Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: Famous Last Words
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths.”
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Something became clear to me as I observed people near the end of life. Those who had already faced struggle, loss and change earlier on in life were less afraid. More open. More at peace.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was a Swiss-American psychiatrist best known for transforming how the modern world understands death, dying, and grief.
She spent years sitting with people who were dying. Listening in the way most of us are never taught to listen. Not to fix. Not to reassure. Just to be there for others.
In a world that preferred cures to conversations, she chose presence. And in doing so, she began to see something many of us sense but struggle to name.
That beauty is not something we start with. It is something life works into us.
A Willingness to Stay
Kübler-Ross entered medicine at a time when death was hidden away. Patients were shielded from the truth. Emotions were considered inconvenient. Grief was something to move past quickly.
She didn’t accept that.
She asked dying people what they were actually experiencing. What they were afraid of. What they wished they had done differently. What mattered now.
What she heard, again and again, was not a fear of death itself, but a sorrow about unfinished living.
Words never spoken. Love never fully expressed. Lives lived carefully rather than honestly.
The Small Deaths Along the Way
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths.” (Elizabeth K-R)
What her quote points to so quietly is that death doesn’t only arrive at the end of life.
It visits us again and again.
When a relationship ends. When a parent dies. When a version of ourselves no longer fits. When something we built our identity around falls away.
These are small deaths. Initiations, really.
They ask us to let go of who we thought we were. They take away certainty. They leave us exposed.
And most of us are taught to avoid that exposure at all costs. We are, after all, a “death-phobic society”, according to Stephen Jenkinson (and I agree).
There’s a reason this idea of small deaths feels personal to me.
About three years ago, during a crisis at work, I began experiencing intense panic attacks. My body no longer felt like a safe place to stand. The version of me who could push through, stay in control, and hold everything together quietly fell apart.
At the time, it felt like something was going wrong. Looking back, I can see something was ending.
I thought I had it all figured out: a business I had built myself, a wonderful family, a great home… but that small death forced me to slow down, to listen, and to ask deeper questions about how I was living.
It was the doorway that led me into this work now, into sitting with mortality, into deeper purpose that feels far more honest and soul-aligned than the life I was trying to protect.
How Depth Is Formed
Kübler-Ross saw that those who allowed themselves to be changed by loss emerged differently.
Not louder. Not shinier. But steadier.
They listened more carefully. They judged less. They were less interested in performance and more interested in truth.
You can feel this kind of person in a room. They don’t rush you. They don’t need to be right. They don’t flinch when things get uncomfortable.
They’ve already been there.
This is the beauty she’s talking about. A beauty forged, not inherited.
And there is something else here that matters.
Without struggle, we do not stretch. Without loss, we do not deepen. Without being brought to our knees from time to time, we rarely discover the strength, tenderness, and clarity that were waiting underneath.
One of my favourite philosophers, Eckhart Tolle, often reminds us, it is through struggle that consciousness evolves. The ego resists this. The soul does not. The soul knows that tension, discomfort, and even suffering are not mistakes, but pressures that shape us, like muscle under load, like a tree bent by wind.
“It may look as if the situation is causing the suffering, but ultimately this is not so - your resistance is.” (Eckhart Tolle)
Struggle is not a detour from the human journey. It is the journey. And joy, the kind our soul truly yearns for, is not found by avoiding these moments, but by allowing them to open us into something wider, truer, and more alive.
Why We Resist It
From my perspective, our culture doesn’t make much room for this kind of transformation. We’re encouraged to stay upbeat. To move on quickly. To treat endings as failures rather than thresholds.
But when we bypass grief, and avoid the conversation of our mortality, we bypass depth.
Every loss we don’t fully feel stays unfinished inside us. Every ending we refuse to acknowledge quietly narrows our lives.
Kübler-Ross knew that grief, when honoured, doesn’t weaken us. It widens us.
Preparing Without Knowing It
Perhaps this is the wisdom beneath her life’s work. Those who learn to meet the small deaths of life are less frightened, and therefore create less limiting beliefs.
Not because they want it. But because they’ve practised letting go. They’ve learned that love survives endings. That meaning doesn’t vanish when form changes. That something essential remains.
I’ve also learned this by studying as a Soul Midwife (a type of end of life guide) and for two years, I volunteered as a compassionate companion with Dorothy House Hospice and the NHS at the Royal United Hospital in Bath, sitting with people who were dying - people who had no one to be with them (an unfortunately common theme in Western hospitals).
What I saw again and again was not fear of death, but a tenderness around life.
Those moments taught me that learning to meet endings earlier in life matters. Those who had already faced loss and change seemed less afraid at the end. More open. More at peace.
A Gentle Pause
You might take a moment today and ask yourself:
What ending in my life have I not fully allowed? What loss have I hurried past?
There’s nothing to fix here. Nothing to solve. Just notice.
Because the beauty Elisabeth Kübler-Ross names does not come from avoiding pain. It comes from letting life do its work on us.
And those who allow that work, slowly, imperfectly, become the people others feel safe with. The “beautiful ones”.
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Live happy,
Hoppy
Tools & Updates
The Ultimate Meditation: A guided practice designed to help you slow down, reflect on mortality, and reconnect with a life of no regrets. Many people tell me it helps them discover greater calm, gratitude, and clarity.
Tools: For guided exercises to help you live these ideas day to day.
Go deeper: The Ripple Effect of Denying Death / Maya Angelou: Famous Last Words / The Surprising Way Mortality Enhances Creativity
Full website with all content: Here
What people are saying about DTLWP: Hoppy, I LOVE this!!!!!! Just so on point and desperately needed - thank you. (Max)
Updates:
The Beta version of Reverstory is almost ready and will be coming to paying subscribers soon. This is an AI tool that will reverse engineer your life, identify the major life regret you may be heading for, and give you suggestions of how to step into deeper alignment.
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