Training Caregivers At The Humane Prison Hospice Project with Laura Musselman

Laura Musselman is the Director of Communications (and program facilitator) for the Humane Prison Hospice Project. She is also a trauma-support specialist and advocate for compassionate, dignified end-of-life care. 

A mother of one child and three dogs, she enjoys exploring how privilege affects access to a “good death” and learning from others’ stories.

In this conversation, Laura Musselman shares her journey from teaching philosophy to becoming an end-of-life care specialist. After losing her parents, she became a doula and now works with the Humane Prison Hospice Project at the Central California Women’s Facility, providing support and education to caregivers in prison. The discussion explores her early awareness of death, the challenges of her work, and the importance of community in caregiving. In this conversation, 
Laura discusses the complexities of self-care in high-stress environments like prisons, the importance of nature and gardening for emotional well-being, and her fears surrounding death and dying. She emphasizes the need for planning and open conversations about end-of-life issues and shares her appreciation for poetry as a means of processing grief.

humaneprisonhospiceproject.org
Insight Garden Project
Buried in Work

Transcript

Annalouiza (00:02.607)
Today we are looking forward to a conversation with Laura Musselman. Laura transitioned from teaching philosophy to end-of-life care after losing both parents. Trained as an end-of-life doula and hospice volunteer, she regularly provides ongoing support and education to the peer caregivers at the Central California Women's Facility. As a director of communications and program facilitator for the Humane Prison Hospice Project,

Laura is also a trauma support specialist and advocate for compassionate, dignified end-of-life care. A mother of one child and three dogs, she enjoys exploring how privilege affects access to good death and learning from others' stories. Welcome, Laura.

Wakil (00:51.596)
Yeah, that's great. So glad you could join us. 

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (00:52.108)
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Wakil
Did we get the last name pronounced correctly? 

Laura Musselman 
You did, actually, which doesn't happen often.

Wakil
Excellent. That's great. 

Annalouiza (01:02.719)
That's so funny because I was going to ask you, my grade school art teacher was named Mrs. Musselman , so. Yeah.

Wakil (01:10.51)
Hahaha.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (01:10.75)
No way! There aren't that many of us, so that's pretty cool.

Wakil (01:13.54)
Probably related, right?

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (01:16.918)
I mean, you know, there's so few of us, I'd be surprised if we weren't, but.

Wakil (01:20.888)
Yeah. Great. Well, again, welcome. So glad to have you. I met you at a conference not too long ago and was really impressed by the work you're doing. So I'm really glad you could join us today. And we like to always start out by asking when you first became aware of death.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (01:39.426)
Yeah, you know, it's funny, this is a question I've actually been mulling over a lot recently because I have a seven year old. And because I do the work that I do, death is not a stranger in our house. And so I've been thinking a lot about when I was, you know, their age and prior to that, and it has become clearer and clearer to me the older I get that death was always something I was aware of.

You know, when I was four, if somebody asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would say that I wanted to be an ambulance. You know, what I meant was a paramedic, but I didn't know the word, but I wanted to be somebody who helped people when they were in need. 

I remember really vividly going to the funeral of my best friend's grandma when I was probably five. we'd play in her house a lot. So she was somebody that I knew and it was an open casket funeral. There was a viewing and I remember looking at her in her casket and there was such an immediate juxtaposition between I'm looking at this person and she's familiar and she looks like the person I know. But importantly, she's not actually there. There was some kind of...

Wakil (03:04.771)
Right.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (03:08.226)
... conflict there between the person I knew and her smile and her laugh and all these other things and the person I was looking at in his casket. And I didn't find it scary. I found it, I think, really mysterious. 

Wakil (03:23.556)
Hmm.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (03:29.25)
And that was just sort of further irritated, I guess, by the fact that when I had questions about death or dying, as all children do at some point, nobody wanted to talk to me about it. So it became this very big, intriguing mystery that I knew was a real thing. And I also knew none of the adults I knew wanted to get into it. And so I kind of got determined to get to the bottom of it. Whatever that means, I was always, you know, in different circles, this can come across as morbid. I think it's okay here. 

Wakil (04:01.198)
Definitely.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (04:27.254)
You know, when I started reading, I was really curious about tragedies. I was fascinated by, you know, the Titanic, know, Pompei. Things were like these. unimaginable tragedies had occurred and so many humans had faced their last moments. And just the idea of, well, gosh, this really does affect everybody and it doesn't affect everybody when you're expecting it drew my attention. Not again in like a negative way, just in a, this seems like a big giant puzzle that I need to solve.

Wakil (04:56.078)
Yeah, nice, Yeah, perfect.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (04:57.684)
Yeah. And I'll add to that, that I wasn't raised in like a particularly religious family. We didn't go to church or anything like that. But I think like a lot of parents, my parents kind of leaned on more religious or spiritual explanations that even as a kid, I just kind of wasn't satisfied with. I remember, you know, being in the car, looking at the sky, thinking like, okay, well, is that heaven?

Annalouiza (05:27.287)
Yeah.

Wakil (05:27.523)
Hahaha

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (05:27.67)
Like, is it that cloud? Like, none of it made any sense to me ever. And so I was just kind of like, I gotta figure this out. I gotta find some answers here.

Wakil (05:37.444)
I love it. Early on curiosity.

Annalouiza (05:40.843)
Yeah. And so actually with that, that's such a board to jump off of because did you ever figure out about death? You know, because how does death impact your life story? Like.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (05:54.912)
Well, yeah, I mean, I there's a good segue there to, know, it's clearly the reason I started in college studying philosophy and I got my degree in philosophy because I thought, okay, maybe this is the thing where I can learn about this massive complicated mystery and I'll find some answers. And of course, the best thing that happened being a student of philosophy was learning that learning and accepting that I don't know is a perfectly fine place to be. That we don't always need to find answers, that sometimes there aren't answers to be had. living in acceptance of that was liberating in a way. But when I started teaching philosophy, it came up so many times that my students would ask, well, are we going to figure out the meaning of life? Like, that, you know, just having to tell them like, no.

Wakil (06:27.278)
Yeah. Yeah

Annalouiza (06:48.311)
yuah

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (06:51.852)
... you're probably just gonna leave with more questions and that's its own gift. Like that's a whole other thing. You know, in philosophy, when we answer a question, it usually becomes its own thing, like astronomy, for example, or, you know, aspects of biology. So, you know, not being able to find that answer is for me extra exciting, but I understand that that can be frustrating for a lot of people. So.

Annalouiza (06:55.705)
Yes.

Wakil (06:57.144)
Yeah, yeah.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (07:19.278)
No, I never I never did get to the bottom of it. But I got okay with that. But I will say, you know, I think my my interest in doing more practical end of life care was in some way fueled by that lack of knowledge. You know, I studied it academically as best I could. And that's when I really started thinking, maybe I need to do this really practically. 

You know, after college, but before graduate school, I applied to mortuary school. I got in. That was kind of my next step. And then both of my parents at once started declining in health. And so I scrapped that idea and went to graduate school to do something completely different. But that was, I think, kind of the turning point for me of, okay, there's not a whole lot of use at this stage in trying to be further cerebral about this, I need to kind of just really see what it's like from the perspective of people who are, who are experiencing it.

Wakil (08:33.592)
Yeah, yeah, perfect. 

Annalouiza (08:36.697)
Whoo!

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (08:43.749)
yeah. Yeah.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (08:54.263)
Yeah.

Wakil (09:03.757)
Well, yeah, and for people who are listening to the audio, they can't see your sweatshirt, but it's beautiful. It's used that we were talking earlier about how that, you know, when you go talk to people or you're standing at the school with your kids, that your kids are fine with it. They're used to it. as Annalouiza says, talks about that too. But it says green burial and aquamation and human composting and open air funeral pyre. So yeah, it gets conversations started, right? Yeah, definitely does. Yeah.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (09:06.656)
It definitely get some looks. And it, you know, I don't get nervous about it in the sense that somebody might ask me and I won't know how to respond. But I get nervous in the sense that I know how hard it is for adults to talk to children about death and dying. It's it's a question I get from, you know, parents, my friends who are parents, is it okay that my kid is asking about death as often as they are? What do I tell them?

You know, I chaperoned a field trip recently and it came up somehow while we were driving, my kid told their classmate what I do for work. And all I could think was, my God, what is this kid going to tell his parents when he gets home today? it was this person.

Wakil (09:49.986)
Hahaha. Right

Annalouiza (09:53.881)
Yeah, well, I will tell you as a long time death positive human being and having gone invited to a lot of dinner parties where I talk about it, either people will recoil in shock and not want to actually engage. And I've seen people leave the table where I'm at when we're talking about death. They're like, no, you know, or.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (10:17.002)
Yep. I saw a guy pick up his chair and turn it the other direction once.

Annalouiza (10:20.877)
Yeah. Oh yeah, no, I've had that happen. And the other extreme is people will always lean in and want to tell their death story. Right. And so it's a great place. Like you get to actually watch humanity and it's like primalness.

Wakil (10:37.796)
Right?

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (10:38.61)
Oh a hundred percent. And it's also just a really excellent boundary that kind of does its own work. You know, if I'm at a dinner party or something like that, for example, and somebody recoils or walks away, no, probably not my people anyway. 

Annalouiza (10:43.886)
Yes. Yeah, right. It's it's it's the tagline right there. Yeah, no, that's okay.

Laura Musselman 
You know, that's fine. 

Wakil (10:52.772)
Really good. Well, well, that's I love that. That's great. Yeah, they may. Right, some point.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (10:58.028)
That's fine, I don't wanna talk to you anyway.

Annalouiza (11:00.153)
Yeah, but someday they'll want to talk to you. I dare to empty it.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (11:03.668)
Right. Yeah. And that's why it's worth it. Right. I mean, not only is it something that, you people like us are passionate about, but I think that's, you know, at least for me, that's a large part of how I got to working in it in the first place was that, you know, my parents died when I was in my twenties and I'm an only child, which is probably why I spent so much time as a kid thinking about these things. I didn't really have any...

Wakil (11:30.125)
Hahaha.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (11:33.602)
...  any siblings to talk to about it. But when my parents died, you know, the consequence of being the only child of two people who really didn't want to talk to me about death and dying was that I wound up in a situation where I was pacing the hallway, you know, after my mom died thinking, my God, what do I do? Like, who do I call? Where's the checklist of things I'm supposed to go through to make sure I do this, you know, quote unquote, the right way.

And I think that's really what it's, you know, at least a third probably of what got me to pivot was if there wasn't already that person in the community, I wanted to be one of those people 

Wakil (12:15.982)
Yeah, yeah.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (12:29.504)
... in the community who understood what it's like to have to go through that. Because it's so lonely and it's so isolating. So I'm happy to be the person that  you know, is that the party that you either don't want to talk to or you've been hoping to talk to and you just didn't know where to find me.

Annalouiza (12:32.729)
We'll take your card. Yeah, totally.
 
Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (12:39.458)
which I feel like is more often than not the case.
 
Wakil (12:34.308)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, absolutely. That's a perfect segue. We want to hear more about what your current role, your current work is. Can you tell us about that some more?

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (12:50.946)
Absolutely. Yeah, well, so after both of my parents died, I wasn't really interested in going back and doing more formal school. 

Wakil (13:02.99)
Mm-hmm.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (13:16.234)
 But I trained as an end of life doula and I started volunteering as much as I could at a nonprofit hospice that was local to me.

I was a patient care volunteer working directly with patients. I was a vigil volunteer at the bedside with people who were actively dying. And then I started facilitating the volunteer trainings at that hospice. And unbeknownst to me, that wonderful local nonprofit hospice had a relationship with a group of peer caregivers at the central California women's facility in central California. 

And there's a hospice nurse who would go out there to provide ongoing education and grief support to those caregivers. And I sort of just jumped in and said, do you need an extra person? And they said, of course we do. 

Wakil (14:00.558)
Yeah.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (14:11.414)
So I started doing that having never been into a prison before. I didn't have anybody in my life growing up who was incarcerated for long periods of time. But there was something about it that I think really resonated with me. I think at that point, I'd been working as an end-of-life doula for a little bit, and it became so clear so quickly that the people who were inquiring about my services were one, people who knew what an end-of-life doula was, and two, people who could afford to pay out of pocket for doula services. 

And, you know, I'm of the belief that everybody deserves good, compassionate, individualized care, but it really got me thinking about my own experience in just the isolation and loneliness of grief and loss and what that must be like when you're already experiencing that isolation and trauma and grief and loss. And it seemed to me that that was a community I really wanted to show up for. I did that for probably six to nine months. And then the Humane Prison Hospice Project was hiring. And I coincidentally came across them when I was teaching ethics.

I showed a short video of one of the co-founders speaking at an event. And so I was already familiar with them and I applied and now I'm the director of communications. And I also go in and facilitate our in-prison programming.

Annalouiza (15:57.027)
Wow. Beautiful.

Wakil (15:58.675)
Yeah. Can you tell us a little more about what that's like? What does the programming look like? Or what would a day look like?

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (16:06.177)
Yeah. You know, I mean, it's always different. The prison system is a very, very unforgiving and unpredictable place. And just, you know, as a very small example, our organization has existed for about eight years, and it's just really in the last year and a half that we've been able to implement this training inside of prisons.

There's a lot of bureaucracy. It takes a lot of time. now that we're in, yeah, I mean, a typical day, the training is an 80-hour training. It's very, very comprehensive. There are 15 modules that make up the training that we go through. I would say maybe half of them are very practical areas of knowledge. 

So, you know, things like disease trajectories, signs and symptoms of dying, the paperwork of healthcare, how to use medical equipment that you might come across. And then the other half are focused more on, I like to think of them as just like human skills that, you know, we're all kind of constantly working on trauma-informed care, active listening and communication. Grief and loss, being a part of a team, spirituality, you name it. 

So it's very comprehensive and really built by the perspectives of people who've had decades of experience working in hospice and palliative care, people who have had decades of experience working in those areas in a correctional environment. And of course, people who are justice involved, who are receiving that care or giving that care in their communities. 

So it's a really well-rounded curriculum and it's also kind of a living curriculum. We just actually wrapped up a training and I'm kind of looking at the post-training evaluations and getting ideas about how we might improve this or that section to meet the needs of that community better. 

So typically, in a day It kind of depends on the module that we're doing, but I would say for the most part, it's just a really collaborative learning experience. It's less didactic. It's not like when I was teaching college, standing in front of a classroom, just lecturing at people for 75 to 90 minutes. We all sit together in a circle, and we have conversations and share experiences and get vulnerable and try to problem solve in creative ways.

Wakil (18:45.721)
Hmm.

Annalouiza (19:02.367)
Laura, who funds this? If it's for the prison system, like who's funding it?

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (19:08.22)
Individual donors and foundation grants. We did get one grant last year from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation that was actually very generous, but because of budget cuts, it will not be available again next year. So we are constantly, constantly hustling for sources of funding.

Annalouiza (19:36.953)
Are these modules available for other folks who are incarcerated who'd want to also be supporting their community?

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (19:45.694)
Not as of yet, although that is something that we're currently working on. I think we're always working on how can we improve or increase access to this material. So we are going to be digitizing the manual to be available on tablets in different locations. But alongside that, we're also in the process of expanding outside of California.

And ideally, anyone who's learning from this material would have some kind of local support coming in to facilitate face-to-face and offer continued training and just support because caregiving is such a difficult, emotional, often thankless job. And if you're doing it inside of a prison, it's even more so. You're not having a lot of space to be heard or share those kinds of feelings about your work. 

So on the one hand, we want it to be accessible. And on the other hand, we want it to be cushioned by community support. 

Wakil (20:58.116)
Mm. Yeah, yeah.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (21:14.006)
So it's something that we're working on, you know, it's new. So we're kind of working out the twists and turns and the bumps as we go, which is fun. Yeah, yeah. 

Annalouiza (21:14.991)
It's life, it's life.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (21:42.344)
So yeah, but I will say, you know, a lot of the peer caregivers we've trained, we've trained about 100 at this point. And actually, this week are graduating another class, which is always a wonderful moment. They'll routinely tell us that, you know, someone who they live with in their building is is wanting to look at the material. or they're talking to their roommates about a mindfulness technique that they learned or something about trauma that they didn't have language for before. 

And that is getting more people in that community interested in what this is about. Because on the surface, it's about having the confidence and a skill set to take care of somebody who's sick and aging and dying. But I think underneath that, it's also about reconciling our own very complicated fears and anxieties and feelings about death.

Wakil (22:20.002)
Yeah, yeah. I really love that, and I remember this from when you were speaking at the conference, this sense that, the sense of going in and creating the community within the system. 

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (22:32.715)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (22:38.703)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil
You know, and teaching people to be, you're not going in and fixing stuff for them, you're teaching them how to help each other, which is a beautiful way of looking at it. I really appreciate that. Yeah. 

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (22:42.976)
Yeah, and they also teach us how they take care of each other. 

Wakil (22:45.57)
Sure, yeah.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (23:12.522)
You know, it's, it's important that because I'm not a member of that community, I have a lot to learn about what that looks like so that we can better meet those needs. you know, a lot of these communities of care, I like to think of it as just supporting them because for the most part, they are preexisting. 

I think when there's a communal need, people will band together to try to meet that need. And that is really often the case. Sometimes, we're training people who are brand new to working in hospice or palliative care. And sometimes we're training people who have worked in hospice for longer than I have. So you know, even the word training sometimes feels a little bit inaccurate.

Annalouiza (23:40.783)
It's like mentoring almost, right?

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (23:41.514)
We haven't figured out. Yeah, it's, I don't know. It's partnering, it's collaborating, it's, yeah, it's giving permission ...

Wakil (23:49.081)
Yeah. Yeah.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (24:09.29)
... I guess, to ask for what you need in a place that does not often want to listen or honor that. That there is empowerment in collaborating with  other community members and demanding your humanity be seen because you deserve that.

Wakil (24:15.96)
Yeah, it's like a companionship, but it's like we're all walking each other home, Yeah. Yeah. Great.

Annalouiza (24:23.831)
Yeah.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (24:24.544)
Yeah, yeah, it's exactly right. That's exactly right. And a lot of our peer caregivers are serving very lengthy sentences. Not all of them, but a lot of them are serving either life or virtual life sentences. And so that existential anxiety is very, very raw and real.

Annalouiza (24:48.089)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil (24:48.504)
Yeah, yeah. Sure.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (24:51.306)
You know, just like I came to this work because I wanted to better understand this big mystery, you know, I think a lot of them in some part come to this work because it's a real problem that affects them directly and affects the members in their community who they care about. And they recognize that it's something that needs to be solved as compassionately as possible.

Wakil (25:14.766)
Yeah. Beautiful. 

Annalouiza (25:21.283)
Yeah. So what are your biggest challenges that you find in the work that you do?

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (25:30.049)
God, where do I start?

Wakil (25:31.586)
Hahaha.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (25:35.232)
Yeah, I was saying to somebody actually at that conference a few weeks ago that it's such a wild spectrum between just immense joy and wonder and like the sharpest rage and fury. 

 And I feel like on any given day I vacillate between both. You know, the wins are few, but when they happen, they're big. When we're able to actually help somebody who's been granted compassionate release, for example, go to a safe place in the community where they can be with their family and friends and receive the care that they need and deserve. That's a, that's spectacular. It also doesn't happen very often when I'm sitting at my desk doing research and I'm reading about politics and things that are on this bill or that bill or coming up in the election or, you know, the way that the state murdered an innocent man just this last month. I, it's, it's rage.

Wakil (26:58.638)
Yeah.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (26:58.986)
It's rage and it's a challenge I think constantly to try to channel that into something that's productive. 

Wakil (27:06.34)
Sure.

Laura Musselman  (she/her/hers) (27:27.924)
Because I can sit here and be angry and I can hope that I just wake up tomorrow and there's a different situation in the world. But short of that, I don't see that there's anything else to do but try to keep trucking forward.

Annalouiza (27:26.115)
Living in paradox? 

Laura Musselman
Yeah, yeah. Which is, mean, that's life, right? 

Wakil (27:35.35)
Exactly. 

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (27:35.68)
Yeah. So yeah, I mean, that's definitely a challenge.

Wakil
So it is about acceptance. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Understood.

Laura Musselman
That's a challenge all the time. And self-care is a big challenge too, if I'm being honest. It's only one of our modules in the curriculum is on, you know, self-care, which is an exceptionally complicated thing to talk about in a prison where, you know, you don't have the luxury of going to your own space and processing things or, you know, doing whatever it is that you need to do to kind of get yourself back to baseline. 

But even not being in that environment, I struggle with it. You know, finding the time to really try to come down and regulate after a day of that wild bonkers spectrum I was mentioning earlier is a challenge. 

Wakil (28:39.78)
Very well segwayed into our next question, which is about, about tell us some of the ways you do take care of yourself and support yourself or what kind of things you need to feel supported.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (29:01.856)
Yeah. I would say at the top of the list is I need alone time to recharge. You know, the job in and of itself is really demanding in terms of emotional labor and support, which I don't mind. 

I also have a child and a partner and three dogs who all also deserve equally my love and attention and affection and care. And there are some days I can tell that I haven't done a good job of carving out that kind of necessary self care for myself when I get to the end of the day. And the only thing I can think is I need to not be needed by anyone. 

Wakil (29:33.952)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (29:52.459)
Yes, I understand this by the way.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (29:56.82)
I don't like getting to that point. Yeah, but it's, you know, it's hard when, you know, you're, you're serving people in your job all day and then you go home and it's, and it's, there are still needs to be met that you want to meet, but you know, what's left, right. After, after doing that all day. So that's, that's at the top of the list.

Wakil (30:19.716)
Yeah.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (30:22.942)
Underneath that, I try when it fits in my schedule to get up from my desk and go to the gym. That definitely qualifies as it's become one of my favorite things to go to the gym and put my phone on do not disturb and just be a little bit absent and just spending time with friends. Honestly, I want to listen to other people's problems, you know, like...

Wakil (30:37.092)
Ha ha.

Annalouiza (30:46.431)
Ha ha ha.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (30:48.61)
Are you going through something? Yeah, I'll absolutely meet you for dinner. Tell me all about it because I need to kind of get my brain off. 

Annalouiza (30:50.319)
Yeah... Yeah... That's so true.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (31:15.936)
You now, equal parts like connection, but also kind of well-intended dissociation from things and then just movement, I would say is a really direct way of feeling like I'm caring for myself. 

The other thing that I'm really not good at and it's been my objective all year long to try to improve it and I have not succeeded is better sleep. I'm trying to really pay attention to my sleep hygiene, but that remains a struggle, which is unfortunate because it fuels so much of everything else.

Wakil (31:37.06)
Right, it does. Yeah, so important.

Annalouiza (31:37.294)
Yeah.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (31:39.234)
So yeah, I realized that was more of a question of what do I not do to support myself? 

Annalouiza (31:48.143)
That's okay. That's okay, yeah.

Laura Musselman
But you need to the lapses before you can address them. yeah.

Wakil (31:52.728)
Yeah, yeah. A lot of, mean, one thing that occurred to me while you were talking about that and talk about the situation you're working in is one of the main things that people always talk about is how much nature helps them recover, you know. 

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (32:05.367)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.

Wakil (32:20.017)
And in prison, that has to be a huge loss to not have any access to the forests, you know, or to trees or the flowers or whatever. And I don't know if there's any. I almost feel like maybe we should be planting little mini forests in the recreation areas or something.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (32:25.046)
Well, I'll really quick shout out another nonprofit organization that does almost exactly that work, which is Insight Garden. They're present at a lot of prisons in California. I'm not sure about outside of California, but they take on gardening projects and invite members of the community there to join in so that people can get their hands in soil and plant something and care for it and watch it grow.

Annalouiza (32:54.372)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil (32:54.789)
nice.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (32:54.938)
One of the things that I say a lot that, you know, I think sounds maybe trite right off the bat is that every prison is different. And, you know, on the face, it kind of seems like, well, of course, you know, they're in different places. They serve different populations, but they're very, very different. I mean, the culture from one prison to the next can be, you know, completely black and white. 

And so, we definitely have prisons in California with beautiful outdoor spaces. The garden outside of the hospice at the California medical facility, for example, is gorgeous. And there's so many beautiful, quiet places to sit and people can tend to the plants and there's a mural and it's, it's outstanding. 

But then you go to, you know, the central California women's facility and you know, we have a garden, but a long time ago, pretty much all the trees got taken out because they didn't want anybody climbing them. So you go there and it's in the central valley during the summer, it's blistering and dry and there's no shade. There's no green. It's completely barren. So yeah, that remains an ongoing struggle as well.

Wakil (34:21.796)
Yeah, thank you. That's interesting. Something else that we don't think of, we who live unincarcerated. Yeah, that's great.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (34:30.486)
Yeah. Yeah. The garden at CMF is really lovely too, because patients who are on hospice service there can be wheeled out into the garden 

Wakil (34:42.188)
Hmm.
Nice.

Laura Musselman
... to just, you know, spend time outside or if their family comes to visit, they can join together outside and have a meal together. 

Annalouiza (34:51.363)
Wow.

Laura Musselman
And it's, it's a really nice place. And I wish, I wish every place had something like that.

Annalouiza (34:57.775)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil (34:58.274)
Yeah, yeah, thank you for that. I'm gonna definitely try to look up, or maybe you could even send me links to any of those things that I can add into our podcast notes. That'd be great. Yeah, yeah.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (35:05.984)
Yeah, Insight Garden for sure.

Annalouiza (35:06.457)
Yeah, yeah. So my next, we're going to pivot from exterior to your interior again. And so what frightens you about the end of life?

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (35:24.642)
Probably equally portioned between really common everyday fears that everybody has about death and dying and things that are really specific to the experience of working in it. I would say for the former, I worry about waking up one day and that's the day that I die and I never get to see my kid again or my partner again, that there's things I've left unfinished or undone, you know, not feeling ready.

On the, on the other side of it, being somebody who works in it, I get very nervous about winding up in a situation where my needs aren't met or my values aren't being honored. So luckily, you know, I'm who I am and the people I love are the people they are. I think everybody in my life who might wind up being that person knows very well and very clear what will and will not be acceptable.

Annalouiza (36:25.871)
Yes. Yeah, I think if you're death-positive, everybody in your inner circle knows exactly all this information because we talk about it so much.

Wakil (36:26.89)
Ha ha ha.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (36:38.046)
Right. Yeah, exactly. You know, and admittedly, I still have, it makes me feel like a hypocrite sometimes, but I still have lot of things undone, you know, I mean, I have a will, I have my advance directive. Luckily, those are living documents. 

Wakil (36:39.544)
Yeah

Annalouiza (36:53.583)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.

Wakil (37:01.784)
Yeah.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (37:08.232)
But I haven't made like, a concrete, you know, do this with my body kind of plan yet, which I think I'm still kind of, it's funny because I think I'm still kind of waiting to see what happens over the next couple of decades, even though I may not have the privilege of experiencing them. And, you know, yeah, that remains undone. But I'm a really big advocate for kind of everybody I know, no matter how old they are, getting at least an advanced directive done.

Wakil (37:13.038)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah.

Annalouiza (37:28.441)
Right.

Annalouiza (37:36.108)
Uh-huh.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (37:37.78)
I've been known to thrust them. I have like a giant stack of like the five wishes handbook that I will just like throw at people like here, just start working on it. Just start thinking it through. 

Annalouiza (37:39.905)
Yeah. Yeah. Don't think about it.

Laura Musselman
Like if you wanna have me over and yeah, we can drink a bottle of wine and talk about it, whatever. Like it doesn't have to be this scary thing, but you can't like ostrich about it, right? 

Annalouiza (37:51.192)
Right.

Wakil (37:55.79)
Yeah.

Laura Musselman
Like you can't put your head in the sand and pretend it's just not happening because it is and it will.

Annalouiza (38:00.875)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil (38:01.188)
Yeah, yeah, so true. Yeah, both of us work on classes or trainings of how to prepare end of life preparation stuff. And one of the things you said reminded me that we often, or I often at least say, just take a little bit at a time. .

Annalouiza (38:18.031)
Mm-hmm.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (38:18.687)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (38:26.243)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil (38:29.966)
Just do a little bit today, a little bit tomorrow, set aside an hour a week to work on your, we have one of these Nokboxes, you know? And just pull something out and say, okay, I'm gonna put the insurance stuff in there today. Yeah, I'm going to start on this. just, you know, because it is, it can be overwhelming if you look at it like, my God, there's so much to do. But then if you just take a little at a time and you prioritize and like you've got the, you know, advanced care directive and the will and trust or whatever, those are maybe the higher priorities, but you can prioritize and you can decide, yeah, this is something I can do today. And this is, you know, I can get my list of people I want to know. I want to make a contact list so they can get in touch with me, that kind of stuff, you know.

Annalouiza (38:58.563)
Yeah.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (38:59.258)
And I think that gets at something important too, which is like, maybe this is the former teacher in me, but I think of it like an exam almost. Like start with the questions you know the answer to. 

Wakil (39:08.014)
Yeah.
Yeah.

Annalouiza (39:11.055)
Yeah, that's great.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (39:24.13)
And kind of work backward from there, because if you do it that way, if you start small and you just start with the things you know, then you're chipping away at it little by little, and then eventually it's done. There's also so many great tools and resources now for doing that. Like, you know, the death deck, for example.

Wakil (39:26.392)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (39:27.652)
Yeah.

Wakil (39:31.918)
Mm-hmm.

Laura Musselman
You know, it's a deck of cards and it's, and it's fun and you can go through it and you can go through it with your family and your friends and, and really intentionally or unintentionally even uncover values that you have or wants that you have that you may not have realized.

Annalouiza (39:46.105)
Right. I also mean that there's, there's that whole aspect that I, I, I enjoy talking to my daughter about, like, even though I haven't filled out my Nokbox folders, I've already had a conversation with Lucero as I was flipping through them. I was like this information, this information, this information. but one thing that it just came to me just a few months ago when my son was over for a visit and he was coming through my room and he said, Hey, when you die, can I have all your toys?

Wakil (40:13.568)
Ha ha ha

Annalouiza (40:13.741)
Because because I have collected really cool like pop Funko figures 

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (40:18.896)
Oh yeah!

Wakil (40:21.388)
Hahaha!

Annalouiza
And I've got like whole Pee Herman set like, you know, like, seriously, I, I know. So yeah. yeah. 

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (40:23.379)
my God, will you send me a picture of that? That sounds so awesome.

Annalouiza (40:41.353)
So in my twenties, I started collecting toys and, and I have them, I have them all. And so he wants them. And I realized in that moment that my kids won't fight about a house or I don't know. They won't fight about the things that people sometimes fight about. They're going to fight about the toys. 

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (40:45.014)
Yeah. Yeah.

Wakil (40:46.562)
Hahaha.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (40:55.223)
Yeah.

Annalouiza
And so I actually started thinking I need to catalog all of them and actually divvy them up because I don't want that pressure for them to like be mad about it. Right. I'd rather gift it and let them know rather than because part of me was like just figure it out. Right. But actually that's kind of a mean way to do it for them because there will be issues.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (41:06.9)
Yeah. I think, I think there's, you know, that brings kind of two things to my mind. One of which is that, you know, if you're already kind of in advance telling them like, Hey, this is your, you know, box of toys and this is yours. You also then still have time to create memories with them involving those items that will be nice for them to have later. 

Wakil (41:27.001)
Yeah.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (41:36.338)
But also it's, you know, I just think making those plans as specifically as possible is the greatest gift we can give to the people we love. 

Annalouiza (41:40.995)
Yes. Yep.

Wakil (41:51.374)
Yeah, yeah.

Annalouiza (41:51.885)
Yes.

Laura Musselman
Because being left grieving a loved one and having a mess to deal with is horrific. Horrific.

Wakil (41:54.498)
Yes, Yeah, we've all dealt with that, I think we had a guy on who does something similar to the knockbox has a beautiful website called buried in work, which I highly recommend. 

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (41:59.233)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. I'm gonna write that down.

Wakil (42:24.174)
And he has like card games, his card games and other stuff. And he's got a huge resource list there. But he was he was saying that too, that just the more you can have these things in place and ready to go that the biggest gift you can give to people, you know, so I love that. So thank you, yeah, that's very true. That's very much what we need to do. 

So we're pretty much at the end of our time and we always like to end up with something like, what do you wish we had asked that we didn't ask? Is there anything else you'd like to share?

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (42:37.144)
Oh gosh. No, I feel like this was, that went so fast. This was just such an organic, fun conversation. I can't think of anything.

Wakil (42:49.06)
Great. Well, thank you. It's been great having you on and you have a poem you'd like to share.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (42:55.242)
Yeah. When you were asking me earlier and I was like, gosh, I don't know if anything comes to mind. My brain kind of smacked me and said, Mary Oliver, obviously, for two reasons, you know, my, my quote unquote doula bag when I have a client doesn't have much in it because I prefer to be very flexible. But it does have Mary Oliver's devotions in it all of the time. Not necessarily for the person I'm serving just for me. 

Wakil (43:27.182)
Yeah.

Annalouiza (43:50.645)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Wakil (43:51.054)
Mm-hmm.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (43:53.548)
But, and this isn't the poem I'm going to read. After my grandmother died, who was maybe the person I was closest to in my life, and my last family member, I walked out of her room and there was a binder at the nurse's station with, I think it was Wild Geese by Mary Oliver, just slapped right on the front of it. And I was like, thank you, Mary, you're here. But I figured I would read a pretty song. Oliver, because I always feel like it really encapsulates grief. So, should I go ahead?

Annalouiza (44:07.407)
Mm-hmm.

Wakil (44:07.748)
Yeah.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (44:11.724)
A Pretty Song

From the complications of loving you
I think there is no end or return.
No answer, no coming out of it.

Which is the only way to love, isn’t it?
This isn’t a playground, this is
earth, our heaven, for a while.

Therefore I have given precedence
to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods
that hold you in the center of my world.

And I say to my body: grow thinner still.
And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song.
And I say to my heart: rave on.

(© 2006 by Mary Oliver)

Wakil (44:50.158)
Saint Mary. 

Annalouiza (44:51.449)
St. Mary Oliver, yeah. Always.

Wakil
Thank you. Thank you so much. Beautiful. Yeah. 

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (44:51.934)
yes. Yeah, she got it.

Wakil
Well, thank you again for being willing to join us in your beautiful story and your amazing work. We really appreciate you and all you're doing. 

Annalouiza (45:03.694)
Yes.

Laura Musselman (she/her/hers) (45:08.076)
Thank you for inviting me.