This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - How To Have A Good Death with Suzanne B. O’Brien, RN | 292

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Death is something we all have to face, yet most of us avoid talking about it—until we have no choice. But what if we approached it differently? What if we could embrace the inevitable in a way that brings peace, purpose, and even a sense of fulfillment? Our guest today, Suzanne B. O’Brien, RN, has spent her career at the bedside of over 1,000 end-of-life patients as a hospice and oncology nurse. She is the Founder and CEO of Doulagivers Institute, and her work in end-of-life education has earned her recognition as a Humanitarian Ambassador by Oprah Magazine. In her new book, The Good Death: Supporting Your Loved One Through the End of Life, she shares what it truly means to have a “good death” and how we can prepare for it—both for ourselves and our loved ones. In This Episode, We Cover:  ✅ The four biggest regrets people share on their deathbeds ✅ Why forgiveness is the most powerful tool for healing at the end of life ✅ How to prepare for death in a way that removes fear and adds peace ✅ The role of death doulas and why end-of-life care matters ✅ How to live today in a way that leaves no room for regret If today was your last day, what would you regret? What’s missing? What’s left unsaid? The answers to these questions aren’t just about dying—they’re about truly living. Connect with Suzanne B. O’Brien, RN:  Website: https://www.suzannebobrien.com/  Book: https://thegooddeathbook.com/ 9 Questions Document (Free download): https://doulagivers.com/the-doulagivers-9-choice-advance-directive/  Doula Givers (Free) Resource Center: https://doulagivers.com/free-resource-page/  Related Podcast Episodes: You Only Die Once with Jodi Wellman | 262 How Is Your Spiritual Health? with Dr. Lisa Miller | 287 060 / Caring For An Aging Parent with Rayna Neises Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 Subscribe & Review: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

I am Nicole Kahlil, and on this episode of This Is Woman's Work, we're going to cover a topic that I don't want to talk about and you probably don't want to hear about. Bet you're excited to hit play for this one, right? Okay, that might not be the best way to kick off an episode, but it's the truth. Because we're going to talk about death. And I know just hearing the word makes most of us want to change the subject, stick our fingers in our ears, or scroll Instagram until we find a cute dog video to distract us. But here's the thing.

Death isn't something any of us can avoid. No matter how many things we think we can learn any of us can avoid, no matter how many things we think we can learn from the Blue Zones, no matter how much anti-aging methods we employ, or how many medical advancements we make. It's the one certainty that we all have. We just may not know the when or the how, only that it will happen. So why are we so bad at talking about this inevitable thing? More importantly, in our avoidance, are we missing out on the lessons that death can

teach us about how to truly live? So today, with some discomfort on my part, we're diving into how to have what our guest calls a good death. I think I have an idea of what that might mean, and I'm assuming it's not about avoiding the inevitable, but embracing it in a way that brings peace, purpose, and maybe even some perspective. But my ideas about this topic are all conceptual

because I've been fortunate to not have experienced death at a deeply personal level yet in my life. And yet I know it's coming because, again, death is a certainty of living. To guide us through this topic as someone who's not just comfortable talking about death, she's spent her life working to make it better for everyone. Suzanne B. O'Brien, RN, is the founder and CEO of Dula Givers Institute and has been at the bedside of more than a thousand end-of-life patients as a hospice and oncology nurse. She's taken those deeply human experiences and turned them into a mission to provide

high quality end-of-life education and care to patients and families worldwide. Oprah Magazine named her a humanitarian ambassador for her work, and she's here to share insights from her new book, The Good Death, supporting your loved one through the end of life. Suzanne, thank you for being our guest and for talking, well, I'm gonna speak for myself, about an uncomfortable topic that is so important.

So I'd love to start by asking, based on your experience, should we be talking about death more? Are we missing things by avoiding it? A thousand percent. So if I may, and I know this might be a spoiler alert for the episode, but when you talk about death, you're talking about life because they're not exclusive of one another.

And the minute that I started working with those at the end of life, my whole life changed in the best way possible. And we can dive deeper into that as we go on this episode, but to answer the first question is absolutely. So that was something that I was thinking going into this conversation. Given your experiences,

God, it sounds so heavy, you know, sitting at the bedside of over a thousand deaths. I would imagine that there is a heaviness, a sadness, a hard element of that, and yet it's obviously given you so much good. How do you handle that paradox? Yeah. So first of all, thank you so much for having me, Nicole. And I love your podcast, because you know, I love it's time for the female energy to step forward. And how we do that is listening to our heart individually, and then collectively for the world. And that's how I found myself working

with those at the end of life, because I finally started listening to this calling that I had. I had no end of life experience, and I was being called to go to hospice as a nurse, and it didn't make any analytical sense. And the minute I did that, I knew that that's how life works, is following your intuition, following your calling. And yeah, there were very hard end of lives, and I'll tell you why they were hard. First of all, it's always gonna be difficult to say goodbye to someone physically

in this form that we love. That's just part of it. But it's a thousand times, if not 10,000 times more difficult today because we don't acknowledge that death is a part of the existence. So when it does show up, it's like this crisis for everyone. So I was seeing and am still seeing a lot of end of life that are really challenging that shouldn't have that added stress to it. Now, at the same time,

I would see occasionally it back in the beginning, an end of life that was beautiful, something that happened that was so connected. And I thought if people could see that, if they knew end of life could be like that, they would never be afraid. So I'm gonna tell them. Okay, I couldn't agree more with the concept of following your intuition and trusting yourself. So thank you for being an example of that.

And I have so many questions about those experience, but I wanna start with first something that I saw you had said in my preparation for our conversation, and that is what all people, regardless of age, religion, or culture, realize at the end of death. What is that? Okay. So now I've been honored to work with people all around the world and in different cultures and religions. Why? Because end of life touches us all, right? So one of the things in our just bringing that back to how much more similar we are than different, super important, right?

That death teaches us that. But what was happening is that there was a certain point in the end of life journey where I call, almost people get their, what I call their spiritual eyes. So it's almost as if they have one foot in this world and one foot in the next. And if I may, for a minute, is that we're holistic beings. We're mental, we're emotional, we're physical, and we're spiritual. And at the end of life, it really seemed, because again, I work from

a big pool that I can teach from, that as the physical body was diminishing, it was almost as if their spiritual body was growing. And there was one point in that journey that they have all this new awareness, like a new perspective. And so they would say the following, that there is no death, that we're all connected to one unconditional loving energy, that there's no judgment, and that everything that happened in their life, even the most painful things were meant as an opportunity for growth. People were saying this who had lived a certain way with a certain religion that they practiced by and it turned into more of a spiritual awareness.

But if we're not paying attention to people at the end of life about what they want you to know, by the way, time is your greatest commodity and we just don't know how much we have of it, we're doing something wrong if we're not paying attention to that wisdom because they're not trying to sell you anything. And we can really talk about what makes a good death. And what really does make a good death is a good life, a fully lived life, not missing it.

Because the regrets, and right now, statistically, death is the number one fear in the world. For my patients, it wasn't the fear necessarily of the death. It was that they got a time limit left and that they didn't use their life the way they know they were supposed to. So they were full of regret. They do not want us to miss on that. And that's really important. So that completely aligns with when I was studying confidence.

That's my favorite topic. And it talks so much about how the thing we regret most are the things that we don't do. The conversations we didn't have, the forgiveness we didn't give, the risks we didn't take, the dreams we didn't chase, all of those things. So I want to talk about the good death and what it tells us about life. But before I do, what are some of the top regrets that you heard people share on their deathbed?

You just said one of the major ones. And if people that listening to this podcast today take away one thing, it's forgiveness. I really want you to understand the transformational power of forgiveness for people at the end of life. Now, what happens at the end of life, I feel like, is everyone's stuff bubbles to the top. It's almost like it wants to be worked out. And when they get that higher perspective, they're able to look at situations that happened in their life with a different lens. And that lens affords

them an ability to look at it for the opportunity of growth. And forgiveness is something that does take place there and it literally transforms the person. So the minute I was seeing that, I said, wait a minute, if we, and we all have it, it's called the human experience, right? We all have forgiveness to give and we all have forgiveness to receive. And I thought if they could change their life

at the end of life through the power of forgiveness, what do I need to look at? Am I carrying things? And so I really did an inventory. And by the way, it is the most transformative tool that we have in life because when we're carrying things with us, it's like carrying backpacks with boulders in them.

And it really prevents us because everything is energy and it prevents us from moving forward in those dreams, in that purpose, if we're blocked from holding onto resentment, holding onto guilt, holding onto I wish I had. So forgiveness is one of the best tools you could ever use for, and it's for yourself, which is not always understood. It's not for the other person. It's for you. It literally frees you of energy being drained. And it's just amazing. Couldn't agree more and easier said than done. I think especially for those of us

who may conceptually know that death is coming, but it doesn't feel imminent, right? When you know you only have a certain amount of time. So any tips on applying what we're bound to learn at the end stage of life to today? Yeah, and it goes back to like your question again, previously, I went off on forgiveness because it's such an important, important moment

to understand. But when you're saying what are the regrets, the regrets are, you know, I wish I had not lived in fear. And when I mean lived in fear, I mean fear of stepping out of their comfort zone and really following their heart. And that's where the growth is, by the way. And so when we talk about that, so super important. So if I may invite your

listeners to a little exercise, if and I know this is a hard one, but just stay with me for a minute, if your life were to end tomorrow, what would be the major things you regret that you can think about? Ah, I didn't write that book. I didn't talk to my sister. I didn't do this. What is that?

Because those are gonna be your indicators of what to take action on now because we don't wanna get there. And so when I cleaned up my own and really got to what I wanted to do, never in my life did I think we'd have this International Institute. It's not what what was the main role, the main role was just following the heart to the next step. But I'll tell you

that when you do the the journey takes on a magic and an essence that you can't find unless you step out of that small human space that we're in. So think about what you would regret now, those conversations, just like you said, the things that you'd want to do and go do them. I like that shift on focusing on what we'd regret. I think sometimes we think at the end of life, what would we do? And then you start thinking about, oh, I would move to this country and spend all of my money. And it's like, okay, but we can't live that way from day

to day. We can't live as if this is our last day from that perspective. But thinking about it from the lens of what would I regret most? That's something we can do something about today. Absolutely. And that's what I did. So I was like, oh, and I wanted to try everything and travel everywhere and do whatever comes into my, you know, the flow of my alignment, what I call that heart alignment. And it's just been a magical journey. So that's really important. And again, the people at the end of life, the number one thing that they say to me is I thought I had more time. end of life, the number one thing that they say to me is, I thought I had more time.

Take that away. We have to take that away because we know that this journey is not going to be the same. And here's the thing, the people at the end of life, the beautiful, sacred, a hundred years ago, we used to die at home. People cared for us. The skill of how to care for somebody at the end of life was hands down generationally. We've been dying for thousands of years, by the way. We know how to do this. It's only in the last 100 that it got really medicalized and removed. And when we remove seeing something and the truth about it, a fear surrounds it. But if you go back into history, death used to be revered as a sacred rite of passage, just like birth, marriage, and death. And there are beautiful ritual and beautiful things that happen in that space that we need to know about

because it quells fear, and it also just may open you up to that there's a much bigger picture going on in this beautiful thing called life that we've been gifted. You know, that's really interesting. And I think it is very much a part of the fear or discomfort that I experienced because you're right. I mean, again, I haven't done the research that you have or had the experiences that you have,

but I feel like now when we think of death, we almost always think of hospitals and things that we can try to do to delay or prevent. It feels cold and scary. That's not to say that there haven't been some great medical advancements that help us live longer, and that's wonderful. There is this flip side of the coin that makes us inexperienced and disconnected from the power of the experience. Am I?

You're spot on. And this is what I want to say is that there's a very fine line between extending keeping people alive and living where the quality is never going to be there and it can almost cause more discomfort. But I also want you to know this, and this is really important in why the book was written, is that hospice care, which is a beautiful model of care in theory, is our end-of-life provider in the United States. 98%, this is a survey by Medicare,

98% of the hands-on end-of-life care is done by family caregivers when they usually don't know the first thing about how to do that. You just said, I don't know. I haven't done the research. I haven't been there. The time to learn this is not when you're faced with it. When we're frightened and we're in it, nothing.

I just go in as a hospice nurse and put band-aids on. As a hospice nurse, I was making visitsids on. So as a hospice nurse, I was making visits for 60 minutes once a week if that person was stable. The model doesn't work, but here's the great news, that death is not a medical experience, it's a human one. And we were doing this for thousands of years. And so this book and the trainings are bringing that back. And there's so many that are offered for free so that you have the tools. And by the way, there are offered for free so that you have the tools. And by the way, there's threaded with beautiful stories.

People have talked about it healing their grief from 20, 30 years ago, inspiring about life, like we say, get to it. So there's many beautiful things about stepping into this space. Okay, so I wanna take our conversation twofold. First, you know, this idea of creating and experiencing a good death for ourselves and the people we love, basically teaching us some of the things maybe we knew 100 years

ago that we don't know anymore today. And then the second part is what we can learn about living. Before I dive into that, let me just double check. The biggest regrets is around forgiveness and feeling like wishing we wouldn't have lived in fear. Are there any other regrets that we should know about? Yeah, not forgiving people, not letting people love you fully, not loving other people fully.

And I feel like all of this is in that nucleus of living in fear and unforgiveness. I really do, because when we're hurt, it's almost like prison walls. Like prison walls get, and we have, this is called the human experience. This is what people have told me, is that we go through these trials and tribulations

and also beautiful moments to evolve, to experience, to grow, to expand. And if we keep making a wall every time we get hurt and shutting down, shutting down what I want, shutting down what is in my heart because I don't want to get hurt again, we miss the whole entire journey. And forgiveness is the tool to remove that. Yeah. So what do we need to know that we don't know anymore about how to have a good death? Live life each day like one little lifetime. And that's my wisdom.

And that's what I do. Because if I know that one day the journey will not be the same, I don't know when that day will be, I wanna make sure that I don't miss today. And that means just making sure I connect to gratitude, to presence, to the awe and wonder of this experience, right, and then also how can I show up to be of service?

Where's that calling me? Because I will tell you, I believe that everyone is here for a reason and everyone has a gift to share. And it's, that's, I think what people, again, the regret is, oh, I had this impulse of, I was supposed to be an artist or a florist or whatever that was. And we didn't live that. And when you follow, and it might not

make analytical sense, it usually doesn't. But when you follow that guided, what I call guided inspiration and take action, it's almost like breathing for the first time. So if you follow your heart, what you want to, you know, connect with your gift, but then make sure each day you're in presence, you're being thankful, you stop and smell the roses and what's around you. When that day comes, hopefully we can all say, okay. And in your experience, you mentioned that you have experienced some good deaths. Is that the sort of commonality that they have that they lived a good life, that they didn't have a ton of these regrets, that they didn't have a ton of forgiveness they still had yet to give?

Or that was it. That was it, Nicole. So when I first was witnessing a good death, I was like, okay, what made that? Because everything is not going well. What made that? And it was that, number one, that the awareness that one day their journey would not be the same as it is today, and that they didn't have a lot of stuff to unpack. So that was critically important. And then to add for you what makes a good death, and I think this is another thing that if, you know, I called it a dola giver's pearl, if your listeners can take away, understanding what quality of life means to me.

And so what makes that day, that one little lifetime day have joy? And when that's not attainable anymore, maybe I can't speak to my loved ones or recognize them or do anything for myself. That would be the benchmark where I wouldn't want extensive measures to be taken to keep me alive.

And then deciding for myself, yes, I would like to be home. I'd like to be surrounded by my pets. I'd like to have warm blankets, please. I'd like my pain to be no higher than a two or three if possible. I'd like chocolate ice cream all day for my meals. This is super important. And then thinking again about how you'd like chocolate ice cream all day for my meals. This is super important. And then thinking again about how you'd like to be celebrated, there are lots of choices that we have. And it's really important that we choose that. When you do, by the way, it's one of the

greatest gifts you can give your family, because this is so hard for them already. And if you give them a blueprint and a roadmap how to support you, it makes that experience almost 100 times easier. And I wonder how many of us have that for ourselves or the people in our lives today. Like I think of if you have living parents or a spouse or a best friend or for yourself, has this been communicated? Are you having this conversation? I'm gonna guess the answer is no for most of us.

It is, so statistically 23% of people, they say have done what's called an advanced directive, that's a document where you put your wishes, but only half of those people even know where they are. So it's not something. And again, back to your comment and it's correct, have we maybe unknowingly created this huge fear around death with the verbiage we use

as medical professionals? He lost his battle with cancer. You have to fight, you have to fight. And have we set up an impossible thing to win? Because we know if it's a battle, no matter how much we prolong it, it's never going to be something that we can outrun. By the way, you shouldn't have to.

It is a sacred experience. I think bringing back that awareness, I think bringing back the sacred awareness of death brings back the sacred awareness of life. And I think that's how we change the world. You said several things in there, but I think this is such an important conversation to have. So what might be some examples we ask ourselves or our loved ones? Is it about pain tolerance?

Is it about quality of life? What does that mean? What are some of the most important questions we ask so that we can be aware? Because you're right. I think for many of us, the question is, what would this person want? And we will feel better, obviously not happy. It's still, the grief is still there, but I think we'll feel better if we know that we are delivering on what this person would want. And without a conversation, we're just best guessing.

So what questions should we be asking? Okay. So you want to ask this question, mom, if you're at a point where your quality of life cannot be improved, so there's no reversing a disease process, where would that be? Where would that benchmark be? And then on top of that, so pick that, what's important to you? You want to give the person back control. So you want, you know, for something that seems like the person is, I don't want to talk about it. It's like a loss of control and all of that. Give them back control. So say, what's important to you? What makes your day? And so for my mom, it's playing bridge and talking to her friends and going to lunch. And if she weren't able to do any of those things, that would be that her quality of life wasn't

there where she wouldn't want extensive measures. Then, Then let's flip that and say, now, what do you want? How comfortable do you wanna be? Where would you like to be cared for? What's important to you? The shows that you wanna watch, the music that you want played, visitors, all of the things that you can layer there that you really wanna tailor it.

There is a list that we have. So when you share with your listeners, some show notes, we have a lot of free things that are in one is called the nine question document. That's a free document that you want to ask your question. These are the nine questions that I have heard repeatedly that incompletion will allow for a good death. If you ask your loved one, these nine questions, where do you want to be? How do you want to be treated? What's important with the conversations? How do you want your ceremony to be? How do you want to be celebrated in your life? Those kind of things. It's all there and that's really, really important. And get it in writing.

Yes. Okay. That makes sense. Especially if you've got siblings or other family members involved, right? Yeah, because fear has a really weird way of like letting us hear something different than somebody else did depending on the same conversation. Have the conversation if you can in a group setting with your family and loved ones, have brownies and cookies and all that yummy stuff,

and then put it in a document so that it's crystal clear. Because when it does show up, sometimes it's really, you know, a moment that you wanna revert back and say, okay. And the most loving thing we can do, Nicole, is to support mom in what she would want, even if it's different what I would want. And that gives me a tool and a roadmap to say I'm doing something to help mom.

This is the best thing I could do at this moment. It could also be the hardest thing. Yeah, and that is exactly gonna be my follow-up question too, which is what do we do when what the person wants goes against what we would want or our beliefs or something like that. And I think you answered it, which is ultimately this is their experience and we get to honor that. And then the second thing is what to do when someone is unwilling to have the conversation. You know, if you bring it up with a parent or spouse and they're like, oh, that's too

dark or I don't want to talk about it or whatever, any advice about how to help them be more open to the conversation? Yeah. First of all, I think you need to meet people where they are. So maybe that first time that you're attempting that conversation, you know, they're like, oh, hold on. And then you're like, okay, you know, but this is really important. And then what I would say is to come back and say, mom, we love you so much. And we want to make sure that we have everything that you want to, you know, to make sure that you're comfortable

and that everything to uphold that. And so even just if you even just ask her, where would you want to be cared for? If there's no reversing a treatment and like, you know, comfort bringing all those things, even if you get that one done. But if you can say to her, it's one of the greatest things for you all. So you know exactly what to do to honor her wishes, because you love her so much. Usually people will step into that space after that initial sometimes shock, which it might be at the beginning. And a lot of people do sometimes say that, you know, I've

had a lot of older people say that their adult children shut them down from having the conversation that they want to talk about it. And the children are like, Mom, don't say that. It's not going to happen. And it's like, stop. But I would like to share an interesting bedside story, if I may. Please. From this so that, yeah, so that people can really be invited into this space of what I have been privileged and honored to see and why I'm not afraid of death and why this is so important. In the oncology unit, there was a woman who came in. She had gallbladder cancer. She was being treated with chemotherapy. It had brittle her bones to the point that she fractured her hip.

So I was working a Friday, Saturday, Sunday shift, and she came in on Friday, her and her sister, she was about 46 years old. Everyone really panicked, of course. And I knew building the trust was really important for them right away. And then by the end of Saturday shift, I moved her from a bedside commode back to her bed, and she was short of breath. And that was a new finding. So we both sort of knew in that moment that something was happening, but really didn't know what.

It turns out that night they did testing and she had a blood clot that had broken off and went to her lung and she had a pulmonary emboli, which is not a good thing. By Sunday, the end of Sunday, she was breathing heavy. And I remember walking into the hospital room with the doctor to do rounds. And this woman said to the doctor, I just wanna thank you for everything you've done for me. And I turned to look with the doctor to do rounds. And this woman said to the doctor,

I just want to thank you for everything you've done for me. And I turned to look at the doctor's face and tears were going down her face. This woman, Maureen, was essentially telling the doctor she was going to die. And that night, the doctor, of course, was out of her mind wanting to fix this. And there's nothing they could do at that point.

That night, they said that Maureen woke up from a nap at about 11 o'clock and said, "'Get my sister, I'm transitioning.'" With like all the excitement that you would have told an eight-year-old child you're going to Disney World. Her sister comes into the room and she goes, "'I'm transitioning.' And I don't even know if I knew that term back in that day.'"

So this is what I wanna say. What did she see and what did she know that completely not only removed her fear, but made her excited about that next chapter? And this is just one of the examples. There are so many beautiful moments that people talk about, seeing loved ones at the end of life, being connected to encompassing love, that have we removed one of the greatest teachers about life and is our fear of death completely unfounded? Yeah. Powerful story and invitation, I think, for all of us to, I don't know if reframe,

it seems like a silly word, but just really to reestablish our relationship with what death might be, what it could be. And also I think what I'm hearing that we didn't say directly is there is this sort of communal collaborative component of it. I'm guessing nobody you've sat by has wanted to die alone. I would imagine that's something we all want as the people we love and the people who we've lived with to be around us. Is that fair?

It is fair. It's a sacred experience. And when you're in that, it's so interesting because when you're in that space, sometimes there's just such a feeling of connectedness and love and something so much greater. And time, as you and I know it, sometimes feels like it disappears.

So it is a communal event, it's a loving event. And one of the things that I really share with people is not to rush that moment, to take that in. Because right now we have traumatic grief that we're dealing with. And why we have traumatic grief is because we have no knowledge of this thing called end of life,

which by the way is talking about life. So when it does show up, it's a crisis usually and goes very fast. And then people are stuck in this moment. And if they don't know, they have the funeral home come and the person's gone. They don't even know what just happened. We have to slow all this down for really help bringing back ritual in the natural way. And by the way, it teaches you everything you need to know about how to live.

And that leads to the good end of life. Also, it sounds like, yes, death happens in a moment, but for those left behind, for the grieving who are still living, there is an ongoing element of it, end of life services, celebrations, what these people would want. I also, for whatever reason, thought of like

the passing down of things, the financial aspect, because I've seen a lot of siblings get completely torn up over those types of things. Should that be part of the conversation of what a good death looks like for each person? Absolutely, and that's something for you and me to do now. So this is something that I need, and this is my responsibility, to think about, it's my responsibility to think about quality of life to me,

where I'd like to be, what that looks like, then for my items that I have, where those passwords are allocated, where deeds to houses are. I have a peace of mind planner that has everything for everyone if they want to go through the five categories. All the things we don't think about because right now, if we pretend it's optional, it shows up and families are usually thrust into the next phase of it, which is a scavenger hunt, which is so much stress and they usually end up fighting and it can be just awful. And so avoid that. but this is my responsibility.

So I have my, and I have love notes in there that sometimes you'll have that great day that you're thinking about a family member or some magic moment, writing that down and just putting that in my box that they're gonna get at the end with everything they are. I love that. Yeah, but it really does have all the practical things

as well that we don't think about again your Facebook password I mean things that they need to know about And where you want things to go and who you want them to go to so there's no fighting over it, right? It feels like more often than not. It's the women who get called on parents siblings even like in-laws right right? The end of life experience and what we can do to invite men into this conversation and what, if there's anything as women, we kind of need to protect ourselves from

because it can sometimes be too much. Because we have this aging population, there's a silver tsunami. It's women that are showing up. They're mothers, they're wives, they're working. Now they're taking care of the aging and end of life and it's not okay. So yes, it's okay, because we wanna show up,

but it's not okay that they do it alone. It's really important that we have support, that people know, I need to say, I need help and that's a strength, it's not a weakness. And also if you're in that dynamic, sir, you need to say, how can I support you? Even if I can't physically do it, can I pay for some help? Like we really do need to get on the page. Absolutely. Because women are killing themselves trying to fit this role and it's not okay. It should never be this way.

Right. My last question is any final advice or maybe a reiteration of advice you've already given of how we can shift from radical avoidance to radical acceptance of our own mortality and death? Yes, I want you to take a deep breath and we'll just that's always a always a good thing, right? Take a deep breath, let it out. And I want you to take this in. I think we simply just forgot that death is not a medical experience. It's a human one, and it's a holistic one. And here's the thing, it can go well, really, really well with the right education, kindness, and support.

Suzanne, thank you for an incredible conversation for your brave and wildly important work. I know more people are going to want to learn about this work. So the book again is called The Good Death available on Amazon or wherever it is that you buy books. Let's keep our local bookstores in business. And you can also go to the website the good death book.com. We'll put that and all other information, including links to free resources that Suzanne mentioned in show notes.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Nicole, thank you so much. You have an amazing podcast. I'm so glad that you're doing this. Because of conversations like this, so thanks. Okay, friend, as we wrap up this episode, I want to invite you to have the conversations that we so often avoid, the ones with the people you love, about what a good death means to them, what it looks and feels like so that you can show up for them in the best way possible when the time

comes. And while you're at it, give yourself the same gift today because it's the only day that's guaranteed. Ask yourself, what would I regret most? What's missing? Or what would I need to do to feel like I'm truly living my life fully? Take those answers seriously because they hold the key to a life where things that matter don't go undone, unsaid, or unloved.

Death is part of woman's work because it's part of the human experience. And my deepest wish for you is both a fully lived life and also a good death. This is woman's work.