I think the fear of the unknown is a big part of the reason why we fear death but also I think we fear talking about it is that it evidence is to others that perhaps we don't have anycontrol.
And most of us are walking around like we got everything under control but I don't know anything that's goingon.
I'm just doing my best minute byminute, youknow.
I think that people actually do want to talk aboutit.
I think culturally we don't make space forit.
So what if thinking about death was actually one of the most powerful ways to feel more alive to be more present to embrace every opportunity to live morefully.
It sounds paradoxical but leaning into our mortality may be essential for living more authentically andvibrantly.
As a culture we avoid talking about death at all costs we see it is more of a taboo only to be whispered about hush tones if ever and the actual experience of being a part of someone's last moments we don't even want to considerit.
Yet my guesttoday, Alua Arthur has experienced firsthand how embracing the reality of death can positively transform how welive.
Alua is a death doula someone who serves as a guide through the experience of dying death and the aftermath and she's the founder of going with grace an organization that aims to redefine how we approach end of lifeexperiences.
But oddly she spent much of her career as a water before that before transitioning into this work and search of deeper connection and meaning having experienced death and loss around her early in life and becoming aware of how it changes people and how and how differently we might be able tolive.
And how differently we might experience it and how acknowledging it can profoundly change the way welive.
Herbook, Briefly PerfectlyHuman, shares wisdom on getting real about the transient nature of life in order to craft an authentic existence filled with meaning through deeply personal stories and actionableadvice.
Alua opens our eyes to a powerful mindset shift she guides us to live more fully in the present to die with more peace and grace when the time comes and connect more deeply with others through mortality's unifyinglens.
So excited to share this conversation withyou.
I'm Jonathan Fields and this is Good LifeProject.
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There's certainly two overarching curiosities of mine one is really just exploring the notion of the work that you do and also just how we talk about or don't talk about the process of dying in Westernculture.
But also there's this other curiosity which is just you as we have this conversation the professional work that you do is as a death deal and we'll go into what that is and but this is not how you started into your certainly professional life of contribution you are in the world of law in legalaid.
And you made this pretty profound pivot into what you're doing now which really raises my curiosity about what happened that certainly led to this really big transition depressionhappened.
Being uncertain about what I was here for what my life was about what the point of any of this was that's what happened I've been practicing law for almost a decade that legal aid and for all intents and purposes it's work that should have brought me profound meaning and purpose in my life but I still felt really adrift it been time where I've been just trying to find my way I moved from practice area to practice area trying to find it fit and I got really burnt out not only was I struggling to find afit.
But I was also struggling to find any meaning in budding up against systems that seemed to be set and systems that didn't seem to be supporting the people that they were intended to support and it worked real number I say on my spirit and certainly on my mental health and I was diagnosed with a clinical depression and during that time I went to Cuba where I met a fellow traveler on a bus and we started talking a lot about life and death and I thought wow one day and I waslike, what isthis?
One day everybody's going to die I'm going to die these people on this bus are going to die she's going to die and I started to wonder if whether or not the life that I let thus far would have been good enough for me if the depression is what killed me and the answer was a resoundingno.
And through viewing myself on my deathbed through the lens of my mortality was I able to start realizing that I needed to make a master shift that the life that I was living wasn't working with work being at the center of thatlife.
And so we made a shift made a bigshift.
It's really interesting also because of all the past that you could have chosen in law legal aid would sort of like qualify from the outside looking atlike, oh this is like one of the noblepast.
This is one of the parts of it where like you're doing the work on behalf of other people you're trying to do good you're trying to actually really make adifference.
And yet for you it sounds like it was less about frustration with that but more about the bureaucracy within which you had to operate that your ability to actually see the work that you want to do and feel in some way that like the system within which you worked wasn't allowing you to doit.
Absolutely. I chose legal aid because I thought somehow I could support and making adifference.
I've always been empathetic to a fault to my own fault at somepoint.
And I saw the immense amount of suffering in the world and also in this country and I thought well I can use myskills, my brain to see if I can do something about it and I wasn't ableto.
And granted I may have had a bit of a let's see what we can do about the world let's fix everythingcomplex.
I think growing up the child of evangelical Christian missionaries that were on a mission to save as many people as they could for Jesus really probably worked in my psyche and some capacity to see if I could help make things a little bitbetter.
And we weren't able to do that verywell.
I wasn't able to do that very well legal aid but also the systems of oppression were so insidious that it would take nothing short of scrubbing it all and starting over before any real change couldhappen.
Despite all the hard work that people do at legal aid and in legalservices.
I don't want to discount that because it's really importantwork.
It just wasn't working forme.
So when you're starting to sort of like knock up against this wall and there's something that you want to do and you literally just cannot doit.
So the meaning is going away the sense of purpose that you hope you derived fromit.
It just it isn't there because you can't get access toit.
It's like you can almost see it outthere, but you can't touchit.
And what you'redescribing.
I feel like so many people have their version of thisstory.
And yet they kind of put their head down and they keep on keeping on and never make achange.
And foryou, you reach basically like a point where you said that I just can't keep up withthis.
But I'm curious also law in particular is one of these fields as are so many other professions where you invest a huge amount of money of time of resources and building thispath.
And then your 10 years in and so many people describe it as likewell, I have so much sunk into this that no matter how I'mfeeling, I couldn't possibly walkaway.
So I'm more curious also that like this moment where you decide like I actually need to make this happen and what goes through your mind and what steps you started to take to make thattransition.
It actually happened from this perspectiveeffortlessly, although at the time those a lot of effort that went intoit, I've been transferred to what I affectionately called thedungeon, which was a self help center in the Inglewoodcourthouse.
So I was on the bottom floor in a little concrete office in a larger concretebuilding.
There were nowindows. I couldn't seeoutside.
I sat behind a desk in a small room and talked to volunteer attorneys and lawstudents.
I'll stay long but never talked to clientsdirectly.
So the last little bit of what I could do in the work that fedme, which was direct client contact was nowgone.
And there was also nosunshine.
And so I just slowly started withering the amount of depression that I've had for a while just being stuck in this position that didn't work forme.
Blossom did just took over like wildfire and depression made it such that it was hard for me to do the most basic ofthings.
I took a vacation and went to Burning Man with a few of myfriends.
And the deal was that after that weekvacation, I could go back to working part time and working in a community area that felt better to me the work that I'd been doing before I got transferred to thedungeon.
And on my way back from BurningMan, I learned that that option had been taken away and they needed me to go back to thedungeon.
And without thinking about itmuch, I remember saying out loud in a room in a car with myfriends.
I can't go back to thatplace.
I'll die if Ido. Only inretrospect, can I see how serious those wordswere, but they were very real that I had reached the absolute end of my rope and something had tochange.
I called my therapist when I got back from BurningMan.
And ofcourse, we had a long relationship at that point because major depressiveepisode.
And Isaid, I can't go back and we talked through it and she knew howbad, how dire the situation hadgotten.
And shesaid, I think you'reright, you need to go on and leave aabsence.
And so I saw a psychiatrist and then within aday, I was on a 90 day leave of absence fromwork.
I think that had it not been for that shift that I probably just would have kept my head down and kept going for a while because I've been going for awhile.
It's been years at that point of me shoving it down and watching more TV and take more trips or drink more wine or just busy myself with life so that I couldn't feel into how dire the situation hadgotten.
So it happened somewhatseamlessly, but at a great bigcost, a bigprice.
Yeah.Again, so many people can relate as you're describingit, I can actually relatepersonally.
Imean, I know this aboutme.
I have a very past life and law aswell.
And I actually started out of the massive federalbureaucracy, like a very differentorientation.
I was at theSEC. But I wasstruggling, my lay aswell.
I ended up in a large room in private practice after that in New York and within a matter of weeks was in emergency surgery because the stress of the job was just really worrying with who I was and how I wanted to live mylife.
And I went back to it for the better part of the year and then similar toyou, I realized that my mentalhealth, along with my physical health had taken such a profound hit that a voice inside mesaid, you're not actually capable of making a rational decision about what needs tocome.
Next rightnow, you need to step away and I took a short leave ofabsence.
And it was within that window that I started to just come back to myself and realize this is notit.
It doesn't matter what I've invested up till thispoint.
Like how can I constrain literally the rest of my entire life by the years that laid behindme.
It sounds like you hit that same point and like we're asking the samequestions.
Absolutely. And I'm so encouraged to hearthis.
I'm sad that you suffered as youdid.
But up until veryrecently, up until I started sharing this story a lot morewidely.
I didn't know a single other lawyer that had taken a break because of their mentalhealth, notone.
You are now thethird. I'm so grateful that this has happened that folks are recognizingit.
But also Ijust, youknow, this idea of just keep pushing and keep going despite all the signs from your body to stop or slow down or payattention.
It's something that's so deeplyingrained, Ithink, in our society andculture, particularly as it relates to work and success or climbing ladders or accolades or initials behind ournames.
Just keepgoing, keeppushing, keepgetting, keep achieving without checking in to see what does this mean forme?
What does this mean for mylife?
What does it mean for mywell-being?
We just keeppushing.Yeah.
It's almost like we're on a productivitywagon, youknow, like atreadmill.
And it's likemore,more,more,more,more,more,more.
Never realizedlike, will the end state is theend?
Yeah. Youknow, and it's like we're not working towardsthat.
Like we want to fill it with actually being present and beinghere.
So when you take thisbreak, you end up going to Cuba and having this conversation and having thisrealization.
Did you know at that point that there was this thing called deathdoula, or were youjust, was this just an awakening thatsaid,okay, my time here isfine.
I don't knowwhen, like how long or short it's going tobe, but whatever itis, there needs to bemore, more of a sense of meaning and purpose and what I'mdoing.
It wasn'tawakening. There was a moment when I looked out the window and I remember the clouds very clearly they're edged into my brain thinking there should be people that other people talk to aboutdeath.
And Ithought, why could be one of thosepeople?
A light bulb didn't gooff.
There's inshatter. Nothingmoved.
Noquakes. Oprah didn't showup.
I just felt that it was apossibility.
And then comingback, I started sharing that desire and that idea with otherpeople.
And mostly I heard what happened to you inCuba?
Like are youokay? And something profound did happen to me inCuba, youknow, it was an awakening that didn't yet havelegs, but it carried me for awhile.
I started getting mybooks, my hands on any book that I could that talked about death anddying.
I read some of the seminaltags.
I would talk to anybody who was in a death adjacentfield.
I was voracious about living anddying.
And that was a signal to me that that should have been a signal that something was up because up until then I'd been really disinterested inlife.
My curiosity spark had totallydimmed.
And mycuriosity, something that I hold really at my core is one of myvalues.
And so the fact that it was so dim should have been asign.
But I was curiousagain.
I wasengaged. I was leaning into thetopic.
I was curious whether you shared this with friends andfamily.
And at that time coming out of the very dark space that you had beeninhabiting, they were concerned that your curiosity was not more of like actuallyconstructive,healthy, deep like curiosity aboutlike, what is thisthing?
I just acknowledge bitchcuriosity, but alsolike,oh, she's actually looking at like all of these things arounddeath.
And like that actually raised flags withthem.
I think itdid. I don't know if anybody will tell methat.
I also had gotten really good at masking mydepression.
And so some perhaps didn't know I was suffering as deeply as Idid.
But I think some were certainly a little concerned that death was now my newthing.
But it also since it awakened something inme, I think I approached it with a lot morebrightness.
And also there is an element of my personality that gets really excited about new things and then eventually forgets aboutthem.
I believe being a Gemini and maybe some on diagnosedADHD.
I'm notsure. But I was just like so into it and somewhere little curious like let's see how long thislasts.
But I think a few people in my life that I told that that heard like the underlyingelectricity, the underlying potential with the ones that really championedme.
I'm grateful at this point that they've all come around and they see it wasn't just another passing fancy like teachingtypo.
But rather they know I'm probably in it for awhile.
Nothing wrong with teaching type of that was an amazingtrend.
Incredibletrend.Incredible.
And also I was like so excited about it for like two months and I totally forgot Billy Blanksoo washappening.
You know I'm wondering also because whether you trace this back in any meaningful way your family from what they understand left Ghana around 81 run time in the military coup and therewas.
I mean clearly I do experience in seeing a lot around that and whether you feel like that has informed any of this in any meaningfulway.
I believe so I believe so my earliest memory is of fleeing the coup and without being aware of it in respect and I understand that the fear of death was just blanket in the city that morning becausethe.
I think that's something to do with it the midst of all the chaos around death I felt comfortable my dad was holding my hand I felt secure he picked me up at some point when I couldn't run very fast and he heldme.
And I felt safe even the midst chaos and fear so I might have something to do withit.
Yeah what was your family culture around conversations around death even coming up you know like as a kid or a young adult was something that was talked about or something that was sort of pushed off to theside.
It was talked about in the context of Christianity because we were evangelical Christian missionaries and so John 316 is just shoved into my brain from the Bible you know that who so ever believe it in him shall not perish by shall have everlastinglife.
And so the fear of death but rather that you'll be safe regardless if you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior so we didn't talk about death in that context we talked about it more in the you'll be alright if you just accept Jesuscontext.
My grandmother my mother's mother was the only one who was alive when I was born she died when I was five so I never I don't really remember her very well I remember my mother mourning her I remember that my mom did not hide her grief for her sorrow I remember herpain.
But that was really about it that was really about it her older sister my mom's older sister died when I was about 19 or so that was the next time that a big death hit our family where I saw grief but aside from that we didn't really discuss itmuch.
When you start to circle back around to this and you get really excited about it you're like this is something that keeps I keep coming back to it's not a passing fancy this is like it's got a hold of me in a really meaningfulway.
What is the process I'm curious because you know like I think a lot of people are familiar with with the word hospice and hospice care and hospice nurses and and it's really that modality but probably not a lot of folks are familiar with the concept of death dola so I guess you know the bigger questions what exactly are we talking about when we talk about a death dola and then what's the process of actually stepping into thatpath.
And I think that's the support of the dying person and their circle of support through the process we can also support people when they're healthy in completing some comprehensive end of life plans and so when I say the dying person I'm talking about just somebody who has some awareness that death will eventually occur to not just the people that have an illness that is going to end their lives but rather anybody who has started to think about death and somecapacity.
And I learned how to do this work well for starters after I came back from Cuba my brother in law got sick about six months after I came back from Cuba so I was deep still like reading all the books and talking to anybody who did anything death related and he got ill he had a Birketsl and phoma stage four and four months after he was diagnosed they couldn't treat himanymore.
And I was really short amount of time not enough time to get your head around the fact that your brother in law who you're close to who I was close to was going to die forshort.
And when when we learned that they weren't going to treat him I went to New York where he and my sister and my niece were and I got to be with him for the last two months of his life and I essentially served as a death dola for the first time without knowing what it was or what death doladid.
And I served as part of the larger circles of care around him he was at the center moving toward his death with my sister holding his hand his parents around him my parents around him his friends his family in another circle people and circles going all the wayoutward.
And I served as a death dola to serve as one of those circles of support around the dying person that means I ran a lot of errands compiled questions I would ask if they understood everything the doctor said when the doctor left the room I researched everything what we do about his ashes how do we figure out his will what should we do with these leftovermedications.
How do we talk to a four year old about death I researched I asked questions I was present I stood with them I had my own grief to deal with but at the time I was just trying to be useful somehow if I did this part of it then my sister could just be with her husband if I you know picked his parents up from the airport they wouldn't have to worry about that they could just think about theirson.
I took as much of the burden off of them so that they could be with what they needed to bewith.
And so that's essentially what a death dola does after his death I was thrown into the frenzy of grief and in my frenzy I read some more I researched some more that cried a lot I roamed around the world a bit trying to try to make sense of a world where the sun still came up when somebody I cared for deeply haddied.
And if you know grief you know what I'm talking about I use that time to start looking at the ills in the world the ills the places where and where there's not a lot of support and that was a big one it was huge for me at the time but also intellectually I understood 10 to 1000's 150,000 people were dying the same time the Peter was on the same day Peterdied.
And most probably didn't have support and so I wanted to do that for other people I started looking at the ways in which we could provide support you know if there was somebody I could have called in the midst of it somebody who could make sense of what look like Greek that I was reading trying to understand what to do with hospitalmedication.
Somebody who could answer these questions I would have given them anything I would have been so grateful a lot of hogs but also money help me please and I couldn't find anybody you know so I built a practice that looked like what I needed and itworked.
So many questions you know there because this first experience for you was was in you know a high speed and immersive learning process but also was your own process of loss like your personal process your own process and experience of grief so I'm curious that you go through this you see the value of what you just been through in the knowledge that youaccumulated.
But again it's associated with profound pain and yet there was an impulse in you that said I want to keep stepping stepping back into this sphere like into this experience not in the context of people in my own life and so I sort of like re experience that grief from my own loss but to be of service with others I'm curious was there a concern at all that you by keeping continuing to step into that almost like you read traumatizing yourself or re-experiencing yourown.
Rear because I would imagine it's hard to step into that context and not in so much shape or form feel connected to the people who are part ofit.
It can be it can be incredibly triggering I'll tell you what Jonathan I'm hardwired for service I believe and for meet your needs but also meet the needs of the people around you and being in legal aid for as long as I was I had to learn how to start separating myself from the experience of myclients.
Which was supportive so that it's much easier for me to do now don't get me wrong that doesn't mean that I can walk in their cold hard see them as clients and then walk out not be changed I grieve a lot I cry a lot I think about Peter all the time I think about the experience that we had and yet I've also learned how to identify my experiences my own and recognize the things that I'm carrying for other people that don't belong to me to carry so I can share with them for awhile.
At some point I put it down because it's not mine which makes it possible to keep doing this work I think if I kept piling it on eventually it would take me down but I've learned how to separate my experience from the experience of the other so that I can beeffective.
Do you have your own rituals or practices that help you with that process of laying itdown.
Yeah so many of them for starters one of the things that I do all the time and it does not sound like a ritual and I realized how ritualistically I didn't eat a lot of kettle potato chips salt and vinegar listen I would find myself coming in from seeing a client go straight to the pantry and get the potato chips maybe some emotional eatingperhaps.
But also I think like the sharpness of the vinegar the salt the crunch the fat something about it really soothes me and I feel really alive I'm chewing I'm eating it reminds me that not only am I still fully in this body and still very much here but that I still have agency to put the chip in my mouth to chew it up to swallow itetc.
It grounds me it gets me present it reminds me that this is mine and this is what I have to carryon.
I I bathe I take a bath often sometimes the shower but also to wash off what doesn't belong tome.
Now one one tool I use is when I am crossing into the threshold of a home where somebody is dying I will put my hand on the door jam to mark the crossing of a threshold and then on my way back I cross it again so that the person who went in obviously will be changed by everything that occurred there but I must leave what was therethere.
Otherwise it can get heavy but this work I don't find heavy I find it full and dense but it doesn't weigh on me like abrick.
No, no that makessense.
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I want to talk a little bit about what we get wrong about the experience of death and dying and also had a maybe like make some changes there but even before we getthere.
One of the things that I think is just curiosity as well is this notion of we don't even talk about this before even get to what to do or not to do what's good what's working what's not it's like we don't even engage in this conversation like this is taboo to even talk about the fact that there's this thing that unites every single person who has ever been born we did this is the one thing we will all experience like in a sharedway.
And yet we want nothing to do with the thought of it or the conversation around it take me into this a bit because you've been around it so much and what you're thinking on this first of all I must done as you are maybe even more so it is the actual only thing the only thing you know not everybody breathes air like we do not everybody is liver cleanser bloodlike.
This is the only thing that all of our bodies will do at some point I understand the fear I understand the resistance based on fear I understand the desire to not touch it because of fear what I struggle with is the fact that we pretend it's not happening at all or that it doesn't happen when even if I cannot acknowledge the fact that I will die I can acknowledge that some of the people in my life will and that one day I'm going to have to deal with that youknow.
I think the fear the fear of the unknown is a big one is big part of the reason why we fear death but also I think we fear talking about it is that it evidences others that perhaps we don't have anycontrol.
And most of us are walking around her like we got everything under control but I don't know anything that's going on I'm just doing my best minute by minute you know so even acknowledging that we will die acknowledging that we have no control over whenwhere.
How is difficult acknowledging that we don't have any control over the body our bodies are fragile and they are vulnerable and just a nick of a rusty blade can turn a healthy person into a corpse just like that terrifying we feel powerful in these bodies and they are to some great extent but they're also veryfragile.
That makes us uncomfortable but I think most of anything is the go extensive self which places me at the center of everybody's story and granted granted science says I am the center of the universe and I'm pretty cool maybe I have the center of the universe but at the same time there are 8 billion other stories happening and currently the mind you know and all in the history of time a whole bunch more hundred and 210 billion mine is but a fabric in a giant tapestry and when I can see from that perspective it allows me to create a little bit of distance from this main character energy that I carry around that we carryaround.
It allows me to see that my experience here while massive for me insignificant in the grand scheme of things that gives me a little bit of grace to mess up a lot it allows me to approach my life with some lightness and gady and to hold it all really lightly because one in 110billion.
Yeah one of one big deal and I'm trying to be in that one of one as much as possible while also holding that I'm also one of 110 billion thus far yeah that's a tough duality for a lot of people me included you know it's sort of like your constantly you're trying to say okay so I understand this at the same time here I am in my body in my experience with my relationships like with my day to day lived life and it's really hard to step into larger frame in any meaningful way but I feel like one of the ways that we oftendo.
Is through giving ourselves away is through this like reconnection with generosity and service and reminding ourselves that we are not the node we may be for moments and flashes it's such an interesting part of it when you decide to start doing this also you know probably my earliest reconnection with just like really exploring the notion of death and a good death was a tool go Monday's book which I think so many people really stumbled upon then became really big I wasreally.
I was really surprised I remember how big that book became and how like it stayed a part of the public conversation for so long and I was like oh so this is something that people actually want to know about but they don't seem to want to talk about you know like they'll search out wisdom or information but also that book kind of really made it clear it's like we are potentially really getting wrong what a quote good death is and is not and I think there was a wake up call for a lot ofpeople.
So I guess the question I want to so reason to you with you is it in the work that you're doing and having been around this it's this notion of what is and is not a good death at the bigquestion.
Yeah let me back up a little bit I think that people actually do want to talk about it I think culturally we don't make space for it because what I find with my work is that when I mentioned the work that I do it's one of three responses people lean in and want to ask me if I know what happens after we die the answer I do not they tell me stories about when their mother brother father sisters somebody died and how they wish that they would have had some support or they talk about grief and they're not going to be a goodplace.
They talk about grief and their fear or concerns about their own dying or they shut down and walk away the ones that shut down and walk away though I guarantee are the ones that probably end up ruminating over it you know they don't just shove it I think they say whoa whoa whoa whoa and then probably spend some time on it and I'll bet that if I had a second chance with them they would probably talk about it at thatpoint.
I think we want to talk about it I think that's part of the reason why that book was so big is because they were people were reading these words they were learning about something that they probably had some inkling or curiosity about themselves and finally hear somebody saying thethings.
And so I hope that more people keep saying the things when tricky thing is this notion of the good death because for starters just even embedded within is this value based judgment about what is good and what is bad and many of us you know I think one of the things that I often have tosay.
And so I often have to support people through is when they are unpacking how somebody died and all the guilt or sadness or shame they feel over how the person died and the judgment of themselves in that experience or the judgment of the death and death just is the meeting that we make on it is the value that we assign toit.
And I wish that we could pull away a bit from that judgment and think of it more just it occurs and we are all medical care systems included I think doing the best that they can to support people to not be in pain or to notdie.
And the violence and overdose and suicide and all the ways that we think of as bad deaths necessarily there are plenty of not good death that occur in the medical care system aswell.
And what I like to start seeing is us talking about the most ideal death under thecircumstances.
And so big portion of my job is to support people in experiencing the most ideal death under the circumstances the notions of a good death I wrapped up in things like you know being free frompain.
Being people that you love having an opportunity to make a man's or heal relationships to have all your fairs and order for some it's being in their own home or in their ownbed.
And wrapped up in a lot of these things is also conversations about agency and privilege and and their their tricky to unpack and so I think if we can identify what would be ideal for us and use that as a way to create a framework around preparing for the end of life that could be reallyuseful.
No, that's super helpful frame and it certainly takes them are a reality out of it and just like acknowledges the circumstances is like every single time every circumstance every person every family is going to bedifferent.
So let's talk about what feels most right for this particular moment for this particularcircumstance.
What I mean you shared some of the things that we might think about agency is a word that you've actually like said a number of times throughout ourconversation.
And I think a lot of people have heard that word thrown out a lot of different contexts in this context what are we really talking about when you use the wordagency.
I'm talking about informed decision making I'm talking about me making choices for myself based on my valuesystem.
I'm talking about the opportunity to be able to communicate that and then have it berespected.
Youknow, I'm just thinking itthrough.
Yeah,yeah, I wasn't aware I had said it multipletimes.
But it is I mean agencies a key component in helping people prepare for death for meanyway.
It's like this isyours.
Youknow, you get to have it how you wantit.
Who was that Burger King your way right away Burger Kingnow.
Yeah, this is yourdeath.
You get to have it how you want it to the extent that you can and I'm going to do the best I can to ensure that foryou.
And then when it's my turn I get to do the things the way that I wantto.
So what are the questions that we would ask either of ourselves or like from the family from those supporting that might bring as much agency to the experience as we can master many ofthem.
I start with some conversation around end of life decisionmaking.
Who do you want to make your decisions for you in the event that youcan't.
So somebody is going to serve as your health care power of attorney or your medical decisionmaker.
Somebody who would think like you would and making the decisions that you would and not do the things that they would do forthemselves.
We're rather do the things that you would like foryourself.
I think it's also important that we think about what kind of care we want at the end of ourlives.
Conversations about life support treatments and ourvalues.
Thinking through things such as what values make a life worthliving.
What condition of living is worse thandying.
Thinking through I want to live as long as I can dot dot dot to help people get clear on what they actuallyvalue.
Because we can forward those into our dying if we're clear about them while we'reliving.
Which creates greater agency for us because then I'm clear about what I value and then hopefully you can just do that to the extent that youcan.
Having an advocate goes a longway.
Having somebody who has heardyou, understands you and can go go hard for you when time comes is incrediblysupportive.
I think as long as we are talking about what we desire that goes a long way because we're not doing that much atall.
You use word valuesalso.
It seems you said that reminding me of a conversation I had with Rabbi Steve later in LA actually a couple yearsback.
And he was he shared with me the notion of I think he called it an ethicalwill.
Yeah, I think a lot of people that I talked about like I heard of last will and testament like this standard definition of will but the notion of ethical will as this is sort of like my key values that I want to share with you in storyform.
These are the these are the areas that I really have strong feelings and value associations within here stories aboutthem.
And it's not necessarily written in the context of somebody who feels like they're close to death but just somebody who wants to pass these on maybe to children or family members orothers.
And wants to really codify them and I thought it was a beautiful notion and a beautiful like potential gift to giveothers.
At the same time just the process for you as an individual visiting those questions I think is probably so clarifying and what I kept thinking was wouldn't it be wonderful if we did this earlier in the dying process like assuming the dying process literally starts the moment we'reborn.
And if we actually visited all these things like much earlier in life so that we could get clear about them and live them not just in when we know that we have a very small finite amount of time left we know we might not know exactly what it is but really just from that point forward once we have the clarity say like how can I step into this as much as Ican.
So I thought it was a really interesting exercise to do almost like in different seasons of life aswell.
I'm smiling so big because my work here isdone.
We gotit. And that's awrap.
Yeah but100% let's talk about it even something seemingly small when Aretha Franklin died I was in a room with some elderly black people and one of them brought up her funeral and that they had changed a lot of thetime.
I waslike,well, I don't want that formyself.
She said just put me one often and leave me alone and I said great because your grandson know this have you told anybody aboutthis.
This is something that you value you know this something that you think is important and we talk through why she wanted that for herself and it was a casualgathering.
I'm bringing death everywhere I go into but this was not a work event this was just I was hanging out with somebody and some elders werethere.
And so if we can repeatedly like have these conversations casually when we need to to start thinking about them and then when it's time start to write them down codify them in some way communicate a little bit helps a lot more than nothing atall.
And like I said and I'll say again and again and again people do want to talk aboutit.
They do it's just about finding the right time and occasion for it to come topass.
Yeah, that makessense.
It feels like they want to talk about it when it's it's a resident for some reason in theirlives.
But until that moment they're curious about it but like the conversation really everhappens.
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One of the things that you write in your book is this notion of the body story telling capacity especially around the end of life take me into this notion a bitmore.
Meeting somebody nearing the end of their lives would take a little if they've lived a longlife.
There are so many clues about who they were and what they valued and how they how they spent their timehere.
And in seeing that it makes me think so much more about how I live and what I want my body to say after I've tied and have a bunch of piercing there's gold dripping out everywhere I think it's obvious that I like jewelry I like pretty pretty things is true I like pretty things like pretty things on my face in my ears in my home around me I want to be looking at pretty things when I'mdying.
It's going to stay true for me our body is hold so much information not just on the internal but the external as well the way our faces are in call our smile lines although with a big generation of folks getting Botox I want that's going to be the case in a littlebit.
Wow. Maybe not take pictures before they canremember.
Maybe you won't be able to tell but seeing smile lines and wrinkles and the one in between the eyebrows like the scowl or frown lines or the curiosity lines or tattoos scars scars are such powerfulstorytellers.
I'm not going to be able to tell you what I want todo.
Hesaid,oh, you put a lot of miles on his feet and Ithought,whoa, of course he can tell is a foot doctor but alsoyeah, I run I like to walk I'm out on the streets alot.
I think that's a beautifulnotion.
I think our bodies also signal a lot of things to us that we don't pay attention to you know we started off our conversation talking about depression and work and all the resistance I felt in my body every single time I walked into the building or how I felt like I was with her in because there was nosun.
I can see myself just slump shoulders and like sitting sad in the chair body was like girl you're not happy here the same and the way I light up when I see sunshine or the way flowers turn toward the sun like all that is information for me that I just was not paying any attention to bodies they're pretty incredible prettyincredible.
I think we take a lot of what they do and how they communicate with us and carries through this world for granted until health gets taken away or we're facing crime illness or somebody else dies from something that we thought they shouldn't have until we stopped to pay attention to what our bodies are saying ordoing.
One of the things you talk about also that you write about is this notion of I think the phrase you use is finding your feet take me into this concept a bit more and how it relates to the conversation we're having finding your feet for me is a practice inpresence.
Because when I'm living in my head I can be anywhere I can be in Persia I could be back on the plane I can be rethinking that one silly thing I said that one time that I still haven't forgiven myself for you know not here in the present but when I'm with my feet when I can feel the slippers that my feet are currently in or the floor where you sit or anything grass underneath my feet I'm here in the present because the body is always righthere.
The body can't go to Persia unless I hop on a plane in this instant the body is no longer when I said that silly thing in the third grade the body is here right now and so allows me to bring myself into the experience I'm having at this moment it's really useful when people are in anticipatory grief which is an experience where somebody is already feeling the sadness of the death that hasn't yet occurred and there's nothing wrong with it it's not bad it's nothing to be fixed yet it can be the ability to be able to be in thepresent.
Yet it can be the built for some because then comes the guilt over not appreciating what they still have me that the person is still present and so this practice can be supportive there just be like we're here right now and today your person is still alive today you are standing in Los Angeles today you are dot dot dot just bringing us right here right now into the body for thebody.
I mean with the practice be as simple as literally almost like feeling like intentionally scanning your body almost and just like looking for physical sensations throughout the body maybe starting in your feet but then else elsewhere to sort of draw yourself out of your thoughts and into the somatic experience that would be incredible if people can carry it up that far yeah so I just start with the toes just feel the toes you know what are they feeling what the sensations were right here ground here yeah great if we make it to the clouds but I think I thought that was reallygood.
I think I think I think I think I often tomorrow night dinner right right what a thing that also comes up again you write about this in this context is family dynamics and how things are being left not just between the person who is soon to be gone and the family but also among those who survive those who endure in your experience when you're sort of like in this mix and I think it's a little bit more of a sense of how things are going to be like in this context is a little bit more of a sense of how things are going to be like in this context is a little bit more of a sense of how things are going to be like in this context is a little bit more of a sense of how things are going to be like in this context is a little bit more of a sense of how things are going to be like in this context is a little bit more of a sense of how things are going to be like in this context is a little bit more of a sense of how things are going to be like in this context is a little bit more of a sense of how things are going to be like in this context is a little bit more of a sense of how things are going to be like in this context is a little bit more of a sense of how things are going to be like in this context is a little bit more of a sense of how things are going to be like in this context is a little bit more of a sense who is going to make dad's decisions about the end of his life when he is ill and in the hospital and the nurses are asking then it is when dad is relatively healthy even though a little elderly and then we can carry thoseforward.
But I think to the extent that people can what I try to do when the family dynamics are really tense is to listen obviously always acknowledge and validate the experience somebody is having and then try to tease out the root of the thing that's bothering them and see if that solution for that root is also a shared root with somebody else because often when it sounds like people are saying diametrically opposed things about what they want at the end of life the root is always somethingshared.
I don't want him to be in any pain or I don't want this to go on longer than it should or something of the sort so if we can tease out the root of it which is possible through a lot of active listening and reflecting back then we can draw similarities between the roots and then that allows people to sometimes get on the same page and sometimes it's just not possible a lot of times it's just notpossible.
Yeah, have you seen during those times where you've seen that it is possible that this sort of process of teasing out theroot.
I almost wonder whether that is also like a potential mechanism for long term healing gap bridging that may have existed within the family dynamic for a long time but there's this moment of intense emotion and the potential to say like we are all here in this we can't escape this it's happening it's going to happen like you said death is what if we can use the intensity the energy of this moment to all dive into to tease out this root and to explore it and then so that maybe even as we move past this there is some healing which is needed to happen maybe for generations or years or decades that can move out of this sort of like moment intime.
Have you seen that infull?
Absolutely.Absolutely.
You can see the worst of people as people die but you can also see thebest.
I've seen families heal generations long conflict at thebedside.
I've seen people put down differences that they've had because somebody is dying and everybody needs to get on the samepage.
Imean, I've also seen it go the other way but more often than not I see reconciliation that'spossible.
I think when we can acknowledge the very human experience of grieving and often what needs happen is for somebody to point out that this is all grief just showing up in differentways.
It allows us to put the swords down a bit and see my fellow human as a human and there's and I think that's a really powerful way forward for manypeople.
I actually think that compassion and being able to witness and be with the experience of the other is a potential to breaking down a lot of the systems that we find ourselves in that hold us better than other humans on this planet at the sametime.
Part of what you're talking about also it sort of brings up the notion oflegacy.
What am I leaving behind but not just like what stuff am I leavingbehind?
What mark am I leaving behind but also what dynamic am I leaving behind what context am I leavingbehind?
How are the relationships that we've formed being impacted by me having been there and by me now being no longer there and I think it's something that we think about alot.
It seems like these are questions that I imagine you ask yourself all the time about the work that you're doing and who you are in the world and you're choosing veryintentionally.
I need to be in these places in these context in these systems in these relationships because it matters to me not just how I show up but how people are affected by it when you think beyond the work that you're doing and also now in the context of a book that you're putting on to the world you're briefly perfectlyhuman.
Do you have a sort of intention that you hold for this as it moves out into theworld.
My intention I think for all of it even back into the legal aid days is always to be of use you know to be of some use I want to reach the end of my life having made the experience of my fellow human just a little bit easier ifpossible.
That certainly was what I was up to when I was at legal aid it was like yes go and see what you can fix and make things better and now feels a lot less like that but if I can offer a shoulder and a word if I can help somebody feel seen if I can help them feel heard if we can amplify or multiply that any one of us is doing that creates good for other people in some way that would begreat.
I teach death dolas also at going with grace and one of the big motivations in getting started there was to share the knowledge that I built with other people you know if I can do it one on one that's great that's one additional family that support is spectacular but if I can teach five people to do it that's five more families you know if I can teach 20 is 20 more and then if that one teaches another one and before you know amplify going out there in theworld.
Ultimately my hope is always to have been of service to support somebody to help somebody have a little bit of an easier right while we're here it's hard enough already you know it's great to the fact that we all have such individual imprints and unique expressions means that I hold medicine for you when you hold medicine for me so let's share as much of it as wecan.
I feel like a good place for us to come full circle as well so in this container good life project if I have for the phrase to live a good life what comesup.
What comes up is the image of a hammock and sunshine and people who I love the people that make me belly a clap make my cheeksor.
People who make me feel like hard eyes emoji as soon as they round the bend the smell of my partnershirt.
My niece and nephew grown up my god kids ease of being champagne bubbles in my blood in all of life I feel like a goodlife.
Thank you thankyou. Hey before you leave if you love this episode safe but you'll also love the conversation we had with Elizabeth Gilbert about embracing life no matter whatcomes.
The final link to Liz's episode in the show notes this episode of Good Life project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me Jonathan Fields editing helped by Alejandro Ramirez Christa for Carter crafted our theme music and special thanks to Shelley Dell for her research on thisepisode.
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