It's Your Party: Design a Celebration of Life (and a Life Worth Celebrating)

5 Star Review

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Editorial Book Review:

By Paul Ryan

The question Margaret Chiavini opens with is a provocation disguised as an invitation: what if planning your own funeral was the most life-affirming thing you could do? For most of us, the honest answer is that we have never considered it, which is precisely the problem she is writing to solve. It’s Your Party is a book about death that turns out to be entirely about how to live.

Chiavini came to the subject the way most of us come to the things that actually change us: through loss. After attending more than fifty funerals and watching a close friend’s sudden death leave his wife buried under logistical chaos, and then witnessing the quiet gift of her mother-in-law’s carefully pre-planned farewell, she had what she describes as a reckoning, not about death but about the choices she was making in her own life. She responded by planning to climb Mount Kilimanjaro at forty, before turning fifty. She reached the summit. Her mother became a stand-up comedian at seventy and competed in the Ms. Senior America pageant at seventy-two. The book reflects this family inheritance of refusal to wait.

The practical sections are genuinely useful: guidance on designing your own celebration of life, drafting the words you hope someone will say about you, and building the kind of checklist that answers the question could your family find this tomorrow, covering passwords and wishes and assets and all the things we mean to organize and do not. But the deeper work of the book is in the questions that planning forces you to answer honestly: how do you want to be remembered, and are you living in a way that earns that?

Built on the pillars of optimism, gratitude, and responsibility, this is a warm, practical, and unexpectedly joyful book for anyone who wants to stop deferring the life they actually intend to live.

About the Author

Margaret Chiavini

Margaret has built her career for over thirty years on a simple premise: real growth happens when you invest in people. Her philosophy is to pick good people, believe in them, and hold them to the highest standards. That is how great teams are built.

As Vice President of the National Bank and Credit Union Division at Newrez, she leads a national sales organization and hosts Empowerment in Action, a weekly video series dedicated to highlighting women of Newrez. Outside of work, she serves on the board of Thrive, an organization focused on breaking the cycle of homelessness and helping people build stronger futures.

A Stage 2 melanoma diagnosis, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, and reaching Everest Base Camp changed how Margaret looks at life. She stopped putting joy on the back burner. Whether leading teams, mentoring colleagues, or writing her book It’s Your Party, her goal is the same: help people clear the clutter and finally live the life they have been putting off.