Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Briefly Perfectly Human with Alua Arthur

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

One of the few absolute truths for every one of us is that death is inevitable, yet it’s a taboo topic that many of us avoid discussing. But can planning for your own death actually bring peace of mind and even make you live a more fulfilling  life? In this eye-opening episode of The Language of Love Conversation, I sit down with Alua Arthur—a New York Times bestselling author, death doula, and founder of Going with Grace. We dive into those often avoided but unavoidable topics: death, dying, and grief. Drawing from her book Briefly Perfectly Human, she reveals how confronting our mortality can actually lead to a richer, more intentional life. Tune in to discover why facing these tough topics can be transformative and how a death doula plays a pivotal role in navigating the end of life with grace and meaning. Let’s dive in and learn: What does a death doula do? The nine contemplations on death How to use grief as a catalyst for growth The vision of a peaceful death and practical preparations Communication dynamics between the dying and their loved ones Accepting the reality of mortality through meditation Remember to explore Briefly Perfectly Human by Alua Arthur for even more insights. You can follow Alua on Instagram and LinkedIn, or visit her website to stay updated on her latest projects. Also, don’t forget to check out my website for courses and books tailored just for you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman. And for the past 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Here on the Language of Love Conversations, I'm talking to some of the world's most influential and revolutionary experts, thought leaders, spiritual teachers and celebrities about love, sex and relationships from a mind, body and spirit perspective. And that way, my goal is to awaken your mind, body, and soul. It's time to become fluent in the language of love. As the most visible death doula working in America today, Elua Arthur is a New York Times bestselling author, a seeker, a recovering attorney, as she would call it, and the founder of Going With Grace, a death doula training and end-of-life planning organization.

And she has spent thousands of hours with folks as they are contemplating their mortality when regrets, secret joys, hidden affairs, dim realities are finally revealed aloud. Can you imagine doing that for a living? Really, every aspect of Elua's fascinating life comes together in her new bestselling book, Briefly Perfectly Human, making an authentic life by getting real about the end. It's a raw, nose-barred, honest, and actually often hilarious memoir and a really transformative, beautiful story that I think encourages us to think about our own mortality and how to live like we're dying because the truth is every single one of us is.

Elua and I are getting into death, dying, grief, what the heck a death doula is and what she does and everything in between in this episode of The Language of Love. Elua, Arthur, thank you so much for joining us on The Language of Love. I'm really, I've been really excited to talk to you about your beautiful book, Briefly Perfectly Human. Thank you for being here. Thank you very much for having me. It's been a New York Times bestseller. I know you've been all over the place. I've been following you for a while, even before you wrote the book, as someone who

has been through her share of grief and loss. But it's been really beautiful to watch things explode in such a positive way for you. How has it been, this journey to a bestselling author and all of the things that come with that? I've been there, too, so I know it's a whirlwind. Absolute whirlwind. I did not know that you'd been along for the ride. Thank you so much for your support over the years, even though I couldn't see it.

It's been a ride. You know, I've consistently held my core beliefs about the work and how it shows up in the world and how I want to do it. And I think staying authentic to the message, despite other messages about how to talk about death or what we should be focusing on. I think as long as I stay consistent with what I believe and how I speak about the work, then everything is okay. And it turns out it's going okay. And I've been doing a lot of deep breathing. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot of energy coming at you, I'm sure. So I'm really grateful

that you're taking the time to talk with my peeps here because Lord knows I talk a lot about grief and grief healing and different philosophies on the afterlife. But we actually have spoken very little about the topic we're going to talk about today, death, and in particular, your journey as a death doula. As you write about in the book, we have all sorts of resources automatically for navigating bureaucracies or getting tutors or a wedding planner or a real estate agent or whatever, but it hasn't been historically normalized to have assistance with death and that's where the death doula comes in. So let's just start there. What is a death doula? A death doula is a non-medical, really, really important non-medical and holistic

support person for the dying person and their circle of support through the process. And so no matter what they're struggling with, that's non-medical, we can support them with. When I say dying person, I mean anybody who's come into recognition of their mortality. So that means even when people are healthy and they've started thinking oh shoot one day I'm going to die I need to start getting my stuff together we can help them create comprehensive end-of-life plans or work through their ideas about fears about anxieties about death and dying when people know what they're going to be dying of we can support them in creating the most ideal death for themselves under the circumstances and then after a death we can help family members wrap

up affairs of their loved one's life so we're doing all the practical emotional logistical support around dying. Yeah, I thought it was really beautiful. You described it as like the death doula provides a ring in the circle of support that radiates outward like the rings in a tree trunk so that you're really giving that logistical and emotional and even imaginal like thinking, planning support, you know, dream like dreaming. And that's a weird thing to say when you're thinking about end of life, but dreaming into how you want your death to be. And there's so many stories in the book that kind of show that journey that you've taken with so many of your clients. I do remember reading, you made a comment that I thought was really powerful.

It was something like, you know, if you're old enough to get a driver's license, you probably should have a death plan. And that just occurred to me as you were saying, you know, it could happen. You could want to work with a death doula just upon really connecting to the fact that you're not going to live forever. Like it never occurred to me that someone might work with a death doula before getting a terminal diagnosis or being kind of in the process of dying. So what's the earliest you've worked with someone in that process? There was a 19 year old who came to me. Her father was elderly. I believe her mama died when she was much younger and her father was elderly. And she had been sitting with him,

going through some of his possessions and talking to him about the end of his life. And that made her think about the end of her life at 19 years old. So we sat together, I know, and we did her entire end of life plan. Like we talked through all the things. Back to the idea of the driver's license, you know, folks have the opportunity to choose whether or not they're going to be an organ donor right on the driver's license. And that's a conversation about their death, but it's not really informed decision-making because people haven't spent any time thinking about what that means or harvesting my organs

or which organs, or am I comfortable with this process? They just think, yeah, that'd be a great idea. Check it off at the DMV. It's a death conversation, but a full one isn't being had around it. I was able to have all those with her. It was really rich to be with somebody so young, who was so steeped in the reality of her mortality. Yeah. And how could you not be with an elderly father and a mom you'd already lost? I do remember with all three of my boys being, you know, getting their license with them when they pass their driver's test and having a very brief conversation, not the one you just described about, like, we didn't talk about specifically what organs would be harvested and how, but, you know, we talked about that. And, you know,

there's all worse and, you know, so immortal and infallible. It was a really abstract concept for them, but you're right. That is a start to the conversation. And it's not a conversation. We talk about all kinds of things. It's sort of, you know, I relate to this so strongly, and I think you're a similar kind of personality to me that I've spent my life talking about taboo stuff in the sex world as a sex therapist, talking about sex in the public realm. Death and sex are two things. It's probably more things, but those are two of like the biggest things that people are really uncomfortable talking about for different reasons, but are taboo topics. And so I was actually going to talk about this probably later in the conversation, but for some reason it's

coming up now, I was really inspired and I thought you so beautifully shared because so much of the book, guys, if you haven't read it yet, it's kind of a woven story of Elua's life, your wild ride in your life, which is a really beautiful story and beautifully told. And woven into that are many of these stories. So it's the trajectory of how you became a death doula, how you started off as a lawyer and how things evolved to get you to that point, which I want to get into, but also this idea of how you, especially after your family moved to the United States, how you really started experiencing the racial prejudice you did and the experience of being othered in that way, in that horrible, all the painful ways.

I was wondering if you could speak to, we're gonna get into the evolution of how you came to be a death doula, but also just that this idea, cause I've found this true in my life. I was othered in a very different way being a white cis gendered woman, but being the only Jewish family

in my little town on the Bible belt. And so I was very aware that when I decided to become a sex therapist when I was 21 and all my friends were like, aren't you worried? because this was back in the 80s when it wasn't normal to talk about sex. And they were like, aren't you worried that people are going to think you're weird or judge you? And I was like, I've been weird and judged my whole life. I've been an outsider. So I don't have that limitation. You know, I don't mind being weird. Weird is normal for me. Being othered is normal for me.

So I'm just going to do what brings me passion and what I'm inspired by and activated by the fact that no, like, why the hell is no one talking about this? And I felt a thread of that in your story as well, in your version of it, obviously. So I was wondering if you could speak to that a little bit. Yeah. I love that you mentioned all of those things because being othered shows up in so many different ways. And one of the benefits of freedoms of being othered is that we don't have to try to fit into the box. You know, I tried for some time, never did. I tried it though. I really did try. I did too. I really did. And I ended up in depression, a legitimate major depressive episode, a clinical depression when I was still working at legal aid that necessitated

me taking some time off of work. I, to this day, I'm still the only lawyer I know. Well, actually there's one other, one other lawyer I know who's taken a medical leave of absence for work because of mental health. Like it just was not going to work anymore. And that break from work turned out to be really, really incredible for me. I mean, it was great for me just to step off the wheel for a minute and think about the life that I'd built around myself and the fact that it wasn't working for me and my attempts to make myself fit into a very dominant paradigm about what I'm supposed to do with my life and how I'm supposed to make money and the relationships I'm supposed to have and how I'm supposed to feel about my uterus and all of the above. Just none of it

was working, none of it was working. So depression was like a big, you know, red stop button for a while. It allowed me to stop everything and just to pull back from the life that I built. I went to Cuba during that leave of absence where I met a fellow traveler on the bus who had uterine cancer and we talked a lot about her life and then we started talking about her death and it became really clear to me how important it was for us to be talking about mortality. It was a freeing conversation. It was a rich conversation. It was a taboo air quotes conversation, but one that we both desperately wanted to have, but I think didn't know we wanted to have until we were having it. And so when we think about death and sex as taboos, I'm like, yeah, but

people actually want to talk about it. Right. We say that they don't. But when I mentioned what I do, people always like, well, girl, and they want to share with me what happened when somebody died. listen and then they are in and so I'm like maybe it's not as taboo as we think maybe we just need a little bit of permission to discuss it yeah same effects right like the you know we maybe in public forums people are scared to talk about it but in conversation it's crucial and it's so central to our being and I'm so glad you brought up that pivotal because one of the themes for me And I believe for you too, in the book is your experience with depression. You went into, as you described, you know, a really dark place and as someone who has

personally experienced, you know, profound depression in my life and family members and children who have struggled with it, you wrote something like you're, you know, we're all just a phone call or a diagnosis or a chemical imbalance or a crisis or an accident away from a physical or mental disability that will make us not want to live anymore. And I just thought you wove that in so beautifully, but also how when you did, I think the woman's name was Jessica, the one that you met in Cuba who had the uterine cancer. I think that was her name. There was this line where you wrote that talking about her death brought you back to life. A hundred percent. In a conversation about mortality, I think it's where we really meet ourselves because we find out what we value, who we are, the expectations of others that we've heaped upon ourselves. Because when I'm thinking about my death, I'm going to be the only one who's there reckoning with the choices that I've made in my life. You know, at my death comes the end of everything I've chosen. And so I better have chosen well for me, for me. At my death, I'm not going to have to. I mean, hopefully I still won't have my student loans. But at my death, at least I won't think I spent my entire life as a lawyer trying to cram myself into these suits and into courtrooms and trying not to cry when things really moved me and wanting to talk about trauma and healing and pain and absurdities of life and not the strict letter of the law. Yeah. I guess it's that line from that song, live like you're dying, you know, and that's a big part. I feel like that's one of the major messages in your book. I mean, even in the title, Briefly Perfectly Human, you know, this idea of, or the subtitle even more, making an authentic life by getting real about the end.

one of the things that you said was that, you know, witnessing death has a bulldozing and purifying power. And as someone who witnessed, I was with both of my grandmothers and both of my parents and even my kind of spirit mama, my mother's best friend, who was like my second mom as they transitioned, which I didn't realize until maybe the third or fourth person that I was like, wow, this is kind of unusual for people who aren't professional death doulas. And then my 16-year-old who I found dead in his room, I wasn't with him as he transitioned. That was a very different death. But Lord knows, I can feel in my body what you mean by the bulldozing and purifying power. But I was wondering if you could talk a little bit, explain what that means to you.

Yeah. Well, for starters, that many deaths to be around is significant. I think for anybody, particularly somebody who hasn't chosen this as a path, right? This sounds very painful and incredibly difficult. And also particularly in a society where there isn't much of a conversation about how we care for our dying and how we're with dying, which means that you probably learned on the job, which I did. I did. Yeah, absolutely. That's so tough. It was, but it was strangely beautiful. My first death was one grandmother and my mom was with me. The two of us sat with her. Her son, my father, ran out of the room and they unplugged the respirator. So my mother and I stayed with her. So she wasn't conscious. When my mother was terminal, she was the next one to go. And she's the one who really taught me what to do because I was such an empath and such a parentified child already. I was her caretaker from the time

was born, her emotional caretaker. So I was a kid and still a grownup who was very attuned to like what everybody needed. It was part of my survival, but she was very clear. She's even said to me, nobody will talk to me about dying. And I was like, okay, tell me all the things. And she's like, well, I want this and I want that. And you got to do this with your father. You got to make sure no woman gets the jewelry. And you know, she was like telling me all the things. She went on and on and on. And at the end of that, she's like, oh, that felt so good. I think I'm going to want to do that again. And I was like, all right, because I was so desperate to do anything to be with her. And she taught me so much about it so that when then my other grandmother died

and then my father and then my spirit mother, I had accidentally been a little bit trained by my mother who said to me, she had so many regrets, which is one of the things you speak to so many regrets about her life that we spoke about a lot because I had about four months with her before she died. But she said to me, I haven't done a lot in my life that I'm really proud of, but I'm going to die really well. And I never forgot that. So that was sort of my foray into it that made the other ones become almost this sacred. I know what to do. I know how to navigate this. I can hold this, but also obviously holding the pain of the loss at the same time. But I would have never seen myself as someone who's comfortable doing that.

What an absolute gift. I mean, I think all the time that we teach other people how to die based on how we were doing it. And I heard you say that you were parentified from a young age. And sometimes I think that parents also have an opportunity to continue parenting through their death by teaching us how to do it, despite what they did with the rest of their time. And if they're like, these are the things that matter to me, this is what I need. This is where to find the safe, you know, things like that are so helpful. Yeah, because that stuff that now you understand the value of it, I'm sure after her death and as you were doing all the bureaucracies, all this stuff and all the things that were necessary to do, which hopefully means that you will not recreate the same in your own

life. But that's just for like the practical things. I think also with like the surrender with which we approach the end and how we navigate the difficulty of dying. I think that's also a teaching, a lesson that we can impart. Sounds like a really powerful initiation. And I'm grateful that she gave that to you because utterly a gift. Absolutely. Yeah. I felt it as a gift at the time. And I was clear, you speak a lot in the book about the perspective of helping the people transition, supporting them through really what they need moment to moment from in their environment, but also helping them

kind of design as much as they can their own death from what music is played to what they're wearing, to where they die, to how they, you know, as much as we can control it, especially because I think a lot of the stories were people who were terminally ill or in the process of dying. And that had never occurred to me. It's so obvious when you think about it, but that had never occurred to me to do. And I think it's something that is worth for all of us because through that. And I was wondering if you can speak to this too, through the process of thing, which is, I guess the point through the process of thinking about how you want to die. You're also thinking about what's really important to you. And then that begins to

inform how you want to live. Bingo. That's it. Yeah. Book over, podcast over, we're done. That's, I mean, that's all of it. That's all of it. When I'm thinking about my death, It brings everything else into my life in really, really clear focus. If I think that tonight is going to be it, then who do I want to be today? Yeah. Who do I want to be today? It allows me to be more honest with my words, more intentional with my actions. I think also more in awe of this really brief gift of life that we've been given and allows me to see my values.

Like I can see my whole life so clearly when I'm looking at it through the perspective of my death, which is why I encourage people to do so. so often, even if there is not somebody who's getting close to the end, at least that they know of, and they're just starting to think about mortality. I'm like, it's useful. It can be activating for sure, but hopefully it will activate in a way that is useful, kind of like a perm rather than something that fries your hair. I don't know why that analogy just came up, but you know what I mean? Hopefully it's useful. It can be useful. It is. You wrote that we don't actually lose. It feels like when you think about dying, you imagine losing parts of yourself as you're dying, but you're actually becoming

more of who you are. And we're all dying, obviously, but you're talking about when someone is in the active phases of reaching the end of their life and that we can do that now. It was funny because as I was reading that part of the book, I alluded to my son. I talk about my son dying all the time on this podcast. It comes up often, obviously, but it was really when he died at 16, very suddenly and tragically, I had these very major kind of metaphysical moments after he died. And one of them was where I heard a voice ask me, that wasn't mine, do you want to live or die? And I realized that it really was a choice, not that I would kill myself that wasn't something on my radar even then, but that I could just stop living or let

myself go into inflammatory disease or whatever else. And I very quickly was clear, no, I want to live. And then I had this extreme, it's almost impossible to articulate in words, but a physical experience of the profound gift it is to be here and have this life. And it's a longer story that I won't get into here, but what ended up happening is that in many ways, that profound, and it's very similar to what you talk about with going into death and being with death, that that experience, all of it, not just that moment, but everything that came after that and everything I went through to heal set me completely free where I'm just interested in living. I don't have time for small talk. I don't have time for bullshit. It's just about living and cherishing this one current

life that I've been given. So I was really struck by that when I was reading what you were describing about dying because I haven't come close to death personally, but being with that profound, impossible loss of him in particular, because my other loved ones were ill for a long time. And in many cases, I was holding the relief as well as the grief. But with him, it was so profound that it created a similar result to what you were describing. Yeah. I mean, grief that acute and intense is a form of a death. Yeah. You know, they're a big something and you died for certain through that. I mean,

even when I think about the relationship of the parent and child, but even in hearing you talk about this, it's clear that you went through a death process yourself, not of the physical body, but of many other parts of who you were. And grief has a beautiful way of allowing us to meet ourselves. Like you can really see what you're made of when you're in grief. And I don't mean it like, oh, are you going to pass or fly high or win or succeed? But I mean, rather like, who am I like at my core? Because it strips away so many things that we thought that we knew about ourselves or the world or our belief system or spirit or whatever else. And that's something that I want to encourage people to be with their grief in that way. Yeah, it's painful.

It's very, very painful. And also there are a lot of gifts in it as well. It's a fertile soil from which seedlings of self can grow again, provided we allow them to do so and the seedling might grow like thicker, richer, more entangled with darker, lusher leaves if we allow it. One million percent. Absolutely. And I try constantly to give that same message is scary as shit. And you feel like it's going to carry you away. And most of us want to, you know, I've now met thousands and thousands of parents like us. And so many of them, you know, when I'm with them, it feels like every cell in their body is clenched so that they don't feel the pain. But what I keep saying is the pain is the path to how you get set free. If you are brave enough to go into it, grief is a transformative portal. It will absolutely burn away everything that doesn't matter. It will move you up the trajectory to the next level of consciousness.

It will bring infinite gifts that you would happily give back to have your child back, but that are beautiful, amazing gifts, just the same. But you got to be courageous enough. And it's similar. I mean, I'm talking about this because it's all intertwined in my mind, the grief and the death and being with death, which is essentially what grief is, as well as love. You know, I think it's profoundly transformative. So what constitutes a good death?

Like people are always saying, how did they die? What do you say about that? Because I feel like that's a really important part of the conversation for people. It is. And I think a lot of people are really focused on achieving that good death. And I'm using air quotes around both achieving and good because death is not something that happens to us. Like it's something that we do, but it's not something that you can win necessarily.

Death is, it's just, it's absolutely neutral. I think sometimes when we place the value judgments around good or bad death, we end up de-diminishing the experience of the person that was dying and sometimes also traumatizing the people that were around that witnessed it. Also, the idea of a good death is very individualized. I know many people that would like to just be minding their business, walking down the street and get hit by a bus and have it be over. To me, that sounds awful. I would rather have some awareness that death is coming so I have time to wrap up my affairs and smell an orange with real gratitude for the fact that it exists because I know I won't be able to longer. Good death is really based upon a good life also. And it's important that we remember

that even folks that die in violence and trauma and overdoses and all the deaths that we don't think of as the good ones just on their face. When there has been some honor given to their life for the lives that they led themselves, we can transmute that into a death that still is deserving of the same honor and sanctitude and sacredness and beauty and all those things. It serves as a period at the end. Sometimes that period is a little messy and jagged, but it's still a period at the end of their lives. And let's do our best to take the judgment away from how they died, but rather focus on the life that they led. That's the best that I think we can hope for, particularly when talking about violent or painful death. Yeah. Yeah. And it can be so hard for those left behind

to contemplate, but I definitely want to get into like what should be part of a death plan. Most of us have no idea how to move through loss. There's no roadmap to follow when you're trying to navigate grief. And I realized this when I lost my son three years ago. As a therapist who understood grief, a whole new level of pain opened up to me when I lost my 16-year-old son. And since then, I have been building resources that have allowed me to navigate through loss, not only in a healthy way, but in a way that has transformed me for the better. We can move through the most terrible loss with grace. And that's why I have created the course,

Good Grief, Healing from Loss with Love. You can find it on my website, drlauraberman.com, right there on the homepage, as well as free resources letting you know how to support others who are going through loss. None of us has to do this alone. I just have a question that I wanted to ask you someone who has ushered so many through the transition. And you alluded to this in one

point with one of your clients who kept mumbling that she needed her suitcase. But with every one of the five people, not Sammy, but the five people who I was with when they transitioned, in every case, except I guess my grandmother who was unconscious, but the other ones who are still semi-conscious or conscious, they all said either, I need to put on my shoes or it's time to go. It was like I learned after my mother and then when it happened with my other grandmother and then happened with my father. With all of them, there was this moment not long before they actually died where they felt the need to go somewhere. I know there's no universal law to death, but I was like, wow, do they know? I mean, we don't know

the answer, but this is my question inside my mind is like, do they, there's a part of them that knows it's time to quote unquote go. And like, they're like, let's go. We got to put on our shoes. We got to get our suitcase. Like we're going somewhere. Yeah. Do you see that often with your clients?

So often. Yeah. Taking a trip. And it's almost always in the language of a trip or something. I had one client that was really concerned. She had a lot of anxiety because she didn't know where her ticket was. Yeah. She knew she was taking a trip and she didn't know where,

like they know they're semi-conscious all all these people were on morphine or pain meds and they weren't like fully conscious where you could have conversations with them but they were like it's time to go time to go wear my shoes suitcase got to get out of the bed we have some place to go it might be part of the terminal agitation although the agitation sometimes looks a little bit like anger and frustration but sometimes i feel the the you know the agita in it of the it's time to go somewhere, but their body can't move like it used to. And there is actually nowhere to go. At least that I can see with these eyes. Uh, but the fact that it's always couched in the idea of a trip to me is fascinating. It's fascinating. Yeah. And that, and also this

idea of like, which, you know, obviously is a huge part, I'm sure of what you do, but supporting others. Cause there's only been that one death, you know, and all the other deaths I was one of those who was you know in the immediate family but with my spirit mama's death I was with her and she started talking about wanting to put on her shoes and I was like oh shit here we go and I said to her her daughter was not was still I mean she was clearly terminal had started morphine you know she was on her way out but her daughter obviously this was her first death and it was she they were extremely close and she was having a hard time letting go or acknowledging, you know, she was still hoping that some miracle might happen, which I didn't

not, you know, I wasn't unsupportive of that. But when I said to Sasa, which is what I called her, you know, are you ready to go? Do you, you know, are you ready to let go? Are you ready to go to God? Which is what she, how she would describe it. And she said, yes, yes, I'm ready. And then I knew, I just somehow knew because of our prior conversations and how worried she was about her daughter that she wasn't going, I mean, obviously she'd eventually have to let go, but that she wasn't going to ease fully let go unless her daughter told her. Like I just somehow got that message that she needed to hear from her daughter. Like I could tell her until I was blue in the face, it was okay to go, which I do think, I'm curious what you think, but I have found in all

of these cases, my little N of four, that it really makes a difference to say to them, everyone's going to be okay. You can go. We got this. We love you. You'll never be forgotten by us. We're going to speak your name. You can go. You can be in peace. We love you. And just keep repeating that. But I knew that Sasa needed her daughter to say that. So I went over to her daughter and I was like, she's, I really think she's ready to go. I think you need to decide if you can say that to her, that it's okay to go. And she went over and she asked her mom, are you ready to go? And her mom said yes. And so she said the things and then she died. And I'm just curious asking an expert now, cause I've never had a chance to talk to an expert about any of this. Is that like, how do you

handle it? Do you feel like that's an important, not that you have to force the family to accept it and give the person permission, but is that a piece of what you do? I think the conversation around dying is a bit of the permission. Yeah. Cause I find that so often folks haven't had the opportunity to talk to the people that they really love and care about about their end because it's often met with or you can keep hoping or you know let's try this instead or don't give up or whatever miracle yeah a miracle could always happen and so it is an element of it to just create permission by having the conversation around dying I think however on some level it's wildly important that we, the living, I'm using air quotes around living, are the ones that allow the dying

the permission to go, you know, that we also have to let them go. And sometimes by saying it's okay to let go, I think in some ways I'm also making it okay for the dying person to let go. Does that make any sense? Yes. Yes. I'm giving, yes, dying person, you can go, I'm going to be fine. But also living person, I let you go. I have to let you go. Yeah. Both things. It's our unwillingness to be with it and unwillingness to let go. Yeah, that's even more what I'm speaking to. They need to know that we, the living, are going to be okay. Yes, absolutely.

You know, there's this phenomenon that happens all the time where somebody's in the hospital or they look like dying, but it's just been days and they're just hanging out in that liminal space for a while. and the minute my son or daughter or partner gets up and goes to the bathroom and then the person dies. What's up with that? My dad did that. Yeah. I think they finally have the space to do so. They're free. I get the hell out of my head, you know, get out of here so I can die. Stop looking at me. Stop looking at me. I need peace. Okay. So they get up, they excuse themselves for a minute and then they're gone. They're gone. And I see so many people feel so bad about it. I know. Look, I wish I was there. And I'm like, no, she probably didn't want you to be there, which is what I assumed. I assume my dad intentionally waited until I left or went

to sleep. I said to his caretaker, you know, wake me up if something changes. And the next thing I know she came in and is like, he's gone. I mean, of course she wasn't going to know, you know, his breath had been the same, that slow. When's the next one going to be kind of thing. And he waited until I went to bed. And I knew that he did that intentionally, but I never understood why, like, why wouldn't you want your loved ones there? But it makes sense. Yeah. Stop looking at me. Why is everybody looking at me? I'm probably going to be one of those that waits. Cause I don't really enjoy being the center of attention that way. Like I want them around, but I want them kind of talking to themselves over there. I don't want everybody looking at me. I think it might be

hard to like finally shed this mortal coil with everybody being like, she took a breath. Leave me alone. Yeah. My dad was a narcissist. He liked being the center of attention. That was not in his power and his mind in the mortal sense. So I could see him not wanting to let go in front of us, you know, not wanting to give up, so to speak, even though it wasn't really giving up. I want to ask you about this death meditation that you describe in the book as a way to be with your own death and be with mortality, I guess, in general. I was wondering it's, you know, the nine contemplations on death that you describe. I'm wondering if you can get into that a little bit. Yeah. So the nine contemplations on death were written by an

11th century Buddhist scholar named Atisha. And the fact that they were written in the 11th century and still rings so true today is because they're the truths about death that kind of underwrite our entire condition. They'd been developed by further by Roshi Joan Halifax and Larry Rosenberg. And then I developed them a little bit further for my purposes. And so they, I'm not going to remember all nine right now, but the first or several of them is my lifespan is ever decreasing. Death comes whether or not I'm prepared. My body's fragile and vulnerable. My loved ones cannot save me my material resources will be of no use to me and the one that hits home for many people is my own body cannot help me when death comes that one hits really hard for many yeah yeah yeah and it's

important that you know as we think through the contemplations and the way that i do the death meditation is we start with the first contemplation and talk about kind of what it means and have people breathe in and breathe out certain phrases or mantras in order to ground them in the reality of that of that contemplation and then see which ones really tickle something uncomfortable inside them and make them feel some type of way because that's where all the treasure lies because if we see if i say something like death has many causes and that makes somebody really uncomfortable then it's important that we spend time in the rest of the meditative experience being with the different ways in which they could die because let's sit with it see what we have to learn from it yeah

It's a really useful experience, I think, for many people. It sounded to me like, and I'm curious if there's a place and a way that we could direct people to experience it, maybe even audio, you know, you can let us know, but it's like a very gentle, systematic desensitization, like where you are scared of something, but this takes you through the process of really being with it and getting accustomed to it and wrapping your consciousness around it in a way where maybe by the end, I guess the intention is to take away some of the fearful, anxious, unwillingness to be with a charge around the concept of your own death, which I'm sure prevents many people

from doing the things they need to do to prepare for their own death. Yeah, and also prevents people from properly, fully living their lives as well because they've never taken the time to learn from what their fear of death is trying to tell them about themselves and about their lives I think of it similar like a bit of an exposure therapy yeah also in the way

it like what I notice is that people seem so much brighter afterward you know they've seen so much softer so much gentler than before because death can be really anxiety for anxiety provoking for many people but then when we're able to like be with it and somebody's clearly saying you know your organs are shutting down but you are safe i think that allows you some space to be like okay maybe it might be okay after all let's find out yeah yeah we have it's very cool you have them on your website or on where can people find if they want to try it great what's the best way to try it's called grace and dying it's available under the courses tab of our website but it's a nine-part meditation series and we suggest that you do them nine days in a row based on the nine

contemplations of dying to see what like comes up what's tickling what's uncomfortable but also plenty of space to like sit with it talk through it journal through it etc yeah that's i'm gonna explore that yeah that sounds really cool so what is for someone who has a loved one who is terminal or dying or in the process or just maybe has a loved one who's ill and may you know and they're starting to think about that person, letting go of that person. For the person who's dying and those of us who love that person, what guidance can you give, you know, if you're not a death doula and you're just your average Joe or Jane, what do you recommend? What are the things that we can do to support our loved ones who are in the dying process? Well, there are several

different answers and places to go, but I'll start with the practical because I find that for some people, it's much, much easier to talk about how to prepare their things and get their ducks in a row. But I find that almost always talking about the practical leads to the rest of the stuff. So let's start there. Wildly important to get clear on who's going to make your decisions for you in the event that you can't. So the person that's going to be your medical decision maker or your healthcare proxy, and then have the conversation with them about your desires for life support and the kind of care and treatment you want to receive at the end of your life. additionally the types of things that make you comfortable like soft lighting and by all means

do not play any yoga music at my bedside I'm gonna sit up and rip the thing out of the wall you know get clear on the things that bring you comfort the things that you might want identifying your most ideal circumstances to surrender into that deep deep deep great surrender consider also things like your body your services what do you want done with your body after you can't use it no more do you know burial cremation do you want to be turned into a diamond a rock a record like there's a firework there's so many options just even talking about cremation let alone a burial green burial aquamation natural organic reduction there's so many options so talking about there were so many options i didn't know so many options and

when we don't spend any time talking about them we leave the decisions to the people that we love that are in the midst of their own profound grief around your death. It's doubly cruel. So have those conversations about what you might want. Talk about your services. Talk about your possessions. Yeah, we understand that you should get a will

or things of the sort that deal with the big money or the big ticket items. And I get that in wills often, I'll say, and all other earthly possessions. But be clear on what you want with your collection of like elephants. You know, I have all these elephants around. What are they supposed to do with them after I die?

Well, you can donate them or you can get rid of them or you can take them, just any direction whatsoever is helpful. Also, dependents or pets, disabled adult dependents, who's going to care for them afterward? What should the person who takes care of them know about this dependent of yours? And with pets, remembering that the person that you give the authority to may have the right to euthanize your pet. Thinking also about any important biographical information or data, like where's your birth certificate? Where's your social security card? Where do you have accounts open? Do you have any retirement accounts? Do you have passports for multiple countries? Just do your best to like.

What are the passwords? Where's your porn collection? Should you dispose of it now? Where are the toys? Where are the toys? Who do you want to know that you have that many toys? Like, you know, get clear on that beforehand so that you don't give other people the surprise of their lives after your death also. I can imagine I found quite a stash of cannabis in my dad's house. That was interesting. Was it a surprise? What was the surprise is that he had put it in tinfoil in a series of plastic bags in the tank of his toilet. That was the surprise. Wow. Yeah. I was like, dude. And the only reason the funniest part is the only reason I knew that is because he had shown my oldest son when my who was like twenty three or something at

the time when he had gone down to see him, he said, come here, look at this and shows him his stash of medicinal cannabis. That's can't be overstated. The importance of taking care of your own business, even the stuff that you think, you know, cause Lord knows anything can happen anytime. The next minute isn't guaranteed for any of us. So even if you don't have an illness or whatever else, you know, and you're young and healthy, you know, like we were saying earlier, or if you're old enough to have a driver's license, I think it's really valuable and really beautiful. I think it can be too, if you're willing to kind of not only think about the logistics, but the things you were saying about the music and the, like, I remember reading in

your, you were sharing some of your death plan in the book and how you're going to hang all your, you want to hang all your jewelry on trees and on branches and just have people come and, you know, your loved ones and friends come and pick out what they like and like pick it from the, which was such a beautiful image. Would that be nice? That would be so nice. I would, I would really like that. Yeah. Like from beyond the logistical thinking, even of those loved ones I've had who I've sat by the bedside or any words of advice about how, I mean, besides acknowledging what's happening, obviously you can always hold on to the hope for a miracle, but it feels like it's also important to hold both the truth of where that person is. If you want to be a support to

them. And the hope. There's a lot of different ways to go here too, depending on the nature of your relationship and how open this person is to having these conversations. But acknowledging it is a really, really powerful place to begin. Asking if there's any concerns or fears or questions that they have. Another really important conversation to have. I think also focusing on things that they loved about their life. What did you love? What are you proud of? What do you wish she would have done, making space for a conversation about regret. But I think mostly making space to honor the nature of the relationship, but also the life that was lived and allowing them to speak to what their life was. Because an important part of dying is

reconciling our entire lives for what they actually were, not what we want them to be. And there's grief in it and there's sadness in it. And sometimes there's frustration in it. And sometimes there's joy in it and allowing people that, that chance to like talk through their experience of their lives to allow them to start to wrap it up is really powerful and a great gift to give. It really is. This is probably what a death, a good death doula would do, but wearing the hat, a therapist who works with so many who, whose parents are no longer here or who have recently lost their parents with whom they had really a lot of difficulties with by no means am I suggesting that you batter them with all the ways they did you wrong at the end of their life?

I have found even for myself that there is tremendous value. Like I made a decision when my mom was dying and then with my dad as well, that I don't want to leave anything unsaid. I have the gift of knowing they're going. And so I am going to think about anything that I want to make sure I say to them or complete with them in a loving way before they go. Not that you can't have those conversations remotely when they're no longer here. But like I told my dad, I forgive you for these things. Like these are the things I'm acknowledging right here out loud that you did or didn't do or led to or catalyzed in me. And I forgive you. And I even thank you because if I hadn't had all those fucked up things happen to me, this wouldn't happen and that wouldn't happen

and this wouldn't happen. And I probably wouldn't be here today helping as many people as I have if it weren't for the ways you wounded me. So thank you. I literally had those conversations and for the ones left behind, I feel like there's tremendous healing. You can't necessarily have that conversation with everyone, but I do think there's a version of that conversation that everyone can have where there's where it feels like there's very little left unsaid for those who that's definitely the ideal you know it's definitely the ideal to not leave anything unsaid i also seen very many times where some folks feel like they've journeyed as far as they can with a person either the person is not open to or capable of receiving them or it's causing

anger and frustration and agitation nearing that they're dying but they still have things that they want to say. I think that what's most helpful is that we start that process long before somebody is dying. You know, like I'm practicing speaking my truth all the time so that if we get there, there isn't anything that I haven't said. And next, also reaching a place of peace for myself with what it was that I did say or the things that I was able to create with that person or not able to create with that person so that when the time comes, I am at peace regardless of what was said an offset. You see what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. And just from your perspective, I'm just curious about you in particular, what is it that you think just the way you were describing your

different cases? And I think you even spoke to it directly, this idea of like being so conscious and careful not to project your own shit onto anyone. And like, no matter how they showed up and what was coming up for them, like the theme is always just like you do you and immediately meeting them. Like you seem to be able to so seamlessly meet each person where they are, regardless of where it may resonate or not with you. And I do that as a therapist, but I had to have the crap desensitized out of me, you know, in training to get to that place. And I just was really struck by how seamlessly you do that. And maybe it's because you've lived such an international life as a child. Like maybe that's part of it, that you had all these different

cultural experiences and realities to be part of. But I'm curious what you would attribute that to as, because it seems to be a quality of your character as much as your work. It might be, it very well might be. I mean, I think also there's an element of those of us that get to be with people that are dying all the time, where we grow our capacity for compassion. because in order to honor somebody and they're dying, I'm honoring exactly who they were in their life. You know, I'm allowing them to be human. I'm allowing them to die and have that be okay.

And that means if they were human, they fucked up plenty and they were awful plenty and they this and they that, and I'm honoring all of it and they're dying. So if I'm able to do that adequately and they're dying, then I don't see why I shouldn't be able to do it also when people are living. Yeah.

If I'm able to do while we're living, I don't see why any of the systems that keep us disconnected from one another can still exist. You know, it's really, really hard to deny the humanity of the person who is living on the street. If I can think, gosh, one day they're going to die, that's somebody's mom, that's somebody's daughter, that's somebody's sister, that's somebody's somebody. Because when I'm doing it for people when they are dying, I see the whole of who they were. And I can carry that into my life as well. And don't get me wrong, I don't want to sugarcoat it because occasionally sometimes I'm in line at CVS and the cashier is taking too long

and I just don't have it. But you know what I mean? Sometimes road rage also happens. But for the most part, if I can remember like that compassion to allow people to just be human, to not have to be superhuman, to be fallible and to be really messy and to make mistakes and to be right about their mistakes sometimes,

you know, wrong and strong. If I can allow them just to be human, well, I actually think that that could be the most transformative way to be in the world. Like, I think it could break down all the systems, but I'm a dreamer. I agree. I agree with you. You're preaching. And I think it's such a beautiful gift. And it's, you know, it's kind of a circle.

Does it come from being with those who are dying or does it come from, you know, they feed each other? But it's really true. and death is the great transformer. I totally see that and have experienced that. I wrote down a little short, I guess it's a few sentences, so like a paragraph, but I just want to read it because it resonated so deeply with me. This is from your book. Without our deaths, none of it would matter. There would be no context for what we do. When we live in relationship to our mortality, it adds direction to our actions, truth to our words, rapture to our experience, authenticity to our being, and maybe pounds to our hips. We can make choices that resonate with

the core of our being, free from society expectations and the judgments of others. So, so beautiful. And really like the truth of, and maybe, you know, what I was talking about earlier with that impossible loss of my son, like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes to every one of those. And I guess that that was my way of being with my own death. Because like you said, I did die when he died, a part of me. And I also really fully on every cell level understood that no moment is guaranteed. The next moment is not guaranteed. So I could die in five minutes, myself so no time for bullshit there's something unbelievably glorious about that I think so too and also something really glorious about being able to sink into just the basic experience of

being human which being able to do that effortlessly and be in awe of it is an utter privilege and like all privileges I will want to exercise it in in the direction of good yeah and so I'm gonna be with like, wow, I'm human. I'm human. Yeah. We're human. We get to be here. What a gift. What an unbelievable gift. We also get to die. Yes, we do. And I thought we could end, you don't have to go into the whole thing because it's such a beautiful, I think it was in the epilogue, not in the final chapter where you, we talked about the jewelry, but where you describe what you want to experience at your own death? Because I think it's such a gorgeous and creative model

of what the rest of us might create for ourselves. Sure. You mean the glitter wave mostly? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Tell me about the glitter wave. Gladly.

Okay. So just backing up a little bit into my dyeing. Again, I have no idea if this is the way it's going to go unless I choose it, unless I choose it. And let's see what happens. But ideally, and I think about it this way because of thinking about it, getting to imagine my death does bring me some calm after a lot of practice. So I'm at my dying and hopefully I'm on a deck outside and nobody's looking at me.

They're not looking at me. Don't look at me. Don't look at me. But they are together and they're chatting amongst themselves and there's a big thing happening in their lives, right? I am dying and I am not trying to center myself in their experience, but I kind of see how it goes. They love me. They're there. It's going to be a big deal. I want to hear running water. I want to smell some Nag Champa incense. I want to have a blanket on me. I don't want to wear a bra. I want to, no bra, socks on my feet for sure because I want them to be warm. I want to die with my affairs totally in order. I want to die and surrender. And when the people around me notice that I'm not breathing anymore, I want them to clap. I want them to clap because I died

really, really well. I want them to clap with the beauty of the life that I lived and also the grace with which I eventually let it go. And just as they're clapping, I am starting to feel all of the human sensations that I felt in my body, all just starting to gather up in my body again, like I'm feeling what it tastes like to bite into a delicious, perfect cherry or Or look at my partner in the eyeballs or like when he gives me a little kiss and I feel shivers in the place that he kissed me or like the warmth of sheets when they first come out of the dryer or all the little experiences in life that I've really enjoyed and I'm feeling them on my body and just where I can't take it anymore. I explode into confetti glitter that goes everywhere. And I see all the experiences that I had as my life as pieces of glitter falling slowly. And they will gather in larger concentration around the people who loved me because they

will remember the things about me, like my love of brass and copper jewelry and the fact that I can't remember lyrics to any song. I get them all wrong. They will remember those things. But the other little things about me, maybe my book touched somebody at some point. maybe something like that will stick with them. And the rest will just be enveloped back into a big glitter wave that goes on for all of eternity in every direction I can see. And maybe the afterlife is just riding an eternal glitter wave. That would be great for me. Biodegradable glitter,

of course, biodegradable glitter. I gotta be biodegradable. Although in the fifth dimension or 12th dimension or wherever it is we go, it doesn't really matter. Utterly irrelevant, it, but it's pretty is a point. It's very, very pretty. And all the little pieces of your, of your impact, you know, you mentioned at some point in the book, there was this scene that you were describing where you were reading Anita Morjani's book. She's a dear friend of mine. And I just adore, I mean, her story dying to be me is just so gorgeous. You said it jumped off the shelf at you, which I think is wonderful. But one of the things she described in that book is she had the near-death experience and came back was that, and it reminds me of your glitter vision

in a different way, is that she said, once again, trying to put the impossible to describe into of words, the metaphor she gave was she saw this huge, glorious, brilliantly, impossibly beautiful tapestry. And she could see her thread flowing through the tapestry being part of the picture. All the other threads it was intertwining with, touching just for an instant, rolling with for miles, like all the different ways her unique thread wove through this humongous infinite tapestry. That was the image I just thought of that as you were describing the glitter wave, because it's the same thing. It's like all those pieces of glitter are all those infinitesimal teeny and humongous moments of touching the people around us and the human

experience and just really, really beautiful. Thank you. I love it. Thank you. I love it too. It brings me peace. And so I stick with it. Amen. Well, may we all get as comfortable and free as a result of our own impending death as you are. You're a beautiful, inspiring model to me. And I know so many others. Testimony, your bestselling book. Obviously, there are many, many, many people who want to hear this message right now. And I'm so grateful for what a beautiful messenger you are. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your work in the world and your willingness to show up in the way that you are. And we're going to put your going with grace, your website and all your socials in the show notes. Is there anything else you want to share where people can

find you or anything else you think is important that we know? The website is a great place to find out any information about death doula trainings or retreats or opportunities to engage with your mortality or places to learn or just to expand the idea of your death and how we care for people through it. Website is a great place. All right. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining. I can't fall asleep without your arms around me I guess I'm falling in love Baby, you're my rockstar

Smashing all my guitars One day I will charge you For breaking my heart You're just like my sport car Driving fast, you go far When I'm sitting by you We get high.