Death Doula Work, End-of-Life Planning, and Soulful Living with Lisa Cox

Lisa Cox has spent her life as a teacher, guiding people through different stages of learning and growth. Now, as a death doula and shamanic practitioner, she helps individuals and families navigate the profound transition of dying. Her work blends practical support, like completing advance healthcare directives and organizing end-of-life documents, with emotional and spiritual guidance. Lisa emphasizes that dying is a deeply personal experience, and every doula brings unique skills, whether that’s bedside vigil, family mediation, or helping clients prepare in advance.

Through her monthly online Death Cafes with Morbid Anatomy, Lisa creates safe spaces for open conversations about death, grief, and legacy. She has seen firsthand how important it is for people to address end-of-life plans early, noting that hospice care not only improves quality of life but can also extend it when started sooner.

Lisa also speaks about the importance of conscious living, feeding the soul through meaningful experiences, nature, creativity, and connection. She challenges the idea of postponing joy until retirement, urging people to live richly now, regardless of age or health. Her message is clear: planning for death is not just about preparing for the end, it’s about learning to live more fully in the present, so that when the final transition comes, it can be met with peace, dignity, and love.

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Transcript

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Lisa: [00:00:00] For me, it's always been important to be serving others and doing work that meant something to me personally. I do not have a lot to show for it financially. I've lived a rich life, and I wish that for everybody. 

Jill: Welcome back to Seeing Death Clearly. I'm your host, Jill McClennen, a death doula and end-of-life coach.

Here on my show, I have conversations with guests that explore the topics of death, dying, grief, and life itself. My goal is to create a space where you can challenge the ideas you might already have about these subjects. I want to encourage you to open your mind and consider perspectives beyond what you may currently believe to be true.

In this episode, I'm joined by Lisa Cox, a lifelong teacher who now guides people through one of life's greatest transitions. As a death doula and shamanic practitioner, Lisa combines practical support with emotional and spiritual care for both individuals and families. We talk about how each doula brings unique [00:01:00] skills, whether it's bedside, vigil, family mediation, or helping people prepare in advance.

Lisa also stresses the importance of beginning conversations early. Noting that hospice not only improves quality of life, but can even extend it when started sooner, her message is clear. Preparing for death isn't just about the end. It's about living more fully now through creativity, nature, and meaningful connections.

So the final transition can be met with. Peace, dignity, and love. Thank you for joining us for this conversation. Welcome, Lisa to the podcast. Thank you for coming on today. Do you wanna start us off? Tell us a little bit about you, who you are, where you come from, anything like that you wanna share? 

Lisa: Sure.

Thanks Jill. First of all, thanks for making this opportunity available for people. It's really important that we be talking about this stuff. My name is Lisa Cox, and I grew up in Maine. And I am a Wyoming transplant. I have lived in southeast Wyoming about two hours north of Denver for. [00:02:00] About 23 years now, sort of historically, I have most of my life been a teacher of some sort.

I've taught all grade levels, multiple subjects. I'm a bit of a Jill of all trades. I'm here today because I saw your message about talking about end of life, and that's kind of what I do now, is help people through that process. I'm also a shamanic practitioner. I realized about three years ago that there was this, this sort of place where my shamanic practice and caring for my dad come together.

I thought, I'm working with people through all sorts of life transitions. Why not really hone in on helping people at that final transition point? So that's who I am and why I'm here. 

Jill: That's wonderful. You consider yourself an end of life doula. Is that a term that you would [00:03:00] use or what would you call yourself in your end of life work?

Lisa: Yeah, I think that's a really great question. Doula is sort of the term that's out there. I actually did my in-person training with death midwife, so I can call myself a death midwife. I'm also a bit of a wordsmith and being a teacher for a long time as well as a writer and editor. None of those terms really work for me at this point.

I call myself a death attendant. Think of a flight attendant. The flight attendant, as soon as those doors close has you for the whole trip. Right? And that's the way I see my work. So that's the term they use. Planning and going through advanced healthcare directives and making sure you've got your will in place too.

Getting you to your cancer appointments and helping plan a funeral and the whole gamut. So yeah, 

Jill: it's a hard thing describing ourselves and what we do in this end of life [00:04:00] place because people have heard of a doula sometimes, even if they have heard of a doula, they don't always know what that means. I don't know if it really.

Does a good job describing what a lot of us do when we work with people end of life. But I haven't found the term that works. I've gone with end of life coach now. I'm like, I don't know. Maybe I should just say end of life guide, because that feels more like what I do. I'm trying to figure out how to get away from people thinking.

That we only work with folks that are dying. Like you're dying. You call us in at the last moment to help the person. That's not the most effective way to use us though. Right. That's right. Right. And like you were saying about being a wordsmith, I think that's something you probably think about more than I do.

If you think a lot about words and what they mean and how they work, how do we even describe what we do? You said you do shamanic healing practices. I do some of that as well. [00:05:00] I don't lean too much into it for like a variety. I dunno what I'm doing right? Like that's gotta the point that I'm at now where I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing.

Just trying to figure out how to make it easier for people to die. Kind of my goal. It is just like, how can we make it easier for everybody involved when someone's dying? That's what I want. So how do we do that? 

Lisa: And 

Jill: I like the 

Lisa: word guide too, Jill, because a personalized experience dying is very personal, right?

And so. We all have that to face in our futures at some point in time. But exactly like you're saying, whether you call yourself a doula or a midwife or whatever, you choose, coach, guide, attendant. It's a personalized experience for us too, as practitioners. And if you look at the doula model, scope of practice.

Multiple skills that we can draw on, and [00:06:00] every single one of us has different skills. So what is your skillset? I was leading a death cafe yesterday. I've been doing an once a month death cafe online for an organization called Morbid Anatomy. We had a bunch of doulas in our death cafe yesterday, and they were all in the same position.

Like what you're saying. Okay, I'm here to figure it out. What can I bring and what can I do? We're all putting new tools in our tool bags every day, but. The bottom line is you may go into something thinking, this is what I wanna do. For instance, one of the participants yesterday said, I really feel like I'm a hands-on kind of person.

I really wanna do that bedside sitting vigil. I have done that. You know, if you're going to sit vigil with someone, that's something that. You need to be able to put that time aside for I'm hyper organized, so I'm the person who you can come to and I'll help you get [00:07:00] all of that paperwork done. I'll help you go through that process of answering your advanced healthcare directive questions and making sure that plan is in place, that you've got your agents that.

You know, who is your durable or financial power of attorney? How do you choose that person? So we all have a skillset, right? Being able to pinpoint that term for each one of us in our practice, I think is pretty important. You know, that we're even thinking about that. 

Jill: Yeah. Because I think a lot of us go into this work.

Envisioning that we're sitting vigil with people. I remember my mentor, her name's Jill Shock, she does death doula la Um, and so, you know, when I did my training with her, like early 2020, even before like right around when the world was shutting down, I remember her saying to me, you're really not gonna be sitting vigil.

You're not gonna be doing that as [00:08:00] much as you think you're going to. Mm-hmm. And she was like, and really? In the long run, if you do your job well, leading up to it, the people aren't gonna need you to be there. They're gonna be prepared, they're gonna be ready. They're not gonna need to have somebody sitting there with them.

Yeah. And I know that was part of what I really want to do, and I still want to do it. I actually love doing it. Mm-hmm. Logistically, though. It is not easy. Mm-hmm. I have two kids. My husband travels a lot, so getting a phone call in the middle of the night of like, Hey, you know, grandma's dying, can you come sit with us?

That would be hard for me. I could get it done, but it would be difficult and I wouldn't be able to do that. Every week. That's the thing too, right? You've got birth doulas. They know that in nine months the baby's gonna come out. I've had more than one client that said I had six months or less to live. I could think of four of them over the last five years, and they're all still alive.[00:09:00] 

So if I was just waiting around for them to die, and I mean, I'm sure there's some people listening to this going like, that's really terrible. How could she say that? You know what I mean? Like if that's what I was sitting and waiting for. It doesn't work that way with any of life. I'm glad that all of them are still here and they're all doing fairly well.

It's different. It's a whole different thing than I thought it was going to be, and that doesn't mean that it's bad, but it's just not what I was envisioning in my mind when I got into this work. 

Lisa: Yeah. You have seen, you've been practicing for several years and I'm sure that even over that time. Things shift and change.

You are doing your job if you're helping other people prepare for that point in time, right? It's great to know that we can be available to sit vigil, but ideally we'd have. The the people in place who could do that, whether it's family or loved ones. If you are a spiritual [00:10:00] counselor or coach, you may be that person.

But logistically we can't all do that. And I think one of the things that is. Starting to happen in our profession. And of course a lot of this came out of COVID because so many people were dying and so many people were either able or not able to be with their loved ones during that process. And caregiving, I mean, how many of us are aging now in the population and living longer?

And we need our children or family members, husbands, wives, partners to care for us, but. Part of what's coming from all of that is there are a lot of people out there who think this is what I wanna do, and caregiving in any capacity is tremendously challenging and tiring work. And so. I think we all need to go into the [00:11:00] profession with the understanding that we have our own limits on the time that we can give or the energy that we can give, and how can we best do that to help our clients be prepared when the time comes.

Jill: Yeah. Caregiving. And that's a whole topic in and of itself because people don't realize how. Emotionally draining and exhausting. It is. I recently, one of you know, the people that I'm thinking of that like six months or less to live, we thought he was gonna die in January, went through like a crisis. His hospice nurse thought it, hospice social worker thought it, right?

And a group of us came in to help care for him because he doesn't have family, right? Mm-hmm. He didn't have a caregiver. And so because we're all part of the same community. There was the conversation of like, I'm gonna need more help. You know, is that something that I like, Jill? Is that something you could help with?

So like I got together a group of [00:12:00] people and we got through the crisis yesterday. We did the debriefing. One of the people was like. I didn't realize we were supposed to come in and replace hospice. Hospice is not there 24 hours a day. I don't know how to get people to understand this. Hospice is not there 24 hours a day.

We were not replacing hospice. Hospice was still doing their job. They had a nurse come in and aide come in. They had the social worker, they had the chaplain. But that's one hour. There's 23 hours out of the rest of the day that this person could not be by themselves. So yes, we had to spend the night. Yes, we had to be there all the time.

I don't know how we can communicate with people the. Extreme level of care that so many of us are gonna have to give a loved one at the end of life, unless you are very wealthy because paid caregivers, especially if you need a nurse, you're looking at like [00:13:00] hundreds of dollars an hour depending on where you live.

Yeah. I think one of the ones that I contacted, it was like $900 an hour for a nurse. Something crazy where I was like, oh, okay, sure. And like minimum of like 12 hour shifts. I was like, oh yeah. Who can do that? Not so like what are we gonna do for all of these people? And I guess that's where being a teacher, I have a teaching background as well.

Okay. And so, like, you know, there's a lot of things about educating, it's going into our communities and helping to educate people. I don't know. Maybe you have thoughts on that one. I'll start 

Lisa: with, I'm really glad you brought up hospice. I actually got to the point because there are a couple of things with hospice care, right?

One is that you mention hospice could be a. Good resource. I had a client recently, he died in February when I started bringing up, you know, maybe we'll get some resources in place. I think also of the spiritual piece, because [00:14:00] having the chaplain from hospice was so valuable for my dad. You don't have hospice 24 hours a day.

I mentioned to this client, let's start getting some resources in place that might help you with planning and feeling more comfortable in your situation and your partner as well who experiences anxiety. The fact is, Jill, we're all gonna die, right? Yeah. So let's do what we can to be best prepared. I had a conversation with the spiritual director of our local hospice last week.

We met, met for coffee, and I, I was just dumb out. I'm like, how do we approach people and let them know that hospice is a resource? The other end of that is exactly like you were saying. You know, I hear people saying, if I can just get my loved one into hospice care, I can get a break for a night. That's not how [00:15:00] it works.

Hospice is made up of volunteers and they don't have 24 hours a day, right? So we had this conversation. What came out of it, I think we all try to let people know on a daily basis when we meet with a potential or current client, is letting them know hospice is here to help your quality of life. Improve, make sure your quality of life is good rather than the length of life.

Don't worry about hospice. That's not how it works. Education is a huge part of it, not just about caregiving, but caregiving is a huge part of that. Billions of dollars are lost every year with family having to. Stop working or cut back on working to be with a loved one going through end of life. And you're absolutely right.

It is thousands. Hundreds of thousands of dollars a [00:16:00] year to have round the clock care for a loved one. So I wonder what we can do collectively as a society to help this along, because there are a lot of people, and we knew this was coming. We knew. There were going to be a lot of us who were baby boomers, gen X coming up, people were having to drop out of the workforce to care for their aging parents.

They're in their forties at the height of their careers and they're having to put that aside. And my own experience with my dad, I, I was very fortunate that I had a job that I could work mostly remotely. I would fly back to Maine and take care of him for several weeks at a time. I could hold my meetings online and, and that kind of thing for probably the first year that I had to help him out.

But subsequently up to, and even after he went into nursing care, the amount [00:17:00] of time and money that I spent, I drained my savings. You reenter the workforce. Say you're in your forties or you're in your fifties, and you have to sit in an interview and say, I was unable to work full time during this year period because I was caring for my dad.

Right? Potential employers may say, oh, thank you for doing that. That must have been really difficult. But the workforce is not set up for us to come and go that way. So we lose out. And then you've drained your savings, you've gotta go back to work, and nobody wants to hire you because where were you the past three years?

Yeah. It's even simple things like this that people encounter. How can we collectively make life better for all of us helping people face that final transition? It's a great question, right? 

Jill: It's a great question. I'm sure there's some people. Listening to this right [00:18:00] now, and it's scary to think like, oh my gosh, is that gonna be me?

I really try to invite people when you hear these types of conversations and you get scared. To sit with that, to feel it, to honor it. Mm-hmm. And then do something about it. That's why death doulas exist. That's why we have these conversations. That's why I'm making this podcast. A large part of my goal is to help educate people that it doesn't have to be this way.

We can plan better, we can talk to our parents. We could try to have them plan a little bit better. The medical field is so focused on extending life at all costs over quality of life. Your dad, it was three years. Some people, this could be a 10 year process of caregiving because they go to the doctor and they're like, let's try this and let's try that.

And how about this? And it's like. Okay, but to what extent, what is the purpose in doing that if it's a 10 year process of somebody not living the life they [00:19:00] wanted to live? Most people, if you ask them, do you want to put your children through 10 years of having to take care of you and losing their job and draining their savings, they'd say, absolutely not.

So how do we keep finding ourselves in this position? A lot of it is because we're afraid to have difficult conversations. Yes. With our loved ones. We're afraid to have difficult conversations with doctors and we don't know the right questions to ask anyway. Right. You know, when you go to the doctor and they're saying to you, and I'm a big believer of science and medicine.

Mm-hmm. But also alternative options and shamanic healing. Right? Like, I believe all of those things have their place. So I'm not saying don't go to the doctor and don't believe the doctor, but also when you go to the doctor and they're saying, well, you know, you have to do these things. There are people that can help you ask the questions to get the best care that you want.

And you don't know that though, as a lay person, right? Somebody that isn't necessarily working in end of life. [00:20:00] And I don't have any medical background. So like the questions that I've learned to ask, they're really coming from somebody that is like, no, I don't come from this world. This is what I wanna know.

Is this gonna cure me? Is it just going to delay How? Quickly, the disease progresses, but I'm gonna die anyway. Is it gonna give me six months? Is it gonna gimme six years? I wanna know so I can see the bigger picture and make an educated, you know, decision for me and what's best for me. Education is a huge.

Part of it. So yes, I do want people to take this seriously. What we're talking about, being a little bit afraid of this potentially happening to us isn't necessarily a bad thing, but like also we need to do something about it. And you're right. Like collectively, what do we do? Try to change the conversations in our communities.

Right. Like try to encourage the people around us having the death cafes, even though anybody that's never been to a death cafe, there's not a topic. Right. The whole point in [00:21:00] the death cafe is, it's like you go in and you just talk about whatever you wanna talk about when it comes to death and dying.

That's right. Almost inevitably, this conversation's gonna come up in a death cafe at some point. Having classes in your local library, having conversations, you know, going out to like. I don't know anywhere. I feel like anywhere I go, if I'm wearing one of my T-shirts with my logo, somebody is gonna ask me a question, somebody's gonna start a conversation with me.

So it almost feels like I'm always working. We are, 

Lisa: because we're in service. Right Jill, so it doesn't matter. We're out there and you come from a teaching background. I come from a teaching background. You want people to know, you want people to have the resources and the knowledge available. Death Cafe is a great example of offering the opportunity for those conversations.

So when I hold a death cafe, I'm committed to doing one every month this year, and so far so good. When I do an in-person death cafe, it's very interesting, the first person through the door. [00:22:00] Almost always is the person who has the most pressing need, the most pressing question, or in some instances, several months ago, it was a woman who is actually an acquaintance of mine.

She walked through the door and she just started. Howling. I had to be here today because my cousin just died a couple weeks ago on the phone with a family member last night, and I feel terrible. I said the worst thing I could possibly say, and she just needed to process it. It's something that probably.

60% of us deal with when it comes to family and particularly family who are not really part of the picture, and then they come out of the woodwork at some point in time. Another thing we deal with as an end of life servant is the whole family piece. If there's no family, there's caregiving for someone who doesn't have loved ones in [00:23:00] place.

People are starting to get ready to talk more about. Death and make it a part of our existence in this culture because it's been for so long. You know, doctors will tell you, read being mortal taught to extend your life. We are not taught. To extend the quality of your life. So you've gotta have somebody on board who can do that, whether it's a spiritual advisor, which a doula's role can fill or whatever it is.

Somebody who can help you plan ahead, make those decisions about agency and advanced healthcare directives. But I think people are starting to get really, because what is it something like 35% of people. Who are working today have had to start making some accommodations to caregiver for elderly parents or somebody in the family who's terminally ill or aging.

That's a third of [00:24:00] us. You know? And so I think people are starting to realize we've got to ask these questions and address this point as part of a circle. Life is a cycle and this this one point that, why are we so afraid of that? You know, let's talk about it. 

Jill: Yeah. The generational changes are interesting too because my grandmother, she was born in 1916, talking to her throughout my entire life, she took care of her parents at the end of their life.

Like it wasn't. It wasn't something that she talked about it like it was a burden. Like it was hard, like it was heavy, and I'm sure that it was. It was just what you did. That's your parents. That's just part of the cycle. But she also grew up on a farm where there was a bunch of kids. They were raising each other while mom was doing her job and dad was doing his job and the kids were raising each other and also working on the farm.

It was a different culture not that long ago. And now, too, one of the things that I talk about, I [00:25:00] feel like a lot. But it's because, you know, I am one of those people in my mid forties. I waited until I was older to have kids. I still have young kids, young-ish. Right. 11 is still pretty young. 

Lisa: Yep. 

Jill: And I have aging parents.

So I'm really stuck between two places. Taking my mom to doctor's appointments and going places like that with her to be her advocate and to ask the questions and to, you know, talk about like, what's gonna happen because you know, she is aging and is she gonna have enough money to live on her own? How are we gonna do all these things?

While I'm also running kids to school and softball practices and, and trying to work and trying to take care of myself and, you know, it, it's a very different place that we found ourselves in now in this time period. You mentioned earlier, it's not like we didn't know this was coming. Right. But we do a good job of ignoring problems.

[00:26:00] Until we literally can't ignore it anymore, and we just push it off to the next generation. 

Lisa: Oh yeah, that is a hundred percent true. You can look at the advent of modern medicine as part of the problem. You can look at. The advent of the modern mobile workforce as part of the problem, one of the potential solutions is, for instance, in my situation, I was able to work remotely for the most part at that time that I was going back for a month at a time.

So. There are some things we can do. Maybe Zoom is a good thing for the advent of a new era in which we're needing to care for people. A lot of it, I think, is kicking the can down the road because we've known these things were coming issues with modern medicine and the costs associated and a pretty messed up.

Insurance system, [00:27:00] healthcare and health insurance, and one of my things that I've pledged to do in my practice is I do not take insurance. I am a non-medical practitioner and I have no interest in taking insurance or partaking in that. Part of the process in any way, setting your fees and making sure your time is well paid because you can't work 80 hours a week in this work, so you are gonna burn out and you're not going to be able to serve your people.

I use a sliding fee scale. It works out pretty well. I find that most people are willing to pay the higher end. Because they can and see the value in the work. I think about little things like that, tweaks we can make personally and individually in our practices and helping the people we work with make decisions hesitate to call them chains, but we do have some societal chains [00:28:00] that bind us.

In this time when we should be able to liberate ourselves a little bit more, right? 

Jill: Yeah. 

Lisa: Like I don't wanna be tied down to this 40 hour a week job that doesn't feed my soul, but I have to pay the rent, kind of, you know? And then I become terminally. Ill think about. This client who housed in February, it was a year ago.

He retired from a long, long, several decades in service. And when he retired, he knew, but he did not tell. Most of the community kept it amongst himself and his partner really, he had cancer. So here's somebody who's like literally said, geez, I kind of thought the last. My life after I retired was gonna be a little bit better than this.

And that's so tragic because then you think, [00:29:00] this is the same guy that I suggested, let's get some hospice in place. Let's get some, you know, well, no, I don't wanna die. So he hung on as long as he could with a lower quality of life. We're all gonna die. Let's not be killing our souls in the frog. So yeah, 

Jill: I think with hospice, one of the big misconceptions around it is this idea of when I get hospice in, that means I gave up.

That means I'm dying. And really, I've seen people. Transition to hospice live longer. Yes. And have a much higher quality of life than they did when they were doing aggressive treatments that weren't gonna do anything anyway. I don't even know why sometimes people do the treatments that they do. It really can help people live a better life for whatever period of time they have left.

Hospice is quality of life [00:30:00] over quantity of life, but it also can help extend how long you live because you're, I don't know if it's maybe even just like your body's not going through as harsh of a treatment. Some of those treatments are so difficult on your body that. It might end earlier because your body is just worn out and exhausted.

Right. Just can't take the 

Lisa: treatment anymore. Yeah. If it's any consolation, hospice care can extend people's lives. I wanna say an average of 27 to 29 days. That's a full month, and it might not seem like very much. Traditionally, people do wait until the very end to come to hospice. So that's actually a pretty long period of time and it's quality of life.

Meeting with this director last week, I asked him that question. I said, I've seen these studies. I notice extends life, not just improves quality of life, but extends the [00:31:00] time as well. And I said, how do we get people to start? Coming in earlier, so that time is extended even more and that quality becomes even fuller.

He gave me a partnering answer. He said that now over the past little while, they have noticed right here in our local hospice that people are coming in much earlier in the process. And so now we're talking about rather than people being like, I can't do hospice unless I've got less than six months to live.

People are coming in. Earlier in that process. And so I think what we're gonna see is that time extended and the quality as well. So that's kind of heartening. 

Jill: Yeah. There's not a lot of good news in the world right now in general. It's not just end of life care, but at least for me, I know that doing this work changed the way that I live my life.

Mm-hmm. And I do think, you know, my grandfather was one of those [00:32:00] people too that retired. Died within, I think like a year or two of his retirement. So many people do that, and they work with this idea in their mind of, well, I can enjoy life when I get to retirement. That's when I can relax. That's when I can enjoy life.

And then they work and they work and they work and then they die right after they retire. So they never got to that. Well, I'll enjoy life when. There is that balance of we have to make money, right? We are in a society that you need cash money in order to survive, but also, I'm not gonna wait until retirement to live my life.

I'm not gonna wait to enjoy my life because I know that my life could end at any point. Right? Does that scare me? Not really. I drive. More carefully now. Mm-hmm. I'm more aware. I don't really drink anymore, but I definitely don't drink and then drive anymore. Where in the past it would be like a little bit, it won't hurt.

I'm [00:33:00] way more cautious about things now. Yeah. Not even obsessed way, but because I don't want my life to end any earlier, and so I do things to make sure that I do not cause my death any sooner than possible. Also realizing that I have zero control over it in the long run, and it could still end tomorrow.

And so it has changed the way that I live my life. And I want people to experience that same thing to say, you know, that if I get okay with my life ending one day, if I prepare myself mentally, emotionally, spiritually. If I prepare myself by getting my paperwork in order, you know, doing the boring stuff, then you actually can live your life.

So when it does end, hopefully you won't be lying there on your desk bed thinking I wasted my whole life. 

Lisa: Yeah, I think about that all the time. I have had a very. Rich [00:34:00] life in terms of experiences and doing those things that feed my soul. When you walk past someone on the street, or if you work with someone who doesn't have that mindset, it's really easy to see.

We change our lifestyles a little bit when we're in. This profession and working with people and seeing how bleak it can, you know, that gets back to that spiritual piece, right? Like, are we feeding our souls on a regular basis? I was married years ago and we were so broke, right? But his parents came for an upper middle class family, and you know, his mom said to us one time, don't worry about it if you wanna go out and spend money.

We used to go to this restaurant that had live jazz. On Tuesday nights, and she said, do that because that is feeding your soul. You've got to feed your souls and not giving ourselves those experiences and hunching over a computer all day or whatever line [00:35:00] of work it may be. And this is part of that whole modern workplace thing.

We have been taught that the important thing to do is to work, work, work so you can retire and enjoy the last bit of life. Well. What if that doesn't happen? Because it doesn't for a lot of us, right? Some of us don't make it that far, and I'm a little bit older than you, but I'm starting to notice this. My high school classmates, there goes another one.

This is somebody who wasn't retired, was working hard, hard, hard to try to make a box so they could buy that RV and travel around the country. Take the summer off. Go be a camp host, whatever you need to do to feed your soul. You are surrounded by plants. That's the other thing. Mm-hmm. We need to spend more time outside in nature and less time worrying about whether the boss is happy with our performance.

Jill: Nature is huge. Like, it just, it changes my whole mood. It just changes the [00:36:00] way that I feel. And I actually knew a guy, he was like a, an insurance. Salesman or something. Mm-hmm. I met him through like in-person networking real early on when I was like, mm-hmm. Just starting to like go out and network in my community and.

He was, I think like 81 or 82, still working, you know, 40 hours a week. And he had the RV and he talked about how him and his girlfriend wanted to travel and they wanted to do all this stuff and he was like starting a new program that was kind of online. And we met for coffee to talk. Yeah, he kind of said to me, what do you think I should do?

And I said, honestly, I think you should retire. Enjoy your rv. Drive around the country and do all the things that you and your girlfriend wanna do and have that one little online business that maybe doesn't make as much money, but it like runs in the background, but like you don't have to work. And he died of a heart attack not long after this call.

Never traveled, never did the rv, never did [00:37:00] any of it. He just worked and worked. And never took the time. I still think about it and I'm like, man, he asked me why didn't he listen? Maybe he would've gotten at least a few months of traveling around in the rv. But again, my way of. Thinking about things now is just so counter to what he was taught to believe.

Mm-hmm. He was probably looking at me like, who's this crazy hippie lady? Like trying to tell me to quit my job? Well, you're 81 or 82. Gosh, are you gonna retire? Yeah. If you're not gonna do it now, when are you gonna do it? Never got to do the traveling that he wanted to do. Yeah. Because he was just so busy working.

But I think it becomes such a part of our identity. I. Feel like my generation, so many of us have changed jobs so much just because of the way that it is. Mm-hmm. And so I've had to practice letting go of my identity being tied to my career and my title [00:38:00] because that's not who I am. And in the long run, that's not gonna be the main thing.

Yes. When I look back at my life. I was a baker. I taught baking and culinary. That is a huge part of who I am, and I know that I made an impact doing that, but it wasn't that it was me showing up in that work. It was me showing up for the people that I was either working for or had working for me, or my customers or my students.

That's the thing that was me showing up. It didn't matter what my job was. It's so hard to disentangle all that. 

Lisa: Unfor. You go to your job eight or 10 hours a day, and then you have to disentangle yourself from who you are at work to come home and decompress or do something that you love. Not all of us have jobs that we love, right?

For me, it's always been important to be serving others and doing work that meant something to me personally. I do not have a lot to show for it [00:39:00] financially. I've lived a rich life and I wish that. For everybody. It's very sad that this person did not take that option, but I think part of our work in helping people plan for that and it, it does not matter.

You can never start too early. You can never start too early. Some of the things we can help with are how to. Take care of ourselves mentally, how to take care of ourselves physically, how to take care of our affairs so that we don't have to worry if we become ill or if we don't have the capacity anymore.

And, and the, you know, and we don't want our loved ones to take it all on themselves, right? We have a responsibility. To them as well, to live better. That quality of life, that's what it's all about, right? 

Jill: Mm-hmm. 

Lisa: I don't care how long I live, as long as it was a rich life. 

Jill: Yeah. And [00:40:00] yes, our life is pretty short.

Really? Mm-hmm. When you think about it, right? If you live 80 to a hundred years, that's such a small little blip in the grand scheme of things. Yeah. So why take it all so seriously? Why not just go outside and enjoy? Being outside and enjoy the time with your loved ones and do the things that fulfill us.

I'm not gonna have a lot financially to leave behind to anybody, but I hope that my friends and my family. Will remember me being here, showing up, having the conversations and spending the time. That's what I'm gonna leave behind for people. Yeah. You know what? My kids aren't gonna have money, but it's okay, 

Lisa: but they'll know how to leverage lives.

So that's really what it's all about. Whatever your age, whatever your physical condition, whether you have a terminal illness, you may be that person who thinks you've got six months left to live and it's three years. [00:41:00] Right. So make it worthwhile. 

Jill: Exactly. And we are coming up at the end of our time. I know you did mention that you do the death cafes.

Is that something that people can go to a website and sign up for? How does that work? 

Lisa: I do the website. For the online Death cafes, those are hosted through Morbid Anatomy. That's an organization, I wanna say it's morbid anatomy.org that you can find My Death Cafes. I also tend to advertise in-person ones, not just around town here in Laramie, Wyoming, but on the desk cafe.com website.

And so that's a great resource for anybody who wants to find a free n. Again, like you said earlier, Jill, no agenda. You just show up and have the discussions. Desk cafe.com is a place no matter where you are, you can look for these because they've been held in close to a hundred countries over the past 15 years.

You can find one [00:42:00] near you hopefully, and if not anyone can host a death cafe, but we have to start having those conversations. I do my Shamanic healing practice. Both in person here in Laramie and online, and I also accept clients online for planning purposes or here in person in the community. My website, it's kind of a doozy and somebody asked me to change it and I said I can't because it's www and it's pronounced Hirta Hagan, which means Garden of the Heart, and you can find my.

Services there. You can find my calendar of events there and you can also find out how to contact me just to have conversation. So. 

Jill: Wonderful. Yeah, and I'll put a link in the show notes so people can easily find it because yes, that is a, A little bit of a doozy. It's a doozy, yeah. The website name, but it's a beautiful name.

It gives me a visual when I think of it, but people [00:43:00] can easily find the link in the show notes so they can reach out to you. Death cafes are amazing and they are all over the world. I've hosted them myself just right now. It's not. Not something I'm doing right now doesn't mean I won't do it in the future.

Yep. 'cause they are beautiful spaces to just meet really wonderful people and have really lovely conversations. So for sure. Everybody check out Death Cafes. Thank you so much, Lisa, for coming on. This was so lovely to talk to you. I enjoyed 

Lisa: it. Yeah, you 

Jill: too, 

Lisa: Joe. Be in touch anytime. Always happy to. Continue conversation.

Thanks a lot. I, I really appreciate the time today. 

Jill: In my next episode, I'm joined by Tasha Dugan, a funeral director at Philadelphia's historic Laurel Hill Cemetery. Tasha shares her journey from a childhood fear of death to a deeply meaningful career in end of life care. Inspired by her aunt's, work with the medical examiner's office.

She developed a curiosity about death and the stories every life leaves behind that [00:44:00] led her to work as an autopsy technician and eventually as a funeral director, where she now guides families through grief with compassion and dignity. Tasha reflects on how Facing Death transformed her spiritually, leading her to a death positive outlook.

She also talks about the unique history and artistry of Laurel Hill Cemetery. And how she helps families find healing, closure, and even beauty in life's most difficult transition. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or family member who might find it interesting. Your support in spreading the podcast is greatly appreciated.

Please consider subscribing on your. Favorite podcast platform and leaving a five star review, your positive feedback helps recommend the podcast to others. The podcast also offers a paid subscription feature that allows you to financially support the show. Your contribution will help keep the podcast advertisement free, whether your donation is large or small, every amount.

Is valuable. I sincerely appreciate all of you for listening to the show and supporting me in any way you can. You can [00:45:00] find a link in the show notes to subscribe to the paid monthly subscription as well as a link to my Venmo if you prefer to make a one-time contribution. Thank you and I look forward to seeing you in next week's episode of Seeing Death.

Clearly.