S4/E6 Death: The Ultimate Catalyst

Join us today to delve into the complex and often taboo subject of death. We explore personal reflections on mortality, cultural perspectives on death, and the societal challenges surrounding expressing grief.  Our conversation also touches on near-death experiences, the connection between death and behavior change, and the importance of contemplating our own death in order to make important life choices. 

References:
https://www.drpennysartori.com/index.html
https://deathcafe.com/map/
https://bronnieware.com/blog/regrets-of-the-dying/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Proof-Heaven-Neurosurgeons-Journey-Afterlife/dp/0749958790 

Serena’s Links
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/serenapsychologist/
Website: https://thepsychologyschool.co/

Sally’s Links
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sallygarozzomindmentor/
Website: https://www.sallygarozzo.com

Transcript

Serena (00:01.871)
Hello Sally, here we are for episode six of series four and we have decided to end the series and indeed end the year of 2024 with this very happy topic.

Sally (00:07.049)
Okay.

Sally (00:16.75)
you can see me like I am literally dying inside my god what a pun

Serena (00:23.607)
Yeah, you are. So if you haven't guessed already from Sally's Purn, we are going to be talking about death today on the podcast. That's D-E-A-T-H, not D-E-A-F. Death. And it's something I've wanted to talk about on the podcast for quite some time, although quite, quite, it's quite good that we've kind of eased our way into this conversation as well, because it's maybe not the thing, but it should be first out of the gate.

Sally (00:35.743)
Mmm, no.

Serena (00:52.143)
And I thought quite apt that we're looking at it near Christmas, because coming up to Christmas, so some people obviously associate that with religious birth, but also maybe the feeling of death or things coming to a close towards the end of the year. You had that lovely reaction. Tell me about why you that reaction, Sally, as we enter this lovely conversation.

Sally (00:55.01)
Yeah? Yeah?

Sally (01:06.658)
Yeah.

Sally (01:16.044)
Well, this morning as I was thinking, I'll be honest with you, I had a great night's sleep up until about 4 a.m. and then I got this headache and then at five I got up to take some painkillers and then I was like, I can't get back to sleep. So at six I'm getting up and I'm trying to do some yoga nidra and there's this sunrise, this epic sunrise coming up and I'm chuckling to myself thinking, I'm talking about death today.

Serena (01:43.231)
Instagram by the way it's a beautiful photo

Sally (01:45.582)
yeah, the sunrise is here in the winter, that's why I prefer winter to be honest. Anyway, whole other story. And I have no idea what I'm going to talk about today in terms of death and I quite like that. I quite like coming to this sort of very existential, very taboo. This is probably like the most taboo topic, I think, from my point of view anyway, that I tend to address. You know, I've got podcast about menopause. Talk about menopause all the time.

talk about libido and things like that that don't really get spoken about. All kinds of things that don't get spoken about have spoken about grief on the podcast but not actually death before. And for me, this idea of facing your own mortality is just big. And if anything's gonna keep me up at night, it will be that, you know, how am I gonna die?

Serena (02:28.335)
oooo

Sally (02:44.654)
I go there, I go there. How am I gonna die? How would I like to die? How would I not like to die, obviously? mean, yeah, my mind will go there and yeah, mean, in terms of, well, let me throw it back at you. When you think about the subject of death, what do you think?

Serena (02:45.289)
Really? you actually think that?

Serena (03:09.099)
my gosh, how long have we got to talk about my views on this? The podcast is not long enough. So I'd like to start with, I'm going to answer the question, I'm not going to do a politicians thing and go too off topic here, but I often say when it comes to death, think there are, you kind of fall into one of two camps.

Sally (03:13.078)
Or how do you feel? Let's go to the feeling.

Serena (03:37.079)
You are either the person that thought about it from childhood quite a lot or you didn't. Yeah, and I noticed that when I meet people who are like me, which is I was that child that thought about it all the time, that I kind of connect with those people because it feels like it was just so important. It was such a big part of your childhood thinking about it. And obviously when you're a child, a lot of that thought process

Sally (03:42.38)
Okay, that's interesting.

Serena (04:07.223)
around death is more about worry. So I think, you know, from a child worrying that my parents would die and knowing that they would die was something that I was really aware of. And for me, it's turned into an utter fascination. And actually, when I look at my life, death has been all prevalent. And I think it is for everyone, but you either see that or you don't, and you either embrace it or you don't.

Sally (04:13.475)
Yeah.

Sally (04:28.174)
Okay.

Serena (04:30.787)
And I think for me, I've just fully embraced it. It's a really big part of my life and I'm sure we'll get to some of that. It's not about me, but obviously we share a lot of our experiences here. So how do you relate to that? I can see something on the tip of your brain there.

Sally (04:31.074)
Yeah.

Sally (04:39.939)
Mmm.

Well, it just made me think because you've embraced death so much and you know if you don't know Serena is a forensic psychologist so you

Serena (04:57.289)
just a psychologist, yeah, but I've specialised in forensic psychology.

Sally (05:00.126)
Right, yeah, which involves, you know, understanding and profiling serial killers. So getting into the mindsets of people who murder others, you know. It's hard for me to even say that word. Yeah, and I think, you know, so it made me think, why are people, if you've not been very resistant to thinking about death and that you go there,

Serena (05:06.105)
Yeah.

Serena (05:14.295)
Yeah, yeah, it's not nice.

Serena (05:27.759)
Mm.

Sally (05:28.262)
Why are some people in denial of thinking about death or talking about death? Why are some people so resistant to it?

Serena (05:37.099)
I think actually so I think it creates utter utter utter fear. It's the final, it's the final full stop, isn't it? There's no coming back from it. And actually it's interesting. what I did, so for many years, for about seven years, I think I've mentioned this on the podcast before, I used to teach teachers and teaching assistants. We would teach them developmental psychology. And I did

Sally (05:46.849)
Yeah.

Serena (06:04.887)
a really chunky session for those teachers. It was very unusual. It wasn't a standard part of a teaching curriculum, if you like. But I did a session on death and dying. And I did a session on death and dying to teach what we know about how children process death and dying. And it's utterly fascinating when you look at how children make sense of it because

Sally (06:14.604)
Wow, okay.

Serena (06:29.379)
Children, death is actually very abstract to children because they don't have an idea of permanence yet and what that is. So you look at things aligned with what we know of developmental psychology, so things like object permanence, know, things, the theory of mind. So all the things that make sense of how a child makes sense of the world. And it's a real process to understanding death and dying. And one of the things that you look at in depth when I used to teach that was how we

look at death culturally. So, and I think we can, we should speak to that I think, because it's really, really important, because there are other cultures I think that do it better. Obviously, we're here in the UK, if anyone listening overseas, hello our overseas international friends, please comment on this and let us know how you view this in your country and your culture. But I think here in the UK, in England, specifically,

Sally (07:00.867)
Yeah.

Sally (07:10.498)
Yeah.

Serena (07:27.279)
when you look at the history of how we've dealt with it, it's very macabre, it's very dark, it's all associated with sadness and loss and grief. And although arguably that's there for many people's passing, we don't necessarily celebrate it in the way that other cultures and maybe other countries celebrate it. So I know lots of people think of Mexico and the day of the dead and this big celebration. And so...

I think if you start to look at how other people do it, it makes sense of why some people are more fearful. I think there's two things going on there. You can be sad and not fearful.

Sally (07:57.943)
Yeah.

Sally (08:08.483)
Yeah.

Serena (08:09.999)
or sad and fearful. think lots of people fall into the sad and fearful and it's because we don't really think about it, we don't talk about it enough and it's something that's the more, the less you bring something into consciousness, into conversation, the more hidden it is, the more scary it is. So think there's all of those, there's so many factors, I've only just touched upon a few key ones there that play a part.

Sally (08:12.374)
Yeah.

Sally (08:30.285)
Yeah.

Sally (08:36.352)
Yeah, when I was doing my space holding certification course last year, we came across a really beautiful psychology, psychologist who specialized in grief, Francis Weller, and he spoke about death. And he also spoke about how what really stuck out for me was

his words, we're a grief illiterate culture in that we don't really know how to talk about it. We don't really know how to be with people who are grieving. And I've certainly experienced this in my life. You know, I've been so disengaged from those sad emotions that I've not known how to deal with a friend who's

Serena (09:06.094)
Mm.

Serena (09:22.884)
Yeah.

Sally (09:28.81)
relative has passed or a friend whose cat has just died and I've just locked myself in the room and in my own room and gone You know, I really don't know how to deal with this So when you know, I heard this Talk on this grief illiteracy. thought yeah that I've absolutely experienced that myself and even today, you know, I'm In my work with my clients it kind it's fine and it comes out and you know that empathy because you're removed you're a little bit removed from

you know, then you're not attached in the same way that you are to friends or relatives. So there's, it's a different relationship, but when it's someone, you know, how you deal with their display of grief can be very triggering for you. can bring up a lot of feelings within you. And because we're not used to dealing with our own internal worlds, we can feel quite triggered by other people's displays. So, you know, I'm half Italian, right? Half Sicilian.

So you could imagine there's a lot of emotion right? It's, know, you're falling to your knees outside the church and you it's all of that which I found harrowing as a child because my mum's side of the family, British, know, very held together, very buttoned up, no.

Serena (10:42.67)
Yeah.

Serena (10:48.836)
Yeah.

Sally (10:55.564)
tears, no nothing on that side. So there was this real internal conflict for me around how I experienced emotions. My dad was very emotional, my mum not so much, well not all really, and so I'm a bit of both. Very emotional but also quite buttoned up as well sometimes. Don't let myself go there. Yeah, so...

Serena (10:58.031)
Serena (11:15.917)
Yeah, that's so interesting. I actually really relate to that. So I also come from a mixed cultural background. So it's very similar, but different, but the same principle. So my father is from Pakistan and they do death in a very interesting way. Obviously lots of traditions, very similar in terms of an overt display of grief in many ways.

Sally (11:38.029)
Mmm.

Serena (11:46.017)
some traditions that I fundamentally struggle with, such as, for example, females are not allowed at the grave side when someone's being buried, which is a really big issue for me. Although modern families are rebutting that trend a little bit, but anyway, we won't go into that too much today. And then my other side of the family, my mum's side is Irish.

Sally (11:49.613)
Yeah.

Sally (11:55.266)
Huh!

Sally (11:59.532)
Yeah, that's huge.

Sally (12:07.767)
Yeah.

Serena (12:12.441)
So basically you die and you have a piss up. So you have more diversity in terms of going from one extreme to the other. And so, yeah, I relate to what you're saying in terms of like growing up and navigating your way through seeing and experiencing such difference in both of those.

Which I think for me, don't know how it affects you because everyone obviously will be impacted differently by this. But it just gave me such a perspective. It allowed me to, I think this is obviously partly why I ended up being a psychologist, not psychoanalyse me today. But it made me, I had to become the observer. I had to do that to understand what was going on because my world was so different and so.

I think it creates the observer in you because I was just like, I need to understand why this is happening, why is it different?

Sally (13:07.256)
Yeah, it really does,

Sally (13:13.388)
Yeah, yeah you do, go sort of, you step back. It's a sort of a form of perhaps zooming out maybe a little bit of dissociation where you're removing yourself from the thick of it and trying to make sense of it all, so yeah.

Serena (13:18.774)
Yeah.

Serena (13:28.727)
Yeah, yeah, because you've got these two key figures in your life telling you maybe different things, they're experiencing different things, they're viewing the world through a different lens and they are primary caregivers and so you're making sense of why. Anyway, we're going down a different route here. Let's reel that back in. We're not going to die on different route. Let's go back to death.

Sally (13:39.895)
Yeah.

We are, yeah we are. Let's go back to death. Have you ever had a near-death experience?

Serena (13:51.787)
I haven't had a near-death experience. I know people who have had them. And I work with some great researchers at my university who work in the area. yeah, I remember, so another thing, so again, always being lured towards death and dying and wanting to understand it, I did modules on it at university. So when I did my university degree,

Sally (14:05.07)
It's amazing.

Serena (14:20.747)
in New Zealand, did my BSc in psychology and I did most of my other way. If I'd done one more module, my BSc would have actually been in psychology and religious studies, but I didn't have, I just couldn't face doing one more module. I was just done at that point. But the point being is the majority of the BSc was made up with religious studies because I was just so fascinated by it.

Sally (14:33.758)
wow.

Sally (14:37.794)
Hmm.

Serena (14:46.403)
And I did a few modules that we had on death and dying and you look at it from different cultural perspectives and all kinds of things. And one of the ladies in our sessions, it was a very small group actually, she had had two near death experiences and it was such a gift because in this small group in a university setting, she was able to tell her story and kind of really download all that information to us and we could ask loads of questions. It was utterly fascinating, utterly fascinating.

Sally (15:10.859)
I bet.

Serena (15:16.543)
And yeah, because I was just so deeply fascinated by death anyway, hearing something from her perspective. And actually, since then, I've gone on to read so many books on near death again, because I'm drawn to death and dying and understanding. Penny Sartori, if you're listening to this, I cannot recommend her books enough. She's absolutely an amazing researcher. I think we should tag her in here. And she's a nurse who was a cardiology nurse who

Sally (15:20.098)
Yeah.

Serena (15:43.821)
when she was nursing, she noticed that lots of her cardiology patients would kind of come round after an episode and they'd kind of secretly go to her, do you know what, I could see everything that was happening. they kind of start to tell, she was like, she found it fascinating that no one was paying attention to these stories and actually people were really fearful of telling their story. And so she decided to research it. And so alongside her nursing, she picked up a PhD, picked up like you do, because it's such a simple thing.

Sally (15:57.474)
Wow.

Sally (16:05.634)
Mm-hmm.

Sally (16:12.92)
Yeah.

Serena (16:13.741)
and did her PhD in NIDF and she's now a phenomenal researcher in the area. So, sorry, I've taken it I'm just so excited. So have you had one?

Sally (16:22.072)
Yeah, no kids.

I haven't had one, so I've got two things I want to say about this. First of all, I was with my husband, who was my partner at the time, who had one. yeah, and I read the book, Dying to be Me by Anita Morgiani. Have you read that? Yeah. So she reports the same thing where when she was in a coma, she could see everything all at once.

Serena (16:42.979)
Yes, have, yeah, have right now, yeah.

Serena (16:52.909)
Yeah.

Sally (16:53.516)
So she could see her brother flying in to visit her. She could see everyone sitting around the bed and she could see the nurses and doctors outside, you know, figuring out what to do. And she was also having an experience herself talking to her kind of ancestors and loved ones and guardian angels, whatever, about whether she should come back or not. So, you know, for me, that's fascinating. And I had this...

Serena (17:11.279)
Thank

Sally (17:23.542)
I had this realization once, I woke up in the morning once and I had a very vivid dream and I thought to myself, I think that's what death is, dreaming but more real. So it's like being in a dream where you, sort of a multi-dimensional experience but it just feels a little bit more real than.

than just the very lucidness that how we dream. So we do think that when we dream, we're experiencing a mini death. And isn't there a word about dreaming that is like mini death? I can't remember.

Serena (18:07.087)
possibly, but what you're describing is very aligned with Buddhist thought. Yeah, so there's a lot of teachings and traditions in Buddhism that would encourage you to have more control in your sleep. So with in terms of lucidity and lucid dreaming, like we may go off topic topic if I start to talk about that, because that's another area of passion of mine. The links here.

Sally (18:10.966)
I was here.

Sally (18:27.447)
Yeah.

Sally (18:30.902)
Yeah. Yeah.

Serena (18:37.441)
Yeah, yeah, essentially, like one of your jobs while you're here in terms of kind of some Buddhist teachings is to become aware in your sleep and have awareness and have more control over that with the the foresight that if that is similar to a death experience that you will have the control of the experience versus it just happening to you. Yeah.

Sally (18:38.957)
Yeah.

Sally (18:59.66)
Right, when it's finally your time to pop off, it reduces the fear, I suppose. Yeah, it's the ultimate letting go, isn't it? And we're not very good at letting go as a culture.

Serena (19:05.261)
there is a lot of fear associated with it obviously as well.

Serena (19:12.367)
No, and I'm glad that you said that because I think what's important is if we tie it, because I could go honestly Sally, as you can tell, I'm getting very excited by the topic because this is, yeah, I spend a lot of time thinking about this, I think, and doing this work, but just tying it back to the theme of the podcast, which is behaviour change, you've alluded to something really interesting there and I think people might be this kind of knee deep in at this point thinking why, what's this got to do with behaviour change? Well, arguably, this is the ultimate change.

Sally (19:30.552)
Yeah.

Sally (19:40.376)
Okay, yeah, yeah.

Serena (19:41.943)
It's the ultimate change and I think when you're looking at behaviour change, something that, you know, when I'm teaching, I often remind people of is that often people wait for death to make a change or they wait for the threat of death to make a change. And so I think it's important for us to discuss it because it's not ideal to wait for that to make the changes that you want and we don't need to wait for...

Sally (19:57.197)
Yeah.

Serena (20:08.911)
terminal illness, the death of a loved one, our own impending death to actually change something. So there's this idea of what is called mortality salience and we're very, very aware of our death and that can trigger change as I've said. Are we going to say something?

Sally (20:12.141)
Yeah.

Sally (20:28.024)
Well, it just reminded me of something, you know, Stutz. You know, I'm big fan of Stutz. He's got in one of his tools, one of his tools is called Jeopardy. And what you do is you imagine yourself, you go and visit yourself on your death bed and you listen to the advice of the future version of you on his or her or their death bed.

Serena (20:31.085)
Yes, they love it. Yeah.

Serena (20:45.327)
of that.

Serena (20:52.963)
Yeah.

Sally (20:53.704)
and they give you advice, they say to you, don't wait, change now, let go, change that relationship, cut out, whatever, do it because life is short and love more, go on that holiday, whatever. And I think we can learn a lot from our future dying self if we take that time to really...

Sally (21:21.838)
It's future pacing, it's the ultimate future pacing, isn't it? I think future pacing is an NLP term. But that idea of putting yourself in the future and seeing what that future version of you is doing, saying, advising you to do, it's so useful.

Serena (21:36.803)
Yeah, it's so useful. It's also interesting. from a coaching perspective, when you're working with someone, a death question is a very standard coaching question. So questions such as, you've got three months left to live, what do you do with that time? Or you've got a year left to live or two years left to live, what do you do? know, forcing you into thinking around what's important, obviously, and what would you actually do with the time left versus what you're currently doing.

Sally (21:47.459)
Yeah.

Sally (22:04.739)
Yeah.

Serena (22:05.439)
They're really powerful questions if you're listening. If you've not asked yourself questions like that, it's interesting to ponder those to really get a sense of what is important. What do you really want to be doing? What do you want to let go of? What do you feel like you would drop immediately if you knew you only had a year left?

Sally (22:08.589)
Yeah.

Sally (22:17.174)
Yeah.

Sally (22:25.646)
Mmm.

Serena (22:26.511)
It's really powerful to do that and actually something that I created that I do with groups with permission and I get people to obviously opt in or opt out when they do this because it can be very triggering. So you have to know that you have the resilience and want to go there but I do it like a death meditation. Yeah, yeah so really beautiful music getting into the right headspace, eyes closed lying on the floor flat and then to

Sally (22:44.112)
wow, I bet that is profound.

Serena (22:54.743)
What I get people to do actually is imagine that you say your your awareness is walking into the space where your body is lying in a coffin. All of your loved ones are surrounding you. What is it that you want to be known for in that moment? What is the resonance in the room? What do want people to remember of you as they're looking at you? Kind of tying it to legacy. And purpose.

Sally (23:03.202)
Sally (23:18.038)
Yeah, yeah.

Serena (23:21.007)
And all of these little things, so obviously we're not going into depth with any of these things, but all these beautiful little exercises that you can do in the right frame of mind, with the right headspace, with the right support maybe, are things that you can explore. And these things, I think, ease you into death. And these are the things that we don't do to prepare ourselves. It's like a shock. And that's why, going back to what we said right back at the start,

Sally (23:31.448)
Hmm.

Sally (23:39.427)
Yeah.

Sally (23:43.597)
Yeah.

Serena (23:47.629)
because we don't think about it, well I do obviously, and lots of people do do this, but lots of people don't. People don't think, people don't want to think about it.

Sally (23:52.278)
Yeah, yeah and I think exercise, reflective exercises like this I can imagine are so helpful for people who really struggle, you know, my dad bless him, he really really struggles with the idea of letting go, you know, he's 80 whatever mid 80s now and he's still as fit as a fiddle but you know he's talking, I can see him talking about death a lot more and finality and like

Serena (24:02.136)
Serena (24:10.051)
Yeah.

Serena (24:19.502)
Yeah.

Sally (24:20.876)
They do, don't they? Yeah, they're sort of facing their own mortality and it's really, it's coming up now. And I suppose if you have not been a very contemplative person, then it's kind of like you get to this point in your life and if you haven't been that person, it's enforced upon you in a way. And so...

Serena (24:26.948)
Yes.

Serena (24:35.279)
Serena (24:45.773)
Yeah.

Sally (24:48.204)
How do we deal with that? How do we navigate that? Because it can be a shock to the system.

Serena (24:49.753)
Last thing.

think it's why a lot of people then become, this is a bit anecdotal, but it's often why you see people revert back to or start to lean on religion as they get older, I think, because I think needing that sense of something else and needing that sense of support and also there's a community around that sense of impending death that support you in the process because suddenly if you've not thought about it, you can be presented with a very clear framework.

Sally (25:02.894)
Hmm.

Sally (25:08.654)
Yeah.

Serena (25:21.721)
from a religious perspective as to what may happen to you when this happens. But yeah, I mean, it doesn't have to be religious. think ultimately you do what works for you. And I think that, I think ultimately where I'm coming from with this conversation and arguably you are as well is we don't need to wait for it. We don't need to wait for the threat of this idea of mortality salience or.

Sally (25:36.172)
Yeah.

Serena (25:52.079)
and ill health. We don't have to wait for those things to force us to make changes in a way that feels rushed and full of fear and anxiety invoking. are things that you can do now to start to, I don't want to say prepare. It's not like you, it's not preparing for death in the way that it sounds, although there should be some preparation for death, which we can talk about another time. By that, by the way, I mean death admin, which is an absolute.

Sally (25:58.691)
Yeah.

Serena (26:20.089)
because there's so much of it. People don't realise. my god, deaf admin. Deaf admin is it's behemoth. Behemoth? It's so huge you can barely take it all in. yeah, behemoth. There's a lot of stuff that people end up needing to...

Sally (26:23.606)
Really, Death Admin, my god.

Sally (26:30.785)
What was that word?

Sally (26:35.877)
wow, I've never come across that word before. Bohemoth.

Serena (26:44.559)
deal with when someone dies and you just don't realise and you know when you're in the depths of grief having to deal with stuff like that. So actually this is a good segue to talk about something that I'm really passionate about and it's another thing that people can do to help them have this conversation and start to their way in. But there are something called death cafes and I've been going to them for I don't know

Sally (26:45.645)
Hmm.

Sally (27:04.248)
Yeah.

Serena (27:09.391)
I don't know, I want to say maybe about eight years or 10 years. don't know, I've been going for a long time and I've been a facilitator on them for about seven or eight years now as well. So I facilitate on these death cafes. And we have one every couple of months here in Nottingham. But death cafes are all over the world. They were started by a man here, want to say his name's John Underwood in London.

Sally (27:26.636)
Mm-hmm.

Serena (27:33.293)
and he started them because he just thought we don't talk about this enough in society. Yes, amen to that, we don't. So he started them and with the help of his mother who just happened to be a psychotherapist, he said let's just start having a chat and call it a cafe to make it quite relaxed or have a coffee or a cup of tea and a slice of cake and she opened up her home to start the cafe. So I think they had them maybe weekly or monthly, I don't know.

Sally (27:39.061)
Mm-hmm.

Serena (28:00.215)
It was just to start to ease your way into conversations about death and dying. And since then they've taken on a bit of a life of their own. There is a website that you can go to, which again, we'll put the link in the details, which are death cafes, and you can find one near you, and they are literally everywhere. And so what I would say is there are things like that that you can have access to, and it's interesting being a facilitator on those because you have a lot of the same conversations on repeat.

Sally (28:04.278)
Yeah, yeah.

Serena (28:30.189)
A lot of it is very logical, like the death admin side. And then people, the amount of conversations you have, I mean, I've lost count, thousands of conversations about decluttering and what's in your house and who are you gonna leave all this crap to when you've gone? Are you gonna leave your kids to deal with it? If you don't have kids, who's gonna deal with it? It's like all of these questions, all of these conversations are so important. And that's aside from all of the other deeper, more spiritual, esoteric.

Sally (28:53.762)
Yeah.

Serena (28:59.863)
religious conversations that you are privy to, which are really beautiful to have. And people thinking about what they want to happen to their body, where do they want to be buried? so yeah, it's, and I think it does change you. again, going back to what we're focused on, you can't have conversations like that and not feel change or want to make changes in your own life.

Sally (29:02.699)
Yeah.

Sally (29:12.13)
Yeah.

Sally (29:18.274)
Yeah.

Sally (29:24.266)
Yeah, yeah, it's like a catalyst, isn't it, death? It catalyzes, it mobilises, it's, yeah, it really just, it changes everything. So, you know, whether you're experiencing the death of a loved one, whether you've been diagnosed with something, you know, I mean, I hadn't spoken about the Graham's near-death experience, but basically what happened was...

Serena (29:28.365)
Yeah.

Serena (29:35.727)
Hmm.

Serena (29:49.422)
Yeah.

Sally (29:52.19)
he was having gallbladder pain, really horrible gallbladder pain and we'd been in and out of A &E so many times and in fact it's five years ago this year about this time yeah because it was on my birthday when he had his surgery. So he had this really really bad painful episode they gave him some morphine, the morphine didn't work and they gave him a little bit more and they gave him too much.

So I'm sitting by his bed, he wasn't wired up to any monitors or anything like that. And I'm sitting there and at this point in my life, my anxiety was really high anyway, so it was off the scale. And I'd kind of gone into a bit of shutdown. So, you know, a lot of people overreact, I tend to underreact, right? So I'm looking at him and I'm thinking he looks very still and he started to go blue. And I thought to myself, I'm just gonna go to the loo.

Serena (30:33.401)
Bye.

Serena (30:37.593)
Bye.

Serena (30:44.393)
god.

Sally (30:48.394)
I meandered up the corridor slowly slowly sat down off thinking yeah probably should do something about that. Meandered back he was still blue I put my fingers under his nose couldn't feel anything went to the nurse's desk and said my husband looks a bit blue they came back and all hell broke loose his blood saturation his oxygen saturation was 50

Serena (31:11.587)
Yeah. What's on the wall? Jesus.

Sally (31:17.27)
yeah and they gave him a shot of adrenaline and he came back round thank god so he came back with a story I came back with a story as well

Serena (31:23.169)
Yeah, but he came back with the story, I'm hoping. Okay, good. Why the hell did you just wander off to the toilet, Sally? That's the first thing you said. I saw you doing it. Yeah, but what did he see? What did he experience? We have to know.

Sally (31:36.394)
Emotional shutdown, emotional shutdown, yeah.

He experienced the white light. Yeah, he said he saw the white, he said it was the most peaceful, I mean, you can imagine on morphine, right? The most peaceful experience he's ever had. And when he came back, he said it was really traumatic. Well, not, you know, was like, he felt like he'd been punched in the chest because he'd obviously had adrenaline to get him back. So.

Serena (31:45.683)
wow.

Serena (31:52.527)
Hmm.

Serena (32:08.015)
No.

Sally (32:08.866)
But yeah, I think from that moment, both of us, I mean, both of us had this really big wake up call and both started really thinking about death very differently and just being so grateful for what we'd got and so grateful for each other and my God.

Serena (32:25.665)
Yeah. Well, that will do it. That will do it. And it's interesting because in that story, and thank you for sharing that, that's incredible. Graham, nice to have you here, mate. But I think, again, death being this catalyst, the threat of death being a catalyst for change, that we wait for this thing, we wait for something that's so utterly permanent to shift us into change. It's quite

Sally (32:37.144)
Hehehehehe

Sally (32:46.709)
Yeah.

Serena (32:55.304)
Humans are fascinating, aren't they?

Sally (32:57.632)
Yeah, it really is. then when you think about it, like if you have a spiritual belief, that can help you perhaps feel or think or believe that death isn't the ultimate permanence. And that may help, whether it's true or not, we don't know. I mean, there's some evidence to say that it is with these NDE researchers, but it can help us, certainly help us to...

Serena (33:11.939)
Yeah.

Sally (33:25.742)
come to terms with the fact that perhaps it isn't as final as our limited minds think it is, you know.

Serena (33:34.553)
Yeah, I get that. And yeah, we can certainly talk about anything spiritual. And yet I think we can't deny that in this physical, in this moment, this is all we have in this moment. think reminding us that you want to change what's now is really, really important as well. So and both, that duality is important. And especially when it comes to death, it's often about who we're leaving behind as well. And there's a lot of anxiety around that.

Sally (33:44.823)
Yeah.

Sally (33:51.074)
Definitely. Yeah, definitely.

Serena (34:05.257)
and what you're leaving will do to the people really that are there to bear witness to that.

Sally (34:05.356)
Yeah.

Sally (34:09.27)
Yeah. Yeah, and how that will affect them, what it means for them, yeah.

Serena (34:13.327)
and how that will affect them. Most of us maybe listen to this podcast, maybe not everyone, most people have experienced grief and loss in that way. Or there's the impending sense that this is gonna happen soon for you because of someone's ill health or age or whatever it might be. again, it's one of those things we will, death and taxes, you know, that's the saying goes.

Sally (34:26.533)
And we could.

Sally (34:34.455)
Yeah.

Sally (34:40.12)
the ultimate certainty.

Serena (34:41.667)
The ultimate circus is that you will not get away with it. can't... And actually, very quickly, interesting to go back to the research around childhood and developmental understanding of death is really cute. But at a certain age, I think it's between... I think it's around the age of seven that a lot of children think that they can escape death. If they're fast, if they're quick, if they're...

Sally (35:05.558)
Serena (35:09.589)
If they're cheeky enough, they can get away from it like a baddie. it's like death is a presence and they can escape it in some way. Yeah. Yeah. But actually just going so sadly as we grow, we realize that that's not the case. We will all eventually succumb. No, it's going to happen. It's going to happen whether you like it or not. We are all going the same way.

Sally (35:13.431)
Ugh.

Sally (35:18.764)
fascinating.

Sally (35:27.756)
You can't dodge it.

Sally (35:34.787)
It reminds me of that, it might have been the same nurse, the one that said the regrets of the dying, the five regrets of the dying.

Serena (35:41.537)
No, that's another author. can't remember her name off the top of my head, but we should really put her book in as well. can't remember. gosh. Yes, I can see her face. Sorry.

Sally (35:49.219)
Yeah.

But I remember the concept, so that's really important that she had obviously that impact, the five regrets of the dying and I think one of them was not saying I love you enough. You know, and it certainly made me think I sent a really cute text message to my mum and dad this morning, probably as a result of knowing that I was talking about death today.

Serena (35:57.71)
Yeah

Serena (36:05.708)
yeah.

Serena (36:14.713)
that's very interesting. Her name's Bronnie Ware. And actually, just while we're recommending books, I cannot recommend enough the book by Dr. Eben Alexander called Proof of Heaven. If anyone's interested in this conversation and they'd like more books, that is probably my top book to recommend. I'll leave it there.

Sally (36:20.108)
Thank you, Serena. That's amazing.

Sally (36:33.366)
Okay.

Serena (36:41.089)
enjoy it if you read it. I've recommended it and given it as gifts to lots of people. I think there was so much more that we could talk about, but again, we may be leave it there. If you've enjoyed this conversation, I would say definitely ask for a part two, because I can keep going. I haven't even touched on all the people I've been with when they're dying or the autopsies I've been through. And it's like, yeah, death is important to me. So

Sally (36:45.651)
Amazing. Thank you.

Sally (36:58.112)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sally (37:08.62)
Yeah, I would love to talk to you about that, know, like seeing seeing dead bodies and being at the scene of a crime and all things like that. Yeah.

Serena (37:13.999)
Death itself. obviously. yeah, I hope you've enjoyed this very different conversation. Hopefully it's not made you too sad near Christmas. It's about rebirth as well. I think again in the Death Cafe is what's really, really obvious as we're speaking, I often draw attention to it when I'm facilitating, is talking about death is actually talking about living your best life. That is what it's about.

Sally (37:38.934)
Yeah, I was gonna say that actually. I was gonna bring that up. Yeah. Yeah.

Serena (37:41.603)
That is exactly what you do it for. It's to remind you of what you're here for, to embrace living. So that's a lovely way to end. Sally, I think you were going to say something.

Sally (37:51.022)
I was going to say, I was just going to say actually, yeah, I've worked with a client before who had a really bad fear of dying and it all came down ultimately to just fear, fear of...

Serena (38:02.383)
Sally (38:02.798)
fear of living actually and not embracing life, right? So it's how can we embrace life? So I think it's quite nice to finish with some personal reflections, isn't it? how are we going to, like what has been your takeaway? I know for me, my takeaway, I think I'm going to contemplate how, it sounds really morbid, but how I'm going to prepare for death, as in,

you know, some of those journal prompts that you spoke about before, the contemplation and just, yeah, like feeling, feeling more ready for it. And also, yeah, like that will help me live life more to the fullest in a more like expanded humanistic way. Yeah.

Serena (38:34.061)
Yeah

Serena (38:46.447)
love that.

Serena (38:51.511)
Yeah I love that, that's really beautiful. Can we check in on that in the next series and see how that's gone for you? I've got a really practical one, don't laugh. I need to update my will.

Sally (38:56.556)
Yeah, yeah definitely for sure. What about you? Go on.

Sally (39:06.264)
Fair enough!

Serena (39:09.409)
I do a lot of the contemplation. feel I've had my finger, this is no pun intended, I've had my finger on this pulse or lack of. As a child, it's something that's just so in the forefront of my mind in so many ways. I've just thought about it so much. I bring it into my work when I'm coaching. I facilitate on death cafes. I talk about murder.

It's forever prevalent, it's like a constant force in my life. It can. If I don't keep a... Not a lid on it, that was the wrong phrase. If I don't constantly reframe my approach to it and look at it for what it is versus getting sucked into negative emotion around it. Usually if it's negative emotion, it's sadness and grief about loved ones.

Sally (39:41.56)
Does it affect you negatively?

Sally (40:04.173)
Yeah.

Serena (40:05.007)
Because with all the preparation in the world, you are never prepared for the grief that you experience if you lose someone. And I've lost, well, I've lost a parent, which we've not talked about, which is another podcast probably altogether. And there was no grief like it. It's your whole life shifts, I would say, if one that happens to you. And my life was completely flipped upside down and still is to this day. think, again, it's never that you...

Sally (40:11.234)
Hmm.

Sally (40:17.751)
Yeah.

Sally (40:24.087)
Yeah.

Serena (40:31.171)
get over something like that, it's just a different phase of your life, it just looks and feels completely different, it's like you've got a different skin on. And so, yeah, I think it's forever prevalent. I don't regret that it is because I feel more prepared, kind of going forward. And yet, yeah, for me, it does come back to doing some of those things that are lingering, like...

Sally (40:38.177)
Hmm

Serena (40:57.287)
finalising my current will and kind of getting that sorted because these are things that can get messy. We'll leave it at that. So yeah, I'm gonna, I need to update my will. Shit, yes, do, do, Love it. damn. No, that's a good thing. That's a good thing. Accountability, yes, I'm all for it. Let's do it.

Sally (41:04.248)
Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, I'll hold you accountable.

Sally (41:15.24)
That'll be my first question for the next episode.

Sally (41:25.102)
Brilliant.

Serena (41:25.327)
Well yeah, I hope you've enjoyed that everyone. I hope you've taken something from it. We've recommended loads of books and things so we'll stick those below. Let us know what you think. Let us know if you'd like a part two, there's anything that you'd like to hear more about. Like I said, it's certainly the catalyst for change so definitely a key part of our conversation. well, see you in the next series. Merry Christmas. See you in 2025. Bye.

Sally (41:30.836)
Yeah.

Sally (41:43.148)
Yeah awesome, thank you Serena. There we go, happy Christmas everyone!

Bye!