Welcome to the “longevity revolution,” with all of its dilemmas. Modern medicine enables us to live longer, but it also means that the end of life will often come with hard decisions–decisions that we’re reluctant to face until they’re upon us. Ninety percent of us realize it’s important to talk with our loved ones about end-of-life care, but only 27 percent of us have done so.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ellen Goodman had plenty of experience writing about these issues, but her mother’s dementia left Goodman facing excruciating end-of-life decisions that stunned her. Regretting her failure to discuss these issues with her mother when she still could, in 2012 Goodman founded the Conversation Project, a public engagement campaign dedicated to having everyone’s wishes for end-of-life care expressed and respected. The project believes that the place for these discussions to begin is at the kitchen table with the people we love, before it’s too late—not in the intensive care unit. More than a million people, from all 50 states and 175 countries, have used the conversation starter kit over the past five years. Come learn how to start this crucial conversation with those you love.

Goodman spent decades chronicling social change and its impact on American life before she started her career at Encore, trying to make social change. At one point named the most widely syndicated progressive columnist in the country, Goodman won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary while writing her nationally syndicated column. The author of seven books, she won the Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement Award of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.