#49 - A Death Doula on What Matters at the End

What would change if we treated death as a human event, not just a medical one?

This week’s anonymous caller is a death doula. And instead of going abstract, they get surprisingly specific about what the end can look like and what people wish they’d put in place sooner.

A lot of this episode lives in the gap between what we assume will happen and what actually happens when things move quickly: who makes decisions, what families scramble to figure out, and how easily someone’s wishes can get lost if nothing has been talked about ahead of time.

It’s also a reminder that this isn’t only an “old age” topic. The caller talks about working with people in their twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties. Which quietly changes the question from “someday” to “at some point, and we don’t get to choose when.”

And underneath all of that is one simple reframe that keeps showing up throughout the call: the medical side matters, but the human side is usually what people need most.

In this episode:

• What a death doula actually does (and what they don’t)
• Why dying often needs more human support than medical support
• Why end-of-life planning is a form of care
• The reality that terminal diagnoses don’t only happen “late in life”
• Why the timeline is the part none of us gets to know
• What tends to help at the end — and what tends to complicate things

A few moments from the call:

• “Dying is much more of a human event than it is a medical event.”
• “You need more human support than you need medical support.”
• “We have no idea when death will come for us.”
• “I’m working with people who are in their twenties or thirties or forties or fifties, and they’ve received a terminal diagnosis…”

Book Recommendation: Anonymous Caller Spoiler (preorder link)

More book recommendations from past episodes: View the full list

Video Episode: If you’d like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube.

Transcript

Opening, Premise, And Supporter

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I'm working with people who are in their 20s or 30s or 40s or 50s, and they've received a terminal diagnosis, and now their life's being cut short. And a lot of times they have a whole life. They have kids and they have a house and a dog and a husband or a wife, and things are complicated because now their life is going to be cut short.

Introducing The Caller: A Death Doula

What Happens When We Die

SPEAKER_00 0:19

It all starts with a single question asked to an anonymous caller. What do you think happens when we die? And from there, the conversation goes in completely unexpected directions. Some speak with certainty, others with doubt, some are still trying to make sense of it all. I'm Zach Ansel, and this is When We Die Talks, a podcast about death, meaning, and how that shapes the way we live. This podcast was born from my own fears around death and the need to talk about. Thank you for being a part of this conversation. I'm glad you're here. This episode is supported by Nemostheny, a project I've been building alongside this podcast. Nemostheny is a simple way to tell your story in your own voice. It's a guided, audio-first conversation with me where we capture the parts of your life that matter to you. Where you came from, the people who shaped you, the seasons that changed you, and the moments you don't want to lose. It's not therapy and it's not a performance. It's just a real conversation that becomes a private audio keepsake you can share with the people you love or keep for yourself. If you want to learn more, you can find it at Nimostheny.com. That's N-E-M-O-S-E-N-E.com. Hey, welcome back or welcome here if this is your first time. This is one of the rare calls where I actually know our caller. We haven't met face-to-face, but I've known them through social media for a while, and I've always been impressed by how clearly and honestly they talk about this topic. They work as a death doula, and this conversation lands more on the practical side than some recent episodes. It's not intense. It's a kind of listen that can actually lower your shoulders a bit. We talk about what they've learned being close to death, what people often get wrong about the end, and what actually helps and what doesn't. And even if you think you're nowhere near this in your own life, none of us really knows that. The caller share is that they specialize in working with younger people in situations where nobody saw it coming. And it's a good reminder that these conversations feel awkward until they feel necessary. Just making a few decisions ahead of time keeps people from guessing under pressure. At one point, the caller share something I wish more people understood. Death is a human event, not just a medical one. And we talk about what that changes in really simple terms. Let's get into the call. I hope you enjoy. Hey, how's it going? Good. How are you? Good. Thank you for doing this. You are one of the rare cases where I do kind of know who you are versus a lot of these calls where I don't. So I I like to at least mention that up front so listeners know I have at least some background. But yeah, we are by and large strangers still. So this is a little bit of a different circumstance, but maybe the first thing that I'd love to hear from you is why you even wanted to talk to me about death. It is a conversation that a lot of people tend to avoid and and not want to talk about.

SPEAKER_02 3:11

For sure. So, you know, I am a death doula and I'm a death educator, and death is my favorite thing to talk about. And so I follow everybody death related on Instagram or all of the social medias for that matter. But Instagram happens to be where I stumbled across you. And so I've followed you on there for a little while and I've watched some of your podcasts. And I don't know, it's just kind of something that I do where when I see somebody who's got a death-related podcast, I'll just kind of reach out and be like, hey, you know, I'm a death doula and I didn't know if you if you'd like for us to chat on your podcast before. So that's kind of why I reached out to you is because a lot of times when people are doing death-related things, especially podcasts, they usually are pretty interested in talking to somebody like myself. I've experienced death or sat bedside with hundreds of people as they are dying. And so I've experienced death in a multitude of ways. But I'm also really passionate about educating about death and changing the narrative about death and just talking about death in general. And so I kind of love what you're doing because I really love anybody who is open and honest and ready to talk about death. You know, a lot of people kind of think that death should live in the shadows and be something that we shouldn't really talk about. But, you know, here you are with this podcast asking people questions about death and talking about death and not really being afraid to talk about it. So that's really why I wanted to, you know, touch base with you and see if you wanted to connect.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

That's awesome. And I also feel like now I need to say that I did not pay you to say any of that. The other thing that I love that you said was that death is your favorite thing to talk about, because that is very contrary to what most people would say. And so I love that you have kind of that thought process. And I I love that you're gonna bring this kind of um background of understanding of sitting with death and being around death, because that is not a perspective that most people have, especially in the world today. But before we kind of jump into the full heart of the conversation and everything, maybe we can kind of get to know you a little bit, obviously keeping the anonymity going and everything. Usually what I like to ask is where you're calling from, roughly city-state. I guess calling from or live, depending if that's different. I don't know if that really matters, the distinguishing between the two. And then what your favorite book is and why.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

Okay, so I'm calling from Cleveland, Ohio, and that is where I live. So I'm, you know, one in the same. And I mean, I'll do a shameless plug right now if I can. My favorite book right now is my own book because I'm in the process of writing my own book that comes out later this year in September. And it's a Death Dool's approach to intentional end-of-life care. So uh that's certainly my favorite book.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

Nice, nice. I guess now we can kind of get into the the heart of the conversation and start with the big question of what do you think happens when we die?

Consciousness, Signs, And Guidance

SPEAKER_02 6:07

Great question. So I believe that we are all energy, and when we die, we are just making a transition, right? Energy never dies, it only changes. And so I fully believe that when we die, our energy just shifts or changes form into something else. I have never died, so I can't say exactly what our energy changes into, but you know, I have like sat with hundreds and hundreds of people as they have labored out of life and made their transition off of this earth, and I believe fully that people's energy just changes and shifts into something else. All of the people that I work with as they're dying, I always tell them, you know, I don't claim to know what happens to us after we die, but if there's a way that you're able to come back and see me or visit me in my dreams, or leave me a sign that you're still here somehow, you know, you have to do that. You have to show me that you're still here impacting my life in some way. And they always do, you know, they always do that. So I I see people in my dreams and they leave me messages and I see signs all throughout my life all the time that these people that I that I've helped, you know, through their final chapter of life are still here just in a different way than they were when they were in their human form when they were wearing their meat suit. You know, they're they're just in a different, a different form now.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

Yeah, I love the term meat suit. It it's so graphically disturbing but also wonderful at the same time. And so we know that there will be a transfer of energy and our bodies or or I guess I should continue, our meat suits will decompose and all of those things, and that'll go back into the earth in one way, shape, or form, whether it is through actual like natural burial processes or I mean, even if you get cremated in your ashes, like at some point, you know, it all kind of comes back together. And so I think the energetically that all makes sense. But one question that I always kind of follow up with, and which I think it kind of always goes in tandem with this project too, is consciousness. And so it sounds like you believe that whether you want to call it consciousness, soul, spirit, whatever it is, that that does continue. Because to some extent, the energy could get dispersed into the universe and it and in a very different way. You could say we, you know, carry on, but there's no self still, right? But it sounds like what you believe and have felt through these experiences is that self continues in some way.

SPEAKER_02 8:41

So, you know, I do believe that in some way, you know, our energy or our soul or whatever we want to call it is still able to impact our loved ones that are still here on the earth, right?

SPEAKER_03 8:54

Yeah.

Fear Of Death Versus Fear Of Suffering

SPEAKER_02 8:54

So I've you know met with or talked to tons of people who are mediums or psychics or whatever we want to call that. And they always say the same thing that, you know, once we die, you know, our energy is still here, you know, with our loved ones, still impacting our loved ones just in a different way, but almost in a more meaningful way. So I actually had a medium once say that, like, you know how sometimes you'll get just a really random thought or you'll have an intuition or like a feeling in your gut. Well, I once had someone tell me that like those are never just random. Somebody is putting those feelings inside of you or or helping you out or leading you along the way in your life, kind of giving you these ideas of like, hey, you know, maybe you should do this, or hey, something's wrong with that, or hey, you know, this is off. So I do believe that in some way, and I don't necessarily know how or which way, yeah, but I do believe that, you know, if you believe in that, that our energies are still able to impact our loved ones after we're gone. And I always like to think that I am kind of like a testament to that, if you will. You know, I work with all of these people that I've helped delabor out of life, and I always tell them, you know, to come back and guide me on my journey. I'm on this journey, you know, to build, you know, change the face of death care and to change the narrative about death and dying and to educate all of these people about death and dying. And, you know, in just a few short years, I've done some really amazing, incredible things. And I believe that I've been capable of doing that because there are forces bigger than myself helping to guide me along the way. So that's just my thoughts on the matter.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

Yeah, I love that. I love this kind of idea that we have these like spirit guides, I guess. I don't know if that's uh a great word for it or a great term for it. But yeah, these kind of No, it's a perfect. I always get worried about I think there's always a little concern on my end of the word choices and the phrases that I use because I don't want to like, I never want to be like saying something or putting a term out there that then affects the conversation away or even like how listeners view things. Like I don't want it to sound like biased or partial or in any way. Like I am just I'm very curious. And I think I can kind of loop this into my next question a little bit. I started this whole thing because I had some deep fear around death and anxiety around death, and I felt like I needed to talk about it with someone, and now I'm talking about it to a lot of people and and talking about it way more than I ever thought I would. And so I kind of already assume I already know the answer to this first question. Do you have a fear of death? What is that what does that look like for you?

SPEAKER_02 11:44

Yeah, so I don't fear death at all. I believe that it's just a natural transition in life, just like birth. I mean, I look at death just like I look at birth. I almost look at it with the same respect and beauty, you know, as I do birth. You know, every single one of us on earth is going to die. Ten out of ten of us, you know, it's what our bodies are literally born to do.

SPEAKER_03 12:06

Yeah.

Death Doula vs Hospice: Roles Explained

SPEAKER_02 12:07

And our bodies know how to do that. It's it's what we're here for almost, you know, to live and then to die. So I don't have a fear of death. You know, I have my death meticulously planned. I know what it'll look like to a point, you know. Of course I don't know how I will die, but who I want to be there and things like that, given that it's not kind of a tragic death. But even if it is a tragic death, you know, then it's quick and and painless and fast. Um, I can't say that I don't fear suffering because, you know, there are terminal illnesses that include a lot of, you know, sickness at the end and nobody likes to be sick and to have to slowly decline. Um, that part definitely would not be fun. So I think that dying is the easy part. If I were to get cancer and have to spend years kind of being sick and going through chemo and a lot of medical issues, I would hate that part, but the dying part would actually be the easy part. Uh the release. So I don't fear yeah, absolutely. I don't fear death at all.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

I kind of assume that that was kind of where you stood. And I I feel like the things that you shared are a good reminder of someone who sees it very frequently. It's nice hearing and comforting hearing that from someone who who is close to it in ways. And and maybe that is an interesting thing to jump into because I think death doula has become this kind of, I don't want to say like hip, but I feel like it's something that's becoming much more mainstream or at least part of like the common vernacular. But I still think that there's a lot of people that don't really know what that means. And how does a death doula differ from a hospice nurse versus um, I don't know, other kind of types of work along the same lines. And so maybe it'd be interesting to hear a little bit about, and I'm sorry you probably talk about this all the time, but I don't think I've had a death doula on here actually just share about what a death doula does. And I know that's a big term too. Like I know it encompasses a lot.

SPEAKER_02 14:14

Yeah, I'm happy. I'm happy to explain that. That is one of the biggest questions that most people have is kind of how does a death doula differ from hospice? Yeah. And it's something that's important for people to understand. So I love to kind of explain it. We work beautifully alongside hospice, right? So hospice handles the medical aspects of death and dying. They help to keep your body calm and comfortable. They provide medications, um, they help your body to labor out of life. They're absolutely necessary. You absolutely want to work with hospice at the end of life. A lot of people have ideas about hospice, some people are afraid of hospice. I can never, never, never advocate for hospice enough. I always want all of the clients that I work with to work with hospice at the end of life. Now, that's a differs because dying isn't just a medical event, and that's something where we've been kind of led astray. You know, we always think, oh my gosh, someone's dying, get them to the hospital or get hospice aboard. And yes, great, maybe you do need a hospital and you definitely do need hospice. But dying is much more of a human event than it is a medical event. You need more human support than you need medical support. So that's where a death doula comes in. We don't do anything medical at all. We don't provide any medications, we don't provide any medical support, but we provide all of the rest of the support. So we're coming in and we're helping you with your end-of-life planning, and we're helping you to get autonomy over your own death. We help you to create a death plan, we help you to do a legacy project. So they say that each person dies two deaths, once when you physically die, and once again when you're spoken of for the last time. So we help you to think about what type of legacy do you want to leave behind for those people that you're leaving behind? And then we can help you with that. We can help you to create something tangible that you can leave behind for your loved ones. You know, I always like to put it plainly. Hospice helps the body to labor out of life, and a death jewel helps the soul to labor out of life. And when you work with both of us, you get just an absolutely well-rounded, most beautiful end-of-life death experience that you could possibly have. As a death doula, I usually come into the picture well before somebody is working with hospice. In order to work with hospice, you have to have been given a terminal diagnosis with six months or less to live per insurance requirements. That's kind of how that works.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Gotta love insurance.

Specializing In Younger Terminal Patients

SPEAKER_02 16:46

Yeah, right. So if you have more than six months to live, you can't work with hospice. But for death doors, we don't work under insurance requirements. You can work with a death doula at any time in your life. And so a lot of times people will maybe get a terminal diagnosis, but they've been given a year to live. And so you are like, okay, well, I got this terminal diagnosis, but I'm not ready for hospice yet. But there's like a lot of stuff on your mind. And maybe you've got, you know, a family, and I need to start preparing my family and start preparing myself for what the rest of my life is going to look like. And so you can start working with a Deathula then. And then as a Death Rula, you know, we're very educated about hospice and everything that they do. And as I mentioned, I always advocate for hospice. And I always want people to bring hospice aboard. So I'll start working with my clients, you know, well before they're ready for hospice. But then when they get to that point that they are now ready for hospice, I can help to educate them about hospice. I can help them to arrange hospice services, help to bring hospice aboard. And then we can work really beautifully together to make sure that everything works out perfectly and you have, you know, dare I say it, a beautiful end of life and death experience.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Which is what we all want, right? Or hopefully. I love that distinguishing between the two. But the one of my favorite things that you said is death is a human event. It's not a medical event. I think that is a really beautiful way of looking at it because it I feel like I'm always kind of hitting on how poorly we look at death, especially in the West. And if you had those two statements up next to each other, death is a human event, and death is a medical event, I think if you pulled 100 people, by and large, most people would just say, oh yeah, it's a medical event, because we're not close to it anymore. We don't talk about it, we don't experience it. It's still kind of hidden. And so I I love that, I love that phrase a lot. Kind of coming back to the Death Doula stuff. Do you kind of have a specialty in it? I know like some people do focus on, you know, like I'm a Death Doula that like really focuses on legacy projects. Do you feel like you kind of have a specialty or are you kind of like a little bit of like able to do it all?

Practical Planning: POA, Wills, And Autonomy

SPEAKER_02 19:05

So I'm actually an RN too. Um I worked in healthcare for well over a decade. So I am kind of able to do a lot of stuff, but because of my RN background and spending a lot of time working in healthcare, I'm really able to kind of get in there and just be hands-on with people. A lot of the clients that I work with, and this wasn't necessarily the specialty that I chose. This is kind of, you know, I chose you that, you know, yes, it chose me, you know, like that's kind of what happened. The universe chose this for me for sure. But the majority of the clients that I have have received a terminal diagnosis like cancer, and they're they're at a younger age. So I'm not working with people who are elderly. I'm working with people who are in their 20s or 30s or 40s or 50s, and they've received a terminal diagnosis, and now their life's being cut short. And a lot of times they have a whole life. They have kids and they have a house and a dog and a husband or a wife, and things are complicated because now their life is going to be cut short. And so I'm helping not only the dying individual, the person who's received this terminal diagnosis, but you know, their whole family understand and accept and plan for and you know, go through the fact that this person that they love so much is dying at a younger age. So that's kind of my specialty. But I'm also an educator. So I I opened um Death Doolas School and I actually train Death Doolas. So I train people who want to become a Death Doolist. So I've trained hundreds of Death Doolas across the whole world. I've, you know, reached other countries and so I, you know, I'm juggling many different things between working with clients and training new Death Doolas and writing books and all kinds of stuff. So I I have a few different specialties, I guess you would say.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

Yeah, that sounds like being a small business owner in 2026, is that you have to do like a million different things. I I was very curious. I was gonna ask more about the transition from a nurse to a death doula, but then you kind of brought in this like really interesting information about working with younger people who are dying. What are the things that those people should actually be thinking about and preparing? Like I know you said you have your full death plan and everything. And and so what are the things that you think are important to consider and think about that would be helpful?

SPEAKER_02 21:33

I love to remind people our age of a few things. First of all, death does not discriminate. Death does not care how old you are, it doesn't care what you have going on in your life, it doesn't care what color you are, what gender you are, if you're about to have a baby, death does not discriminate. And it will come for you when it's going to come for you, regardless of what you've got going on in your life or what age you are. And the other thing I wanted to say. To the people who are get nervous, like when you talk about death and they're like, Oh, don't say that, don't say that. You know, talking about death doesn't bring it on any more than talking about sex will make you pregnant.

SPEAKER_03 22:11

Yeah, you can talk about death all day long.

Why We Should Learn About Death Earlier

SPEAKER_02 22:14

Yeah, you can talk about death all day long. Listen, I how if you go to my Instagram page, I talk about death all day, every day, and I am still here. So, you know, I I am proof that that that isn't true. But this is a very, very important and great question that you ask because there are so many things that people should be doing. The second they turn 18, we have no idea when death will come for us. And so as soon as you turn 18, you should really start thinking of your end of life planning and you know, even start getting it in order just because you never have any idea when that will happen. All right. So what does end of life planning include? When you're 18, it might be a little too young to start doing your estate planning because you probably don't own many things, right? But once you own things, if you own a house, if you have belongings, then yeah, you do need to start meeting with an estate attorney and get a will in in place and figure out what would happen to your things if you were to die sometime in the near future. But something that's really important for all of us who are adults is deciding who would be your medical power of attorney. And that means who would make medical decisions for you if you could not make medical decisions for yourself. So let's say I get into a car accident later today and I'm incapacitated and I can't make medical decisions for myself. Who is going to make medical decisions for me? It defaults into, you know, depending on what state you're in, it would default into your spouse if you have a spouse. If you don't have a spouse, then it would default into your parents if you have parents. And then there's kind of a whole list of people who would get to make decisions for you. But that just depends on are those people going to be able to make the decisions that you would want made? You know, what if your spouse wouldn't make the right decisions for you? Or what if your parents wouldn't make the right decisions for you? Do they have any idea what decisions you would want made? You know, what if you're on a ventilator for months and months and months and your body is no longer able to sustain life? Would you want to be able to just let go and and be able to naturally die? But what if you never had these conversations with your people and they didn't know? And what if they let you live on a ventilator forever and ever and ever because they're unable to let you go?

SPEAKER_03 24:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:35

And so while it seems dark and while it seems grim, it's important to have these thoughts and to have these conversations with people and to figure out who would be your medical power of attorney and get to an attorney and get your medical power of attorney in place so that if something ever happens to you, you know, you've got these things in order. And not only having them legally in order, but having these conversations. You said that you've been talking about death more. It's not really dark and morbid to do that. It's it's wise to do that. And it also will help to decrease your fear and anxiety about death. The more you talk about it, the more you learn about it, the more educated you become about, you know, death. And the more that you plan for it, the more that you take autonomy over your own body and your own person and your own death, the more your fear and anxiety will reduce. The reason that a lot of us are so afraid of death is because it's something we're not allowed to talk about. It's something that nobody teaches you about. I fully believe that we should learn about death in school. Yeah. It's something that every single one of us is going to experience. You know, they'll teach you about calculus and algebra in school. You probably won't use calculus and algebra in your life, but you know what? You are going to experience death. Your grandparents are going to die, and you're going to experience that. And you're not going to have any idea what to do with that because nobody ever taught you how to deal with that. A lot of people are going to experience the death of their parents. Some people might experience the death of a sibling or a best friend. Yeah. And nobody ever taught us how to deal with that. These are things that we should be taught, every single one of us, because we are all going to go through it at some point in our life, not only our own death, but the death of our loved ones.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

Yeah, I think there's, I mean, there's so many things that I've learned doing this project and now just talking to strangers, we don't really know how to like sit with someone else's discomfort because we don't really like to be uncomfortable. And so we want to do something. We want to be able to fix it. I don't know. I was a math major and I remember asking at one point, when am I ever going to use this in real life? And the teacher responded, Well, you know, if you go to grad school. And I was like, I'm not going to go to grad school for this. I'm just trying to get my degree and get out of here. And so there's so many things that I think we can look at at the education system with like learning how to budget money. And that's getting way off topic.

Regrets At The End And Living Authentically

SPEAKER_01 27:05

But having no right, why don't they teach us about doing taxes and you know, like stuff that you actually are going to do? Death and taxes.

SPEAKER_00 27:14

Death and taxes, you know? And I think you're 100%. And I don't know where this came from, but it's this idea that, and I always I hate when I'm like, I saw this thing on Instagram. I always feel like such a not interesting person when I that is the way that I bring something into a conversation versus I read it in a book or something.

SPEAKER_02 27:33

That was a buy-in.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

I read this thing in the book. But I think once I say this, everybody's like, oh yeah, I saw that that same video. Or maybe it's because my Instagram is so filled with death stuff that that's why I see it. But I think it was a gentleman talking about how he thinks right out of high school, everyone should have to volunteer at hospice. You should actually have to be around death and see what it's like. And I think that's a wonderful idea. You know, obviously that's not going to happen. But we have to find ways to talk about this. And this is my weird way of trying to do it, because I think there's so many wonderful byproducts that I found from it. You know, I think sitting with discomfort is something that's come from it. And I think there's all these kind of like heavier things that you can say that that come from it that I do think are beneficial. And that's probably why we'll never teach about it in school, because there'd be too much good that would come from it.

SPEAKER_02 28:30

I always say that, you know, making peace with death and the fact that you're gonna die is how you live your most meaningful life. It really is. I mean, sitting with death every day and listening to people's regrets, their deathbed regrets, is how I live my best life every single day because those same regrets that I hear over and over again. You know, I spent so much time working and I never went on vacation, or I never I didn't spend enough time with my family, or I always talked about traveling, but I never did it, or you know, I was always caught up in the wrong things, or I was living my life for other people's expectations instead of doing the things that I wanted to do for my own life, you know.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

That one is the most heartbreaking to me. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, but that one always gets me of just like I wasn't my authentic self. Oh, that one, that one's heartbreaking to me. Sorry, continue.

Purpose, Fulfillment, And The Work Itself

SPEAKER_02 29:27

Hearing those, no, you're fine, but hearing those over and over again, like it reshapes my life. And then also seeing people my age die, seeing people younger than me die, like that helps me to wake up every morning and be like, man, I am so lucky that I'm here. And it really changes the way you look at everything. It takes away fear, it helps me to do the things that I want to do. Instead of being like, Oh, I wish I could do this or I wish I could do that. I can. I can do anything that I want to do. If I want to do something, I'm gonna do it because I'm only here for a little bit of time. I don't have any idea how long I'm here. But however long I'm here, I'm gonna do whatever the heck I want to do because that's what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to live my best life while I'm here. And I always say that, you know, I hear these regrets over and over again from people on the deathbed. And it's kind of like my goal to make sure that when I'm on my deathbed, you're not gonna hear those regrets from me. You know, I'm gonna sit on my deathbed and I'm gonna be like, man, like I did it. I lived my best life. And one of my favorite practices to do every day is to take a moment to sit with my dying self. You know, imagine that you, you of today, is sitting on the deathbed of you, you know, many years from now, who's dying. You know, what is he gonna look at you and say? Is he gonna be like, man, I'm so proud of you? Like you did really awesome things with your life today. Or is he gonna be like, why are you wasting your time? You know, you don't have a lot of time here and you wasted today on the dumbest stuff, you know? And it's just it's really powerful because I live every day making sure that I'm making myself proud so that my dying self is always proud of what I spent my time doing.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

Yeah. That's kind of how I started this journey a little bit. I started doing like death meditations, and that led into, you know, me just like trying to gain some comfort around it. I like this daily idea of like a check-in with my future self. I I think that's a wonderful exercise. I I assume a response that you get a lot of the times when you say that you're a death doula is how do you do that? That's gotta be so hard, that's gotta be so depressing, that's gotta be so overwhelming. And I'm by no means comparing what I'm doing on this podcast to what you are doing. You're doing real work, but I do get similar questions of like talking to people about death, that's gotta be so depressing, that's gotta be so heavy. But I'm curious what your experience around that is because I'm sure you get similar responses.

From RN To Death Doula: Finding A Calling

SPEAKER_02 32:12

Yeah, I always get that for sure. Um maybe the feeling that you're feeling is that you feel a little fulfilled or something. Yeah. Because you're whether you realize it or not, you're doing something positive. You know, you're making a change in the world by doing a little bit of what I'm doing. You're changing that narrative that death is something that we shouldn't talk about or that we can't talk about. And you're probably making an impact in people's lives by letting them know that it's okay to have these conversations and to talk about this and that we don't have to keep it inside all the time. But I do get that all the time where people are like, man, that must just be so depressing and so sad. And how do you do it? And for me, it's the exact opposite. I've never, I've never been happier in my entire life. You know, I mentioned that I was an RN and I worked in nursing and in healthcare for over a decade. And when I worked in healthcare, I was my worst self. I was burnt out. I was treated terribly by everyone in healthcare because in healthcare they don't care about you. They want you to work as many hours as possible and they don't care if you have a family and they don't care about you personally. They don't care if you're burnt out. All they care about is that they have enough nurses on staff that the administration doesn't have to deal with it. But then I became a death doula and I got to, you know, really connect with people and really work with people in a truly, truly meaningful way. And I believe that this job, if that's what you want to call it, is it's my purpose in life. You know, this is what I was meant to do. This is written on my soul. And so I feel like I'm truly aligned, you know, with, I don't know, with the universe or whatever it is that that I'm supposed to be doing. And when I help somebody to have their best death, to labor out of life in the most meaningful and comfortable way possible, there is nothing more fulfilling in the world than that. And it's never sad and it's never depressing at all because, you know, that was the goal all along was to help them to die their best death. And I got to help them do that. And not only did I get to help them do that, but I got to be there for their family to make sure that their family stayed whole through something that was really, really hard. And every single time I do it, I know that I made a positive impact. I did something really great that would have been so hard and depressing if I wasn't there. Um, and so it always leaves me feeling better than anything else that I've ever done in my life. So yeah, I don't know. It's not depressing for me. It's the best thing I've ever done in my life. And like I said, it's it's truly my my sole purpose in life is to do this and to help people through this and you know, to really bring awareness to death and the fact that all of us die and that maybe I did this in a past life or something like that, because now that I'm doing this as an adult, I look back and it's something that I feel like has always been in me ever since I was a child. When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time at my grandma's house and she lived by a cemetery. And you know, my friends were always going to the mall or going to the playground or doing what kids do. And I hung out at that cemetery all the time. That's where I felt comfortable, that's where I felt safe. There was like a morgue there, and I thought it was the coolest thing in the world to go like hang out in this morgue where there was like dead people behind the walls. And my friends just, I mean, you know, they thought I was absolutely insane because who would have been like Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Like this is just who I've I've always been this. Even since I was young, I've always been the death girl, you know. Yeah. I just didn't know what to do with it and I didn't know what it was called. And and then I went into nursing, and when I went into nursing, I initially went into nursing school thinking that I wanted to work in labor and delivery and help to bring people into this world. That was kind of my goal. But then my first job out of nursing school was working in a long-term care facility, which is people who are at or nearing the end of life.

SPEAKER_03 36:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:31

And right away I started experiencing death and I just never left. It was like I knew right then and there, like I think that I'm supposed to help people exit this world as opposed to enter this world. So yeah, it's just always been there in the background of my life. It's always been something that that I was supposed to do.

One Life Wish: Travel And Cultures

SPEAKER_00 36:51

Yeah. I love that you've like it just always felt like it was there and you you found your way. And I think that's that's how life works sometimes, right? I think that's how life works a lot of times, actually, is that you kind of do other things, but there's just always kind of this pull towards what your true purpose is and what you really are meant to do. I like to close out with one question that I ask everybody. So it kind of maybe bookends it a little bit. And so what's one thing you still want to experience in this life?

SPEAKER_02 37:18

You know, there's lots of things that I still want to experience, but one of the biggest things I want to experience is traveling in a big way. You know, right now I'm building my business and my kids are still young. So while we do travel here within the United States, it's kind of hard to do a lot of international travel with young kiddos.

SPEAKER_03 37:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:36

And so that's kind of something that I picture myself. You know, should death allow me to get older in age, you know, once my kids are grown and out of school and kind of doing their own thing, that's something that I picture myself as doing a lot of like international travel because there's so many different cultures out there, and I want to learn about them like in person. Yeah, firsthand. Experience them. I want to travel, yeah, to all of these different countries and really see everything, just you know, and take it in and truly experience it. That's one thing where on my deathbed I want to be able to tell my death doula all about it. Like, man, let me tell you about this. One time I went to Greece, and let me tell you about when I visited Belize, and let me tell you about when I went to Costa Rica, and let me tell you about Australia and Ireland.

SPEAKER_00 38:25

Like, I gotta go.

SPEAKER_02 38:28

Yeah, I know. They're like, all right, you know, but that's that's something that I really, really want to experience.

SPEAKER_00 38:34

Is there like one spot on the top of the list, or is it just almost impossible to pick one?

SPEAKER_02 38:39

There isn't even. I mean, I don't even know. There are there's so many, and honestly, it changes. I was gonna say day-to-day for me too now, and then yeah, and then it'll change. I'll like see a video about something new. I'll quote unquote read about in a book. I'll read about some new place and I'll be like, oh, that's where I want to go next. Oh, I gotta go there. I've always wanted to go to Australia for sure. I Africa would be so cool to visit. I mean, all of these different places for sure.

SPEAKER_00 39:09

I want to do way more traveling as well. And maybe, maybe it'll turn into like a worldwide book tour. Maybe you can end up doing like a worldwide book tour. I don't know how those work, but that seems like a very cool thing to do. So maybe that's what'll happen.

SPEAKER_02 39:22

Yeah, let's start speaking that into existence.

SPEAKER_00 39:25

I'll I'll start working on it over here, you work on it over there, and we'll we'll see if our powers combined can make it happen.

SPEAKER_03 39:30

Perfect. Thank you.

Closing Reflections And Next Milestones

SPEAKER_00 39:32

Well, yeah, thank you so much for being willing to do this, for reaching out. Like I said, I've been following you for a long time. So it was nice to connect and chat and hear more about you and and your story. Sorry if it was if some of it was kind of the same questions you get asked a lot. But yeah, it's a perspective that hasn't come up on here. And so it is interesting to hear about that. And then I think also there are continually like episode to episode, if people listen to every episode, I think there's definitely stuff that I harp on, and it's you don't know when you're gonna die. And so might as well live. I I don't want to say without regrets. I don't think that's a possible way to live life, but you know, live intentionally, live not with all this constant future thought. And I think another one that's come up a couple of times recently, because I've talked to a couple of medical professionals, is it's not the exciting stuff, right? But it is the practical knowing what you want at the end of life. And so I I love that you're able to speak to that too. Because yeah, I think a lot you are working with an age demographic that is starting to get to a point where, I mean, I know for me it's like, oh yeah, things are starting to hurt a little bit more, injuries don't heal either as fast or at all. And so it's like the idea of death is starting to creep in for people in this age demographic, but by and large, the majority, the high majority aren't thinking about it. And so I love that you're able to speak to that too, and and these things that how many people think about at 18? Hey, you know, I should start kind of figuring this stuff out. But yeah, I just want to thank you for touching on that stuff because I can harp on it a little bit, but it's better when uh when I have professionals and experts and other people talking about the stuff that I think is important for people to hear.

SPEAKER_02 41:16

For sure. It's all my favorite topic. So I'm happy, happy to answer all your questions. Yeah. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 41:22

Yeah, and who knows, maybe we'll do a part two at some point, and I don't know, we'll come up with something else to talk about. But thank you again. It was wonderful chatting with you, and I hope you take care. Thanks much. All right, bye. Bye. What I'm taking from this one is how growning it is to hear someone speak about death without turning it into something tense or overwhelming. The collar has been close to a lot of endings and they don't sensationalize it. They keep coming back to what's simple and human, what actually helps, what doesn't, what people get wrong when the conversations only live inside hospitals and paperwork. And that line they offered really does feel like a reset. Death is a human event and not just a medical one. I keep thinking about how much it changes when you start from there. The tone gets softer, the decisions get clearer, the fear gets a little less loud. And even if you think you're far from any of this, the timeline is the part none of us gets to know. So I hope this episode felt like a nudge toward the kind of preparation that's actually care. A few conversations, a few decisions, less guessing later. As for what's coming up, we're at a pretty interesting moment in the timeline of the show. Next week is the 50th episode, which still doesn't fully compute to me. I thought a lot about doing something special, but with everything else I'm building around this project, it felt better just to keep doing what the show does best. More anonymous calls. I think I know which call I'm gonna be using for 50, but I've been recording a lot lately. And sometimes something comes in and you just know it needs to be shared right away. After that, there'll be one more episode, and then I'm gonna take a week off to reset of it and get ready for the next bread. Thanks for listening to this episode of When We Dietalks. These conversations don't offer answers, but they do open space. Space to reflect, to feel left alone, and maybe to see things a little bit differently than before. If you'd like to explore your own beliefs out loud, you can apply to be an anonymous caller at WhenWeDietalks.com. And if a full call feels like too much, the voicemail is always open. Leave a message at 971-328-0864 and share whatever death has stirred in your life. Listener support truly helps keep this project going. If you'd like to support the podcast, you'll find the link in the show notes. And as always, please like, share, and follow. Every bit makes a difference. Until next time, have a good life.