02: Not About Death: What This Podcast Is Really About

Episode 2: Not About Death — What You're Really Afraid Of

Most of us aren’t afraid of dying. We’re afraid of what death reflects back at us. Our regrets, our tenderness, our joy, and everything we’ve been avoiding.

In this episode, I share my story and the vision for this podcast. I talk about what it means to live with one year left, and how that question has shaped the way I show up now—as a poet, death doula, and someone who helps others reunite with their humanity.

What to expect in this episode:

• The origin story behind A Year to Live
• What this podcast will explore
• How my own year to live changed my life
• A reframing of what we’re actually afraid of
• An open invitation to begin your own journey

This podcast is here to help you return to what matters most.

—

Hosted by David Morin
Poet | Death Doula | Prison Facilitator
@mor.intune 

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Year to Live podcast. My name is David Morin. I'm a poet, death doula and prison rehabilitation facilitator. I help people reunite with their humanity. With their pain, with their regrets, with their love, their joy, integrity, everything in between. This is my life's work, and I'm dying on March 31st, 2026. Just kidding. Not actually dying. Knocks on wood. A year to live is a book and thought experiment inspired by Stephen Levine. The question is simple but haunting. What would you do if you only had one year left to live? Sit with that for a second. If you only had 365 sunsets left, how would you spend your days? I don't have that answer for you. I'm just the messenger with the invitation. But if you're feeling both the urge to lean in and the desire to run, and you're still listening, well, you're exactly where you're supposed to be. I completed my own year to live through the Elizabeth Kubler Ross Foundation in Mexico from March, 2023 to March, 2024. The intention was to gain some level of understanding of what death doula clients face at the end of their life. What I received was far more than I expected. I followed my enthusiasm, ended up falling into a full-time job in prison rehabilitation, where I now teach poetry and a trauma-informed curriculum on entrepreneurship. I absolutely love what I do. I spent the year healing relationships with my parents and siblings and getting lost in service to others. My family eventually even started doing therapy together, including my parents who have been divorced for 15 years. You'll hear some of those conversations about therapy on this podcast. So what is this podcast about? I have started my own year to live group. A number of people have signed on to, uh, walk this journey. With me and for me to walk this journey with them. I'll admit I was I was a little hesitant to commit to this idea that I would be dying in one year again, but what lit me up this time was the chance to document it. I didn't talk to a lot of people when I did it, and I would love to use this podcast. It's sort of like a diary or a processing space. Just to share my journey with how this is going and how it's impacting me and those in my life. You'll hear, uh, conversations with my clients in the cohort. deep healing conversations with my family, friends, fellow travelers, and, uh, maybe even my nutritionist as she is curious too. This podcast is essentially my living legacy because if I were to die next March, I want this archive to remain. It'll be proof that we can have the hard conversations that witnessing that be healing, and that you don't have to fix what isn't broken. In fact, the only thing broken is the part of you refusing to accept your whole self. So I took this class. I'm hosting this group. Why should you care? Here's a quick version, equal parts resume and validation attempt. I grew up as a Seventh Day Adventist, became a Jesus freak in high school, and I somehow managed to win most spirited for my senior year of homecoming as a Jesus freak college hit. I took religion classes because I was so serious about my faith and then ended up rebelling. I got drunk for the first time. It was Bud Light at a neighbor's party, and it was pure euphoria. I remember just being drunk for the first time and being like, what? This is why you guys like this. This is incredible. I was like a little kid in, uh, eating candy for the first time. I. I ended up becoming kind of an alcoholic though for about 10, 11 years, um, including being drunk at my college graduation while receiving a leadership award. Now that's poetry. I joined the Peace Corps. I fell in love with a family abroad and eventually had to reconcile, not eventually, actually, pretty immediately. Within those first few weeks, I had to reconcile that my host brother, who I grew to love so much, his favorite food was dog meat. And that was so hard to come to terms with. Throughout my first year, I lost an uncle and two close friends. My humanity hit hard. My lessons on humanity hit hard, but grief hit harder, especially at the worst possible time. After Peace Corps, I gave corporate America a try, and I watched my soul slowly leave my body. My depression got worse. And then for some reason, I did a Darkness retreat, which is the previous episode. Uh, and that cracked me open and it, it showed me that I was a poet. Fast forward a year later. I quit my job. I quit my sales job, cashed in my commission, checks, yada, yada, and, uh, gave myself one job only. And that was to write poetry, to write as much as I could. So somewhere between all of that. And today I ended up finding a year to live. and it was an incredible experience. I was interviewed on a podcast shortly after finishing that and I'll, I will be reposting that, for some more information. But the point is I've walked through the fire I'm inviting you to step into. It's not shiny, it's not fun, but the version of you that's calling you forward is on the other side. And that is the work of a lifetime and that is work worth doing. So for this first,, solo episode, this is a first big insight that I wanna share that I'm working through and like, kind of like in real time and what that is. I have been thinking for the longest time that we're afraid of death. And that's been a lot of the language that I use, even though I, I hate using that language. I don't like seeing it online. When people say, you're afraid of death. You're afraid of death.'cause it's not inviting. And I wanna make this topic inviting and I still don't know if I can do that. So, but here's this insight in the insight is you are not afraid of death. I am not afraid of death. We as a people are not afraid of death. Despite what most death workers shout like me at the top of the mountain. Think about it. If we were truly afraid of death, would we show up to funerals? Would we dare to view our loved ones in open caskets? Would we keep their pictures up and talk about them years later? Would we share the news on social media when notable figures or celebrities die? I don't think we would if we were afraid of death. So we're not afraid of death, What you really fear is the mirror of mortality and what it reflects back to you, and that is your humanity again. It's not death we're afraid of. What we're afraid of is the fear once we see the mirror of mortality and what is reflected back to us. So think of a moment at a funeral that you've been to of someone you love. You know, you are very sad to have to say goodbye. You are sad at seeing their loved ones taking it so hard for saying goodbye. But there is a silent moment you have to yourself where you start questioning what you're doing with your life and whether or not you're wasting it away or living the life you truly desire. It creeps up. You sit with it, this existential dread just for a moment until it's time for refreshments or until you reach for your phone. Then you get into your car and you drive those thoughts away. And you're back to your regularly scheduled programming until the next funeral. A year to live is an invitation to sit with that exact moment every day for one year, even if just for a few seconds or some days, not at all. That's part of the process too. Right. So again, it is not death itself. We are afraid of, we are afraid of how the idea of death makes us feel. There's a big difference'cause we gotta deal with how we feel about it first before we can actually deal with it, right? So we're not afraid of death. We're afraid of our capacity to feel, we're afraid of our capacity for regret. For profound joy, our capacity for betrayal, for hurting someone, for being the cause of someone else's pain. We are afraid of our capacity to forgive. We are afraid of our commitment to never forgive. For acknowledging that we are capable of the very hate we spend our existence pointing fingers at, we don't want to see it. We don't even want to entertain that. We are less than our idealized perfect selves. We fear the enormity of what it means to be human, and we've arrived at a place where our human nature doesn't fit at all with our ideologies of what it means to be human. And when death does finally come, I think deep down we know that part of that process means we won't be able to look away from everything we've spent our whole life looking away from. So the invitation for you, listener, dear listener, is why wait. What waits for you then is what is waiting for you now. Why let that dread hang out, rent free until then behind the scenes dictating and directing every decision you make because you're afraid to look at this mirror of mortality. None of that is actually death. It is our fear of fear itself. And once you realize that your relationship with everything you hate and avoid is more about being afraid of what those things make you feel. Everything becomes clear, and so our mortality, and therefore our humanity is the most powerful class that we can ever take as a human. Yet it's a class nobody wants to take. Welcome to the class. Welcome to the apprenticeship of the Unknown. Much love y'all. See you next time.