Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Birth Data

After a lecture by Kübler-Ross, Linda Clark, questioned her on her birth data. The rather firm reply was: "I was born on July 8, 1926 in Zurich at 10:15 p.m." In September of 1980, Lois Rodden received the copy of a letter from Mrs. Kübler Ross, written in response to seeing a published chart based on her own quote of 10:15 p.m. Part of that letter read: "I am aware that until recently I presumed my birthtime was 10:15 p.m., but recently I found out that it was 10:45 p.m. on July 8, 1926 in Zurich, Switzerland." She then goes on asking for some information regarding this new horoscope.

Biography

Swiss psychiatrist and author who is noted for her work with death and the dying. Her first book, "On Death and Dying," 1969, introduced the five stages of dying; denial, isolation, anger, bargaining and depression, before acceptance; all efforts to maintain power over one's own death. Throughout her life, she has assisted perhaps 20,000 people through their transition into an afterlife. With total belief in the continuity of life spirit through the experience of death, she hit upon a ground breaking method of counseling, listening to the patient first and then continuing with the medical techniques.

Kubler-Ross was the first born of triplet girls, a mere two pounds, with survival uncertain. She was almost an alter ego to her identical triplet Erika who was very sick as a teenager. At 18 she left home alone to see what she could do for the war-ravaged people of France and then Poland. Against the wishes of her father she struggled to become a physician. Her dad was a tyrannical bureaucrat who refused to recognize her desire to become a doctor, starting her lifetime of bucking authority. When she finished school and would not go to work for her dad, he threw her out of the house. She spent years working as a lab assistant while going to medical school. As WW II ended, she did volunteer work through ravaged Europe.

As a young doctor, she married Emanuel Ross, an American neuropathologist. Following two miscarriages, they had a son, Ken in 1960, two more miscarriages and a daughter, Barbara in 1964. At the hospital where she worked, she was most affected by the dismissal and lack of support for terminal patients. With her determination and dedication, she brought many of them back to health. Eventually she was drawn to those most truly abandoned by our society, namely the dying.

At the University of Colorado, Kubler-Ross began lecturing about the process of dying. By the time the family moved to Chicago, her lectures were attracting standing-room-only. She felt strongly that people often clung to life because of unfinished business and once they brought their affairs into order, making amends, saying goodbyes and concluding their mundane arrangements, that they could have a peaceful, even happy death. Her impact was revolutionary.

Though world-traveled for her lectures, her personal style offended many. Certainly inspirational and indisputably charismatic, she was also known as abrasive and critical of the medical profession. Her compassion and love of humanity shone through, but her detractors found her downright arrogant. When she went public with her belief in the spirit world and, in the late '70s began speaking of her own "spooks," the medical establishment labeled her a kook. Over the years, she reported several out-of-body experiences, including two near-death events (due to a bowel obstruction, and to cardiac fibrillation). She personally reported on the light, the peace, the overwhelming love of the experiences. During one endless night of agony, she felt that she was reliving the deaths of all her patients, and after going through the pain and fear, emerged with cosmic consciousness.

Kübler-Ross is an ardent hiker, mountain climber and skier. She admits to a short fuse, great highs and lows and an overly idealistic nature. She has an excellent memory, nearly total recall, and she is a workaholic. In 1979 she caused concern amongst her colleagues with her interests in the occult. She began an association with medium Rev. Jay Barham and his wife, Marti, whom she had first met in 1976, to combine their work in counseling and therapy. Kubler persuaded her husband, Manny, to purchase a 42-acre compound to use as a site for healing. The Barham method included psychodrama, sex, trances and séances, vivid cult components. Through public and professional disapproval, Kubler reevaluated her connection with the Barhams, but not after her husband asked for a divorce from their 21-year-marriage.

After making a clean break with Barham, her San Diego house burned to the ground. Investigators suspected arson but no charges were ever filed. She then bought a 300-acre farm in the Shenandoah Valley, moving in 1984. When she announced that she was adopting 20 AIDS babies, this house was also torched, burning all her possessions, pictures, papers, memories. Her pet llama had been shot. Again, no charges were filed. At this point, her son whisked her off to Arizona, afraid for her safety.

As soon as she was settled, she had the first of a series of strokes that left her incapacitated and massively frustrated. Confined to a wheelchair in 1996, she smokes and fumes that the only thing that works is her brain. In her 30 years of work she has gained international renown as a pioneer in her field, transforming the medical profession's attitudes toward a once taboo subject. Her books have sold millions, translated into 20 languages, and her most influential ideas have helped transform medicine. She now lives in Arizona and has recently collaborated with David Kessler on her latest book, “Life Lessons,” on life and living.

Quotes:

• I have never met a person whose greatest need was anything other than real, unconditional love. You can find it in a simple act of kindness toward someone who needs help. There is no mistaking love. You feel it in your heart. It is the common fiber of life, the flame that heals our soul, energizes our spirit and supplies passion to our lives. It is our connection to God and to each other.
• If we could raise one generation with unconditional love, there would be no Hitlers. We need to teach the next generation of children from Day One that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind's greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear.
• It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we're alive – to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a façade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.
• Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.
• I've told my children that when I die, to release balloons in the sky to celebrate that I graduated. For me, death is a graduation.

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