A Pocket Guide Caregivers Need - You're Not Alone in These Final Conversations

In this conversation, we discuss Ann Thompson's The End-of-Life Caregivers' Pocket Guide. This practical book condenses a lot of information and offers valuable tips. We include personal anecdotes and storytelling elements to foster engagement and help people realize they are not alone in their experiences. This approach effectively combines practical advice with relatable narratives, enhancing communication skills.

We discuss the importance of community support during the dying process, the role of hospice and palliative care, and the significance of Reiki in providing comfort to both caregivers and those who are dying. Anne shares her personal journey and insights into the challenges faced by caregivers, as well as different cultural perspectives on caregiving. The conversation emphasizes the need for open discussions about death and the resources available to support individuals and families during this difficult time.

Videos with poetry from Ann Thompson (USA)

Transcript

Rev Wakil David Matthews (00:01.506)
Welcome everyone. I am Reverend Joaquin David Matthews and today, I'm sorry. by the way, I should say this. We have a good editor. So if you do a stumble like that, just don't worry about it. Today we are really excited to speak with Anne Thompson. Anne is an end of life doula, ordained non-sectarian priest, certified medical Reiki master and Reiki teacher. And she also publishes poetry, vignettes and nonfiction.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (00:09.912)
Okay? Good.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (00:31.136)
Ana Luisa Amandios, my co-host, is taking her daughter to an appointment, so she might be a little bit late or she may not make it, but we will go ahead without her. We want to just, again, be so thankful that Anne could join us today. After a 40-year career as a public health writer, editor, Anne is soon retiring to focus on her soul's true calling to foster healing and transformation throughout the lifespan and especially at the end of life. She recently published a book,

under the pen name Grace Amani, The End of Life Caregiver's Pocket Guide, A Death Duelist Practical Tips on Caring for Dying Loved Ones and Yourself, which is available as a paperback or ebook. And we'll certainly include the link in our podcast notes. And that's pretty much how we found you, I think. Somebody recommended your book. So really glad to have you and glad to hear about your work and so glad you could be here today.

We always like to start by just asking about when you became aware of death yourself.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (01:34.96)
Well, first of all, I would like to say thank you so much for the opportunity to talk with you. I'm very honored and touched and grateful. I also want to mention that my book is now available in audiobook as well for people that may not have the time to read a book. You know, I gave a lot of thought to that question. I was raised in the 60s and 70s by very loving and conservative parents who felt as though

Rev Wakil David Matthews (01:50.273)
Excellent. Yeah.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (02:05.296)
It was in children's best interest to protect them from death. And so I didn't really have any experience with it for a long, long time. I mean, I knew people in my family had died, but it was almost as though, you know, when you're moving and you take a picture off the wall and there's just an empty space, it was as if people just dematerialized. And I'd never really been to any funerals.

I was actually 30 years old and had just started a job as Director of Communications for a private Jesuit prep school in the DC area. And it is, it was and is a very close community. And within days after I started, the director of the board of trustees died suddenly of a heart attack. And my boss asked me to go with her to the viewing.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (02:37.283)
Well.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (02:44.526)
Ugh.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (03:03.76)
And I was just terrified, honestly. I just had never been in that environment before. But what really impressed me was when I got there, it was so clearly a community of love and compassion and people were there to support each other and it was not scary. And strangely and ironically enough, of course, being part of that small community, I ended up finding myself going

Rev Wakil David Matthews (03:03.79)
Hmm.

Thanks

Rev Wakil David Matthews (03:22.648)
Yeah.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (03:31.682)
funerals much more often than I ever expected to. And one of the first quite dramatic experiences I had related to my current calling and death was while I was at this school. There was a student, Jairo Sanchez, who was a senior and had just graduated and on the night of graduation he went out with his friends partying.

and was killed in a car accident. And I had been at this time, around this time, feeling really called to do hands-on healing. And I didn't even know what that meant, but I just somehow felt drawn to do some kind of healing with my hands, even though that was not my career at all and not my education. And when I was in the church in the back of the chapel, it was completely full with all these people in the community.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (04:04.526)
ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (04:30.606)
When Hiro's mom walked in the door past me, my hands started burning and tingling. And I felt really, I intuited that that was a sign to me that I was supposed to go into what I felt drawn to do. So I did go to massage school and there I learned Reiki and I ultimately ended up quitting that job after about nine years and becoming a full-time Reiki and

Rev Wakil David Matthews (04:37.367)
Well...

Rev Wakil David Matthews (04:43.789)
Mm-hmm.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (05:00.144)
massage therapist. And during that time, I was now in my mid-30s, I would say mid to late 30s, and married. And my mom called me one day and was absolutely hysterical. And I said, what happened? And it turned out that her very best friend's son had just been murdered in carjacking. And I

Rev Wakil David Matthews (05:25.431)
Wow.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (05:28.706)
I said, you know, I'll go with you to the funeral. So I took her, I went with her to Utah to the funeral and I rented a car and I drove her around and I found myself in the role of being like a mom to my mother, helping her through this experience that she had always sort of insulated us from. So that I would say were my initial experiences. And then again, due to this community that I worked at being so close and then I ended up marrying a teacher from there.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (05:42.04)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (05:46.84)
Right.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (05:58.649)
I still continue to be quite close to that community through that. My husband and I adopted our daughter and she was about, I would say, seven or eight when we went through this really bizarre period of about five or six years where we lost multiple friends. I think in the course of five to six years, we lost nine or 10 friends, many of whom were

Rev Wakil David Matthews (06:24.256)
Wow.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (06:26.732)
sudden heart attacks or aneurysm or neurological disorders or all sorts of things got to the point where our daughter, whenever we said guess what, she said, who died? But I ended up finding myself in several of these cases actually providing a lot of hands-on support to my friends.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (06:33.742)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (06:40.494)
my, my, yeah, wow.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (06:52.931)
Mm-hmm.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (06:54.0)
And I was with them, probably with three or four of them, I can remember in particular, I was actually at their bedside as they were very, very close to dying. And one in particular was diagnosed with cancer that progressed so quickly, it was literally two weeks. So she hardly even had time to adjust to anything. And I went to visit her and I was holding her hand and she looked at me and said, this is really happening.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (07:07.042)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (07:14.093)
Wow.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (07:24.162)
isn't it? And I looked in her eyes and I've had this experience several times since then and it's really profound. I looked in her eyes and I felt this deep sense of peace. Like, yeah, it's happening and it's okay. It's okay. I just didn't feel panicked. I didn't feel scared.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (07:24.366)
Great, yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (07:40.718)
Mm.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (07:48.099)
And I could just sort of see her whole body relax. I didn't even need to say anything. Just when we locked eyes, it was sort of like there was something inchoate, something nonverbal that just passed between us that it was like, yeah, it's going to be OK.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (07:53.102)
Hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (08:03.638)
Yeah, yeah, that's really a beautiful story and a really beautiful reminder to all of us that there's much more than meets the eye and there's much more going on that we can feel and we can touch. We've talked to people who've had experiences of in communications with people after they've died and and certainly Eureka and that kind of hands on healing thing where you just really remembering that, you know, we have very limited senses really and we don't we don't know all the things that go on.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (08:11.321)
Yeah.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (08:20.996)
Yes.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (08:32.792)
beyond the normal senses or beyond the scientific objectivity, if you will. So great. I'm so glad you could share that with us. So as you're thinking about those experiences, how has that led you to the work you're doing now? How has that affected your life in general?

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (08:37.018)
Yeah. Yeah.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (08:51.31)
Well, it certainly braids in very closely with the Reiki I've been doing for over 30 years. when I practice the Reiki, it gets me in that space, much like meditation, where you're sort of aware of

sensing it in a different way. You're not as tuned into the body. Like when I did massage for nine years, I knew what I was doing. I was in my hands. I knew where the attachments and origins were. knew why I was doing what I was doing and what it would achieve. With Reiki, there's so much more mystery. You just open yourself and allow yourself to be a vehicle for this

mystery to flow through you when you're sort of present to it. You're not doing anything, you're witnessing it. And so there's that similar sense of mystery when I'm practicing Reiki as there is when I've been around people who are dying. And of course that's, I mean I must, I have to qualify I have a saying, these are, I've always been I guess blessed enough to be around people who are dying of natural causes for the most part. I haven't been, you know,

Rev Wakil David Matthews (09:48.718)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (09:59.267)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (10:09.569)
Okay.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (10:12.24)
at the bedside of someone who has died violently or who is in a great deal of pain or suffering. And, you know, we can talk later on, of course, about hospice. think that hospice and palliative care are absolutely key to a peaceful death. But I guess after I had worked with so many friends who were either, you know, very severely ill or indeed terminally ill,

Rev Wakil David Matthews (10:26.338)
Yeah.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (10:39.684)
When my father was diagnosed with pancreas, I'm sorry, not pancreatic, esophageal cancer when he was 88, I knew that I would be there every step of the way. And I thought, well, I should know what I'm doing. I've been intuiting it so far, but I haven't actually studied it. I took a course, was an intensive weekend course in end of life doula.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (10:52.024)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (11:07.864)
training that ended up with a certificate that was taught by the same woman that I learned medical reiki with. And it was such a gift because when dad was, you know, actively dying, you know, he was fortunate enough to die at home with hospice in home. And it was such a blessing to me because I wasn't

Rev Wakil David Matthews (11:14.222)
Mmm.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (11:34.001)
scared. I knew what was happening when all of the physiological changes happened. I could explain to my brother and to my mother, this is what's happening. This is what the body's doing. In fact, I was the one to say to mom, he's dying. And she said, oh, she didn't realize it. She didn't really know. She just thought he was going through a bad patch. I said, no, this is actively happening now. And that was actually a lovely gift because the three of us could experience that without panic.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (11:35.95)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (11:46.392)
Yeah. Wow. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (12:03.3)
without confusion, we were able to support each other. It was just a really beautiful, very gentle experience.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (12:12.878)
Great, yeah. A couple of things that are really important that I really want to reemphasize for the audience. We actually have another person coming on next week. We'll be interviewing her next week and it'll be the week or two, I'm not sure, after yours is aired probably in December sometime at this point. She and I were just talking today and then Louisa and I were just talking as well about the importance of hospice and the importance of palliative care.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (12:39.78)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (12:42.016)
and how people tend to, excuse me a second, we're gonna cut.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (12:51.792)
Oop, you're on mute.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (12:54.328)
People tend to shy away from it or be afraid of it because it seems like if you go on hospice, you're admitting that you're dying, right? Or if you accept palliative care, you're saying, give up. And none of those are true. And what is true is that those are both incredibly wonderful, skilled, beautiful people, angels is the way I think of them, who are just

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (12:58.34)
Yeah. Yeah.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (13:04.238)
Right. Right.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (13:08.336)
Absolutely.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (13:18.842)
True, absolutely.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (13:22.104)
They know what they're doing and doulas as well. That's the other thing I want to point out to our audience is that death doulas have become a thing now. There's a lot more of them around and they are such a blessing to a family before hospice and after death. They can take all of that part and really just like a birth doula, they can really walk you through a midwife. I've heard death doulas call themselves death's midwives. It's a very similar thing. You're really...

because of the knowledge that they have and the experiences they have and the skills that they have, they're able to be there for you, your whole family, your whole community, and really help you walk through this entire process from beginning to end and past the end. So thank you for bringing those up. And just want to really reemphasize all of that for our audience, because we've been talking a lot about that and people who've avoided it, right?

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (14:08.428)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And people often get palliative care and hospice care confused. they think you have, know, the thing is palliative care can be brought in at any point in, you know, the process of any condition, any illness that has, you know, pain or anxiety or any kind of adjunctive problems.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (14:16.439)
Yeah, that's right.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (14:21.71)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (14:25.112)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (14:34.776)
Yeah.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (14:35.618)
above and beyond the illness itself and related to the illness. And you can bring in palliative care at any point. And of course, palliative care is part of hospice care. But for instance, the hospice nurse that we worked with when my dad was, and hospice can be the last six months. And if you rally, you can be taken off hospice and put back into only palliative care. But when my dad was no longer able to eat,

Rev Wakil David Matthews (14:46.072)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (14:57.027)
Mm-hmm.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (15:02.928)
because of his esophageal cancer, he had to have a stomach tube. And the hospice nurse was so wonderful at coaching us and showing us how to use it. And, you know, she was just fabulous. And, you know, she had like two children of her own and she would spend, she would come in middle of the night if we needed her. It was just wonderful. These people are really right. They're like angels. I can't say enough good things about hospice and palliative care people.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (15:06.147)
Mmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (15:17.122)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (15:26.914)
They are, yeah, yeah, yeah.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (15:30.198)
And then also, and I explained this in my book, I do distinguish quite a bit between the two so people understand the difference in all these roles. But an end of life doula really is a non-medical companion, advocate, comforter, information resource. They can kind of be a liaison among all those things, between the family and the patient, between the patient

Rev Wakil David Matthews (15:37.314)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (15:49.42)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (15:57.134)
Yeah.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (15:59.661)
and the clinical team between the clinical team and caregivers, mean, they can really live in all those worlds, but they just are not medical.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (16:03.864)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And still not that well known, but they're starting to be. And so we've promoted them a lot on our podcast. And so I really know that it's a valuable resource for people and really should pay attention to it. And as you mentioned, the hospice people, I think somebody just recently told me that statistically, people only are in hospice for two weeks on average.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (16:12.101)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (16:33.957)
Yes.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (16:35.434)
And they could have six months of incredibly brilliant, wonderful angel-like care instead of waiting till the last minute. we really encourage that. So thanks for bringing that up. We're going to keep emphasizing that. And hope people get that message. So it's really important. Well, tell us more about the work you've done, your book, and some of the work that you're doing now.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (16:40.72)
Exactly. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (16:57.328)
Well, I have done Reiki in addition to and around my day job for all these years. And I am now kind of on the off ramp toward retirement. I'm easing out of my day job and focusing much more on the practicing of Reiki, the teaching of Reiki. And particularly, I'm feeling particularly drawn to integrating Reiki into the end of life.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (17:11.416)
Mm-hmm.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (17:26.818)
experience for the caregivers as well as for the person who is at the end of their lives.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (17:29.164)
Mm-hmm.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (17:37.061)
So right now, I wrote this book actually before I started cutting back on my day job. I just felt really compelled about a year or so ago to do it. I didn't even know then why, but now I kind of understand that there's such a need for people to understand that when they take care of someone else who is either chronically ill, terminally ill, of advanced age, maybe has dementia or is dying, as caregivers, they are

Rev Wakil David Matthews (17:47.438)
Yeah

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (18:06.48)
They often feel, and I can speak from my own experience as well, that you end up feeling overwhelmed. You feel exhausted. You feel isolated. You don't know where to turn. You just, you wish you had more information, but you don't even have the time or energy to find that information. And so after providing care for both my parents at the end of their lives, they've both passed. And again, as I said,

for my friends, I realized that there is such a need for caregivers to have all of that information in one handy place. And my book is really very practical. It's a very short little, I ended up calling it a pocket guide because I realized it was really too short to be a full length book, but it condenses so much information in a short space. And it also includes, know, anecdotes from my own life and, you know, encouragement. I'm trying to

Rev Wakil David Matthews (18:53.847)
Yeah

Rev Wakil David Matthews (18:59.32)
Mm-hmm.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (19:05.38)
help people realize you really aren't alone. You feel like you're alone, but you're one of millions and millions of people doing this. But in the process of doing it, you end up feeling very isolated. So my hope is that not only with the book, but with my work as a Reiki practitioner and with speaking to people and networking with people, I'll be able to get the word out. And I'm actually working very closely with a wonderful man. just love Alejandro Maciel is his name and he is the former

Rev Wakil David Matthews (19:07.758)
you

Rev Wakil David Matthews (19:11.554)
Yeah.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (19:35.193)
managing editor of LA Times Espanol and he has translated my book into Spanish and yeah, we're just about to publish it together and we're trying to reach out to the Latino community because and I knew this from work that I had done as a writer for this organization, Compassionate Choices is a wonderful national nonprofit that advocates for end of life patient care. Yeah. Yeah, it's a wonderful organization, beautiful work.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (19:37.998)
Hmm.

Beautiful.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (19:55.726)
Yeah, I think we've had people on from there. Yeah, beautiful group.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (20:05.206)
One of the women that I worked with there was very networked into the Latino community. And I learned from her that in Latino and other communities of families from other cultures, very often they feel like they shouldn't ask for help, that the family's duty is to be there no matter how much sacrifice you have to make, no matter how hard it is, that's your duty, particularly if you're your parents or your relatives.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (20:25.166)
Mmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (20:32.142)
Yeah.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (20:34.928)
for friends and members of your faith community or whatever. And that's lovely, but if you don't have a support network and if you exhaust yourself, you're not of any use to the person you're trying to support. So Alejandro is feeling really strongly that this meets a huge need in the immigrant community. So he and I are working together to try to do actual outreach and make it more of a community program, not just a book. Yeah, yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (20:44.14)
Yeah, you're not.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (21:01.746)
wow. That's so great. So important. Thanks. Wonderful. Yeah. I love that. Well, just in general, the immigrant community needs a lot of assistance and prayer right now. yeah. Yeah. So that's really wonderful. And have you considered other immigrant communities such as Asian or African or any of those? I know that's a big lift at this point, but there certainly those.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (21:04.773)
Yeah.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (21:10.689)
my god. god, it's so true. Yeah, yeah.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (21:25.464)
Yeah, yeah, no, I definitely would love to reach out more. And again, Compassion and Choices has these wonderful sort of like sub-community groups where they're reaching out to the African-American community. They're reaching out to the disabled community. They're reaching out to all sorts of different communities to bring out the message of end of life patient advocacy and options and compassionate caregiving. Yeah, yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (21:50.254)
Yeah, caregiving, great. Yeah, in our newsletter that's coming out soon, beginning of October, we'll be announcing a new book by one of our friends who came on, Pamela Belier. Well, she didn't write it, but she is fostering it, if you will. She created what's called the Griever's Library. And in the Seattle area, we have seven or eight or book libraries, small book libraries that have just

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (22:11.531)
that's wonderful.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (22:19.502)
grief and loss books and they're categorized by what kind of grief. But they have just put together with the help of a master's student at the University of Washington, a resource page for Mandarin speakers. so, yeah, so we're gonna publish that in our podcast, I mean, in our newsletter to let people know about that.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (22:38.87)
fantastic.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (22:45.53)
That's wonderful.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (22:46.38)
Yeah, I just love that that kind of work is going on, that we're paying attention to the fact that even as we've all grown up in this kind of settler colonial hegemony, that we are the way people are all that matter and we know so much more is needing to be done for everyone else. So thanks so much for that work. Really appreciate that.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (22:56.26)
Yeah.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (22:59.792)
Mm-hmm. for sure. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, and it's especially needed right now because that community is literally under attack. Yeah. Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (23:11.821)
Yeah.

Absolutely. yeah. So sad. Such a sad thing. We try not to get depressed and worn out by that and keep moving, keep doing our work. So, well, that kind of does a good segue into what kind of challenges have you had or do you have in your work or in sharing it?

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (23:20.62)
I know. Yep, yep.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (23:32.785)
Right now, would, to be totally frank, my challenge is trying to extricate myself from the day job world so I can focus myself more on my spiritual work. My husband and I are getting close to retirement age and I will be so thrilled when we can finally retire so I can do this full-time because I've been keeping a foot in both worlds really for 30 years and I feel sort of like

Rev Wakil David Matthews (23:43.874)
Haha.

Mmm.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (24:01.924)
you know, the Janus-faced creature that has two identities, you know, I've got this one identity as a science writer and I'm very practical and I do editing and proofreading and, very rational and I can document everything and do the references on PubMed and all the rest. But then the other part of me is very woo, very woo-woo. And to me, you know, it's, my dad was a nuclear engineer and he was, he always used to say that he didn't understand why people thought that faith and science were a conflict.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (24:04.449)
Right.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (24:16.312)
haha

Right.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (24:32.208)
Because he said, you know, the more you pursue science, the more you realize the mystery and the wonder. And so, yeah, yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (24:39.554)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And some of our skillful, or I don't know, skilled is the word, but most beautifully knowledgeable physicists and scientists have said the same thing, that there's no difference and that we find ourselves, the more we explore science and the more we dig deep, we find ourselves more and more in the spiritual realm of recognizing that those feelings and those connections and those energy things that we

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (24:52.944)
Absolutely.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (25:09.912)
consider woo woo, and I've certainly been guilty of that myself, are real. mean, are real or part of the mystery? Like, what do we know?

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (25:15.888)
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And I think actually the faster our science progresses now with AI and everything else, the more, the closer we're going to get to that realization that it's all the same thing. And when I teach Reiki level two, one of the hard things for people to get their head around, and it was certainly true for me when I first learned it, is that you can actually send the healing energy across time and space.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (25:27.5)
Yeah. Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (25:44.59)
Mm-hmm.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (25:45.155)
And so when I try to explain the context in which that might make sense, I give my students a little kind of quick primer on quantum physics and zero point field and the fact that two electrons that have been connected, once they're separated, no matter how far apart they are, you can do something to one and the other one feels it immediately. our science is actually starting to show us

Rev Wakil David Matthews (25:56.963)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (26:10.85)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (26:14.704)
context in which healing and miracles is completely, they're all, you know, plausible. It's not weird.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (26:20.642)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, even, even I'll even go so far as to say, even if it is weird, what do we know? We have a very, limited spectrum of understanding or feeling and senses. And what I do know and what I've experienced and sounds like you have as well is that these things happen, you know, that people do feel this, it does happen and people connect in this way.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (26:31.672)
Right, right, right, exactly.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (26:45.68)
They do. They do. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (26:50.242)
You know, if we don't know how to prove it scientifically, so what? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, I really appreciate that too. That's really, really well put. So I want to keep track here. We're doing good on time. And is there anything that frightened you about ending your life or the end of life for you or other people in your life?

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (26:53.38)
Right, right, exactly. Yeah.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (27:11.908)
Yeah. The only thing that I feel any concern about is I don't want to suffer and I don't want the people I love to suffer. I don't want anybody to suffer actually. It's very easy to, you know, believe in spirit when your body isn't hurting. But, you know, I've seen people

Rev Wakil David Matthews (27:26.04)
Yeah. Right.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (27:35.47)
Absolutely.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (27:40.261)
go through a lot of suffering and it's very hard to stay focused outside the body when the body needs all the time and attention and energy. So that's again getting back to the palliative care and the hospice care. That's where those providers are absolutely godsends because they really do help you manage that physical part. Yeah, and the doulas, right? The comfort and connection. And other than that, I really

Rev Wakil David Matthews (27:49.047)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (27:53.674)
Exactly.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (27:57.558)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, and the Dulas, yeah, they can just really bring you that connection, yeah.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (28:09.742)
don't have a lot of fear or dread. And I also feel like

Rev Wakil David Matthews (28:10.894)
Mm-hmm.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (28:16.75)
You know, I want to live longer, but if I don't, I've had a really wonderful life. You know? So, yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (28:22.594)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's beautiful. That's really true. In a way, think both Ana Luisa and I have said a couple of times that it's kind of our curiosity. It's one of those big mysteries that we really want to know what happens. We don't get to do it.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (28:34.913)
Exactly.

Yeah, yeah. just, you know, in August, I spent five days in Chicago as volunteering as an energy healer for the people that were working at and attending the International Association for Near Death Studies annual conference, IAMS. That was amazing. I can't recommend the conference enough. It was fascinating, uplifting. The science is

Rev Wakil David Matthews (28:55.844)
yeah. Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (29:00.717)
Mm-hmm.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (29:07.434)
mind-blowing, the people are so loving and open, and people's there is such a huge body of evidence now that is consistent across a variety of experiences that people have when they have a near-death experience and come back. That IANDS is actually advocating to try to get near-death experiences incorporated into the diagnostic

Rev Wakil David Matthews (29:08.632)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (29:16.684)
Yeah, exactly.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (29:22.573)
Yeah, yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (29:26.531)
Mm-hmm.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (29:37.198)
and statistical manual. So it's actually a code that doctors can use so that they can take it seriously and document it better. Yeah, yeah, it was really cool.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (29:39.01)
Mm-hmm. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. One of our early guests was a woman who'd had a near-death experience in her 20s, and she's in her 70s now. And she said when she had that experience, she was working in a psych hospital with schizophrenic patients, and she wouldn't tell anybody because she assumed that she'd be put in the hospital as,

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (30:01.882)
Right?

Right?

Rev Wakil David Matthews (30:06.08)
And so, yeah, we've had people from IANDS come on and speak to us as well. And it's just, as she said at the time when we talked to her, it's such a relief for her and for people like her to know that this is not something she made up and that it really truly happened as she remembers it. It was, it was kind of humorous. She said at one point she was, you know, doing that dialogue, which of course probably happened in seconds, but felt like a long time. And the, the dialogue was the person.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (30:20.496)
Exactly.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (30:34.114)
Whoever was talking to her said, okay, you need to make a decision. We don't have a lot of time here. And so, it's just so beautiful that again, as you say, that we're seeing the science backing up with all of us, many of us anyway, on the mystic path or in that realm of thinking and feeling have felt was true. So, and many people in the spiritual path. So yeah, wonderful. Thank you so much. That's great.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (30:38.096)
Yeah, yeah

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (30:56.068)
Yes. Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (31:02.58)
Is there, let me just check this one more time. Yeah, a couple more things. One is how do you resource yourself? I mean, when you're feeling this overwhelmed, like we spoke about earlier, do you have practices or things that you do to take care of yourself and help yourself? We like to collect these as ideas for our audience.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (31:13.146)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (31:21.676)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I do. When I was taking care of my dad, I basically kept an ongoing journal of not only because, you know, I needed to know what's going on with his health and his medication and questions to ask the doctor, but I also incorporated in that journal my own feelings, my own emotions. And as a creative writer for many decades, I've done sort of real-time

Rev Wakil David Matthews (31:42.382)
Uh-huh.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (31:51.857)
creative nonfiction where I'll, as soon as I hear a conversation, I'll write it down and start narrating it as if I were writing it creatively. So I had done this eight years ago, seven years ago with dad and I'd put it away. I forgot about it completely. And I just found it recently and it brought back not only the experiences themselves and you know, how helpful it was.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (31:53.55)
Mm-hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (32:06.818)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (32:20.794)
to write creatively during that time. But I had forgotten that I actually wrote poems during that time. I had dreams that were very profound. had all these incredible experiences. And I just kept writing them down and writing them down and writing them down. And the writing helped me at the time to cope with the stress. But it's also ended up being an amazing resource now to go back to and learn from.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (32:21.198)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (32:28.846)
Hmm.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (32:35.106)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (32:42.282)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, journaling is a really important tool. Another thing that will be in the newsletter is a new class starting up with Mirabai Star, where she works specifically on journaling and journaling around grief and loss. And I've heard that over and over again. In fact, I think the last person we just talked to said the same thing, besides getting out and being in nature, which is the number one answer, just being able to journal and write things and keep track of them, that sounds like you might have a

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (32:46.158)
Yeah, yeah.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (32:57.22)
Yes.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (33:05.186)
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, and.

Absolutely.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (33:12.086)
a new book in there.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (33:13.944)
I think so. But the other thing I should add though is that it was a whole different experience with my mother because my mother had had mental illness for a long time before she developed dementia and then she had dementia for about five years. So the amount of care, time and attention that she required was so intensive that when my mom passed, I didn't want to write. I didn't want to think about it. I didn't want to talk about it.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (33:29.101)
yeah.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (33:42.201)
I just gave myself permission to not feel anything. I started to berate myself and say, why aren't you feeling sad? And my brother said, well, you know, it's been the long goodbye. We've been saying goodbye to her for years now. So that's part of it. But the other part is you need to give yourself permission to cope in whatever way works for you in that moment. might be not talking to anybody at all. It might be not doing anything but curling up with a blanket.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (33:46.488)
Right?

Rev Wakil David Matthews (33:56.536)
Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (34:04.557)
Sure.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (34:07.854)
Yeah.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (34:11.332)
listening to music. You know, it varies each time.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (34:11.722)
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I spoke to someone who had had similar experience. Their mom had been, well, it kind of begun feeling into dementia 20 years ago and then they spent 15 years with her, you know, first of all, not recognizing them and second being 10 years in a facility and, and they were feeling nothing. were, the biggest feeling they were having was relief and guilt over feeling relieved. And, and I was just like, that's,

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (34:23.056)
Mmm.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (34:31.407)
Yes.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (34:36.578)
Exactly. Exactly.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (34:41.56)
perfectly normal and that you should just embrace that. So yeah, as you said, you should feel all of them, feel all the feels and really honor all of them. Yeah. Well, I appreciate your time. Is there anything you wish I would ask you that you'd like to share before we finish?

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (34:44.344)
Exactly, exactly.

Right. Right. Exactly.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (35:03.44)
How can I get in touch with you again? I really enjoy talking to you and I'd love to be more a part of your community. I'm really interested in it.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (35:11.064)
Great. Well, there is the website for the podcast and when we, and you can, I can also send you my regular email and actually that's where you would, you've got my email because it was how you've got the, the mention of the invitation. So you can, you're welcome to write anything to me there and we can have a conversation. I would love to do that and continue this conversation. Yeah. And yeah, if you write another book,

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (35:26.479)
Yes.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (35:34.192)
Okay. Yeah.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (35:39.672)
We'll definitely post it in our newsletter. I realize I'm talking about our next newsletter when it's going to be probably posted in October. mean, our newsletter is in October and this is going to probably not show up till December. So, apologize to everybody. Make sure you read our old newsletters as well as the new ones. So yeah, we like to just at this point, thank you and say goodbye. Usually, Ann-Louise and I have a little time to talk about.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (35:56.85)
You

Rev Wakil David Matthews (36:07.426)
how wonderful our guests were and we had that at the end, but I'll just do my own. But just really again, thank you for showing up and I look forward to more conversation and learning more about. Yeah, all right, enjoy, have a great day. Bye.

ANN MARGARET THOMPSON (36:14.384)
Thank you. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed speaking with you. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. You too. Take care.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (36:27.062)
Well, I wish Ana Luisa could have been here for that and I know she's going to enjoy the recording. What an incredible person. And we again are so blessed to meet another amazing person out there doing this work. And I love the fact that she really spoke to the difference between hospice and palliative care, how important hospice is. And one thing we've been thinking about a lot lately is how important it is for people to really consider hospice as not giving up.

and getting into palliative care, getting the resources that are available to you and that you deserve at the end of your life. So don't ever think that going into hospice or going into palliative care is some kind of failure on your part. It's so important to just take advantage of those. If you go into hospice and you live for six more months and they say, well, you know, got to be out of hospice, you've had six months of incredibly wonderful care by angels.

who know their work and do a really good job. So much love to all of you and adios, take care.

Rev Wakil David Matthews (37:37.57)
Well, if you missed part of that, I just said much love to all of you. And please do know that you have those resources of hospice care and why not use them? So much love, take care, and we'll be in touch. Bye now.