Let's Talk About Death, Baby // Alua Arthur's "Briefly, Perfectly, Human"

Are you living your most authentic life?

Mortality has a way of cutting through noise. My friend, Cara, and I open season three with Alua Arthur’s memoir Briefly Perfectly Human and ask how getting real about death can help us live with more honesty, tenderness, and courage today. Cara shares first-hand insights from death doula training, and together we map the terrain so many of us avoid: grief that won’t be rushed, hard choices families face, and the practical steps that turn love into action at the end of life.

If these questions (the same ones many contemplate on their death beds) stir something in you: Who did I love? How did I love? Was I loved?... you’re in the right place! Listen, reflect, and then tell someone you trust what matters to you. Subscribe, share this episode with a friend who needs it, and leave a review to help more people find the show. 

Support the show:
On Patreon
Buy us a book
Buy cute merch
Subscribe to the Babes in Bookland Substack

Link to this episode’s book:
Briefly, Perfectly, Human by Alua Arthur

Other episodes to check out:
AUTHOR CHAT: Brittany Penner's "Children Like Us"
Cara's other episode: Anna Dorn's "Bad Lawyer" 

Other resources:
Hospice nurse Barbara Karnes’ booklets 

For people who want to learn how to become a death doula:
Going with Grace – Alua’s company!
NEDA (National End-of-Life Doula Alliance) 

For people looking to get their end of life paperwork in order:
Compassion & Choices
GYST  

A good article about different eco-friendly ways to dispose of body.  https://curious.earth/blog/sustainable-green-burials/

Books for children about death/dying:
Everywhere, Still , Maybe Tomorrow,  The Rabbit Listened , All About Grief 
 
Special thanks to my dear friend, Cara. 
Xx, Alex

Follow us on instagram! @babesinbooklandpod 

Transcript

Welcome To Season Three

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hi, welcome to Babes in Bookland, your women's memoir podcast. I'm your host, Alex Franca, and my friend Kara's back today. Welcome to season three. We're starting it off with a good one. Aloa Arthur's Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End. As always, if you want to hear the extended version of this discussion, you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Patreon, and you can further support the show by purchasing some of our cute merch from TeePublic.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Hi, Cara. Hi, Alex. I'm so happy to be here to talk about this book.

What A Death Doula Does

SPEAKER_02 0:46

It's near and dear to you, I know, and we're gonna get to that. I found it so inspirational and thought-provoking. To me, her memoir really encourages us all to get real with what we want, who we are, how we want to live our lives. So one thing that I really appreciated was Alua's recognition of the ways we die many times throughout our lives, the good ways and the heartbreaking ways. Her memoir encourages you to get real with the maybe for some harsh truth. You will die, and you don't know when or how. So, what can you do to live your most authentic life right now? As we go through our story, we will see how Aluest struggled to live her most authentic life instead of the one she felt she was supposed to want or live. And I think we can all relate to that. We may feel those pressures differently, be conditioned to believe that different things are, quote, what's best for us, and we have to either find the courage or not to live the life we choose, but maybe we can all recognize we, quote, are currently distracted by the daily business of living. One day we will die. If we sensed the immediacy of life, what would we be doing differently right now? How many unwritten books, undeclared loves, and unfulfilled dreams lie dormant here in these bodies? The only thing in our control is how we choose to engage with our mortality once we become aware of it. And uh, we're gonna go further into that. First, let's start with the stuff we always cover. This book was published in 2024, and this is Alua's dedication to the too much, to the not enough, to the wanderers, to the aching dreamers, to the perpetual seekers of nothing to be found. She also has an in-loving memory section which includes her family, ancestors, clients, and every person who came before and has died. All right, y'all, for my quick topics, I'm just tossing it over to Kara because Kara, you have met Alua and you trained to be a death doula.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Take it away. Yeah, so uh, yeah, as you said earlier, this is very near and dear to my heart. And two years ago, I did a Death Doula training. It's an immersive long weekend training with the author, Aloa Arthur, and her amazing team at Growing with Grace. Honestly, I can say it was a life-altering experience. I truly can't thank them enough for it. And I plan to send this podcast to her team and to everybody, all the other 35 or so students that went through that with me, um, because we're still in contact. And that's been a tremendous added gift. And I'll just step back for a moment because I've done other some other death doula trainings too. And I know we will talk about what a death doula is exactly because that's an important aspect of this. But a few years ago, I found myself spending time with a friend who was dying of cancer. And it kind of brought me to this place of presence that I've rarely experienced. And that set me on a path of really exploring death and dying. It just was what took me there. And kind of how to allow the reality that we die to be transformative, as Aloha talks about in the book, and live more fully rather than constantly sort of in a place of avoidance or fear of it. And this exploration has been deeply meaningful for me and is ongoing. But I will say the reality of going out, I don't know, hanging a shingle, whatever the right terminology would be, to be a death duel and earn a living that way, it's hard because I mean, frankly, a lot of most people don't even know what that is, that it even exists. Which is one of the reasons her book is super important and why I'm so happy to talk about it and all of the wisdom that uh Ayla shares in her book.

SPEAKER_02 4:26

Yes, agreed. I think a lot of people are uh familiar now with the term doula in terms of birth doulas, which can be very helpful. I have had a few friends actually who have used do I they're just called doula's. The death doula has to tie in the word death to it, I guess. Right. But yeah, it's a really interesting career path that, right, you maybe one listener out there didn't even know this existed, and maybe this is a calling that again, it feels like Alua created this for herself. She had never heard of it. As she decides to go through her training, which we'll get into, she does talk about other people that she came in contact with to kind of guide her, but she didn't meet a death doula and say, I want to do that. She had an experience, which we'll talk about, and she realized, wow, I'm kind of good at this, at being a support system, which to me, if you were to deduce down what a death doula is, it's a support, it's a support system. What what how would you define a death doula, Kara?

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Yeah, I mean, I th that that's that is a good way to boil it down. It the a couple of key important points is a death duel, just like a birth duel is non-medical, they're not somebody providing medical assistance or services, but they're very knowledgeable about the death process, the way that a birth duel is about the birth process. And it's holistic support. It can be emotional support, spiritual support, practical support. It can be all sorts of things. And it's for the dying person and those who are caring for that person before, during, and for loved ones after death, you know, how to take care of the body, things like that. That all comes into play. And just to kind of set a little more context, you know, a few generations ago, we as human beings, you know, we would learn about this because people often lived in multi-generational homes or they lived near their elders and and would experience their dying and learn from role modeling and just how it worked. And we just don't get that quote unquote training anymore. So we don't have much death literacy. Everything's kind of professionalized, you know, the medical system, the mortuary, you know, professionals and things like that. And so what I've really enjoyed about this path of doing various death doula trainings, including the one with going with Grace, is my own death literacy has improved. And so what I do find is that I'm often in a position to help provide some assistance, clarity on, oh, what's hospice versus palliative care? You know, a lot of people are just not aware because they haven't gone through it.

SPEAKER_02 6:54

And what is the difference between hospice and palliative care? Yeah.

Hospice Versus Palliative Care

SPEAKER_00 6:58

Yeah, absolutely. Like palliative care is a whole medical discipline that is focused on alleviating pain and suffering, essentially. Hospice care is specifically for people who are at the end of life and a hospice team, including a doctor, a nurse, volunteers, chaplain, etc., provide holistic support, including medical support, which is the primary thing, but designed to really assist with a person with dying. There's this famous, uh famous, famous in my circles, the circles I follow now, hospice nurse named Barbara Carnes, and she's got these wonderful little pamphlets for 15 bucks. It just helps people understand what's happening. How do you support your loved one better? Little things that if you haven't delved into this world, you just don't know they're out there. But there are a lot of resources, and in particular online, we can link later to I can send you a bunch of stuff to.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

And I actually really appreciated that part of Alua's book as well. She does get into the physicality of dying. Okay, so tell me about meeting Elua. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

So you know how she describes like, I hope people remember me this way, like as this very fully embodied, like real panoply of things that is not just pinned down to one thing or not just don't make me a saint and you know, all that stuff. And I mean, she is, I'm not gonna say larger than life because just if if we're lucky, like this is what life really looks like is just somebody who feels who is really inhabiting their skin in a way that is feels so authentic, feels very present, but also very real. Like she was very vulnerable as a person who is providing training and sharing her own experiences. She would get up there and talk about where she had, you know, doubts or confusion and how, you know, she doesn't have all the answers. I mean, she was she's just a very real, well-rounded person who also brings a ton of presence and really kind of helps bring you to wanting to fill up your own skin that same way. It kind of really helps to pull out your own excitement for this thing. Because if you're there in that training, you have a passion for this. There's just no question, nobody's gonna do three days of that without really wanting to.

SPEAKER_02 9:15

I'm dipping my toe in here.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

So people love to ask this question if you had six months to live, what would you do? You know? And Alo is kind of asking the question, like, why do we have to put that? We don't know. We don't know. And I think she says somewhere in her book, you know, how soon is it to when is it too early to hire a death duel? And she's like, Well, I don't know. When is it too early to hire somebody to help you prepare for something that will definitely happen and you don't know when? It could happen tomorrow, right? Like we don't know. It's an easy thing to just regularly lose sight of. I mean, that's just the nature of it, right?

SPEAKER_02 9:54

Because how could you function if every day you woke up from a fear-based place? I mean, unless you really made peace with the fact that you will die, which is hard for all of us to do, I think, depending on different stages of life, but it is important to know that it's going to happen in the same way, like we've been talking about, where it can set you up to make better choices for yourself on a smaller scale in the day-to-day.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:19

It to me is about finding that balance though, between being responsible, saving for a rainy day, and knowing that that rainy day may never come, tomorrow may never come. So, how do you also live your life as fully as possible right now?

SPEAKER_00 10:33

It's more to say if I'm in touch with the reality of dying, my bigger fear might end up being that I'm not making the most of my time.

SPEAKER_02 10:42

Yeah.

Meeting Alua: Presence And Vulnerability

SPEAKER_00 10:43

And so it's kind of lived life. Recognizing, oh, I can live each moment, each day, in a way that helps me feel a deeper sense of confidence or peace that if it comes out of the blue or if it comes at a ripe old age and you know, your children have grown and their children have grown, you know, no matter what, I didn't waste time. Kind of, I will I'll use the term mindless approach to life, um, or a an approach that tries to delude ourselves into thinking it's indefinite and infinite because it's just scary and we don't want to go there, to one that stays mindful. And that's her big point, right? The big plan.

SPEAKER_02 11:26

Okay, well, let's get into Alua's life. Okay. It's time to dive deeper. So Alua weaves her in her interactions with her clients through telling us her life story. We're gonna separate them for the podcast. It's very clever how she does it, but I think it's a little bit simpler for our discussion today. Uh, we're gonna go through her life story and how she became a death duela, how she found death dualism, maybe. I don't know. And we're going to chat about a few of her clients and the lessons she learned and our reflections on those as well. We won't touch on all of her clients though, so as always, I highly recommend that you pick up this book yourself because what I got out of it might not be the same thing that you will get out of it, and that's what makes it so special. Yeah. Okay, so life story. Why and how Alua came to feel the pressures she felt to live one path, and then ultimately why and how she realized she owed it to herself to choose a different one. Elua was born in Ghana. She was conceived in London, which I loved that she like made the note to say that. So cute. Roughly 18 months after her oldest sister is born. She writes, My birth was my first death from the womb into this world. I changed form, changed the way I breathe, changed environments, and left the only place I knew thus far, the comfort of my mother's body. That was the first time in my life I had thought about birth as death. Yeah. She writes about how growing up in Ghana, she felt loved, celebrated, wanted, and safe. This changed when her family had to flee a military coup and moved to the United States, where being chubby was looked down upon as was being black. And she really had to do the work to find harmony with her body by, quote, rooting myself in the mystery of its existence and delighting in its power and grace. After all, she reminds us, I'm only here for a small amount of time, so I insist on taking up space in this world, in rooms, in my life, in my relationships. I am here. This is my body. It is the place I live and also the place where I will die. I appreciated this, and I will be the first to it to recognize that's not always easy to do. It is really hard to find peace and harmony within your body in today's society. And I would say, on top of just that as a human, I think being a woman, I don't know if we're encouraged to take up space.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

We are not. I think you're saying we're actively encouraged not to on some level. And we're actively encouraged to almost view our bodies as like an enemy that we have to like whip into shape to yeah, I don't know, serve some purpose that is typically not please for us someone. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:06

Back to Alua, she doesn't want us to view our bodies as prisons, but rather for us to fall in love with our bodies. She writes, in these bodies, we have the privilege of experiencing the magical playground of Earth because of our bodies. We get to eat donuts, jump in puddles, smell rare spices, listen to children's laughter, make art, make love. Because we get to live, we get to die.

SPEAKER_00 14:31

Yeah. Doesn't she have an amazing just sort of way of crystallizing this stuff? I mean, I think that was just beautiful. Yeah. Yeah.

Balancing Mortality And Daily Life

SPEAKER_02 14:39

I had to include that. There's lots of good nuggets that I just don't have time to know. I know. Again, read her book. Um okay, so back to her childhood. Her father has to stay behind in Ghana and turn himself in rather than risk getting caught and executed because he had worked for the government at that time. So during his time in prison, he finds Jesus and Christianity. Her mother also finds Jesus, and fortunately, her father is released from prison and able to join Alua and her family in the US, where her father becomes a preacher. And they travel all around the United States and even live in Nairobi for a while before settling in Colorado Springs, Colorado, a very white, conservative town. She experiences racism here, but had also experienced it for the first time in Nairobi. She starts to internalize what people are saying about her blackness and feels she is inherently wrong, which I think is something that we can all relate to, unfortunately, at some point in our life. Yeah. This feeling of just like being wrong for merely and simply existing.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:36

She writes, I was never Ghanaian enough by virtue of not being raised there, and never American enough due to my Ghanaian heritage. Home has always been a fleeing concept for me, and I've had to learn to cultivate it in my body. It's really interesting. She is not the first woman, memoirist, I've read, and she won't be the last, I'm sure, who really talked about this idea of home not being a physical place where you go, but a place that you create for yourself inside of yourself.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

Do you feel like that's something that you've been aware that you've done in your life at any point?

SPEAKER_00 16:11

Is it easy to do? No, it's not easy, but it is, I think, the path to a deeper peace. Because our homes, physical structures, even people we live with at different points in time, they're all ever changing, yeah. They will not last as they are forever. They won't. And so this comes back to the little deaths, right? The the changes, the fact that things change constantly, nothing's permanent. And so if we can cultivate a sense of well-being just within ourselves, then we can navigate all that with much more ease.

SPEAKER_02 16:47

Yeah, because we've created that thing to return to.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:50

She writes, in Ghana, everyone is black, so no one has to be black. There is nothing else to compare it to. Within the first week in Colorado Springs, she's called a jungle bunny, an African booty scratcher, a monkey. She writes, My parents comforted me by modeling resilience. When it came to hurt and disappointment, my family's unspoken mantra was, don't let them get to you. Tears were allowed, but not indulged. Where do kids like kids are taught these things to say, no kid I know would ever just out of the blue know what an know the term African booty scratcher, right? Right. Like, right. What the hell, people? I I hate that she had that experience. And I hate that that meant that these little kids were being taught hate, truly. I know. And she's fairly young, you know?

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Like this is not. I want to say she's like nine-ish, ten-ish. My mom's generation or something, where it's like, okay. Oh, I see what you're saying. Do you know what I mean? Like, no, she's what in her four 40s now, maybe? In Colorado, like what? Yeah. It's just distressing and disheartening. Unfortunate. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:55

That that's reality. Right. And then so as parents, I think we all deal with times where our children either experience bullying to varying degrees or or a friend, you know, doesn't choose them that day. You know, it's nothing super malicious. Like this seems to be. But that's one thing that I talk about with my husband all the time is there's if there's really one thing that we can teach our children is resilience.

Alua’s Early Life And Identity

SPEAKER_00 18:21

I think as long as we're not inadvertently sending a message, it's bad to have emotions or to feel sad or to feel angry about something. But there are ways to feel those things and then choose ways to be in the world that help you find joy again or whatever that is, but not, but not don't feel that you're doing something wrong if you have feelings about something. But yeah, like it's like a it's like we can we can get stuck, get kind of identifying with the emotion. Like sometimes I'll use this the technique of like, oh, this is anger or this is sadness instead of I'm sad. Sometimes just that little sliver of differentiation between the emotion itself that is coming through, like a weather pattern, and the I, who I am. I am not sadness. I simply have sadness passing through right now. Wow. You know that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02 19:15

I love that.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

Little techniques, we can find them. That's really helpful.

SPEAKER_02 19:19

Back to Alua. She writes, Gradually, I understood that blackness could look and sound like anything. Bjork, plantains, and biggie smalls, all were my lanes. So was activism. She pledges Delta Sigma Theta, a historically a historically black sorority at Wesleyan. Her father had gotten his PhD there and her sister was enrolled. She studies abroad in Ghana, and she is, quote, freshly enraged by the ravages of colonialism and the realization that, quote, the system is not set up for us, black people, to win. My anger continued, and formal education gave me the tools to make people finally pay attention. I wanted to include this part too because while I can't speak to this experience at all, I think there are a lot of us out there who are feeling angry, unsure of what to do to make the world a better place. But I loved this phrase, formal education. And I can think we can even get rid of formal education gave me the tools to make people finally pay attention. That's something that I just will continue to do. Educate myself so that if I am able to have a discussion with someone, I have a leg to stand on, a little bit more of what I know what I'm talking about. Okay, so after graduation, Aloa spends the summer in Thailand working in HIV AIDS education at the YMCA, which I didn't realize there was a YMCA in Thailand. Who knew? Who knew? She writes, This was an enlightening trip. I learned the importance of understanding a culture's values, culture's values before discussing topics that are taboo, like death or sex. I learned that sometimes ignorance just means lack of access to knowledge and information. That was a big one for me too, because I think right now I have a personal frustration with people who I'm like, oh, how could you not see or how do you not know this? And then when she wrote this, I thought, oh, not everyone does have access to a trusted news source or a news source that isn't trying to get them to feel a certain way or believe a certain thing or is lying to them. I mean, we're all experiencing it now. Like there are media sources out there who call themselves the news who are definitely taking snapshots of of the truth, little pieces of the truth and creating a different truth from it. But I mean it's apt that her her group name is going with grace because I think that she extends a lot of grace to people in this book and encourages us to extend grace to one another and to ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

Yeah, I agree. I don't know about you, but I keep like quotes I hear on a little app in my phone, you know, because I like that I like too. There's one on travel. Can I share it with you? Yes. Okay. It's Marcel Proust. He said the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscape, but in having new eyes. And I think that's just really kind of says it.

Body, Belonging, And Resilience

SPEAKER_02 22:12

I love that. I think you can have an enlightening experience in your backyard. Absolutely. Yes. Across the world. Wow. I do think when you choose to open yourself up to enlightening experiences, that's where the magic can happen. Yes, agreed. Back to Alua. She's supposed to leave Thailand at the end of the summer to start law school. The path she felt she was supposed to take as the daughter of immigrants, but she doesn't want to leave. She's found a part of herself here and doing work that she felt incredibly good about. However, her father is like, I will come get you if you don't come home, so come home, she does. She graduates law school and doesn't know what to do next. She flips a coin. Heads New York, Tails, California. It's Tails. And she settles on Oakland because of the good mixture of people and the culture there. But she meets a boy, Kip, and ends up in Pasadena, California, living with him. The next few years are filled with growing pains as she continues to put off being a lawyer by working odd jobs until she finally gets a job at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. This is a nonprofit law firm that provides free legal services to low-income people in LA County to help them access the justice system. Aloa is incredibly empathetic and she wants to do good with her life in a way that marries her desires and her parents' expectations of her. And y'all, she goes into way more detail of this in the book, but you know, we have to kind of condense. She and Kip elope in Costa Rica, although she's having mixed feelings about him and marriage in general, and six months later they separate. She writes, Wasn't this what I was supposed to want? Married at 29 to a hot, successful, creative, beefy gentleman who loved the shit out of me and wanted a long life with me. How could I look happiness in the face, turn and run? She continues, There must be a word for the grief we experience over the life we thought we should have, events that never happened, stories that didn't have the happy ending. At every step in our path, some possibilities died behind us while others bloom before us. And in every transition, even joyful ones, there is grief. From maiden to mother, single to married, unemployed to entrepreneur. The old you dies, a new one is born. The grief is ongoing and never ending. Grief is also the fertile soil from which we can be renewed. Oh, I know.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

It's such a beautiful insight, isn't it? And the one thing that I want to talk a little bit about with this is, you know, she talks about grief is this fertile soil from which we can be renewed. And I completely agree with her. But that assumes we're actually grieving. That assumes we grieve. And I will just kind of as a little side note here, there's this writer named Stephen Jenkinson. He's a Canadian palliative care worker. And he wrote a very thought-provoking book. It's called Die Wise. I will just say it's on every Death Doula Training reading list that I've ever done. Like everybody brings it in. One of the things he says in that book that has always stuck with me is it's his view that grief is not an emotion. It's a skill. And I think what he means, I've really sort of grappled, like, what does that mean exactly? And I think what he really means by that is it's like we need to be taught how to grieve. It needs to be role modeled for us. We need rituals and community around it to experience grief. It's not like an emotion like sadness or sorrow is going to come and go, just like those clouds are going to come and go in a weather pattern, whether we mean for it or not. But grief is a more intentional, grieving is a more intentional act, so to speak. In what he he would call the dominant North American culture, it's not something we do very well or very often. It's just, you know, instead of grieving, we look for the next distraction, pick up the phone, or, you know, drink or or find the silver lining, lean into hope as, you know, can't talk about the fact that you're dying. Keep keep hope alive and you know, fight this disease, right? Those things, a lot of different strategies for essentially avoiding the pain of the loss. That's what grieving is doing, is ex a really like experiencing that pain. And, you know, she does talk in her book, and I know we might get into this a little bit later about the woman she meets in Cuba, and she's expressing this issue of just like she wants to talk about it. She wants to talk about how she's feeling about dying, about death, and and nobody around her will let her. Even that psychiatrist who's supposed to be helping her only wants to talk about how she's living with the disease she has. And that's a super common reality if you start to attune to it and notice it. And so it's just kind of recognizing where in your life is there loss. And as there are losses, little and big, but in particular the bigger ones, are we you, do we have a way of actively grieving that loss, or are we sort of, you know, just skirting by it in a certain way, you know? I think that's such a wonderful point.

SPEAKER_02 27:17

Where we're all maybe slowly but surely coming to realize that these things don't go away. You push them down, you think you hide them in a closet, they show up in other ways. Yeah. In ways that feel less in control, you're less in control of. Yeah. Um, ways that could be potentially more harmful to the people that you love.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

Yes, that is becoming increasingly clear. Yeah. And I do think that comparative thing is so significant and so real and such a an important thing to notice when we're doing that to ourselves, you know, but this isn't a child. It was a pet. So how can I act like it's some big, big deal in my life and the things you have gone through? That that really does a number on us. The starting point is to notice that we're doing it and then say, okay, well, how could I do it differently? And what might that look like?

SPEAKER_02 28:05

And yeah, what might that look like if instead of judging one another or trying to dictate how or why a person feels something, we just opened our arms and said, Yeah, you're human and I'm human too, and let's try to exist together. Yeah. Back to Alua. I loved this. She writes, Cultural norms are like lead in our drinking water. You can be aware of their presence, but that doesn't make you any less sick, which I feel like speaks to exactly what we're doing.

Activism, Anger, And Education

SPEAKER_00 28:31

Sort of like, okay, so awareness is only step one. Yeah. Then you have to do the things to get the lead out of your system, uh, make yourself healthy in other ways. Yeah. Definitely. Some agency there.

SPEAKER_02 28:42

Yes, definitely. But something else is making her very sick. Her job. Aloa writes about running away from her life, literally. She travels all around the world. Her job at legal aid allows for this. She comes home, works a bit, and then takes off again. She's distracting herself. She writes, I ran away from my pain, not knowing why I was doing the work I was doing, trying to patch together a life that felt good. Why was I fighting so hard to remain engaged in the life I'd built for myself? Why did no one else around me seem to be struggling like I was? How did they have it figured out? I think we can all relate to this too, where I think social media, for all of its bad, which I do think there's a lot of bad. I think one of the good things once we all stopped, like, I mean, people still do the Instagram life. Like we're turning to one another now and saying, hey, this is kind of hard. Like, wow, I'm tired a lot, or this I don't really know how to figure this out. Do you? I I do think that my generation, our current society at large, is better about being vocal about that.

SPEAKER_00 29:40

I agree. And it's an upside. And you can find community in the far-flung parts of the world. It doesn't have to be somebody next door, you know.

SPEAKER_02 29:47

Right, right. You don't have to compare yourself to the Joneses because you've got access to the But you can also find those like-minded people going through the same things.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

You know, you can find those people more easily.

SPEAKER_02 29:58

And it is helpful. One day, her boss, whom Alua looks up to and respects, just asks her, Why are you a lawyer? She writes, I was too embarrassed to tell her that I was a lawyer because I had been a gifted child, expected to do big things with her life. And being a lawyer sounded good, and I wanted to make my family proud. This was a connection I was not expecting, Kara. Our first episode together was on Anna Dorn's bad lawyer, which just parallels Alua's experience so well. They both went in separate directions. Anna Dorn now a writer, Alua now a death doula, but both realized it wasn't for them and decided to live a life that they wanted to live. Authentic book.

SPEAKER_00 30:37

Yeah, made some authentic choices, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:39

Alua writes, I was discovering there were few opportunities to feel like I was truly helping. No matter how hard we worked, it often felt like sweeping sand on a beach. I was more interested in what was right rather than what was legal. And if anybody wants to listen to that episode, Kara also goes into her career as a lawyer, which is very fun to learn about because that's why I could probably never be a lawyer. Because there is a difference sometimes between what is right and what is legal in the law or right in the law, or what someone's interpretation of the law or the constitution is, as we're all kind of covering the two as being co not coexistent anyway.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

Well, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 31:18

Yep, yep. At the end of the day, Aloa is not herself in this job, and it's slowly killing her. She writes that she doesn't recognize herself in the mirror. It was like I was holding a pillow over my own face, waiting for myself to stop struggling. She eventually reaches her personal rock bottom. She is reassigned to a role with no more freedom for her to travel. This was the band aid on her life. She sobs after getting told the news and finally decides to see a therapist, even though her quote, immigrant daughter, strong black woman's aversion to therapy, was operating at full tilt. Within three months, her doctor upgrades her diagnosis from persistent mild depression to a major depressive episode. And Aloa still rails against the diagnosis, even though she starts every morning crying and has run out of energy to do anything. She writes, at 34 years old, I was still waiting for my life to begin, denying the fact that I was presently living it. She talks about this idea that she's been conditioned to believe what a strong black woman looks like. Right. Even though she writes that earlier in college, she was able to sort of rearrange or redefine what being black meant in one sense, but it just goes to show that that conditioning can seep into other parts of our lives. And really going to therapy was the first step and her saving her life. Yeah. And so thank God she was able to put those preconceived notions or what's the word I'm looking for?

Law School, Paths Chosen And Questioned

SPEAKER_00 32:42

Conditioned ideas aside. Yeah. Which is not always easy to do. Yeah, it's like these norms that get presented to us as this is how this is how to be in your manifestation, whatever that looks like, female, male, you know, because men get a lot of this too in different ways, and black, white, and then all of the other things. So yeah, that's tough. It's even once we can intellectually see that we're subject to those things, then being able to actually see how it plays out in our lives and where it's kind of getting in our own way is the next level. And therapy can often help, other things can help. But yeah, yeah. Glad she found it.

SPEAKER_02 33:23

But she's like, what is wrong with me? I'm living a life of service, but she feels so incredibly empty. She goes to Burning Man, and for the first time in a long time, she feels alive. Okay, have you ever been to Burning Man? I have not, and I never will.

SPEAKER_00 33:36

I just I'm too old.

unknown 33:38

It's not gonna help.

SPEAKER_00 33:38

Like you're never too old to do anything. I know I know many people my age and older go, but it's just that's not quite my cup of tea either.

SPEAKER_02 33:45

But you know what? Go on with your bad selves if it's yours. I love it. Absolutely. She writes that Burning Man, I was beginning to understand the question I'd been asking myself, what was wrong with me was incorrect. The problem wasn't me. It was society. It was okay if I couldn't live a life that was based on society's ideals. They weren't mine. I could start over. And again, that speaks to what we were just saying, really recognizing and separating out. Okay, what is it that the world is telling me is good? And what is it that I believe is good? Right. Right.

SPEAKER_00 34:16

What's truth for me?

SPEAKER_02 34:17

Which there are a lot of pressures and schools of thought that come from all different ways, too. What families we're raised in, the cultures we're raised in. We're all taught to value things differently. Yeah. But at the end of the day, what are you going to do with your one wild and crazy look precious life, you know? So she's finally realized that her life depends on not returning to work. She says, I didn't know yet my way through, but had to trust that life would hold me. She takes a medical leave of absence, and after distracting herself with a man she met at Burning Man and going to Portland, a distraction that was no longer working, she was feeling more and more lost and more and more like a failure. Then her friend, Kristen, calls. So she goes to Denver, she stays with this friend, and her friend shows up for in such a beautiful way. Alua has lost a lot of weight by this point, a symptom of her depression. And although she really struggles again with accepting help and support, she's battling the internalized strong black woman belief. She writes, Growing up in my family, my sisters and I learned to prioritize strength and resilience. As far as I was concerned, vulnerability was not a virtue. Just finding that balance, like tears were allowed, but not indulged. But then you see how it plays out later in her life, just recognizing what worked for you may not work for your child. What worked for child A may not work for child B. Right. She also writes that the idea that her friend could tell she was suffering was really embarrassing to her. And she writes that this notion is cemented in black culture, especially for women. One day, Alua eats an edible and has what she calls her break open moment. She writes, a pretense I'd been holding on to crumbled like a wall in the Acropolis. And with it, a set of beliefs about myself and the world. That if I did the right thing, practice good law, be a good daughter, get married, use my gifts and service, do what I was supposed to do, I'd have a good life. I'd be perfect, happy, fulfilled, complete. Who was I in the absence of what I'd been told was a good life? That's the question to, I think, really ask yourself. She's finally able to admit to Kristen and herself, something is wrong. Alua returns to meditation, something she's done before but had fallen to the wayside. Even though Kristen suggests maybe an impatient facility might be the answer, and even though her doctor wants to prescribe an antidepressant, she's unconvinced her depression is a chemical imbalance and seems to believe it's more of a situational depression. She wants to tune into herself and really hear herself again so that she can find her truth. Do you meditate, Kara? I feel like a lot of what you've already been saying. I do, I do.

SPEAKER_00 36:50

I've been doing, I have had a regular meditation practice for a good 10 years or so now. Wow. And I really have come to think of it as this, it's a way of training my mind to be like a steady friend to me. I've heard people use this analogy, it's not mine, but like, you know, you can go to the gym and train your muscles, exercise them. And here you're kind of doing a training that's like deepening your capacity to be in touch with that truest self, that atmospheric self. And some people might say it's your consciousness or call it awareness or call it your soul, those kinds of words. But to be in touch with that as distinct from the thoughts, the emotions that are always coming and going, to continue to use the the weather metaphor like weather, the more you can do that, the more and the more you can take that off the cushion, not just be that way in the in the during the meditation, but you start to learn how to bring that into your daily life, it just creates a more stable. I found it incredibly invaluable. I've really appreciated it. It's evolved from a kind of more just mindfulness meditation kind of practices to something with a more Buddhist path to it. But I know I've mentioned to you in the past I also sit every Sunday with a group of Quakers. So I don't, it's not about any kind of dogma or, you know, sets of beliefs. It's about internal seeking and being still and quiet and sort of seeing what comes through that way.

Grief As A Skill

SPEAKER_02 38:20

Tuning into yourself. You know, what I thought was really interesting about this moment in Alua's journey was how, in some ways, she knew herself so well. She knew she could forego the inpatient facility, she could forego the antidepressants, which like we cannot recommend, right? Like listen to your doctors. She knew something inherently that meditation could get her where she needed to go. Yet on the flip side, and sh maybe she did know, but she didn't want to acknowledge the truth of I am not living the life I want to live. I am living the life I've been told is the right life. Right.

SPEAKER_00 38:54

So it's talking in retrospect, she sees all that, right?

SPEAKER_02 38:57

Right, right. It's during meditation that Alua cannot stop thinking about of all things. Elian Gonzalez, his name, his story, if you need a reminder, like I did, he was the child who was found floating on the inner tube outside of Florida after his mother drowned, trying to immigrate out of Cuba. His face just keeps popping into her mind. And as she's learned, she doesn't judge this. She's just like, okay, interesting. Then this is where you're just kind of like, okay, what is fate? What is synchronicity, coincidence, all these like interesting things. Yeah. She goes to the library, and the man outside is trying to get her to sign some sort of Greenpeace petition, and he's wearing a shirt that says Cuba te espera. And I'm sorry if my accent is horrible, but it means Cuba is waiting. And she's like, What the fuck? She tells him about alien popping into her head, and she's like, Do you think this is a sign? And he's this Greenpeace guy's like, uh, maybe. Um, but Cuba is very difficult to get into via America during this time. You have to go through Mexico or the Caribbean. Alua feels it in. Her gut, she has to go to Cuba. Everyone tries to convince her not to go, but she does. And she wonders wait, am I running again? But no, she really feels like this time she's running to something. She's being pulled towards a place. And it's in Cuba that Elua meets Jess, the woman who you mentioned earlier, Kara, a German woman traveling the world to see what she could see before uterine cancer might end her life. There's this another crazy serendipitous moment where Elua has been in an actual near-death experience. This is how she starts her memoir. She's almost hit by a car, which really shakes her and makes her think about death, her death for the first time in her young life. And this shapes the rest of her life. She meets this woman, Jess, they become best friends, they're travel companions for a while, and towards the end of their time together, Jess turns to her and says, I was in that taxi that almost hit you. I got goosebumps. I'm getting them right now. Or as Alua calls them, juice bugs. I know. So cute. So fun. That is just the wildest story. And it makes me wonder like, could crazy cool things like that happen to all of us if we just learned to, I don't know, lean into our instincts, listen to ourselves a little bit more. I don't know what unlocks that cool stuff, but I love it.

SPEAKER_00 41:15

I do too. I gotta figure some some amount of that would be more available to us if we just like stayed in a more flowy kind of state. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:26

And you know, she talked about earlier about trusting that life would hold her.

SPEAKER_00 41:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:32

And again, I think you're either brought up in this world to believe that life is a gift that gives you gifts, that is this wonderful, beautiful, the world is your oyster, or potentially you're taught that life is hard and it will be a struggle. And I think you reap what you sow a little bit, or you reap what others have sown for you.

SPEAKER_00 41:52

Well, and as we go through life with whatever worldview kind of was was shaping us, just can we, how can we be more in touch with our own intuition, our own inner guide, and allow it to guide us, you know, as opposed to, oh, well, that's crazy. Go to Cuba right now. That's crazy. You know, so she, I mean, she had this amazing experience because she allowed that intuition to guide her.

SPEAKER_02 42:16

And okay, I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't bring this up too, because while I agree with everything that you just said, and I loved this part of her book, Learning Her Story, I recognize that not everyone has the availability or the privilege to be able to take a medical leave of their work or quit their jobs to find another career path. People have various responsibilities to themselves, to others, to children. And so, how can we still take this beautiful message of living our authentic life, choosing the type of life that we want to live while still acknowledging that there are just certain responsibilities that we will have? You can't wake, I mean, maybe you can, but probably can't wake up one day and say, I didn't want children after all and leave your kids, right? Like there are there is a level of accountability that a lot of us have that Aloa doesn't have at this point in her life. This was her incredible journey and got her to where she is today. And but I just want to acknowledge that we don't all have that option necessarily. Yeah.

Depression, Therapy, And Burning Man

SPEAKER_00 43:18

So how do we take this story and apply it to our own lives? I would say I what I think she's fundamentally talking about is taking the inner journey, which we could we just talked about a minute ago. That could be in your the four corners of your home. That could be, you know, of course, not everyone can travel the world or change jobs and all these things, but we can all kind of make the journey from the head to the heart, which is kind of how Ram Das, I don't know if you've ever heard of him, but he's a spiritual teacher who's kind of known in a lot of circles. But he would talk about that being the real spiritual journey of life, is going from the head to the heart. But it's sort of if if someone is feeling stuck or unfulfilled or a lot of the things she was feeling, lots and lots of simple things that don't require money or um lots of spare time are available if we choose to make that inner journey. And that we could just say, I want to make a conscious effort to repair a certain relationship or set a boundary with a certain relationship, or you know, minimize the distractions in my life and be more present. And so I'll just try to, you could use an app for mindfulness or whatever. You know, there are a lot of things that don't require these big, uh radical changes, right? Yeah, I it's it's the radical thing is to actually take the inner journey. Yeah, whatever that looks like for a person.

SPEAKER_02 44:39

Well said. There are still tools available to you, whatever your means are.

SPEAKER_00 44:43

Yeah, there really are.

SPEAKER_02 44:45

And I would argue that she helps her clients go from head to heart as they're dying. These people cannot travel the world. Yeah. They have limited time. Yeah. That's what she shows us through these interactions. Let's get to a couple of these interactions. Okay. This is Alua's time as the death doula. She writes, Every single person I've had the honor of accompanying toward their death has left me with an invaluable lesson about life, showing me the myriad ways which you can choose to live it and die. They all live inside of me, and their lessons do too. She also offers some practical guidance about what to expect at the end of life and end of life care as well. We spoke a little bit about that. You know, even the paperwork, right? The logistics of things, that is what a death duela can help with. During this moment of grief or moment of confusion, I mean, she talks about canceling her brother-in-law's credit cards, these things that don't even know. And on the flip side, as a person who at any moment could die, what can you do to set your loved ones up for success upon your death? Right. Yeah. Before we continue Alua's journey and her interactions with her clients, I just want to admit, like, I am still kind of afraid of dying. More afraid of a painful death. And I'm also selfishly, I want to see my children grow up. I want to have those experiences still. I would be pretty, I'd be pretty pissed if I got something terminal. Like that's that would definitely be my first step, as I feel like would probably be a lot of people's, no matter what age you are in life. What are the seven stages of grief? Isn't anger and denial? They're they're up there. They're in there. They're in there. They're pretty up there. And you've spoken about how it seems like you are in a more peaceful, accepting place with death. But do you have any other thoughts about it?

SPEAKER_00 46:31

The fear of a prolonged, painful death is a very common one out there. The one thing I want to say about that is from everything that I've learned, it it death itself, dying itself, is not painful. Now, a disease we might be dying of could very well be painful. And there could be a lot of things by caused by that disease, but but there's a lot of medical support for people who are dying that really can manage pain and all the way up to sedation if needed. I have found that the more time I spend contemplating dying and death itself, the more I actually have a bigger fear of dying suddenly. The thing that most people say would be the ideal thing. I died in my sleep. I never saw it coming, you know, that kind of thing. I increasingly hope for, I have no control over it, but I hope to be given the opportunity to die where I know it's coming, that I can have some conscious awareness of it and be able to experience it. Does it have anything to do with other people or you with my loved ones while it's happening? But it's a little more about the experience of dying. It's the last thing we do as a living being. Wow. And I'd like to experience it. No, of course I'm saying this as a person who's not on her deathbed. But um, so and don't get me wrong, I don't want to be in extreme pain. Yeah. But I have told my wife, if I'm unable to make decisions about my health care for whatever reason, my goal, now if I'm conscious enough here, I don't know, this is maybe contradictory, but my goal is to keep pain manageable, but I want to balance that with my desire to be as present as possible and aware as possible. So I'll accept some amount of pain in exchange for greater awareness and less sedation. And that's not everybody's choice by any stretch, but that's that's where I've come to with all of this time. And I really feel like this is a an experience I don't want to miss out on if you, you know, if you know what I mean. But that does bring up a related topic. No, we can't control how and when we will die for the most part, but we can make our wishes known. Think about what your values are, what your desires are, and decide now. You put in your thing, you know, do you want to be kept alive on life support if all that's doing is extending your dying for a year or something like that, right? Like most people don't want that. But if you don't both write these things down and talk about it, really, that's the almost more important part is to talk about it so that people, if they're ever, God forbid, in that situation, because you know, if we stay conscious and we can make our own choices, great. But somebody else has to make our choices for us. The more we've really helped them understand what we want, the less burden we place on them and the less likely it is that they will just put in their choices, which is maybe to keep you alive when you would not choose that. That's the main point. Have the conversation.

SPEAKER_02 49:27

Like you had mentioned earlier with Jess, this young woman in Cuba. It's these questions that her family don't want to ask, and it's these questions that Jessica so desperately wants to talk about. And guess who asks them?

SPEAKER_01 49:39

Our girl Ala. Of course she does.

Intuition, Cuba, And Jess

SPEAKER_02 49:42

She writes, It breaks my heart that Jessica is dancing alone with death. I feel called to dance with her in this lonely place, turning and turning in this strange beauty of life, the curiosity of it all. She continues, talking death is starting to bring me back to life. There you go. Talk death, come back to life. She realizes that there's an opportunity here to be that person for other people. And this idea really gets its wings after the death of her brother-in-law Peter, whom Alua credits with teaching her how to be a death doula. She writes, He also taught me that you never quite heal from the pain of loss, you just learn to live with it. Peter's death is her and her family's first big death experience, and they deal with the confusing heartbreak of terminal lucidity, the period in which a dying person appears more alert, stable, energized, the afterdeath tasks and the frustration they bring, like when a credit card company asks to talk with a deceased person to verify their identity to cancel a credit card. Again, these are just the real life nuts and bolts of it.

SPEAKER_00 50:46

You get no training until you're suddenly immersed and you're supposed to be grieving at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 50:50

Right. And I have had no experience with this. Both of my parents are still living. I've had no immediate members of my family die to where I've had to be this person. And I know you went through your mom, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:01

Yeah, with your mom. Oh, we had to learn it all on the way, on as we went. Oh, can I make one point? Yes, real quick. Yes. I do want to just note that terminal lucidity, most people don't have that, although some do. And it's mostly it can be a real blessing if you know what it is, that you know, death rally or lucidity that happens. And but as long as you know that doesn't mean they're about to be well again, then that's the heartbreaking part. But it's also not something to expect and hope for necessarily just because it it doesn't happen to everybody.

SPEAKER_02 51:33

Okay. Alua has this great part where she's like, we have tutors to help with school. We have right, you know, birth doulas to help with birth. What's well, maybe there's a this thing called the death doula that I could do. I could be that person that support. It's not just someone to help with the mental, emotional, and spiritual load of death for the dying and their loved ones. It's also someone who does the paperwork. She starts her company going with Grace. Alua doesn't write too much about her training as a doula, but she does mention taking a death midwifery program over three weekends and some literature that she's found helpful, along with how she built her client base, which I found very helpful as well. Yes, yes. So if being a death doula is something that you're interested in, I'll work with Kara to provide a lot of great links for you in the show notes. And of course, you can always reach out, DM me on Babes in Bookland Pod. It's gonna start with the Going with Grace website, of course. Of course, goingwithgrace.com, I'm assuming. She writes, compassion and service are at the root of my work, but those forces alone don't make you a death doula. An effective death doula must pay deep attention to their own relationship to death, along with inherited judgments, biases, privileges, and limitations. And like I said, she really goes into the lessons that she learned, the lessons that she carries with her, and lessons that she wants us to take away, whether it's something to inspire us or or educate us through her clients, throughout her memoir. Of course, we don't have time to really get too many of them because our conversation has already been so long and beautiful. I loved the young cancer patient. She had had the rift with her parents, her mother and her sister, and she helped bring them back together. Yeah. I thought that was so beautiful, and how all of her friends had the orange roses and laid them at her body, and that's what she wanted. The grieving mother who she helped come to terms with her son's suicide. That was heartbreaking.

SPEAKER_00 53:17

That was so moving.

SPEAKER_02 53:18

That was such a moving section. Oh, and the the one that was crazy was the woman who called her up and said, My father's dying. Also, he told me I now have five half siblings.

SPEAKER_00 53:28

All these bananas. Crazy. And then there was Ken, the one who he wanted to have like makeup on him and nails done, and the family didn't want it. And that was a good idea. And helping Ken have enough of what he wanted while sort of keeping the family's sort of issues holding that space too. So that was a really interesting thing.

SPEAKER_02 53:55

He helped him have his agency up until the end. Yeah. He wanted to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00 53:59

And to be his authentic self all the way through, you know, it wasn't maybe the full expression of it.

SPEAKER_01 54:05

Right.

SPEAKER_00 54:06

Because his family couldn't couldn't go there. They just weren't. But she got enough of that through. And that was really she helped him find a compromise, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 54:16

Yeah. Yeah. She also writes about Leslie, this woman who had all these questions for Aloa. She comes to Aloa and she's like, What does dying feel like? You know, all these things we've already talked about. And Ayloa's like, I can't answer this because I'm still living. But I'm curious, Kara, what do you think happens when we die?

SPEAKER_00 54:31

Okay, first I have to tell you this is my wife's favorite dinner party question. I could tell you so she's asking that, and I'm at the other end of the table being like, How do you want us to take care of your bodily remains after you die? You know, like let me tell you all the different options. Um, so we love it.

SPEAKER_02 54:46

You just have like dinner parties and then do it.

Privilege, Limits, And Inner Work

SPEAKER_00 54:50

But yeah, I used to be in the camp of kind of it's all lights out, sort of a you're everything goes black, okay, you're gone. That is not where I am today. I've gone through a real evolution on this. The most I feel like I would say is that I feel like there's some kind of continuation. I don't presume to have any real knowledge or belief about what it looks like when that continuation occurs. And there's so there's tons of mystery. But to me, the idea that there is some kind of internal consciousness, our individual consciousness, that is connected to something more universal that people have all sorts of different words for, but let's just call it universal consciousness for the sake of having this conversation. I just find that the idea that both now and after our bodies die, that our individual consciousness transforms in some way rather than extinguishes, that's what resonates for me. So I'll ask you the same question.

SPEAKER_02 55:46

Here's what I here's what I will say. I don't know. I don't know. I agree. I think that energy continues. I was raised in the Catholic Church, I was raised with this idea of heaven and hell and purgatory. Here's what I hope. I hope that somehow on the other side, I still know you. And I still know my kids and my husband and my friends. Yeah. I hope somehow. Yeah. All right, here's what Aloa has to say about all of that. She writes, When we open ourselves up to the discomfort of not knowing, that's where all the juice lies. When we think we know, we are not pliable. We are stagnant and stuck. Opening ourselves up to the discomfort of not knowing means opening ourselves up to the magic of what may be, the place of pure, boundless potential where anything is possible. I'm in the camp that if your faith system provides you with a peaceful idea of how it can all go, I'm okay with that as long as like that's not weaponized. I think it tends to be weaponized more than not, you know, like be good because if you don't, you go to hell. Right. And it's like if you do decide to release this idea of doing things in this life in order to get into heaven, get into hell, have access to some sort of better afterlife, you know, people who claim to know Jesus and therefore they've been saved, but on the day-to-day, they're not very kind people. That's the stuff that I get really confused about.

SPEAKER_00 57:08

You know? Yeah. Do you have a belief if you have a belief system, is it something that is on a regular basis opening you up and generating love? Or is it doing something opposite to that? Yeah. It's just a good, it's a good lens to look at it through.

SPEAKER_02 57:25

Yeah. And I loved reading about Miss Bobby. She's 94 when Aloa meets her and she said, Baby, I ain't figured shit out. My life was so messy and I wouldn't change a goddamn thing. Boy, it's been a hell of a ride. You know what? If my last words are, boy, it's been a hell of a ride, that'll be a good sign. This is what Aloa writes for her motto to support the grieving or dying. Show up and shut up. After acknowledging the situation sucks and you don't know what to say, let them lead the way. If they are silent, be silent with them. If they want to talk about something benign, follow them there. And if they want to talk about their pain, let them talk about their pain, not your experience unless you are asked for it. Just be in the trenches with them and give them the incredible gift of bearing witness.

SPEAKER_00 58:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:13

I think this is something that we all struggle with.

Lessons From Clients At The End

SPEAKER_00 58:14

We don't know how to be there for one another. It's hard, isn't it? It's true. It applies if somebody's just in a painful situation, right? Just we we're so in our heads about, am I saying the right thing? Your intention is to help somebody, but you're so really in your head about your own, do they like me, love me? Am I doing it right? Am I me, me, me, right? It's a hard thing to learn how to let that pull of wanting to help, fix, etc., float by and just be present with reality. But that's what we're asked to do as a death dueler, that's for sure. That's that's been consistent in all the trainings.

SPEAKER_02 58:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:53

Is this your most important skill is being able to just bear witness. Sit down and show in a loving, compassionate way, by like really centering and honoring the person who's dying and getting out of your own, you know. But yeah, it's it's not easy. Love that she just brings this awareness to us.

SPEAKER_02 59:09

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 59:10

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 59:10

Okay, so how do we find our purpose? She writes, So many of us reach the end of our lives wishing we knew the particular reason we ever existed. I've come to believe that my life doesn't have a singular purpose. Maybe yours doesn't either. The search for purpose itself can be blinding. While we are obsessed with trying to make meaning and purpose out of life, we can miss the experience of being here. What if your purpose in life is to delight in the delicious syrup made with lavender and blackberries from your garden? Or to learn how to macrame art finally? What if your joy in life is when Cisco belts out the key change in thong song? And what if what brings you purpose is reveling in the mysteries of life and the simplicities and perfection of nature? Would this be sufficient?

SPEAKER_00 59:53

We feel like we're doing it wrong or failing if we haven't quote unquote found that purpose or been successful at making. Making it work for us in our life. And I just don't, I I really agree with her. I feel like she's trying to like Alo is saying, anytime we can appreciate an experience that is bringing us joy and flow, like we're living our purpose.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:15

All the things that, as everybody says, on our deathbeds, we will realize, hmm, I wouldn't have spent as much time on that. So many people talk about that.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:24

So speaking of deathbeds, this is what Alua writes. Nearing the end of life, I have observed that people are concerned with three major questions. Who did I love? How did I love?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:35

Was I loved? I've heard so many deaf duelism nurses talk about this in the same variation on that theme. It's just like when you're faced with imminent death, perhaps for the first time, getting in touch with the reality that all the worldly things you valued are not coming with you. Yeah. The only thing left is love.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:53

And the only thing left is love. That was Alua Arthur's Briefly Perfectly Human, making an authentic life by getting real about the end. Alua asks herself and us, what do we want to be on our deathbeds?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:07

Cara, who do you want to be on your deathbed? I mean, I'll just come back to that overarching purpose for me if I'm lucky enough to have a deathbed, by the way. Okay. That's true. But I really hope I can look back and say, I grew to the greatest extent possible in love and wisdom.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:24

I love that. Have you thought about it? You want to share anything? You know, I'm gonna take yours. I think I'm gonna take a lot of what you just said, but did I love to my fullest capacity? Yeah. Did I try my best to be kind and give people grace? Did I give myself grace? Yeah. Did I love myself? Yeah. Yeah. Those are all the things that I hope the answer is yes to all of those questions on my deathbed or towards whenever the end is. And those are things that you just continually can check in daily and keep living daily, because then if tomorrow never comes, guess what? Yeah. You can say yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:56

If we regularly think about it, then we will spend a little more of our time with a little greater intentionality, yeah. A little more paying attention to well, what do I want to say, be able to look back on and say on my deathbed? And how will that change how I live today? Because you can't you can't change much once you're there.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:17

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:18

And that's I think her big message and where her wisdom is.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:21

I agree. Cara, thank you so much for joining me today. As always, you bring so much wisdom and love and grace. And we will link all of the wonderful things that you talked about in the show notes, all of those resources and guides.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:34

Well, thank you, Alex. It's been just such a pleasure talking about this topic and spending this time with you. Thank you.

Pain, Dying, And Advance Wishes

SPEAKER_02 1:02:40

I love you. I'm going to leave us all with this. In her epilogue, Aloa takes us through what she hopes the experience of death is, and she calls it writing a glitter wave, which I think is really fun. But I want to end with this. This is what I wish for all of us: a life that feels like the miracle it is, and a death that serves as a period on a satisfying sentence. Because we live, we get to die. This is a gift. If you enjoyed our conversation today, it would mean so much to me if you would rate and review the show wherever you listen to the podcast and send this episode to a friend. We can't wait to have you back next week when author Amanda McCracken joins the show to chat about her memoir, When Longing Becomes Your Lover Breaking from Infatuation, Rejection, and Perfectionism to Find Authentic Love, a true story of overcoming limerence. Next week we'll talk about what limerence is and more with Amanda. We'll see you then. Take care, be well. Bye. Bye, everyone.