Stan Goldberg

Stan Goldberg is a Professor Emeritus of Communicative Disorders at San Francisco State University. For over 25 years he taught, provided therapy, researched, and published in the area of information processing, loss, and change. Stan has published seven books, written numerous articles and delivered over 100 lectures and workshops throughout the United States, Latin America and Asia. He is currently working on a novel and a book on loss. He also consults on issues of personal, institutional, and corporate change. He has served as an expert legal witness in high-profile court cases and is a consulting editor for Oxford University Press. Stan leads workshops for adults whose lives were suddenly and traumatically changed. He serves at the bedside hospice volunteer in San Francisco for Pathways Home Health Care and Hospice. and is a featured columnist in the Hospice Volunteers of America quarterly magazine. His published magazine articles, essays, poems, and plays have received numerous national and international writing awards. Written with humor and sensitivity, they have appeared in magazines ranging from Psychology Today to Horse and Rider. His latest book is Lessons for the Living: Stories of Forgiveness, Gratitude, and Courage at the End of Life http://lessonsfortheliving.blogspot.com. It’s a memoir of his six years as a bedside hospice volunteer; an experience that taught him to accept his cancer and live fully, no matter how long that might be. He can be contacted at stan@stangoldbergwriter.com. Numerous downloadable articles appear on his website www.stangoldbergwriter.com

Articles:

Caregivers: We’re Not Mother Teresa

I’d been a bedside volunteer for more than five years; sitting with dying patients and their families once or twice a week for up to four continuous hours. Sometimes I […]

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Music for my Relatives: Understanding Buchenwald

I thought about my father’s family tree as I drove from Prague to Weimer. Thirty-three relatives had died in Auschwitz, three had been liberated from Dachau, but nothing was written […]

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I’m in Shock! But it’s Nothing Personal

It was the type of conversation we’ve all heard, and then thought, “I’d never do that!” In a small restaurant north of San Francisco, I heard a woman loudly complaining […]

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Does Choosing How to Die Make a Difference?

If you could choose the way you will die, what would it be? Many people cavalierly answer “old age” or “in my sleep,” as if either of these answers will […]

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The Zen of Eating Cream of Wheat: A Journey Into Dementia

As a bedside hospice volunteer in San Francisco, I always have the choice of whether or not to accept an assignment. Some, I immediately know are right for me, such […]

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Thoughts As You Approach Your Own Death

How do we “know” something? How do we know anything? Our primary sources usually involve written documents or the spoken word, with information ranging from ludicrously false to probably true. […]

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The Hard Work of Dying

Imagine that you’re preparing for a thirty-day trip to a foreign country and you’re limited to taking only what can be carried in a backpack. Your decisions on what to […]

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Memories: A Call to Reconnect

Did you ever have a memory that rode into your consciousness on the back of a passing odor, object, or random word? It might have been something you desperately tried […]

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Helping Those in Pain Requires Acceptance, Compassion

A client who was dying once said to me, “Every day, I feel as if I’m on one of those exercise boards that rest on a ball. Just when I […]

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The Insults of Aging: Why Young People Get it Wrong

Incredible things are heard when nobody thinks you’re listening. Recently, in downtown San Francisco, I was walking behind a 20-something–year-old couple. They were forced to reduce their fast pace as […]

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