[00:00:00] Jessica: I kept wishing away the next 25, 30 years. I was like, I just have to make it to retirement. I just need to make it to retirement. I'll get through this dental profession and I just have to make it to retirement. Well, working at the cancer center was just. Hitting myself in the face every single day until it finally clicked where it's just like not everyone makes it to retirement.
[00:00:17] Jill: Welcome back to Seeing Death. Clearly, I'm your host, Jill McClennen, a death doula and end-of-life coach. The conversations I have with my guests may challenge you to think outside the box of what you believe to be true about death, dying grief, and living life. In this episode, my guest is Dr. Jessica Met.
[00:00:36] She is a general dentist by trade and ended up specializing in working with cancer patients. We talk about her work with patients, but a lot of our conversation focuses on the role of community in our lives and in our death. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.
[00:00:53] Jessica: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:00:53] This is a near and dear topic to talk about, so I appreciate you holding the space to be able to have these conversations.
[00:01:00] Jill: It's my favorite thing to talk about, which I know sounds strange to a lot of people that are really uncomfortable talking about death and dying, but I think that's partially why I like to talk about it, because I get to see.
[00:01:14] Some of the realness of people that they usually hide when we're out in public talking to people, and that's the conversations that I like to have. So I'm excited. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself, your background, maybe where you came from, how old you are, anything like that that you'd like to share?
[00:01:32]
[00:01:32] Jessica: I was actually raised Italian Canadian, and so my grandparents are immigrants from Italy, and so raised Catholic. That also changed later on in life and just my belief around death and dying and just energy shifts. I have always been. Very open about talking about death in general. We went to funerals right from when we were little kids.
[00:01:55] To me, it was very natural to have those conversations and then fast forward that a part of my own background and my experiences would actually then help me within my career, because I'm a general dentist by trade, but specialized in treating cancer patients. I worked full-time at one of the top five cancer centers in the world and saw death every single day, and it was very interesting because as a general dentist, you wouldn't think twice about it. But I ended up teaching later on how to help patients improve their quality of life post-cancer therapy to the medical and the dental community.
[00:02:36] Jill: It's really interesting because recently I was volunteering at the hospital and one of the patients had.
[00:02:44] A brother that's a dentist and they brought in this special oral care kit mm-hmm. For people that had gone through cancer treatments and everybody was like, wait, there's a kit for that. We had no idea that there was like these special things out there. I didn't realize that it was actually, I guess really what, it's the teeth and the gums.
[00:03:06] Like what? What exactly happens with all of that?
[00:03:09] Jessica: It's different based on your primary diagnosis and then the treatments that you undergo. Let's say you have a head and neck cancer diagnosis and you end up going through radiation, so. Go through radiation survival rate's, great. But now you end up with all of these post side effects, which include dry mouth, difficulty swallowing, a sore throat, maybe even a burning tongue, and we don't realize how much that can impact our quality of life in the day-to-day aspect from.
[00:03:36] Tasting food to smelling food, to not being able to drink our favorite glass of wine because now it's too uncomfortable or that water may taste metallic. There's a lot of prep and support that goes into the lead up to. Having your diagnosis and then going through treatment, but then afterwards in survivorship is where there is potentially this drop off and where the individual now has to navigate and try to figure out, okay, where do I fit back into society?
[00:04:08] Because now you're reflecting, well, when you're reflecting through all of that stuff, you can still have a team of individuals and that's where dentistry comes in to be able to support you along that journey. When. Think of palliative care, we automatically think of end of life. But the world's health organization’s definition of palliative care is managing long-term side effects post-cancer therapy.
[00:04:35] And that means then the physiotherapist, the oncologist, your family physician who maybe you hadn't seen because you had all these other doctors. All of these people are now a part of your day-to-day care in your survivor.
[00:04:48] Jill: I find that a lot of people don't know the difference between palliative care and hospice.
[00:04:54] Mm-hmm. Including people within the medical field, which I was surprised by. Mm-hmm. That there was doctors and even nurses. They just assume that palliative care and hospice are the same thing. Mm-hmm. And most of the death rule is that I know part of our mission is to just help educate people around different issues and different things that go with end of life care.
[00:05:18] And palliative care and end of life really are connected, but it is so different. A lot of people could have palliative care and really find a lot of benefit from it, but they don't even know that it exists and they don't know what the benefits could be because I'm learning now that. It's not just the team that I thought of, I would've never thought to get a dentist involved in palliative care.
[00:05:43] Mm-hmm. Because thankfully, I don't know, cancer treatments can affect my teeth because I've never gone through that. Mm-hmm. But now I do have this knowledge so that I can help some of my clients. There's a similar. Misconception about end of life doulas as well, is that it's not just for the end of life, really.
[00:06:03] It's if somebody gets a diagnosis of cancer, we can come and help support and educate the families and let them know. Because it might be something that somebody wouldn't even think about if they're having dry mouth and they're having issues they wouldn't even think to ask for help around that because you know, oftentimes we don't ask for help about things.
[00:06:24] We think we just need to figure things out on our own.
[00:06:27] Jessica: Yes. Okay. So you hit the nail in the head with that because I think at times within society and we get to a point where, Because there is a discomfort talking about death at times, that we then can't ask those follow-up questions or those more in-depth questions, which are supportive questions, and that's where.
[00:06:48] These conversations allow individuals to say, okay, it doesn't have to be that tomorrow I'm dying. It's just, okay, how do we actually talk about life then? Right? And it gives us that opportunity to explore it in a different way instead of being just downright scared and then saying, no, we can't talk about it at all.
[00:07:10] Jill: It seems like a lot of times too, the not talking about it is what leads to the bigger issues because. It really ends up almost shortening the quality of life because people wait to have these conversations with their loved ones and with their doctors. Mm-hmm. When really they could have had treatments.
[00:07:31] I'm in Facebook groups around the different end-of-life issues and somebody in one of the Facebook groups said, oh, you know when hospice comes in and they just put the family rate on morphine. And then my dad ended up living like six months and she acted like this was a bad thing. And I said, yeah, but what happens often is if hospice comes in, And they put somebody on morphine and control their pain, and the morphine also helps with their breathing.
[00:07:55] They will potentially extend their life and they'll be able to live a better life for those last few months. Mm-hmm. But there's so much misunderstanding around all of these things where if we would just talk about it more with our loved ones and with doctors and make it not such a taboo subject. We could face all of these things a little bit easier, and it wouldn't be so stressful and it wouldn't be so upsetting.
[00:08:25] And we wouldn't feel so overwhelmed because that's what I found when I navigated the end of life with my grandmother. I was just so overwhelmed because I was so confused. We nobody had ever talked about this stuff. I didn't know what to expect. You think it's like it's gonna be in a movie. Where people just sleep and then they die, and that's the end of it.
[00:08:46] And that wasn't how it worked. And it wasn't a terrible experience, but it was confusing because I didn't know what was happening and we just need to talk about it more with everybody.
[00:08:58] Jessica: Yeah, I know when my grandfather passed away, I had just actually started my master's, and during that time my family was about a three hour drive away from where I was doing school, and I had come home for a period of time because he had entered the hospital without us knowing what his diagnosis was, getting diagnosed with lung cancer, and then him not leaving the hospital because of.
[00:09:23] How bad the diagnosis was as at that point. And he stayed in the hustle for about a month and I was there for his last breath. And it's a very interesting space to be in when you know the end is near and it's happening. And when we have more of these conversations, it makes it easier for the person who ends.
[00:09:52] Staying on this earth, being able to then process their emotions as well, because it becomes really hard if we just keep putting off that discomfort that it's, it's going to be uncomfortable at some point, and all those emotions are going to bubble up eventually. It's just, well, what if you actually could step into them in a way that you felt safe and with a bit of ease that allowed you to.
[00:10:17] Tap into that sadness to tap into that uncomfortableness, to tap into just being angry as well, because you are going to experience all those emotions. And so yes, there was that month that happened where it was very unexpected for my grandfather. But at the same time, we as a family then got to go through all of those processes and I realize that death is very different whether it's very sudden and at an earlier age versus someone who is older and lived a long life, or if someone had a cancer diagnosis, went through treatment and has all these side effects now.
[00:10:53] And so we have to have more of these conversations so then we don't feel like we're just blindsided and the rug gets ripped out from underneath us. And then it takes us decades to be able to process because I bet you anything, the person on the other side who has left this physical life, they wouldn't want you to be struggling for the next decade to try to process, to try to understand.
[00:11:19] And I think that. That those conversations with multiple different people from multiple different religions gives us the opportunity to be able to process and being like, okay, this is what I connect with. I just saw a meme the other day where it was witches have. Spells. Christians have prayers, and spirituality as manifestations, and scientists have quantum energy in quantum physics.
[00:11:43] And at the end of the day, it's not a question that we don't believe it, it's just we see it and we call it different things. And so when it comes to then even going back to my background being raised Catholic and then. Getting into my early twenties, I just couldn't relate to Catholicism anymore, but my science allowed me to relate to that quantum energy, and so it's still, wait.
[00:12:06] I just call it something different. It gives me an opportunity to process it differently, and it makes sense to me. So when we have these conversations, then you get to find those ways and those paths that allow you to accept. Sometimes it may not make sense, right? But it gives you that opportunity to be, at least start to process.
[00:12:27] So then you get to go back to, or start a new path of what your now life looks like.
[00:12:33] Jill: I love that connection between the different spiritual paths. Mm-hmm. And even science. I have a very similar background where I was raised Catholic. I don't know if I ever felt any connection to the religion other than the ritual part and the fact that my grandmother was very Catholic.
[00:12:54] So her and I were very connected. And as I got older I definitely leaned more into this idea that there's something, you know, energy or God or again, everybody has different terms for it. I do feel like there is something that connects all of us. And maybe even we are just all little individual pieces of this one big ball of energy or whatever.
[00:13:21] It's Right. Yeah. And we, I don't know if we will ever know for sure in our human form, but I like to think that when we die, it will all become clear. And maybe at that moment, right before death, maybe it all becomes clear. I love thinking about it. I love talking about it, but I don't know for sure and I do struggle sometimes with the fact that part of me.
[00:13:50] Really wants to have like a religion, something that I can kind of clinging to because I see the comfort in that. I see where it can fill a need for humans to have this thing that we just believe in so deeply. But at the same time, I also really love not knowing and just being open to anything and talking to people that have all different beliefs and learning what they believe and trying to understand why they believe it, and then connecting all the different parts together.
[00:14:23] That's part of why I like end of life work, because I get to meet a lot of different people with a lot of different beliefs, and I love hearing what they think, especially when it comes to death, but also what comes after this life.
[00:14:41] Jessica:Because nobody knows for sure, but that's the key there, right? Is that nobody knows for sure.
[00:14:45] So one of my friends who is an author, she's on her second book right now, and her book is around Death and Dying, and so she's asking everyone that she meets. She's like, what do you think happens after you die? There is no wrong answer. That's the beauty of it, is that we can argue in and debate and have conversations around it, but we just don't know.
[00:15:07] And a part of being problem solvers as human beings, what we clinging to at times is certainty. Because with certainty means we get specific outcomes. But with this, we just don't know. We have definitely individuals who share near death experiences and stuff, however, We just, we don't know as this physical entity that we are currently in right now, we just don't know.
[00:15:31] So that gives us the opportunity to, like you said, whether it is religion, whether it is energy, whether it's community that offers that as well, whether it's yourself. It gives you that opportunity to figure out, okay, what do I connect with? What do I believe then happens afterwards, and you can still have that strong belief in very different.
[00:15:52] Jill: Maybe it is the community part that I miss the most about going to a church on a regular basis, cuz I really don't miss. The what? I would, what I, in some ways would call lectures because that's what it felt like to me. Yeah. It didn't feel like it was trying to educate me to be a better person. It almost always felt like it was telling me everything that I was doing wrong and why I shouldn't be doing it.
[00:16:18] Right. And that. And, and my husband grew up not religious at all. So sometimes when we talk about things he'll be like, you Catholics and your guilt. What is it? Why do you feel guilty about everything? I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. It's just part of who we are. We could leave the religion part behind, but when you grow up in a religion, parts of it become very much who you are.
[00:16:43] And I do find that so, Because he is so far removed from it. When he points it out, I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah, that, that, that is what it is. You're right, that is some Catholic goat going on right now. But I missed the community part. With our society the way that it is now, we've really lost community. Unless you're still part of a religious organization or sports or even politics, but.
[00:17:12] Ends up turning into a me against them in so many cases, whether it's religious, sports or politics. Mm-hmm. And that's what I really don't like about all of those things. So I think for me, I need to find that connection to a group without that feeling of Right. And everybody else is wrong. Yeah. And I don't know how we fixed that part.
[00:17:37] Jessica: So this is fascinating cuz I do believe that when it comes to religion, that guilt aspect that comes into it is a way to scare individuals at times to doing good. And when we think of religion, and I'm not doing this as a blanket statement, I'm just saying with certain religions or at times and I can share my experience with Catholicism and growing up Catholic is, is that you.
[00:18:03] Didn't do certain things for fear then that you were going to help. Right. So it was just like, you have to be good, otherwise you're going to hell you have to do. And I don't think that that's to me, That didn't fit into my framework of living, where then you can't make mistakes and then you can't show up as you, you can't try to explore you as an individual.
[00:18:25] And so when it comes to society in the 21st century with the industrial age, we ended up. Splitting family units up and separating farther apart. And we became independent family units and less of a community and less of a tribe and people coming together and relying on individuals. And so religion filled that gap or politics or sports as you said.
[00:18:47] And I think for the individual, cause I know this is what I struggled with for so long, was trying to find those groups of individuals where we supported. Because at times, sadly, by blood isn't necessarily those individuals. It might be this family that you choose. And so when you give yourself the opportunity to explore and you start to build that community, you can also have multiple communities with different interests.
[00:19:15] You just need to figure out what fits your interests, your beliefs, and your values, to make sure that it connects with those other people. But the one. Stronghold grasp, like a strong arm that I found religion, especially Catholicism. I found for me was that okay, well again, if you make a mistake, if you do something bad, then you're going to be condemned.
[00:19:38] You're going to hell. And to me, that just never sat right. So it was just like, okay, so now you have this fear and what keeps people. Doing quote-unquote good was that fear aspect and not because of the fact that their values had evolved and that is what they wanted to do. And so to me that was one of, and then there's all a whole feminism piece, but that's a totally different story at that point in time.
[00:20:04] Cuz I was even asking early on when. I was a little, little kid being like, why can't nuns do the Homi? And stuff like that. But that's, I digress. And that is a totally different conversation. And so for me it just, I didn't fit into that. And so when I started looking for family or for community apps, Sex.
[00:20:22] It was, okay, well where do you start to look? And for me, I found it, it came to interest to people who had similar values, how they chose to take care of themselves, how they treated others, and that gave us then the opportunity to start to build out what your community looks like.
[00:20:39] Jill: I used to be what I would've considered hippie crunchy.
[00:20:42] Which now, if anybody listening has kind of paid attention to some of the news, that's almost like a code word for this, like pipeline that has now led to white supremacy. So I don't call myself that anymore. I know, right? Yeah. Didn't even know.
[00:20:59] Jessica: This is news to me.
[00:21:00] Jill: Okay. Yeah, it's, it's very interesting, it's happened a lot over, you know, 2020 with like all the stuff with Covid, but it felt like, As soon as I found that group that I felt like I belonged to, and there's still this, you're not doing it right.
[00:21:18] You're not saying it right. You're not doing enough It, it's very frustrating to me because it feels like humans, we always end up putting up these walls, like making things into these little boxes, and that if you don't fit all these little tiny criteria, And they push you out. You know, they attack and nail it verbally or online, where in the past it was maybe physically attacking to keep people out.
[00:21:47] Mm-hmm. Which is, again, it's a control tactic. It's either you do what we tell you to do or we're going to push you out. Yeah. I guess there's some connections with death and dying and in that, the fear is that when I get pushed out, The community. When I got pushed out of the tribe, when I got pushed out of the group, then I would be alone and then I would die because I can't take care of myself alone.
[00:22:14] Yeah. And I find the whole thing fascinating. I find it really interesting. It is something that I've noticed more and more over the last few years that if you're not saying the words exactly the way that groups want you to say them, you're not considered part of the group anymore. And. So I don't know if I even want to connect to any one group in particular, but there is still that part of me that I think inside has that.
[00:22:42] That if I'm not part of a group, I'm gonna be left alone to die. I won't survive this. Yeah. I don't know. Cuz again, I don't know what we do about that. I think it's just a human nature thing. I don't know if there's any fix for it or even if it's broken, even if it is a problem. It's just something that I've noticed more and more over the last few years, especially.
[00:23:04] Jessica: So humans are so interesting, so very interesting. Our habits, our patterns, our connections, the way that we think, and the way that we process all of that is so interconnected. And then how we can be influenced at times based on our age as well. And then how that affects as a whole. And going back to that community aspect of it, I sound for me as a single 35 year old woman, you are looking for.
[00:23:31] Community aspect of it and instead of it necessarily being like a picture perfect, what's on a cereal box back in the day is like that nuclear unit where your husband and wife and two kids, that's not the case. That's not what nuclear units I signed now look like. And so when it brings us back to that community aspect of it, it can look very different.
[00:23:58] So about a year and a half ago, we moved across the country. And moved away from my family by blood towards family. I choose because of our interests being similar and because of my best friend who I call my sister, she wanted to expand her family. And I was like, well, I wanna be around for my niece and I wanna be able to support that and be able to have these conversations as well.
[00:24:21] And when that ended up happening, initially I thought I was a bad person, cuz again, I think. Society culture, Catholicism is that you're growing up and blood over anything else, but at the same time, It goes back to that saying where blood is thicker than water, which was actually shortened because that's not the actual quote.
[00:24:44] It's the blood of the coven is thicker than the water of the womb, and that is what it had been broken down. And again, we have to interpret certain things to fit our understandings. And to me, when I think of Coven or Covenant, it's the people, it's the community, it's. It's that aspect of who we put in, and it comes to our interests and our values and the connections that we make.
[00:25:06] And when we have those connections, we can then start to have the conversations around death and dying and have the conversations around life and what that looks like instead of it being uncomfortable or someone then saying to you, oh no, we can't talk about. No, no, we shouldn't talk about that. So when we do start to find those individuals, we start to feel less alone.
[00:25:30] And when we feel less alone, then we feel comfortable to be able to have those conversations. So then we're not getting to that point in thinking, oh my goodness, what just came in, hit me in the face so fast because I didn't actually know I could ask those questions.
[00:25:44] Jill: And that community that we choose is going to be even more important.
[00:25:49] We all age, because I think you're right in that, you know that age range of, I am 44, so I think I'm the older end of the spectrum. Mm-hmm. But so many of us are not choosing to live the life that we saw before us, which is the husband, the wife, the kids, the this, that, and the other. Mm-hmm. We do tend to choose to either not partner.
[00:26:13] If we can't find a partner that's going to fit our values, we're not partnering with people just because you have to. And then we're maybe moving to be with our friends because we wanna help raise children together as a group. Because I know a lot of women my age and also younger, That are like, I don't wanna have kids.
[00:26:31] It's just not my thing. I don't ever wanna have my own, I love everybody else's. I wanna help be part of that family unit of my friends. Yes. But I don't feel the need to do it myself. And so as we all age, it's going to be really interesting watching how we navigate the end of life. It's not the husband and the wife and the grandma.
[00:26:52] It's gonna be friends, and I think that's amazing. Mm-hmm. And it's going to be important for a lot of different reasons because as our generation ages, even now, we're starting to already see it, that there's not the resources to care for people at the end of life. You don't just stick grandma in a home.
[00:27:14] We don't have places, and if we do have them, a lot of people can't afford it. A lot of these nursing homes that I work with as a death do. I'm looking at the prices and I'm thinking, I can't afford that for my mother. There's no way I'm ever gonna be able to pay to put my mother in a facility that will help care for her.
[00:27:35] It's going to end up falling on me, which is fine. I don't mind. But at the same time, if she needs 24 hour care at some point mm-hmm. I'm not gonna be able to work. I'm gonna have to really focus all of my energy in caring for my mother. Mm-hmm. And it's just me. She doesn't have any other children.
[00:27:55] Where as my husband and I age, you know, so we're actually polyamorous. So we both have partners, and our partners in some cases have partners and there's children, and there's our children, and we have a very large. Group in some ways, but still also very small where it's just our little bubble. But that's gonna be a lot of end of life navigating that we're gonna have to do.
[00:28:21] But I think it's actually going to be really beneficial because when it's time to care for my husband, it's not just gonna be me. Yeah. And even if the bulk of it falls on me, his partner will be there to support me and I'll be there to support her. We'll be there together. Of course. There's also potentially gonna.
[00:28:41] Extra drama that's gonna go with that, but mm-hmm. Again, the end of life brings up a lot of issues for people. It's gonna be interesting. If nothing else, I'm really, I think about it of course, because, and I mean, it's part of what I do. So I think about these things and how we're going to navigate it. And I could say for sure that when I started my relationship with my husband 20 something years ago, and we were already.
[00:29:09] We didn't know the term polyamorous at that time, but I didn't think about the long term of what that was gonna look like. Still in my head, I very much had this idea of like, it's gonna be me and it's gonna be Steven, maybe some kids. I don't even know if I want those. But now that the reality is changing and I'm like, oh, but no, for real, like we, we have quite a few people that we're all gonna be aging at the same time.
[00:29:32] Yeah. Potentially all gonna need some kind of care around the same time. What is that gonna look like for us? We'll figure it out, but it's going to be an interesting way of navigating things that we have not really seen as examples from the elders right now
[00:29:49] Jessica: Mm-hmm. Or just the past. I think that that's what allows us to also grow as a society is.
[00:29:57] Seeing the different ways that we can live and that we can come together and that we can choose to take care of each other, because I think that the model that currently exists, I don't think it's. I don't think it's working where all of a sudden you get to a certain age and you're going to a nursing home.
[00:30:15] Actually, the place that I've been really interested, I can believe it's in Finland right now, especially for Alzheimer's individuals. It looks like a little city, but there's care that's around there. And I think that what we need to start to do and when we start to look for these communities is exactly what you just described, is how do we get to support each other later on in life too, because that is always the question.
[00:30:36] That's one of the reasons why some people end up staying. Really crappy relationships is because they just don't want to be alone. And I think if we give ourselves the opportunity to explore and say, I am okay on my own, I am enough on my own, I am me, and I get to be me. Right? Then that also gives us the permission to step into that side and then start to ask questions about, okay, if I am gonna be alone later on.
[00:31:06] What does the definition of alone actually mean to me? Do I get to be surrounded by my community and the people that I love may not be, uh, life's partner, but maybe it's my best friend? And one of the shows, I don't know if you've seen Grace and Frankie, so their whole aspect is they had partners who ended up turning out to be lovers as well.
[00:31:27] And so, cheating and lying throughout their marriage. However, what ended up becoming of it, because those partners ended up coming together, Grace and Frankie ended up becoming best friends, and now when they started dating and they started fighting boyfriends again, they decided that they were like, No, but I still need you.
[00:31:46] You are the most important person to me. Look at the houses of the golden girls, and I've seen that even happen in this era where, as you said, moms are coming together. Moms can then support each other with their kids. The aunt, me, I get to be the best aunt ever. Now we get to explore it and also be okay with it instead of.
[00:32:04] Being shunned and thinking that, oh my goodness, I'm not fitting the, the stereotypical quote unquote, what that family would look like. But now we get to explore what that looks like. And I think that when we do find that community, it makes it that much easier to be able to have conversations around the difficult stuff, the conversations that we need to have with people can feel so vulnerable and we just avoid vulnerable.
[00:32:34] Jill: Because of a variety of different things. I mean, I know for me, I think back to, you know, even childhood of really sharing something with a friend and then it is turned against you and told to everybody and it just became these drama-filled things. And so then you learn to just not be vulnerable and you learn to not share as a way to protect yourself.
[00:32:59] But it also prevents you from finding real deep connections Yeah. With other humans. Yeah. And I have found that in my personal life when it comes to female friends, where again, I think it's partially because growing up there was the drama and the stuff that went with girlfriends. So I have female friends now, but most of my really close friends have always been men.
[00:33:25] Mm. And I miss, I think that connection, like even when you were talking about moving for your best friend, part of me is like, oh, I want that. Like, you know, but I am not going to get that because I also still protect myself by not being super vulnerable around women. Because I just don't want to feel that, whatever that feeling is, where I just didn't feel like I fit in.
[00:33:56] I felt like there was so much judgment and gossip and all this other stuff. So then I put up the wall and then, of course, everybody's gonna think I'm weird, cuz I am the weird one who doesn't talk to anybody,
[00:34:07] Jessica: but we're all a little weird.
[00:34:08] Jill: Oh, totally. And I've learned that too in, my old age is that in the long run, we're all a little bit weird.
[00:34:16] It's just different kind of weird for different people, but I'm learning even now just what it really means to be vulnerable and to have conversations with people that maybe make me feel a little bit uncomfortable. But I realize too that life is short and if I want to form these connections, Maybe I do need to put myself out there and maybe I need to say things that in the past I would've been like, I'm not saying that to her because I don't want her to think this, or I don't want that.
[00:34:49] Now I'm just kinda like, you know what? Fuck it. Like I'm gonna say it. And what's the worst that's gonna happen? Mm-hmm. They're gonna think I'm weird. Okay, fine. But maybe they won't, and maybe that'll be the chance to really form connections. And life is short enough, and I know very. Well now from doing nothing but reading and talking to people about death and dying anymore, when I'm on my deathbed will I regret saying that thing to a woman that maybe looked at me weird and rolled her eyes, or would I potentially regret going through the rest of my life feeling like I don't have a deep connection with any women around me because I have had fear.
[00:35:32] I don't know.
[00:35:33] Jessica: Ooh, good reflection points. Definitely good reflection points. And I don't think we give ourselves the permission to say, on my deathbed, because people think then, Ooh, that's morbid. Why would you say that? And it's like, no, no, let's have a conversation around that. That was something for me that I had to explore where when I was diagnosed with depression, a generalized anxiety disorder, and what I now know to be my third burnout.
[00:35:57] I kept wishing away the next 25, 30 years. I was like, I just have to make it to retirement. I just need to make it to retirement. I'll get through this dental profession and I just have to make it to retirement. But working at the cancer center was just, Hitting myself in the face every single day until it finally clicked where it's just like, not everyone makes it to retirement, right?
[00:36:15] So start having those conversations with yourself. It doesn't have to be morbid. Start having the conversations. No one, no one that I treated ever said, I wish I worked that extra hour. No. People are wanting those connections. And how do we build that? And because being vulnerable means that sometimes we get hurt.
[00:36:33] And a part of our mechanism is avoiding hurt to begin with. We as human, put up those walls, put up those protective mechanisms, but asking ourselves those questions, questions that we would want to be answering on our dock bed gives us the opportunity to live life the way that we want to now, instead of waiting another decade or two decades, or when you've been given diagnosis and you only have six ones left.
[00:36:58] Jill: And so many people don't make it to retirement. Or in my grandfather's case, he retired, found out he had cancer, and died right afterward. Yeah. So he kind of did that with his life of like, you know, I'm just gonna make it until retirement. And then if I remember correctly, he even retired because he found out that my mother was having me.
[00:37:18] So he was like, Ooh, grandbaby, I'm gonna retire so I could be home with the grandbaby. And then he immediately got sick and he died when I was four years old. And so he never had the opportunity to live this life that he'd been holding out for and waiting for. And I know at least in Buddhism, they talk about it a lot.
[00:37:38] But this idea of living in the present moment, because tomorrow's not guaranteed even an hour from now is not guaranteed. And most of us go through life. Waiting for this thing, this, whatever it is out here. I'll be happy when this happens. Yeah. And most of the time it never happens. I think back to, okay, so when I was 20, there was in my head, well, I'll be happy when I have a partner.
[00:38:09] And then I found my partner and my husband's amazing. I love my husband so much, he's my best friend. But then I started working in food service and it's very stressful. So then it was like, well, I'll be happy when I become a pastry chef. And I have that title. And then I became a pastry chef, and then I was burning out and I was.
[00:38:25] I'm 25 and I'm already burning out. I can't do this anymore, so I'll be happy when, and it just like the, when just keeps moving and it keeps moving and it keeps moving. And now eventually I have to be like, okay, so maybe life's not perfect right now, but honestly, I wouldn't change any of it. In the sense that every morning I wake up and I have my husband and I have my children and we're healthy and we have a roof over our head and we have hot water, we have the basics.
[00:38:57] Do we have a ton of money? No. Do I have a fancy car? No. I don't have the things that society says to us will make us happy. And part of me, I think maybe in the. Would kind of be like, well, once I can make this much money, or once we could, now I'm just like, you know what? I might not be here tomorrow. I might not be here a year from now.
[00:39:19] So I'm trying as best as I can to live my life in this moment and appreciate it so that if tomorrow is the day that I'm on my deathbed, I could be like, no, you know what? I'm okay. I'm okay with it. Hopefully it won't be tomorrow. And I think that's some of why people don't wanna think about that or say that either is they feel like saying it means it's gonna make it happen.
[00:39:42] Yes. Like I'm gonna bring that deathbed to me by saying it every time I say it. I still picture myself being in my nineties. I still picture the old lady on my deathbed, laying there, talking to my family, hopefully telling them how much I loved them and how much I appreciated them. Is that what's gonna happen?
[00:40:00] I don't know, but I could still hope that that's what's gonna happen. Mm-hmm. We'll see. Yeah.
[00:40:07] Jessica: Oh, so good. That was so good.
[00:40:11] Jill: Well, good. Thank you. I mean, this has been a great conversation. Is there anything else you wanna let the listeners know about? Do you have any websites, or anything that you want people to know about?
[00:40:21] Jessica: One thing in particular that I work with individuals on is asking those hard questions, being vulnerable with yourself, and it's how do you go about changing that inner voice? Because we do talk to ourselves at times in a very negative berating way. And we would never say those things to someone else, and yet we feel like it's okay to say to ourselves.
[00:40:41] So if you're interested, you can definitely check out more of my stuff at www.drjessicametcalfe.com, and then I'm across all social media platforms with the same at Dr. Jessica Metcalfe.
[00:40:54] Jill: Wonderful. I'll put that all in the show notes as well. And also, you mentioned your friend's book, so mm-hmm. Yeah. What's your friend's name? So that this way if somebody wants to look up the book, we can find it.
[00:41:05] Jessica: Dr. Kim Harms, so she's in the middle of currently writing her second book, but she actually wrote, I believe it's. Called and I can send you the link as well, A Guide to Widowhood, for her first book. Yeah, so it's essentially where a whole bunch of widows has come together to show their stories about navigating those next challenges, and especially around when individuals at her age, she said, we didn't have these conversations, and so how do we go about having them?
[00:41:33] Jill: Perfect. Yeah, I'll definitely put all the links for all of that in the show notes so people can find it. Thank you so much. This was awesome. I had a great time. I didn't know exactly what we were gonna talk about, but I love that. I love that the conversation just goes all over the place and I've really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for coming today.
[00:41:51] Jessica: Thank you so much for having me. This was awesome.
[00:41:52] Jill: Thank you for listening to this episode of Seeing Death. Clearly. My guest next week is Jay. In this episode, he shares his experience of navigating the suicide of his wife and his healing afterward. This is the only interview I've ever done that brought me to tears.
[00:42:09] His story of emotional healing and transformation is a beautiful testimony to hitting the bottom and then finding your way out. And now he uses what he has learned to help others. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend or family member that may find it interesting. Sharing the podcast really helps me get the podcast out to more people.
[00:42:28] If you could leave a five-star review on your favorite platform, it tells the platform that the podcast is worth recommending to others. I'll see you next week on seeing Death clearly.