Say My Name, Honor My Wishes

Say My Name, Honor My Wishes is an online class for anyone interested in using advance directives to deepen intimacy.

Explore advance directives as a relational tool, designed specifically for people prioritizing chosen family. Whether you're single, partnered or "it's complicated”, monogamous, non-monogamous, have queer platonic life partner, every adult who wants to choose who speaks for them when they can't speak for themselves needs an Advance Directive. This is designed with queer, trans and non-binary people in mind, and all are welcome. Open to the general public.

What Matters Most: Advance Directives as a Relational Practice

A two-hour live online class for trans, non-binary, queer, and polyamorous people and the people who love them.

Sharing what matters most to us in our lives - our desires, wishes and fears, is deeply intimate. Explore how discussing Advance Directives and name people or a person you trust to make decisions for you if you can't is a deeply relational practice, one that can open new levels of intimacy and protect you by making sure the people who you name and trust are the people legally authorized to speak for you.

When someone is seriously ill due to physical and psychiatric illness and cannot speak for themselves, the law reaches for a default: usually a spouse, or a legal next of kin. Perhaps you have a spouse but you'd like them to just be your support person and not have to make decisions, and you know your BFF would be a grounded decision maker. In a mono-normative legal system that defers to marriage, chosen family is not automatically family in the eyes of a hospital. Trans, non-binary, queer, and polyamorous people know this intimately — and a completed, correctly executed advance directive is one of the few tools that puts the decision in your hands and names the people you trust.

In two hours together, we'll explore how advance directives (including psychiatric advance directives!) can be an essential relational tool for partners, lovers, friends, queer platonics and more. We'll practice, in large group and small breakout rooms, language for starting the conversation — around a holiday table, on a long drive, in a text thread with a parent who is also aging. We'll walk through resources for completing your state's form, and flag the state-specific laws worth knowing, including default surrogate hierarchies that are activated if you don't have an Advance Directive, and how to navigate situations where chosen family can be locked out.

Come solo or with one or more people you trust to make decisions for you.

You'll leave with a script you can use this holiday season, a plan for your own next step, and access to the recording.

This event is led by a doctor and bioethicist, not an attorney - the content of this course is educational and does not constitute legal advice.

Facilitator/Instructor: Dr. Andi Chatburn

Andi Chatburn, DO, MA, HEC-C (they/she) is a Hospice and Palliative Care Physician, Bioethicist, and Ceremonialist living in the San Francisco Bay Area. They hold a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine and Master's in Bioethics from Kansas City University (2010). Dr. Chatburn completed their Family Medicine residency with the University of Washington in Spokane, WA, and fellowship training in Hospice and Palliative Medicine at The University of Kansas. They are a board-certified as a Healthcare Ethics Consultant (HEC-C), and has served as clinical faculty at multiple medical schools. They now have a private practice and teach Relational Ethics for Expanded States of Consciousness with the Seminary associated with the Congregation for Sacred Practices.