Live and DieAWAKE
On Love, Loss, and Living Fully
- Publication
- November 4, 2026
- Author
- Julie Wright Halbert
- Inside
- Guided meditations and reflection pauses
- Subjects
- Grief, loss, end of life
At 3:33 on a Thursday afternoon, Julie’s husband Jim took his last breath, their sons each holding one of his hands. “My soul did not break. It cracked wide open.” Live and Die Awake is the story of a great love, a sacred dying, and the unraveling and rebuilding that followed. It is also a hand reaching back for the reader, into a season of love, loss, and becoming.
“Read it with your heart open and your hand on your own life.”
Not a book to be read.
A book to be walked through.
A quiet dedication
In honor of those we love.
The full dedication is held until the release.
Julie’s husband Jim died within three weeks of a sudden diagnosis. Live and Die Awake is the account of those three weeks, and of the years that followed: the descent into grief, the slow witnessing of it, and the rising into a life of presence, love, and grace.
The book flows through Julie’s personal story, followed by guided meditations and reflection pauses that invite the reader into their own journey. The arc moves through what Julie has come to call the Living and Dying Awake Framework: descension, witnessing, rising.
- DescensionThe descent into grief.
- WitnessingThe slow witnessing of it.
- RisingThe rising into a life of presence, love, and grace.
Anyone moving through loss in any of its forms.
It is for anyone asked to keep living while carrying a loss the world has stopped asking about.
- A divorce
- A move to a new city
- A job that is gone
- An identity that no longer fits
- The death of someone loved
- Hospice workers, death doulas, and clinicians
“Death is not only about how we die. It is about how fully we choose to live.”
“We do not rise in spite of the ashes. We rise from them.”
“Grief is not a problem to be solved. It is a doorway opening into living into the light.”
Julie Wright Halbert.
Julie practiced national education law for the Council of the Great City Schools for almost three decades, serving as Legislative Counsel on cases that reached the Supreme Court of the United States.
In 2018 her husband Jim was diagnosed with cancer. Three weeks later he was gone. He was 51. They were never told the time would be that short. In the years that followed Julie became a certified death doula, an end-of-life educator, and a transformational soul coach. She founded Rising Phoenix LIFE and began teaching what she had been forced to learn: that the way we meet death shapes the way we live.
Julie lives in Sarasota, Florida. She is the mother of two sons, Jacob and William.
- Certified Death Doula
- Certified Transformational Soul Coach
- Hospice Volunteer, Empath Tidewell
Write to Julie about the book.
Questions, review copy requests, launch-event invitations, or just a note. Julie reads every message herself.
Guided meditations.
The meditations woven through the book. A few are already here to sit with.
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