his making room for mine.
It was weeks after his passing that it became clear that his spirit had been waiting for me to release what I had to in order for him to release his body. The identities we had both carried for so long needed to be surrendered to make room for our freedom. Our liberations were tied to one another.
This year was not so much my introduction to the art of death, but more the year I was invited to embody it with everything I have.
I remember being so acutely aware of how different the energies were between the ICU floor he was on for the first three days and to the hospice floor where he spent his final three. As I reflect back on it now, it has obvious comparisons to the stages I had been in with my company. The months leading up to my final decision to close were spent in what felt like an Intensive Care Unit, with the energetic signature of “keep it alive at all costs.” We eventually shifted into the final decision, saying, “Let’s make this right and as soft and loving as we can. Let’s allow death; let’s allow the beauty of what this is.” The energy was so similar to the energy that infused my father’s time in hospice, where he, a classical cellist, spent his final days surrounded by musicians from the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra who came to play for him.
This year was not so much my introduction to the art of death, but more the year I was invited to embody it with everything I have. I have spent decades showing up to death’s teachings and its ultimate generosity through my devotion to plant medicines and to spirit, as well as my lifetime commitment to curiosity. I have always been guided by the demands of upheaval in the face of stagnation or unwellness, and I have carried an almost dutiful allyship to transformation.
What I know for certain now, on what feels like the other side of this bridge, is that dying is the sure path to living.
To access this truth, first we have to have the courage to actually do the dying in this life. To walk toward all the little deaths and then the big ones that ask us to show up for them. To trust in and celebrate the endings as much as we do the beginnings. The ones we choose as well the ones that choose us. They are our doorway to freedom.
This story first appeared in Atmos Volume 10: Afterlife with the headline, “Embracing the End.”
In the natural world, nothing goes to waste. Matter constantly decomposes and reconstitutes in new shapes. Atmos Volume 10: Afterlife seeks to answer the question: what comes next?
Mara Hoffman: ‘Dying is the Sure Path to Living’
