Speaker 1: What is it that you fear?
Speaker 2: You look at what you fear, then going to tell
Speaker 2: you a lot about your life, and then you can
Speaker 2: start living in that direction.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 3: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 3: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 3: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 3: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 3: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 3: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 3: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 3: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 3: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 3: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 3: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 3: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is AILOUA Arthur,
Speaker 3: the most visible and active death dula working in America today.
Speaker 3: She's a recovering attorney and the founder of Going with Grace,
Speaker 3: a death dula training and end of life planning organization.
Speaker 3: Ailua's work has also appeared in Vogue, in Style, Los
Speaker 3: Angeles Times, The Cut, The New Yorker, and others. Today,
Speaker 3: Eric and Ailoa discuss her book Briefly Perfectly Human, Making
Speaker 3: an Authentic Life by getting real about the end.
Speaker 4: Hi Aloua, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 4: We're going to be discussing your book Briefly Perfectly Human,
Speaker 4: Making an Authentic Life by getting real about the end.
Speaker 4: But before we get into that, we'll start, like we
Speaker 4: always do, with the parable. And in the Parable, there's
Speaker 4: a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say,
Speaker 4: in life life, there are two wolves inside of us
Speaker 4: that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 4: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 4: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 4: greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and
Speaker 4: they think about it for a second. They look up
Speaker 4: at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins,
Speaker 4: And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 4: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 4: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 4: that you do.
Speaker 2: In my life, I think I often grappled with the
Speaker 2: idea of the good wolf being the things that society
Speaker 2: had given me about what life was supposed to mean
Speaker 2: and what life was supposed to be about, which was,
Speaker 2: or at least the way that I understood it, about
Speaker 2: success and achievement, and about showing up in the world
Speaker 2: in a way that other people really valued, about having
Speaker 2: a good job, about getting married, about having children, about
Speaker 2: following this very linear path that to me was the
Speaker 2: good wolf, the bad wolf being the impulses that I had,
Speaker 2: the impulses or mayhem and flights and adventure and discovery
Speaker 2: that didn't fit a very linear progressive that's how you achieve,
Speaker 2: and this how you do well in society narrative.
Speaker 1: And I for a long time.
Speaker 2: Said the good wolf, but that eventually starved me that
Speaker 2: what I thought was the bad wolf was the thing
Speaker 2: that ultimately was what led to my freedom. I'd say, overall,
Speaker 2: no matter which wolf you feed, you're going to die anyway.
Speaker 2: So let's feed the ones that give us the most
Speaker 2: meaning and purpose and joy and significance and like presence
Speaker 2: while we're here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I love that listener, As you're listening, what resonated
Speaker 4: with you in that? I think a lot of us
Speaker 4: have some ideas of things that we can do to
Speaker 4: feed our good wolf, and here's a good tip to
Speaker 4: make it more likely that you do it. It can
Speaker 4: be really helpful to reflect right before you do that
Speaker 4: thing on why you want to do it. Our brains
Speaker 4: are always making a calculation of what neuroscientists would call
Speaker 4: reward value, basically, is this thing worth doing? And so
Speaker 4: when you're getting ready to do this thing that you
Speaker 4: want to do to feed your good wolf, reflecting on
Speaker 4: why actually helps to make the reward value on that
Speaker 4: higher and makes it more likely that you're going to
Speaker 4: do that. For example, if what you're trying to do
Speaker 4: is exercise, right before you're getting ready to exercise, it
Speaker 4: can be useful to remind yourself of why, For example,
Speaker 4: I want to exercise because it makes my mental and
Speaker 4: emotional health better today. If you'd like a step by
Speaker 4: step guide for how you can easily build new habits
Speaker 4: that feed your good wolf, go to Goodwolf dot me,
Speaker 4: slash change and join the free masterclass. I love that
Speaker 4: you use the word mayhem. I'd like to think of
Speaker 4: my wolves as being involved in the occasional bout of mayhem.
Speaker 4: Such a good word. Before we get into the core
Speaker 4: of your work, which is about guiding people along the
Speaker 4: path of dying. There was something that you were just saying,
Speaker 4: and it made me think of a theme that sort
Speaker 4: of ran through your book, and it was that there
Speaker 4: were times that you were out living this sort of
Speaker 4: adventurous life and you were involved in mayhem and going
Speaker 4: after things you wanted, and that there were times that
Speaker 4: that was almost as inauthentic as the life where you
Speaker 4: were doing what you were told to do. Am I
Speaker 4: reading that right? And if I am, say, what makes
Speaker 4: the difference?
Speaker 1: I think you are absolutely reading it right.
Speaker 2: Part of the difference is that for a long time
Speaker 2: I was running away from myself. I was running away
Speaker 2: from the thing inside me that said the life that
Speaker 2: you're living isn't working for you. I was trying to
Speaker 2: escape and try to bury it under romance and travel
Speaker 2: and just really wild experiences. I was seeking desperately. But
Speaker 2: part of the thing about seeking is often I find
Speaker 2: myself looking outside of myself for an answer, trying to
Speaker 2: find it in something or somebody else. And what I
Speaker 2: found rather was that it was important for me to
Speaker 2: seek within, to go inside, to learn what I actually wanted,
Speaker 2: who I really was, rather than just rallying against what
Speaker 2: I thought I was supposed to be going toward.
Speaker 1: Is that clear?
Speaker 4: It totally is. And I recognize a similar thing in
Speaker 4: myself to some degree also, where some of the things
Speaker 4: that I really enjoy, which are things like travel and
Speaker 4: novelty and different experiences, is really, I think a core
Speaker 4: part of who I am, and it can be a
Speaker 4: core way of also running away from myself also, as
Speaker 4: you've said, and so learning when I'm doing which thing
Speaker 4: is kind of an interesting lesson to learn.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I think the come from is the thing that
Speaker 2: makes the difference, because well, to get into it just
Speaker 2: a little bit, I met a fellow traveler on the
Speaker 2: bus in Cuba very many years ago, eleven years ago
Speaker 2: at this point, and she was on a trip to
Speaker 2: see the top six places in the world she wanted
Speaker 2: to see before she died. And to some that sounds
Speaker 2: like one of these bucket lists, like, yes, go out
Speaker 2: and get it and do all the things that you
Speaker 2: want to do before you die. But or what I
Speaker 2: heard in her was a resistance to death rather than
Speaker 2: an embrace of it. It was, oh, no, I have
Speaker 2: to do all this stuff before I die, rather than
Speaker 2: I'm going to die and so let me enjoy what
Speaker 2: I can while I'm here. It's a small distinction, but
Speaker 2: I think it's the distinction that is couched in what
Speaker 2: we're talking about right now, which is the impulses that
Speaker 2: live within us when we ignore those and we do
Speaker 2: the things to try to fill something inside, or rather
Speaker 2: when we know what it is that we need inside
Speaker 2: and we go experience what we can when we can.
Speaker 4: There's something you say late in the book, and I
Speaker 4: think this is interesting. You say, my habit of forever
Speaker 4: seeking without any promise of finding helps me guide clients
Speaker 4: through the terror of the unknown, And you're talking about
Speaker 4: guiding clients through the dying process. But I found it
Speaker 4: really interesting this idea of forever seeking without any promise
Speaker 4: of finding, an acceptance of that also being part of
Speaker 4: what we need in order to accept the end.
Speaker 2: There is a fundamental part I think of being human
Speaker 2: that wants to understand and uncover the things that we
Speaker 2: cannot know. I think we're socidally really obsessed with mysteries.
Speaker 2: I think often about Jean Beney Ramsay. You remember this kid,
Speaker 2: a little girl right from the nineties.
Speaker 4: I haven't heard that name in a while, but yet.
Speaker 2: Right and we still don't know what happened to her,
Speaker 2: and for a while everybody was obsessed with what had
Speaker 2: happened to her and trying to uncover the mystery. I
Speaker 2: think we get really stuck with not knowing what it
Speaker 2: is that happened. And death is the greatest mystery we
Speaker 2: will never ever ever know, and many people, I think,
Speaker 2: set themselves on a quest to find answers for things
Speaker 2: that really have none or we will never know. And
Speaker 2: so how can we get comfortable with not knowing? How
Speaker 2: do I get myself okay with the fact that I
Speaker 2: don't know what the next minute is going to bring,
Speaker 2: or what happens after I die, when I'll die, the
Speaker 2: circumstances under which I'll die. It's a big, fat mystery.
Speaker 2: It's a really juicy one, and I would love it
Speaker 2: if we could all continue to like just stay seeking,
Speaker 2: recognizing that there is an answer to be found, because
Speaker 2: the juice is really in the seeking.
Speaker 4: If you ask me, yeah, I love that. One reaction
Speaker 4: to I'll never know the answer is to just go
Speaker 4: so why bother asking? Right, is to give up and
Speaker 4: just not be interested, versus knowing that we're not going
Speaker 4: to know the answer, but we still are curious to
Speaker 4: know it. And I think that describes my worldview fairly well,
Speaker 4: in that I don't think most things have answers, and
Speaker 4: yet I'm intensely curious in all the questions.
Speaker 1: Same here, same here.
Speaker 2: I think my curiosity is one of my greatest gifts,
Speaker 2: but also one of my biggest challenges is that I'm
Speaker 2: always like.
Speaker 1: I wonder, how, I wonder if, I wonder if we.
Speaker 2: Can and just walk a little bit toward it and
Speaker 2: keep tunneling and tunneling and tunneling until either I get
Speaker 2: bored or something else picks up my curiosity along the way.
Speaker 2: But it's something that I really like about myself, but
Speaker 2: it's something that allows me to do my work well.
Speaker 2: I teach doulas, and I often remind folks that our
Speaker 2: curiosity about other humans is one of the key traits
Speaker 2: that is helpful in the work because that curiosity allows
Speaker 2: me to keep asking questions, which gives people space to
Speaker 2: share what's on their hearts or what they're curious about,
Speaker 2: or what they're scared of, et cetera.
Speaker 4: So we're going to get into a second what that
Speaker 4: term death doula means, because that's kind of the core
Speaker 4: of your work, and before we do that, I'm going
Speaker 4: to say that I don't know now what this conversation
Speaker 4: really is going to be. Is it a conversation about
Speaker 4: how we support other people on the way to their death.
Speaker 4: Is it a conversation about what we learn about living
Speaker 4: through people dying. Is it a conversation about how to
Speaker 4: overcome the fear of death? I don't really quite know
Speaker 4: where it's going to go, So I'm sort of stating
Speaker 4: that just out loud because I'm just really not sure.
Speaker 4: But I think the place to start is with you
Speaker 4: describing kind of what a death dula is.
Speaker 1: I'm down to stay curious about this conversation.
Speaker 4: If you are, I am great great.
Speaker 2: A death doula is a supportive person who does all
Speaker 2: of the non medical and holistic Karen support of the
Speaker 2: dying person and their circle of support through the entire process.
Speaker 2: So when I talk about the dying person, I mean
Speaker 2: anybody who has some awareness that when their death will come,
Speaker 2: which means probably you. As we're having this conversation about mortality,
Speaker 2: and certainly me, when we come into awareness of our mortality,
Speaker 2: it's important that we do some comprehensive end of life planning.
Speaker 2: And so death doulahs can support healthy people in getting
Speaker 2: their end of life planning done and also in working
Speaker 2: through any fears or anxieties around death. When people know
Speaker 2: what it is that they're going to be dying of,
Speaker 2: we can support them in creating the most ideal death
Speaker 2: for themselves under the circumstances, and also to help them
Speaker 2: get clear on meaning or purpose or work through any
Speaker 2: relational challenges that they have after the death occurs. We
Speaker 2: can help the family members or the loved ones wrap
Speaker 2: up affairs of their loved ones life. So a lot
Speaker 2: of the bureaucratic mess that's left after a death. So
Speaker 2: we're supporting with the emotional, practical, and spiritual aspects of
Speaker 2: caring for the dying.
Speaker 4: It's a lot of different things to be doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is, and the needs are really dependent on
Speaker 2: the individual. You know, some people come and you just
Speaker 2: want practical support, But nine times out of ten, the
Speaker 2: practical support opens up a greater emotional conversation or a
Speaker 2: spiritual conversation that perhaps they weren't aware that they were
Speaker 2: also in because they were stuck on the practical.
Speaker 4: And your road to becoming a death duela. It sounds
Speaker 4: like there were two sort of key moments. One is
Speaker 4: you were referencing earlier the conversation with the woman Jessica
Speaker 4: on the bus in Cuba, when she recognized she was
Speaker 4: going to die, and you guys started having some open
Speaker 4: conversations about that, and she felt heard in a way
Speaker 4: she hadn't before. But then the other was a close
Speaker 4: family member of yours named Peter. Do you want tell
Speaker 4: us about that?
Speaker 1: I would love to. Peter.
Speaker 2: Saint John was my brother in law. He was my
Speaker 2: older sister, was my Saint John's husband, and Peter came
Speaker 2: into my life when I was about twenty one years old,
Speaker 2: and so I really grew into adulthood with Peter. Now
Speaker 2: we were close. We got close very quickly. He was conservative,
Speaker 2: socially conservative. He was white, he was Irish Italian. He
Speaker 2: liked to fish and hunt, and I was just horrified
Speaker 2: by these activities.
Speaker 1: I was very early a.
Speaker 2: Social justice warrior and just could not think of the
Speaker 2: possibility that one could kill another being, like why vegetarian?
Speaker 1: Vegetarian?
Speaker 2: Peter and I butted heads on everything, but we also
Speaker 2: were incredibly close. I think the butting heads was an
Speaker 2: element of our relationship. About ten and a half years ago.
Speaker 2: Shortly after I came back from Cuba, Peter was diagnosed
Speaker 2: with Burkitt's lynphoma, and I was crushed. I hoped and
Speaker 2: hoped and wished that he would be cured, understood that
Speaker 2: while a cancer diagnosis was a long road ahead, I
Speaker 2: planned to journey with him through the diagnosis, all the
Speaker 2: way through its completion, and I assume the completion would
Speaker 2: be his health. But about four months after he was diagnosed,
Speaker 2: the doctors couldn't treat Peter anymore, and I got to
Speaker 2: support him in journey with him for the last two
Speaker 2: months of his life and for my days since then.
Speaker 2: This is still the greatest gift I've ever been given.
Speaker 2: I got to care for somebody who I loved so
Speaker 2: much in.
Speaker 1: His life and to his death.
Speaker 2: It grew my capacity for compassion, understanding how many people
Speaker 2: were journeying through the similar thing at the same time,
Speaker 2: and also I got to see the inequities in the
Speaker 2: system and how we really need to do better by
Speaker 2: people that are ill and dying and those that care
Speaker 2: for them. Because we were largely like floating out there.
Speaker 2: We had a lot of support for his body and
Speaker 2: the medicine, but not much support for all the other
Speaker 2: things that goes into when somebody's dying. Those things felt
Speaker 2: over looked, and so I started my practice and my
Speaker 2: business going with Grace to address some of those concerns.
Speaker 4: What were some of the things that during that experience
Speaker 4: most woke you up to the fact that this type
Speaker 4: of work was needed out there? What were specifically some
Speaker 4: of the things that you really felt like you and
Speaker 4: your family were unsupported in well.
Speaker 2: For starters, maybe the most basic of all, nobody ever
Speaker 2: said Peter is dying. That would have gone a really
Speaker 2: long way. They said, we can't treat him anymore, or
Speaker 2: we're going to try this treatment, this might alleviate his pain.
Speaker 2: You know, nobody said very clearly he's dying. And in
Speaker 2: the state that we were in, and let me speak
Speaker 2: for myself and the state that I was in, I
Speaker 2: was going to hear everything, but he's dying. Unless somebody
Speaker 2: spoke those words very clearly, I was going to hear, well,
Speaker 2: maybe there's hope where they can try this, or maybe
Speaker 2: his kidneys will start responding better tomorrow. I wasn't hearing
Speaker 2: that he was dying. That would have been incredibly supportive.
Speaker 2: What I now understand is that a lot of medical
Speaker 2: care teams shy away from using that very plain language,
Speaker 2: somewhat because of liability, I think, but also because of
Speaker 2: a lack of familiarity with conversations around mortality, not only
Speaker 2: in their training but also with their patients. Like it's
Speaker 2: just not a part of the conversation at all, and
Speaker 2: I think it desperately needs to be. We could have
Speaker 2: prepared ourselves much better had somebody said, very plainly, Peter
Speaker 2: is dying, we probably would have sought additional services. Similarly,
Speaker 2: there weren't additional supportive services where he was dying. There
Speaker 2: wasn't somebody to sit alongside us and help us figure
Speaker 2: out what to do with some of his possessions. We
Speaker 2: still had medical equipment at home, medications. He wanted to
Speaker 2: transfer title of his vehicle to his nephew, and that
Speaker 2: was really complicated. After he died, we didn't know how
Speaker 2: to talk to my niece, who was four, about the
Speaker 2: fact that our dad was dying. We didn't know how
Speaker 2: to talk about it with each other. I just cursed
Speaker 2: is that okay, It's fine, okay, okay, because I'm full
Speaker 2: of them, but I'll keep it pg. There were a
Speaker 2: lot of things that we we didn't know how to do.
Speaker 2: And somebody to say, hey, these are some things that
Speaker 2: you should think of beforehand would have been tremendously supportive.
Speaker 2: Somebody to point out his death rally when he was
Speaker 2: having it. I thought it was a miracle. The death
Speaker 2: rally is when the dying process has progressed quite a
Speaker 2: ways and it looks like death may soon be coming,
Speaker 2: and yet the person who's dying has a burst of
Speaker 2: energy again and they start, you know, maybe cracking jokes
Speaker 2: or being like how they were before they were ill,
Speaker 2: or want meals or want to start planning trips or so.
Speaker 2: It's to me, it's the last little bit of life
Speaker 2: force that's burning off, And I thought that Peter was
Speaker 2: maybe having the miracle that we'd hoped that he'd had,
Speaker 2: and yet it was the last time that I actually
Speaker 2: heard his voice was during his death rally. So just
Speaker 2: somebody to point out what was going on, Somebody to
Speaker 2: stand there and say you're doing great and this sucks,
Speaker 2: or to give us some practical information would have been tremendous.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's been about a year and a half now,
Speaker 4: but my partner's mother passed from Alzheimer's. It was about
Speaker 4: an eight year journey through that where we were sort
Speaker 4: of primary caregivers, and my father a little over a
Speaker 4: year now, also passed from Alzheimer's, but I was more
Speaker 4: involved in the care of Ginny's mother, and I remember
Speaker 4: when hospice finally got involved. It was such a relief
Speaker 4: in some ways, because all of a sudden, now there
Speaker 4: were people who knew about this last little phase. I mean,
Speaker 4: it was clear. Once you say hospice, you mean like
Speaker 4: the end is close. I just found them a welcome
Speaker 4: relief to the overall process. It's not like we had
Speaker 4: any hope she was getting better, right, I mean Alzheimer's
Speaker 4: unfortunately you kind of know where that's headed. But they
Speaker 4: were still very much a relief to just be people
Speaker 4: who understood what happened at this phase of life, because
Speaker 4: you don't know who does know right until you've gone
Speaker 4: through it.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad to hear that, yall, I have that
Speaker 2: support for Ginny's mom. Hospice is tremendous. Tremendous. Had we
Speaker 2: had hospice support when Peter was dying, I don't know
Speaker 2: that we would have had a similar experience. He died
Speaker 2: in the hospital, yet hostice does a lot, but they
Speaker 2: can't do everything, and a lot of hospice treatment is
Speaker 2: still focused on the body. There are ancillary services that
Speaker 2: are available, like social workers and chaplains, and in some
Speaker 2: cases music therapy and art therapy occupational therapy. But I
Speaker 2: think where death doulas can really be supportive is in
Speaker 2: a collaboration role with hospice. Hospice nurses and CNAs are
Speaker 2: often the greatest allies in the work because we can
Speaker 2: team up to make sure that we are fully covering
Speaker 2: the client's needs. I've found many times where I'll be
Speaker 2: in the home or I'll arrive in the hospice nurses
Speaker 2: there and we'll check in with one another, Hey, what's
Speaker 2: happening today, how they feeling, how they're doing. Granted we
Speaker 2: already have the permission of the client or of the
Speaker 2: patient of theirs to share information back and forth, but
Speaker 2: just to make sure that we are holistically covered. Also,
Speaker 2: we're often able to catch people much fur their upstream.
Speaker 2: Oftentimes I am called in when somebody has a diagnosis
Speaker 2: or when they know when they get the prescription from
Speaker 2: their doctors about hospice, and I can help them that
Speaker 2: one and find a good one for them, help them
Speaker 2: sort through their goals of treatment or their goals of care.
Speaker 2: We can also just help people wrap their heads around
Speaker 2: this disease that they've got and start to handle some
Speaker 2: of the fears of death that they may have. One
Speaker 2: of my more recent clients had just been diagnosed with
Speaker 2: a pancreatic cancer, and while it wasn't a death sentence
Speaker 2: and we don't know when they might be dying, it
Speaker 2: was an important time to start talking about the fears
Speaker 2: of death because those came up.
Speaker 4: I can see how valuable what you do is. We
Speaker 4: were fortunate in that Ginny's mom, as soon as she
Speaker 4: got the diagnosis, had sort of got all her affairs
Speaker 4: in order right away, like locked down and all that.
Speaker 4: And I remember thinking, even with all of that done,
Speaker 4: they're still like, you've got to go to the funeral home.
Speaker 4: You've got it, And I was just thinking of, like,
Speaker 4: what would it be like trying to figure all this
Speaker 4: out if we hadn't been so prepared for this day
Speaker 4: coming and she hadn't have done so much of that,
Speaker 4: Like it really was a huge gift that she gave us.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure I saw it that way when I
Speaker 4: was taking her to the funeral home when she was
Speaker 4: first diagnosed. But in retrospect, I mean she gave us
Speaker 4: a real gift.
Speaker 1: I love your language about it. It is a gift
Speaker 1: to me. It's one of the last great acts of love.
Speaker 2: Because the people that we love, the people that we
Speaker 2: care about, are going to be.
Speaker 1: Deeply grieving our deaths.
Speaker 2: How wonderful would it be if then they don't also
Speaker 2: have to figure out if they just spend month one
Speaker 2: thousand dollars on a casket or ten thousand dollars on
Speaker 2: the casket, or where you would like to be buried,
Speaker 2: or if you want to be buried at all, or
Speaker 2: where the passwords are to your email addresses, or where
Speaker 2: your money is or do you have retirement accounts. There's
Speaker 2: so much stuff that if we just said, would make
Speaker 2: it so much easier on the people that we care about.
Speaker 2: If you've been in the experience of grief and it
Speaker 2: sounds like you have, you understand how it can have
Speaker 2: a bulldozing effect on you. It's hard enough to remember
Speaker 2: that the sun comes up every day and you should eat,
Speaker 2: let alone trying to then sort through like the CSI
Speaker 2: of trying to close online accounts because you don't have
Speaker 2: basic passwords. I wish that all of us would do
Speaker 2: a lot more end of life planning.
Speaker 4: So in addition to some of the planning and the
Speaker 4: things that you do it, another big part of your
Speaker 4: work is helping people come to terms with the fact
Speaker 4: that they are going to die. You and I both
Speaker 4: know that, and we're aware of that, but our need
Speaker 4: to come to terms with it is a little bit
Speaker 4: different than somebody who is six months away, give or
Speaker 4: take from death. So what do you find when it
Speaker 4: comes to working with people around the fear of death.
Speaker 4: I assume there's a wide variety in your clients and
Speaker 4: what their response and relationship to death is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say the fears of death fall in
Speaker 2: about four or five major categories, and this isn't going
Speaker 2: to capture all of them, but it's a good number
Speaker 2: of them. A lot of people fear the process of
Speaker 2: the body. What is it going to feel like? Is
Speaker 2: it going to hurt? What's going to happen to my body?
Speaker 1: How?
Speaker 2: What are the circumstances under which I'll die? So that's
Speaker 2: around the process of the body, what's it like. Another
Speaker 2: major fear of death is the fear of the unknown.
Speaker 2: What if anything happens after I die, So all the
Speaker 2: questions about annihilation and not having memories anymore, and consciousness
Speaker 2: not continuing on after we die, or if they did
Speaker 2: the right things but with the religion that they chose
Speaker 2: while they were living, et cetera. So a lot of
Speaker 2: questions about the unknown couched also in religion and what
Speaker 2: happens after death. Another major fear of death is about control,
Speaker 2: the loss of control that sometimes kind of also fits
Speaker 2: in with what happens with the body, like not being
Speaker 2: able to control the facts or circumstances around my dying.
Speaker 2: Another one of them is the fear of missing out
Speaker 2: life continuing on after I die, children growing older, the
Speaker 2: earth moving, what happens with the next presidential election, or
Speaker 2: is everything going to hell in a handbasket? So what
Speaker 2: happens after I die and not being around for it.
Speaker 2: And one of the last major categories, and this is
Speaker 2: the biggest one, is a fear of a life not
Speaker 2: fully lived. This sounds often like, well, I can't die
Speaker 2: yet because I have yet too dot dot dot you know,
Speaker 2: for me, for a while, I just really want to
Speaker 2: get my book out. I want to get my book done.
Speaker 2: And so it was like I can't die before I
Speaker 2: get the book done. I find that a lot of
Speaker 2: people a fear of death follows a fear of life.
Speaker 2: That's actually Mark Twain's quote that a fear of death
Speaker 2: often follows the fear of life that those that are
Speaker 2: not living fully and authentically, people that are often not
Speaker 2: prepared to die. But those of us that are in
Speaker 2: our fullness while we're living can approach death with an embrace,
Speaker 2: because once we're there, we're like, well, I did it
Speaker 2: as best as I could, as much as I could.
Speaker 2: I mentioned before, I teach death do List students, and
Speaker 2: a lot of folks come to the work thinking that
Speaker 2: it's important for them not to have any fear of
Speaker 2: death in order to do the work. And I think
Speaker 2: people often think that because I sit and I talk
Speaker 2: about death all day every day, that I have none.
Speaker 2: But rather, I think it's important that those of us
Speaker 2: that do this work build a good personal relationship with death,
Speaker 2: that we excavate what those fears are. And for any
Speaker 2: fear that we have while we're living, I can find
Speaker 2: a root of it in a fear of death. If
Speaker 2: we sit long enough, I'm going to dig it on out.
Speaker 2: But I think it's important that we like excavate what
Speaker 2: our fears of death are because they often teach us
Speaker 2: very much about how we're living and what we value,
Speaker 2: and so we can place a greater emphasis on it
Speaker 2: while we live, rather than try to shun it and
Speaker 2: pretend it doesn't exist at all, which is what many do.
Speaker 2: You know, just don't look at the thing you fear.
Speaker 2: Don't look at your death, but what is it that
Speaker 2: you fear? You look at what you fear, then going
Speaker 2: to tell you a lot about your life, and then
Speaker 2: you can start living in that direction. It's quite motivational,
Speaker 2: if you ask me, But I'm also biased.
Speaker 4: You have a line I think it was from your
Speaker 4: ted talk, not from the book, although it may have
Speaker 4: been in the book. Also that acknowledging death means we're
Speaker 4: not the center of the story, and that struck me
Speaker 4: as really profound, right, because we all sort of live
Speaker 4: with this perception that we are the center of the world,
Speaker 4: a or main character syndrome. It's sometimes referred to, right,
Speaker 4: we're the main character in all this. But when you
Speaker 4: realize that you're going to die and the world is
Speaker 4: just going to carry on, it can be very overwhelming
Speaker 4: to think that I mean, it's bad enough to think
Speaker 4: I'll leave my job in two weeks everybody be like, ah,
Speaker 4: who is Eric? We don't remember him?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 4: But take it to death. That's a whole different level.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, It's quite humbling, isn't it?
Speaker 2: Because here I am thinking everybody cares about the things
Speaker 2: that are going on my life, and you know, my
Speaker 2: neighbor knows my name, but you don't know anything about me.
Speaker 1: You know. It's really humbling.
Speaker 2: Yet I find it freeing also that in two decades
Speaker 2: nobody is going to remember my name. I've chosen not
Speaker 2: to have children. Nobody's carrying forth my name moving forward.
Speaker 2: Maybe people will speak about me after I die. I
Speaker 2: don't know, but in to generations nobody will anymore. That
Speaker 2: also means that I have the absolute freedom to do
Speaker 2: what I want because I don't have to try to
Speaker 2: impress anybody or make anybody proud, and a little bit
Speaker 2: moving forward, that the mistakes that I make are also
Speaker 2: going to die with me, that the people that remember
Speaker 2: the things that I've done that I feel embarrassed.
Speaker 1: By, they will die too.
Speaker 2: I feel so much freedom in knowing that everything else
Speaker 2: will carry on after I die. It allows me to
Speaker 2: do the things that I want, because they're not that
Speaker 2: important anyway. Big picture, you know, really big picture. There's
Speaker 2: already been about one hundred and two one hundred and
Speaker 2: ten billion that I've come and gone, one hundred and
Speaker 2: two to one hundred and ten billion billion. The greatest
Speaker 2: names in our time, you know, those people that people
Speaker 2: know in the far reaches of the world, like Michael Jackson,
Speaker 2: for example, Nobody's going to remember him in a generation
Speaker 2: or two. Nobody will speak of him anymore. And those
Speaker 2: are the ones with the greatest fame.
Speaker 1: It's humbling, it totally is.
Speaker 4: I mean, you do realize we all talk about like
Speaker 4: legacy or impact, and you realize how hard it is
Speaker 4: to make any sort of lasting legacy in the world,
Speaker 4: even people that we talk about all the time, like Shakespeare,
Speaker 4: and he's only a few hundred years. How many people
Speaker 4: think about Shakespeare? I mean, a reasonable number, but in
Speaker 4: the grand scheme of things, not that many, right, I mean.
Speaker 4: And so even like you said, these huge names, five
Speaker 4: hundred thousand years from now, they're almost certainly going to
Speaker 4: be gone. And if they're not gone, whatever they were
Speaker 4: is going to be some figment of the imagination. And
Speaker 4: I think When I was young, that used to really
Speaker 4: trouble me. And as I've gotten older, I've become more
Speaker 4: comfortable with it, almost as you said, freed by it,
Speaker 4: because then it's like, well, don't bother like trying to
Speaker 4: suss out your historical importance because there isn't.
Speaker 2: One bingo one of the benefits of aging, isn't it
Speaker 2: one of the big benefits of aging?
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 4: So one of the things that you say, although what
Speaker 4: I just said was our historical importance is nil. You
Speaker 4: talk about how everybody does have a legacy and you're
Speaker 4: creating it all the time. Say more about that.
Speaker 1: I think it's my angelau.
Speaker 2: Although I'm gonna mess it up, but the quote that
Speaker 2: people will never forget how you made them feel. They
Speaker 2: may forget what you say and what you did, but
Speaker 2: they'll never forget how you made them feel. Now, I
Speaker 2: find that to be so true in my work that
Speaker 2: after the person that I got to care for has died,
Speaker 2: when it comes to their funeral, it's often judged by
Speaker 2: what people say about them, who they were, how caring
Speaker 2: they were, how considerate, how funny. They care more about
Speaker 2: the qualities of the person rather than their accomplishments, And yeah,
Speaker 2: some people have great accomplishments, and people can read an
Speaker 2: obituary that's three pages long with all the things that
Speaker 2: people did, but often it's more about who they were
Speaker 2: while they were doing the things that people care about.
Speaker 2: I know many of folks that created a lot with
Speaker 2: their lives and yet left a wake of ruin in
Speaker 2: their path. They annihilated people that worked for them. They
Speaker 2: didn't bother to look the cashiers and the eye you know,
Speaker 2: those things are the things that ultimately matter. Those are
Speaker 2: the bits of the legacy that we carry on as well.
Speaker 2: I tell you a quick story. Sure, there is a
Speaker 2: client I got to work with, not somebody who was dying,
Speaker 2: but rather she came because she wanted to plan a
Speaker 2: funeral for a gentleman that lived on the street outside
Speaker 2: of the place that she got her coffee in the
Speaker 2: morning on the way to work. And every day she
Speaker 2: stop and talk to this unhoused man about his life
Speaker 2: or the things that were going on in her life,
Speaker 2: and he would ask her questions. She would ask him questions,
Speaker 2: and they struck up a friendship. After a while, she
Speaker 2: noticed that he wasn't there anymore and did some digging
Speaker 2: to try to figure out what happened to him and
Speaker 2: he had died.
Speaker 1: What she found was.
Speaker 2: That there was all these folks that had died that
Speaker 2: went unclaimed by other people, and she was really taken
Speaker 2: by that. So she wanted to plan a funeral for him,
Speaker 2: in particular because she knew him. We planned the funeral,
Speaker 2: we held it outside. Over four hundred people came because
Speaker 2: of how she talked about him, about the impact that
Speaker 2: he had on her life.
Speaker 1: That was his legacy in her life.
Speaker 2: Somebody who, by most metrics, certainly this country, whose life
Speaker 2: had no value to other people who lived down the street,
Speaker 2: who begged for change, that human four hundred people came
Speaker 2: to honor his life because of what he created in her.
Speaker 2: That's how we measure legacy. That's how it shows up
Speaker 2: for most of us.
Speaker 4: I wanted to pause for a quick good Wolf reminder.
Speaker 4: This one's about a habit change and a mistake I
Speaker 4: see people making. And that's really that we don't think
Speaker 4: about these new habits that we want to add in
Speaker 4: the context of our entire life.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: Habits don't happen in a vacuum. They have to fit
Speaker 4: in the life that we have. So When we just
Speaker 4: keep adding I should do this, I should do that,
Speaker 4: I should do this, we get discouraged because we haven't
Speaker 4: really thought about what we're not going to do in
Speaker 4: order to make that happen. So it's really helpful for
Speaker 4: you to think about where is this going to fit
Speaker 4: and what in my life might I need to remove.
Speaker 4: If you want to step by step guide for how
Speaker 4: you can easily build new habits that feed your good Wolf,
Speaker 4: go to good Wolf dot me, slash change and join
Speaker 4: the free masterclass. That's a beautiful story, by the way,
Speaker 4: And I think it's a really true thing that our
Speaker 4: greatest legacy is what we leave in other people, and
Speaker 4: yet accomplishments call to us, you know. And so talk
Speaker 4: to me about how in your own life you think
Speaker 4: about accomplishment and the value of that versus the value
Speaker 4: of who you are in terms of your legacy. Like
Speaker 4: you mentioned your book, right, a book is sort of
Speaker 4: a legacy project to some degree. It is an accomplishment
Speaker 4: to some degree. Although I'm assuming you didn't do it
Speaker 4: because you wanted to be known as a New York
Speaker 4: Times bestselling author. But I'm curious how you reconcile sort
Speaker 4: of those two competing forces within us.
Speaker 2: In the early part of my adulthood, I went to
Speaker 2: law school. I passed the bar on the first try.
Speaker 2: I was courted by some of these big name law firms,
Speaker 2: and I want to do justice works. I went to
Speaker 2: Legal Aid and I was doing the good work and
Speaker 2: fighting the good fight. And for you know, the metrics,
Speaker 2: I was doing pretty good. I was pretty successful. I'm
Speaker 2: using air quotes around that term. And yet I was
Speaker 2: terribly depressed. I was drinking too much, I was smoking
Speaker 2: too much. I was not making time for my friends.
Speaker 2: I was totally out of touch with what I wanted
Speaker 2: to do, who I was in my life. All I
Speaker 2: know is I had a degree, and at a terminal
Speaker 2: degree when that many people en feed or place some
Speaker 2: value on. And I had good relationships, you know, I
Speaker 2: had beautiful.
Speaker 1: Men in my life.
Speaker 2: I had married briefly. You know, I was doing things.
Speaker 2: I was living the life, and it didn't feel good.
Speaker 2: It felt terrible to me. It felt terrible. It helped
Speaker 2: me see that the external markers of success were not mine.
Speaker 2: Like I had to redefine what success meant for me,
Speaker 2: and for me, it didn't mean the accomplishments, it didn't
Speaker 2: mean testifying to the Domestic Violence Council or all of
Speaker 2: the schools that I opened in low income neighborhoods in
Speaker 2: LA that didn't really matter. What mattered rather was my joy,
Speaker 2: my presence, my ability to like revel in this miracle
Speaker 2: that it is to be alive. That's how I measure
Speaker 2: my success now, because at the time I wasn't doing
Speaker 2: much of that, and it left me really broken and sick,
Speaker 2: and so I had to break out of that. I
Speaker 2: had to break that metric try to see what a
Speaker 2: good life meant for me.
Speaker 1: And a good life now is.
Speaker 2: Couched in joy and presence, like I said, and still
Speaker 2: in doing things that feel good to me because of
Speaker 2: how they impact the world, but less in getting my
Speaker 2: name out there and becoming a New York Times bestseller,
Speaker 2: but more in the healing that people are able to
Speaker 2: access because of the work I'm able to do. How
Speaker 2: folks can feel seen because for the first time, I've
Speaker 2: acknowledged that anger is a pivotal part of grief, or
Speaker 2: so is promiscuity. For folks that feel free to grieve
Speaker 2: or to feel because now they can allow themselves to
Speaker 2: have the full gamut of human emotions and share those
Speaker 2: as opposed to just the ones that we think that
Speaker 2: we're supposed to. I think that accomplishments maybe make us
Speaker 2: look good in the eyes of other people, but if
Speaker 2: I don't look good in my own eyes, and what
Speaker 2: does it matter? And whose eyes am I looking through
Speaker 2: when I'm looking at myself? I think a big process
Speaker 2: of elderhood is somewhat shedding the societal expectations and the
Speaker 2: ideas of who we should be. And when I can
Speaker 2: come back into my authenticity, come back into my body,
Speaker 2: be at home in my body, be at home in
Speaker 2: my life.
Speaker 1: That is successful.
Speaker 4: You said so many beautiful things there, and sadly, I
Speaker 4: am hung up on a phrase that you used in
Speaker 4: there about promiscuity and grief, So I'm going to have
Speaker 4: to ask you to talk about that for a second
Speaker 4: so I can focus back on the important things here,
Speaker 4: because I didn't expect that to be something that came
Speaker 4: out of your mouth.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, here's the deal, is that the grief experience,
Speaker 2: as we know it is like all over the place,
Speaker 2: people have a very number of responses to grief, and
Speaker 2: there are some that we under stand and are down with,
Speaker 2: like sadness or you know, confusion or loss or I'm
Speaker 2: having a hard day right now. And yet some people
Speaker 2: experienced grief with a lot of different other things, like
Speaker 2: their bodies and wanting to feel a lot of pleasure
Speaker 2: in it, grounding and the fact that they are still
Speaker 2: present and promiscuity. I really don't like that term because
Speaker 2: it's so negative now, but people, you know, people experiencing
Speaker 2: grief through their bodies sexually is a way that people
Speaker 2: do it, and I'm down for like, get you some
Speaker 2: feel the pleasure feeling your body.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, Now I'm going to go back to the
Speaker 4: important things that you said, Not that that's not important,
Speaker 4: but I'm struck by you describing the former life and
Speaker 4: the current life right And it seems to me that
Speaker 4: having an impact on other people is a really defining
Speaker 4: part of what makes you you. And when you were
Speaker 4: doing the legal aid work, you were having significant positive
Speaker 4: impact in the same way that you are now. What
Speaker 4: was it a about that you weren't satisfied with or
Speaker 4: wasn't working for you compared to what you are doing now.
Speaker 4: You alluded to the word joy. Is it as simple
Speaker 4: as the sort of work you enjoy doing? And it's
Speaker 4: just that simple. You like this type of work better
Speaker 4: than that type of work.
Speaker 1: Well for starters. Yeah, like the legal work is not
Speaker 1: a good time.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of paperwork and checking boxes, and I
Speaker 2: wasn't so into it.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: I also don't really like arguing. I would often think
Speaker 2: that there should be better ways to come to resolution
Speaker 2: rather than everybody making their stating their cases on opposite
Speaker 2: sides of the table, Like why aren't we just getting
Speaker 2: real with the stuff. I often also wanted to argue
Speaker 2: based on what was just not what was legal, like
Speaker 2: that that was not a good metric to frustrate by. Yeah,
Speaker 2: very frustrating to me. But I think even more deeply
Speaker 2: is that in the legal practice, I couldn't use all
Speaker 2: parts of myself, you know, like some of the things
Speaker 2: that I just alluded to. But I'm a super sensitive being.
Speaker 2: I'm really curious about humans. I'm really interested in healing
Speaker 2: and how we experience the world, and there wasn't space
Speaker 2: for me to do that while practicing law. You know,
Speaker 2: imagine me standing up there saying, like, your honor, she's
Speaker 2: really trying to heal, and look at all these traumas
Speaker 2: that letter here. No nobody cares about that. But to me,
Speaker 2: that's how we ultimately break the cycles of violence that
Speaker 2: bring the clients back over and over and over again,
Speaker 2: and the people that are perpetuating the violence. So let's
Speaker 2: get to that, you know, let's get to that. It
Speaker 2: wasn't a fit. It stifled me. It suffocated me. I
Speaker 2: felt like I was like drowning, but it was in
Speaker 2: an ocean of my own making, and so I had
Speaker 2: to get back to the surface and get out of
Speaker 2: there and say, wait, who am I? They are parts
Speaker 2: of me that I like a lot that make me
Speaker 2: me that I cannot use here, and so let's go
Speaker 2: take them someplace where we can use all of it.
Speaker 1: And this feels like a pretty good fit.
Speaker 4: I can see why that is a particularly hard situation
Speaker 4: to perhaps find your way out of, because to your point,
Speaker 4: you chose it and be it is important work, right,
Speaker 4: and so it becomes harder to sort of recognize It's like, well,
Speaker 4: I chose it, and it's important, and yet it's still
Speaker 4: not for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I chose it, it's important, and I'm one hundred
Speaker 2: and thirty thousand dollars in debt over it to this day,
Speaker 2: and it's still not for me, you know, And it's
Speaker 2: still not for me. It was a very, very difficult
Speaker 2: choice to make, but one that I had no choice
Speaker 2: about because I developed a severe clinical depression. I kept
Speaker 2: avoiding that thing inside me that said this isn't for you,
Speaker 2: as we were talking about when we began talking, I
Speaker 2: was just avoiding and trying to escape this life that
Speaker 2: I built, and it was crushing me, and I kept
Speaker 2: pretending it wasn't happening until well, I was an absolute.
Speaker 1: Shell of myself.
Speaker 2: I couldn't find any joy anymore. I couldn't find a
Speaker 2: good reason to get up and keep doing the things
Speaker 2: that I was doing. My life had fallen into disrepair
Speaker 2: and so in my health. And if not for that,
Speaker 2: I probably just would have kept going and hoping that
Speaker 2: it got better that I came up with an answer
Speaker 2: at some point. In some ways, I am very grateful
Speaker 2: for depression as well, because it allowed me to step
Speaker 2: off the wheel for a while and like pause and
Speaker 2: try to look at my life and say, what's not
Speaker 2: working and how do we fix this?
Speaker 4: So what's your journey with depression been like since then?
Speaker 4: So after you sort of realized like, Okay, I can't
Speaker 4: function in this world, I'm going to have to do
Speaker 4: something different. You've taken a different path. And I ask
Speaker 4: because I'm somebody who has had depression many different times
Speaker 4: in the past, and so you know, it's sort of
Speaker 4: an area of ongoing maintenance for me. I'm kind of
Speaker 4: curious what your relationship with it is like now.
Speaker 1: I still dance with it from time to time.
Speaker 2: But I'll say that it has never been as deep
Speaker 2: or as overwhelming as it was then. And I think
Speaker 2: also my relationship with impermanence has shifted and that I
Speaker 2: can allow the feeling that I'm having at the time
Speaker 2: to just be that, recognizing that it will one day go.
Speaker 2: But that's a practice, as a consistent practice, because sometimes
Speaker 2: when it feels like it's coming again and that heavy
Speaker 2: blanket is starting to descend on me, I get scared
Speaker 2: that it's going to come and stay. It's going to
Speaker 2: be so big and overwhelming. And yet I keep reminding
Speaker 2: myself that we've been here once and we moved on,
Speaker 2: and if it were to come back in the same way,
Speaker 2: we would be able to get over that as well,
Speaker 2: and give myself a lot of grace for my chemical
Speaker 2: composition and my sensitivity and the way that I move
Speaker 2: in the world that allows me to, I think, dance
Speaker 2: with it as opposed to just get terrified or get
Speaker 2: boled over by it and a lot of meditation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that seems to be one of the defining features
Speaker 4: I think of depression is this sort of hey, I'm
Speaker 4: back and I was never really even gone, and you're
Speaker 4: always going to feel this way. To me, it's embedded
Speaker 4: in the condition itself. Is that story, which, like you,
Speaker 4: I've gotten much much better at sort of looking at
Speaker 4: and going that's not true. That's just simply not true.
Speaker 4: It feels like it's true, but it's not, and being
Speaker 4: able to trust that as I've come out of it
Speaker 4: multiple multiple times.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I wrote in my book, and I remember distinctly writing this,
Speaker 2: that depression is a liar.
Speaker 1: You know, it lies.
Speaker 2: It tells you that nobody cares, that you can't get
Speaker 2: out of it, that it's going to be this way forever,
Speaker 2: that for me at least, that I didn't deserve joy,
Speaker 2: and that I deserve this terrible feeling, and that I
Speaker 2: got myself here and that I wouldn't be able to
Speaker 2: get myself out. And I now know, ten years past
Speaker 2: this major depressive episode, that none of that is true,
Speaker 2: and that, as you were saying before, it's just it's
Speaker 2: kind of baked into the condition itself, like this overwhelming,
Speaker 2: like never going to get better, there's no hope, there's
Speaker 2: no way out.
Speaker 1: This is it. I'm just going to be like this
Speaker 1: for forever. Yep, yep, what a lie.
Speaker 4: So it's kind of a cliche at this point that
Speaker 4: people say, like the only thing that really matters is love,
Speaker 4: and yet you say in the end of life, I've
Speaker 4: observed that people are concerned with three major questions. Who
Speaker 4: did I love? How did I love? Was I loved?
Speaker 4: So say more. It's a cliche, and it seems to
Speaker 4: be a cliche that carries an awful lot of truth.
Speaker 2: Relationship people are so mid in their relationships. I see
Speaker 2: so much talk about who's there, who wasn't there, who
Speaker 2: should be there, what they did to somebody, how they
Speaker 2: mess this relationship up, where they need to say I'm
Speaker 2: sorry where they didn't. The grudges, the trauma, the pain, separation,
Speaker 2: all of that. I spend so much of my time
Speaker 2: with my clients talking about their relationships, how they were
Speaker 2: to other humans, and I do find it to be
Speaker 2: a defining characteristic of being human. But also this human right.
Speaker 2: I think it's one of the things that imbuse this
Speaker 2: human experience, even with all of this difficulty, with some pleasure,
Speaker 2: you know, even when things get hard, the fact that
Speaker 2: my best friend and I, she can say one word
Speaker 2: and I will laugh until I cry, until I cannot
Speaker 2: think straight anymore.
Speaker 1: I want to giggle even thinking about the word.
Speaker 2: I love her. I love how she shows up in
Speaker 2: the world. I love how she loves me. And that
Speaker 2: makes it feel okay when things get really, really, really difficult.
Speaker 2: Nearing the end of our lives, as we are approaching death,
Speaker 2: I think that becomes very, very starkly clear. We can
Speaker 2: see who we loved, we can see who loved us,
Speaker 2: We can think about all of our missed opportunities. And
Speaker 2: many people are in a rush to reconcile their relationships
Speaker 2: as they're dying. In fact, it's one of the tasks
Speaker 2: of the living that we should do, that we should
Speaker 2: be engaged with consistently, is checking with the state of
Speaker 2: our relationships, who's important to us, what is still unsaid,
Speaker 2: what needs to be said, and then find the courage
Speaker 2: and the vulnerability to say it while we still have
Speaker 2: time to maybe repair the relationship if it needs some repair.
Speaker 2: But yeah, love, I mean the Beatles said it. Love
Speaker 2: is all you need. Really, I mean some bread is nice.
Speaker 1: Yes, my shelter is nice. But love goes a long way.
Speaker 4: So it's obvious. I guess it's not obvious to everyone.
Speaker 4: It seems obvious to me that reflecting upon the fact
Speaker 4: that we are mortal is a way of figuring out
Speaker 4: what's important to us and living more that way. And
Speaker 4: it also seems remarkably distant even knowing that. Is there
Speaker 4: a way that you know of to get people who
Speaker 4: are not around death all the time?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: If you're around it all the time, you are more
Speaker 4: tuned into it. But to actually allow this recognition of
Speaker 4: our mortality to be more influential on us, even at
Speaker 4: a further distance, well, I.
Speaker 2: Think it only seems distant because we're not in relationship
Speaker 2: with ourmortality. Because when we are, I know that my
Speaker 2: next breath is not promised, and neither's that I'm not
Speaker 2: guaranteed to make it home or to my next destination,
Speaker 2: or even to finish this conversation with you that allows
Speaker 2: me to live each day with that awareness, with that
Speaker 2: presence in my life. When we can live with our mortality,
Speaker 2: and I don't think that we need to be working
Speaker 2: in death care in order to live that way. When
Speaker 2: I'm living in relationship with my mortality, my moments are
Speaker 2: far more precious, and because I know that they are finite,
Speaker 2: I think that there's a lot of different ways that
Speaker 2: we can access it. First, remind yourself that you're going
Speaker 2: to die as often as possible. One practice that I
Speaker 2: really enjoy is just looking in the mirror. When I
Speaker 2: am in the mirror, I first of all just have
Speaker 2: a lot of gratitude for all my melanin. But next,
Speaker 2: when I'm in the mirror, I can also see the
Speaker 2: signs of aging on my body, and it reminds me
Speaker 2: that this very mortal shell will soon reach its end.
Speaker 2: And I say soon, because far sooner than I'm ready
Speaker 2: for I made forty six in a flash. I don't
Speaker 2: understand how I'm for you years away from fifty, because
Speaker 2: I don't feel that way yet. The body, when I'm
Speaker 2: looking at my body, I'm like, oh, no, girl, you're
Speaker 2: getting there, You're getting up there.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: The body constantly reminds me about my mortality.
Speaker 1: And so just like a long, solid.
Speaker 2: Hard look in the mirror, and not in a judging way,
Speaker 2: not in a less fat here, less cellulate there, but
Speaker 2: rather just in like an observational way. That's a really
Speaker 2: useful practice for those that are interested in like juicy
Speaker 2: er stuff. There's a number of death meditations that you
Speaker 2: can actually do. We offer when it Going with Grace.
Speaker 2: It's a nine part series that walks you through the
Speaker 2: nine Contemplations of dying, which are written by an eleventh
Speaker 2: century Buddhist scholar named Atsha. But there are the nine
Speaker 2: contemplations of death that we should all be with regularly.
Speaker 2: I think we can also pay attention to our language,
Speaker 2: because so much of our relationship with death is in
Speaker 2: our language. We talk about death all the time without
Speaker 2: awareness of it. I think of the word deadline, like
Speaker 2: how often and there are people using that word in
Speaker 2: their regular lives. Deadline This is the line after which
Speaker 2: nothing else can be done. You got one, I got one.
Speaker 2: And we're not talking about get the project done by
Speaker 2: this date, but rather the end of your life.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 2: Our vegetables die, they rot, they go away, We must
Speaker 2: throw them off. Our car batteries die, our phones die.
Speaker 2: We talk about death all the time. Characters and movies die.
Speaker 2: We're engaging with it consistently, and yet we don't make
Speaker 2: it personal. It always lives out there, and so it
Speaker 2: is not distant. It's baked in as part of the
Speaker 2: contract of being human is one day you will die.
Speaker 2: And that day it's going to come far sooner than
Speaker 2: any of us are ready for.
Speaker 1: So let's get with it.
Speaker 4: So listener and thinking about that and all the other
Speaker 4: great wisdom from today's episode. If you were going to
Speaker 4: isolate just one top insight that you're taking away, what
Speaker 4: would it be. Remember, little by little, a little becomes
Speaker 4: a lot. Change happens by us repeatedly taking positive action.
Speaker 4: And I want to give you a tip on that,
Speaker 4: and it's to start small. It's really important when we're
Speaker 4: trying to implement new habits to often start smaller than
Speaker 4: we think we need to, because what that does is
Speaker 4: it allows us to get victories. And victories are really
Speaker 4: important because we become more motivated when we're feeling good
Speaker 4: about ourselves, and we become less motivated when we're feeling
Speaker 4: bad about ourselves. So by starting small and making sure
Speaker 4: that you succeed, you build your motivation for further change
Speaker 4: down the road. If you'd like a step by step
Speaker 4: guide for how you can easily build new habits that
Speaker 4: feed your good Wolf. Go to Goodwolf dot me, slash
Speaker 4: change and join the free masterclass. Well, I think that
Speaker 4: is a beautiful place for us to wrap up. Thank
Speaker 4: you so much for coming on. I really enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 4: Your ted talk is wonderful, your website is great. We'll
Speaker 4: have links in the show notes to all of those things.
Speaker 4: Thank you for the work that you're doing, and thank
Speaker 4: you for being with us.
Speaker 2: It is actually my pleasure in my Tooay was great
Speaker 2: to talk to you today.
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