"Life is like a movie... and you get to write the ending."
THE END-OF-LIFE JOURNAL
Welcome
When we are young, people ask us, "What would you like to be when you grow up?" We answer with roles: a teacher, a parent, a nurse, a builder. Over a lifetime we live many of those roles, some we chose and some that were handed to us. Through them we met the world, used our gifts, made things, loved people, and learned about life.
At the end of life, those roles begin to come to a close. We leave this world the way we came, without them, and the only thing we take with us is what we learned. This journal is a place to look back on each role, keep what was truly you, set down what you no longer need to carry, and let go of what never fit. Along the way, you can reflect, preserve, and share your story with the people who matter most.
And at the end, you will finally be able to answer that childhood question, not with a role, but with a true definition of "Who I Am."
Your story
About End of Life Journal
Our Mission
At End-of-Life Journal, we are dedicated to providing high-quality opportunities to reflect, preserve, and share your life experiences.
Our Vision
Our vision is to provide a platform for all people to reflect on, preserve, and share their life story.
Through the Lens: A Glimpse into Our Products and Services
Welcome to the Life Inventory!
As we begin this journey through your life, let's start by understanding the ways your Self has met the world. Think about the most important roles you have played, and list them from the most meaningful to the least. Some roles may have lasted your whole life, and others only for a season. Some may have ended already, and some you may still be holding. As you reflect, notice how each role let you express your skills, your desires, your creativity, and also what others expected you to be. By the end, you will understand yourself more deeply, and you will be ready to write your final story in a way that is intentional and true to who you are.
This is your time for Reflection
The Life Inventory
How to Use This Inventory
Pull up a comfortable chair, and think of this as a quiet chat with a caring friend. There are no right answers and nothing to get perfect.
Take your time. You can do a little today and come back tomorrow, next week, or next month. Answer what you want, skip what you don't, and change your mind whenever you like.
You can write your answers, print the workbook and fill it in by hand, or simply talk them through with someone you love. Any of those counts.
Part One: Your Roles
As we begin this journey through your life, let's start by understanding the ways your Self has met the world. Think about the most important roles you have played, and list them from the most meaningful to the least. Some roles may have lasted your whole life, and others only for a season. Some may have ended already, and some you may still be holding. As you reflect, notice how each role let you express your skills, your desires, your creativity, and also what others expected you to be. By the end, you will understand yourself more deeply, and you will be ready to write your final story in a way that is intentional and true to who you are.
Now let's make your role map. Think of the roles you have lived, such as son or daughter, parent, partner, friend, worker, neighbor, or caregiver. Write each one down and put them in order, from the most meaningful to you to the least. For each role, jot down:
- When it began, and when it ended, or whether you are still living it.
- How it let you express your skills.
- How it let you express your desires.
- How it let you be creative.
- What other people expected of you in it.
A role can be permanent or temporary. It can be finished, or still going. Just notice which is which.
Part Two: Your Values
Values are the reasons you lived your roles with meaning. They are real parts of who you are. Let's give them some attention of their own.
- Across all of your roles, what mattered most to you?
- Can you remember a time you stood up for something you believed in? What happened?
- Which values showed up again and again, no matter what role you were in?
- Was there ever a role that asked you to go against your values? How did that feel, and what did you do?
- Which values do you hope the people you love will carry on?
The Life Inventory, continued
Part Three: Reflecting on Each Role
Your Life Is a Movie
Think of your life as a movie, the one only you could have starred in. Every role you have played is like a scene in it: being a parent, a friend, a worker, a neighbor. Each scene has its own setting, its own turning points, and its own lessons, and together they make up the whole picture.
So on the next pages, we will give each role its own chapter. Chapter 1 might be "My life as a teacher," and Chapter 2 "My life as a friend." Take them one at a time, in your own words, and look for the beauty in each. Your values play through every scene, because they are true parts of who you are.
Now take your top roles, one at a time. Start with the one that mattered most, then go down your list. Give each one its own chapter, titled "Chapter 1: My life as a ______," then "Chapter 2: My life as a ______," and so on. For each chapter, have a quiet chat with yourself using these questions.
Remembering
- How did this role begin? Did you choose it, or did it choose you?
- What did an ordinary day in this role look like?
- When did you feel most alive, most like yourself?
What it gave you
- What did this role bring out in you?
- Which skills, talents, or creative gifts did you get to use?
- What did it teach you about life?
Truly you, or not?
- Which parts of this role felt like the real you? These are the parts to keep.
- What did you carry mostly because others expected it? These are the parts you can set down.
- Was there any part that never really fit you at all? Those you can simply let go.
- If you could keep just one thing from this role, what would it be?
Your values
- Which of your values did this role let you live out?
Sharing
- Who should hear about this part of your life?
- Is there a story, a saying, or some advice from this role you would like to pass on?
Closing this role
- What would you tell someone just starting out in this role?
- What are you ready to set down?
- What do you now know about who you are?
Closing: Who You Are
You have walked back through your chapters, one by one, and you have named what you hold most dear. Now for the last stretch.
Beyond my roles, I am...
Picture the roles falling away, one by one, and only the lessons you learned remain. Who are you then? Finish that sentence in your own words. Write as much as you like.
What would you like to be when you grow up?
Remember that question from when you were small? You can answer it now, not with a job or a title, but with who you truly are.
Your next step is the Life Journal, where you can write your story in your own words and decide who gets to read it. Your answers here will be a wonderful place to start.
A fillable workbook
Prefer to type your answers and keep them? Download the fillable workbook, fill it in at your own pace, save it, and email it to yourself or someone you love.
RCADE: How Roles Shape What Matters to Us
By Jesus Dominguez, PhD, CPC-I
Think about the last time something went wrong in a part of your life that you care deeply about. Maybe you missed a family event, or you felt you let someone down at work. Now think about a small mistake in something that barely matters to you. The two feel very different, even when the "problem" is the same size.
RCADE is a way of making sense of that difference. It is a framework for understanding how the roles we live shape what we pay attention to, how we feel, and how much of ourselves we pour into things.
What the name stands for
RCADE stands for Role Centrality, Anxiety, Demand, and Effort. Here are the four ideas in plain words.
Where it starts: what matters to me
RCADE begins before roles do. Every day, our minds and bodies quietly sort what deserves our attention: a need, a worry, a person we love, a chance to do something meaningful. This sorting is not only about danger. It also notices opportunity, connection, and purpose. Much of it happens without our thinking about it.
Roles come later. As we grow, we take on roles such as child, friend, partner, parent, worker, and caregiver. Each role becomes a pathway for expressing who we are, and each one organizes where our attention and energy go.
The four ideas
Role Centrality is how central a role is to your sense of who you are. Some roles are important but sit lightly. Others sit close to the center of your identity. RCADE suggests this is why a setback in one role can feel like a small bump, while a setback in another feels like a verdict on your worth.
Anxiety here means the uneasy, alert feeling that comes when something important is uncertain, threatened, or unfinished. In RCADE, anxiety is not automatically a problem. It can help us prepare, pay attention, and act. It only becomes a concern when it is intense, lasts, or gets in the way of life, and that is something a qualified professional assesses.
Demand is what a role asks of us. Some demands are practical, like tasks and schedules. Others are standards we carry inside, such as "a good parent never asks for help." The gap between what a role seems to require and what we are able to give is where much of the strain shows up.
Effort is the attention and action we put toward a role. It is not the same as capacity, which is our real ability to turn effort into results given our sleep, health, time, and support. You can care deeply and try very hard and still be unable to meet every demand. That is not a character flaw. It is often a sign that a situation asks too much of one person.
When demands outgrow us
RCADE describes three common ways people respond when demands are bigger than their capacity:
- Pushing harder, because progress still seems possible.
- Shifting to another activity or role.
- Stepping back to protect energy.
None of these is automatically good or bad. Stepping back can be rest, or it can be avoidance. Shifting can help us recover, or it can put off something important. What matters is what is happening and what it costs.
When a role closes
Roles do not last forever. A job ends. Children grow up. A loved one moves into care or passes away. RCADE calls the ending of a role's everyday form "role extinction," and it adds something important: the meaning of the role can live on even after the daily tasks stop. A parent whose children have grown is still a parent. Someone who has lost a spouse may still hold that bond in memory and faith. Nothing here asks you to stop honoring what mattered.
How this connects to the End-of-Life Journal
This journal rests on a simple idea: we meet the world through roles. Through them, the Self expresses itself, creates, learns, and experiences life. Over time, we take in the parts of each role that truly fit who we are, and we set down the parts that never did. At the end of life, our roles come to a close, and we leave as we came, taking only the lessons we learned.
Our values are the reasons we lived our roles with meaning. They are real parts of who we are.
An honest word about its status
RCADE is a theoretical framework. It is still being developed and tested, and it is not a diagnosis or a treatment. We share it because it offers a gentle, useful way to look at your life, not because it has been proven. If you are struggling, please reach out to a qualified professional.
Your next step
Ready to look at your own roles? Visit the Life Inventory, a guided, conversational set of questions that helps you reflect on each role you have lived, what you want to keep, and what you are ready to set down.
Role Reconstruction Therapy (RRT)
By Jesus Dominguez, PhD, CPC-I
When you are asked "Who are you?", chances are you answer with a role: a daughter, a teacher, a husband, a nurse, a caregiver. Roles are how we live in the world. But what happens when a role gets too heavy, or when it ends? Role Reconstruction Therapy is an approach built to help with exactly that.
What RRT is
RRT is a way of working with people that is built on RCADE (Role Centrality, Anxiety, Demand, and Effort), a framework about how roles shape what we care about and how much we give. RRT turns those ideas into a collaborative process. The person and the helper look at the person's roles together, and the picture they form is shared and open to change.
RRT is a proposed approach that is still being developed. Its effectiveness has not yet been proven. It is meant to work alongside other care, not replace it.
The heart of the idea
We engage the world through roles. The Self uses roles to express itself, to create, to learn, and to experience life. Over a lifetime, the Self takes in each role and keeps the parts that best fit who it truly is. It sets down or rejects what did not fit. In the end, roles come to a close, and we leave as we came, carrying only the lessons.
Values matter most in this picture. Values are the reasons we lived our roles with meaning, and they are true parts of who we are.
What RRT does
RRT uses a few simple tools:
- Role mapping. Listing the roles in your life, which are active, changing, or finished, how much each matters, what each asks of you, and what helps you carry it.
- Role distancing. Learning to see the difference between you and one performance in one role. A hard day as a parent does not make you a failure as a person. Distance is not abandoning a role. It lets you keep your commitment while being kind to yourself.
- Revising standards. Looking at the unspoken rules we hold ("I must do everything myself") and adjusting them to fit real life, while keeping what is essential.
- Sustainable effort. Sharing the load, protecting your energy, and making room for the other things that give your life meaning. This works only when real help, like rest and support, is within reach.
- Telling the story after a role ends. Honoring what the role was, noticing what still matters, and choosing, in your own way and time, how to carry that forward.
RRT also respects culture and family. Duty and closeness are not problems to fix. The goal is flexibility and a life you can sustain, not detachment.
How it connects to the End-of-Life Journal
The Life Inventory is the RRT tool for reflecting on the end of life. It follows the same path:
- Your role map. You list your most important roles, from most to least meaningful.
- Your values. You give your values a section of their own.
- Each role, one at a time. For each role you ask: What parts were truly me and are worth keeping? What did I carry mostly because others expected it, and can I set down now? What never fit at all?
- Beyond my roles, I am... You picture the roles falling away, with only the lessons left, and finish that sentence in your own words.
Finally, you return to a question from childhood: "What would you like to be when you grow up?" Many people find they can answer it best at the end of life, not with a job or title, but with who they truly are.
RRT and caregiving
Caregiving is one of the clearest places to see roles at work. Most caregivers do not set out to become one. They begin by "just helping out," and over months or years the role grows until it shapes their days and their sense of self. Some caregivers come to feel that accepting help means they are failing or abandoning the person they love.
RRT offers a different view. A few of its guiding ideas for caregivers:
- Healthy distance from the role is not abandonment. It is what makes sustainable care possible.
- Your other roles and parts of your identity deserve protection.
- Community help and a support network are real extensions of your capacity, not signs of failure.
- When the caregiving role ends, you can grieve both the person and the role, and carry your values into what comes next.
A gentle reminder
The Life Inventory is a reflective journal. It is not therapy and does not replace professional care. If you are caring for someone, grieving, or feeling overwhelmed, please talk with a qualified professional.
Your next step
Start whenever you are ready, at your own pace. The Life Inventory will walk you through your roles, your values, and the story you want to leave behind.
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