Live Well Leave Well
Live Well, Leave Well brings death back to life by gently weaving it into everyday conversation. Hosted by Baci Hillyer, the podcast invites you to meet death with courage and curiosity, to prepare for what’s inevitable, and to discover how an end-of-life doula can guide you and your loved ones through life’s final chapter with care and clarity.
Live Well Leave Well
7 ~ The Death Equation with Zenith Virago
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There are very few people who can sit at the threshold of life and death with the kind of steadiness that both calms the room and delivers the truth. Zenith Virago is one of them.
For more than three decades, Zenith has served as a deathwalker, celebrant, educator, and spiritual elder, walking alongside individuals, families, and communities through some of life’s most tender, raw, and sacred passages. Her path into this work was not gentle. It was a baptism of fire, forged in the heart of the AIDS epidemic, where death did not arrive politely or occasionally, but relentlessly, personally, and with profound urgency. In many ways, death itself initiated her, shaped her, and polished her into the elder and wise woman she is today.
Zenith is the co-author of The Intimacy of Death and Dying, the subject of the documentary Zen & the Art of Dying, and a beloved guide to many who are learning how to meet mortality with honesty, courage, and compassion.
In this episode, we speak about the importance of learning to hold the midpoint, to stay calm and steady in the presence of intensity, both personally and professionally. Zenith shares how, culturally, we’ve been conditioned into fight, flight, or freeze when faced with death and crisis, and how over time we’ve underestimated our own capacity to function and to meet and respond in these moments. Through medicalisation, control and avoidance, we’ve slowly handed away skills that humans have carried for millennia: the ability to sit, to stay, to tend, and to accompany one another through dying.
We talk about ritual, language, community, children and grief and what it means to bring death back into the village, not as something to fear, but as something to meet with presence, reverence, leadership and heart.
This episode includes themes of death, dying, grief, and end-of-life care. Please listen in a way that feels supportive for you, and take care of your heart. I hope you enjoy listening to Zen as much as I did.
Links & Resources
💛 Griefline
Free, confidential grief support
📞 1300 845 745 (8 am to 8 pm AEST, 7 days)
🌐 griefline.org.au
💙 Lifeline
24 hour crisis support
📞 13 11 14
🌐 lifeline.org.au
🌿 Zenith Virago – Official Website
📚 The Intimacy of Death and Dying
https://www.naturaldeathcarecentre.org/a-book-about-dying/
🎥 Zen & the Art of Dying
https://zenandtheartofdying.com/
🌱 Natural Death Care Centre
https://www.naturaldeathcarecentre.org
💡 Deathwalker Training (Online & In-Person)
https://www.zenithvirago.com/deathwalker-training
This podcast is hosted by Baci Hillyer.
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Recorded and Produced by Michael Burrows
(https://www.michaelburrowsmusic.com/)
Edited by Granger Lock @ Brand Music (https://brandmusic.com.au/)
What I would say is that death is calling you. But it's actually calling everyone. It's just your listening.
SPEAKER_01Sometimes the body just doesn't whisper, it doesn't nudge, it just pulls the freaking blood. Live well.
SPEAKER_02Live well.
SPEAKER_01Live well, leave well. A podcast about death, life, and everything in between. This is a space for real conversations about dying, grieving, and remembering, told by everyday people and the professionals who walk beside them. There are no true experts in death, only the wisdom that we gather as we live through love, loss, and letting go. Each episode, we explore what death can teach us about life, how grief shapes us, how ritual holds us, and how endings invite us to live more fully. We spend a lifetime learning how to live, yet almost never how to leave. So pull up a chair. Bring your stories, your truth, your questions, and your answers. Sharing what we know about death is one of the greatest gifts we can offer the living. And preparing for our death, well, that might just be one of the greatest acts of love we can offer ourselves and those we leave behind.
SPEAKER_02Who's in the heart seat? Who's in the heart seat? Who's in the heart seat?
SPEAKER_01Zenith Virago is my guest today. She walks at the threshold between life and death, grief and love, spirit and body. For over thirty years, she has offered herself in deep service as a death walker, a celebrant, and a spiritual elder, gently guiding individuals, families, and communities through the raw, the real, and the sacred terrain of dying and grieving. Rooted in ancient wisdom and grounded in radical presence, Zenith invites us to return to death as a natural, intimate, and empowering part of life. Through her work with the Natural Deathcare Center and in her teachings and ceremonies and everyday encounters, she helps others meet mortality with courage, clarity, and deep compassion. Zenith is not afraid of the truth. She sits with what many turn away from, and in doing so, she reminds us death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it. Her presence is like earth medicine. It's soulful, it's honest, it's comforting, and it's liberating. She is the co-author of The Intimacy of Death and Dying, the subject of the profound documentary Zen and the Art of Dying, and a beloved teacher who brings reverence, humor, and fierce love to every conversation. Zenith is here to help us remember we know how to do this. Death is not a failure, it's a homecoming. I personally really learnt so much from this incredible thought leader and elder. And I think in reflection, the biggest thing I learnt was to go back and to continue to refine and to be curious and to keep investigating and keep asking questions along this beautiful journey of my service in Death Work and how important it is to have a really healthy ego and to really question a lot of the language that I've been using and make sure that it matches and is in absolute alignment with my core values and principles and how I meet this work. Thank you so much, Zenith, and I really hope you all enjoy this episode. I know you will. There is incredible wisdom that you're about to engage in, and may her wisdom continue to live on in all of us. Hi, Zenith, and thank you so much for joining me on Live Well Leave Well today. You're welcome, but thank you for the invitation. I've um been doing a deep dive into you over the last few days, and when you discuss that every death is like an equation. Could you explain that? Because I just love how you say this.
SPEAKER_00Sure. So obviously each death is unique in its own right, but the response to that death for the people who are still alive will be different for each death. And that's because I see it like this. So it's who the person is, how they live, and how they die, plus who you are, your relationship to that person, and your experience with death so far, or your familiarity with death so far, will give you a response. And so that response will be different each time because the two parts of that equation are different. And so, you know, someone dies suddenly, or someone dies expectantly, they've lived a long time, or they lived a short time, they've lived a quality life, or they've been an unhappy, or um, you know, sometimes life has been cruel to them. And then it's what you do with that. And so sometimes people, especially people who are working in that field, often feel, yeah, I'm getting really good at this. I'm doing, you know, I feel it, I'm I'm building up a capacity, and then a death will come along and it will just slam them because the equation for that death is more significant to them. And that's okay. It's just good to realize that, you know, not to get too uh too far away from each particular death and the the response that is required from you for that death. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01It it's it's such a a simplified way to be able to describe something so layered and complicated and nuanced. Part of the equation that you described in there is how we respond to a particular death and and describing that someone will or someone working in the area, especially end-of-life duelers, and we're trained for this. It doesn't matter how much training you have, something will come and trigger you. And what I love about the message, your strong message, is that we all need to really first work on ourselves before we we move into this, into the death landscape. Could you talk a little bit more about that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think uh, you know, because I've spent the last 30 years w working with people who are dying, pe people at kitchen tables and bedsides, and then in ceremony and anywhere else in between. What I see is that a lot of people feel they have a calling to work with dying or or families that are bereaved. But it's really important that you don't go in there thinking that you have all the answers, or that you can rescue everybody, or that you're something. Because what I would say is that death is calling you. But it's actually calling everyone. It's just your listening. Because a lot of people, much like the conversation we had before we started about some people, are resistant and they're reluctant, but it's coming for you anyway. So the sooner you get with that program, the sooner you open to uh death as part of life, because it takes a lot of energy to resist something. So you all know that we are going to die, we all know that friends of ours are going to die, our families are going to die. It just depends what the order is and the circumstances of that. And so I think it can be very good for people who f feel they have a calling or are called to explore their motivation, but also to do some personal development or internal work so that they are not merging with the people that they are working with or in service to, and that they are able to be centered and solid. And part of you know what I'm teaching in the Death Walker training is about that holding that midpoint calm, steady center. So whatever the circumstances are that you find yourself in with the people that you're working with, or on the side of the road if you come across an accident. That's true. Then that you are calm and present and can function and can respond to what that situation needs from you.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so you can't prepare for every circumstance, but you need to do that internal work on a personal level, but also on a professional level to be able to be the best service you can be, because of course it's not about you once you're doing the work.
SPEAKER_01And it's often said that our responsibility lies in our ability to respond. And that's exactly what you're you're talking about there. And I it's just such sound advice. And I think that exploring one's motivation in in end of life, especially for those who want to be carers and end-of-life duelers or work as non-medical roles, it's it's critical to do self-development work and you know, work on your triggers and know what's yours and what's theirs, and to be able to define those lines very clearly and energetically. So I I really love that. What um in your life have you done in in that area to help yourself? You've been doing this for for decades and and really such a pioneer. How how did your journey look in the earlier days when you first started?
SPEAKER_00Well, I you know, I'm part of the queer community, and so and I'm 68, so I've lived a long time. And I lived through the AIDS crisis in Sydney. That was a apart from my own personal experience of friends dying when I was young, um there was something about you know, watching young men in an epidemic of death where and the world wasn't looking for a cure. It didn't want, you know, unlike COVID with that virus where you know the whole world went into action um, you know, with HIV because it was a queer community, mostly gay men, the world didn't have that same response. And so s watching your friends in their twenties turn into 80-year-old men um in a very short amount of time was pretty shocking and heartbreaking. And some of those men got a result in the morning and killed themselves in the afternoon because they saw it as a death sentence and they didn't want to deteriorate in a slow, you know, difficult way. But also, I also know now that most people's concerns or fears around death are all about being out of control. And so uh they were taking control of their situation and their response to that virus, and so that was a pretty hardcore uh, let's say, baptism into death and dying. A lot of my friends who I you know I loved died from that disease or are still alive or or died slowly.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um and and that was pretty, you know, it was to sit in that set of circumstances with those people and and work out what that meant about life and um all of that. And so that was really something, and then I moved to the north coast of New South Wales, um, to Lismore, to Byron, and that of course was a great place to learn about life, but also then when death started to occur, a friend of mine died. I worked in law, I offered to her husband to take care of that, and it just had a life of its own. I mean, it's a much bigger story, which uh you we haven't got time to tell. But um, basically, death called me, and before I knew it, it just had a life of its own. And so I found myself in that work with people in community, and uh it I didn't really, I didn't have any training, I didn't have any particular expertise, but what I had was a willingness to go there, a courage, a raw courage to be in it, a sense of excitement that we could make a difference and we could make cultural change. And also I was lucky because I was in an environment here with a community who wanted to to still have something that was deep and meaningful, but that wasn't religious.
SPEAKER_01That's true. Big.
SPEAKER_00So, in some ways, I I just happened to be the right person in the right place at the right time. But at that point, I wasn't a particularly deep person. I was a party girl, I was full of life, I was, you know, dancing and studying, you know, like seven days a week. And life was very rich.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh, but you know, death has really polished me into something much more beautiful than I could ever have imagined.
SPEAKER_01It's like a beautiful gem. Is that where that comes from? Your your innate knowing and your belief in all of us that we also know and to come and and remind us and continually remind us?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I would say because if I just feel like if I could do it, anybody could do it. You know, if I could become this good at something, yeah, that you know, there are people throughout my whole life, people who are much better at things than me. But what I see about most people is that they, and women in particular, will underestimate themselves and they will hold themselves back. Whereas for me, it's very clearly when I found myself in that situation, particularly at ceremony when I had two or three hundred people looking at me to make that better.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I would just so basically I did for others what I would want someone to do for me.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And if I was a person affected by that death, I would want someone to to bring a respect to my feelings and my relationship and my response to that death. I would want them to offer me something solid and sensible.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I would want them to understand that it's a right, the ceremony is a rite of passage. And I've I think one of the great disservices that culture has done at the moment is that whole fight or flight nervous system response because there's also function. There's also there's quite there's quite a range of responses.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so particularly as a woman, um, what I see in in situations is that so fight or flight's a very masculine response. Yes. Um, but a lot of people in situations can't fight and they can't run away. And so they freeze and they disassociate from that situation. And other people function. So this is a long way of answering your question about that we all have the inherent capacity. So, but because we're culturally conditioned into not functioning in that way, so but people it's like when we find ourselves in a situation on the roadside, someone's dying in an accident. People don't worry what to do, they just fucking do it. Yeah. They're there, they're they're present to that moment, yeah. They're responding to that person whose head might be in their lap, or you know, they're doing whatever they can. And I think that more and more people are very capable of functioning in those situations, but they underestimate their capacity to do that. Because the medical system and the funeral industry have slowly eroded that our natural ability to be with death and dying, and to be with our own death and dying.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_00Because medical intervention, great when you want it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But at the end of life, you know, and also we've got this we've got this stop-start experience now because people are often think, oh, they're gonna die. Medical intervention, they don't die. So it we become deluded that n no one's gonna die. Medical intervention will save them. And so people in their 90s who really are moving towards death, um, you know, people are just sometimes just worn out, they're just tired. The body can only do so much. It's the it's called old age. Dying a natural death of old age.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's right.
SPEAKER_00And I'm absolutely you know, I'm in my I'm heading for 70, I'm in my last stage of life, and I'm finding it fascinating. Um, because I, of course, have had death as a teacher. So it's I know that's where I'm going. And it makes me appreciate every single second um of life and every precious moment, whilst I'm just functioning like a normal person. Because at any minute it could just be like this.
SPEAKER_01It could finish. Yeah. Death, no doubt, is um our greatest teacher. That's incredible uh wisdom. You mentioned ceremony in there, and I know how important ceremony is. What do you wish that pe that more people understood about the role and the ritual and ceremony, um, not just at the moment of death, but throughout life as a way to metabolize grief and to honour love? Oh, that's a big question.
SPEAKER_00I think, you know, we live in a range of different cultures. It depends what your cultural background is, because some cultures um still have a lot of ceremony in everything. But I suppose for the bland sort of Western world, yeah, that's what I'm referring to. Yeah, religion has uh commandeered ceremony. Uh, except for now, you know, we have civil ceremonies for marriage, which of course I've been a celebrant for a marriage celebrant for 30 years. And um, and so we're also really doing civil death ceremony, but nobody terms it in that way, where people can include God or include religion if they want. But we as celebrants don't overlay the ceremony with a religious flavor unless people invite that's who you are, and that's how you represent yourself in that work. But for me, I come neutral. I uh you know, I invite everybody to take a moment to pray to their own God, whoever that might be, because I have a baseline with ceremony and with teaching, but mostly with ceremony, that I'm trying not to piss anybody off at the ceremony. Yeah, because I can't check in with them because there's too many of them and it's not appropriate. So like a workshop where you can check in with someone. Yeah. So I'm trying not to piss them off. So what I'm doing with that is I'm I'm not saying should, I'm saying may. You may feel like this, you may feel they died too soon, you may feel they had so much to give, or whatever, whatever. But if you say the word may, you're not gonna piss anybody off because you they'll let it go past if they don't feel like that. Yeah. They'll think you're talking to the other people who may feel. Like that, and they're glad about that. But what they don't want to be told is how they are feeling. Because, back to the equation at the beginning of this program, is that everybody's response will be different. And some people will be glad that person has died. And some people, even though they're there, they may be family, that person may have been cruel to them or abusive in some way. Yeah. And so, um, or they may be holding a secret about that person, which, you know, the world is full of that situation. And so they might be looking sad, but really they feel that person, they're glad that person is dead. Yeah. Not just relieved because their suffering is over, but because they never like them anyway. And so you have to be able to dance with absolutely everyone at the ceremony without, you know, upsetting anybody, and allowing all of those things that they bring to that ceremony to move through them during that hour, that hour and a half. So it's a it's a rite of passage. So they come, they're separated from the person, that's a challenging situation in whatever form it is. And then at the end of it, they're going to walk back into their lives without that person physically in their life. So it has all the components of a classic rite of passage or hero's journey in that work. But we're not doing a workshop, we're not doing a quest, we're not doing some sort of journey. We're doing real life and death, and there are massive consequences to everything. But, you know, we have to learn what that death has to teach us. And so if it's a young person who's died by misadventure, then we have to bring a kindness to that, but also a warning for the other young people. Ah, yes. Um, so if someone kills themselves, we have to acknowledge everyone's shock and their other emotions around that. But we also have to honor and accept that each person has the right to their own life and their own death. And even though that might be very difficult for people to live with, um, it's what it's the reality of what's happened. And so you have to offer people a range of options, a range of comforts, a range of care that can support them in the situation where they're sort of thrashing around trying to make sense of it. But only they can make it better for themselves. Yes. That's not the job of the celebrant, I don't see. The celebrant's role is to offer them, you know, a range of a range of things to think about, to feel, to release, to make sense of, all of that. And so I would just say, so I never feel that I'm holding space. So when I first started that work by the bedside, kitchen table ceremony, they're the three easiest ways to define it. Um, I did think that because it was in the 90s, and that was a phrase that was very it came into being. We just found ourselves responding to those situations. But after a while, I just thought, well, what is space? You know, what is it? And then I thought, actually, I'm sitting with a young mother who's leaving three young children behind. She doesn't want to die at all, but she is going to die within a month. And I just thought, I can't hold space for her. I'm not dying. I have no idea. I can imagine, but it won't be anything like what she's feeling.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so I just thought, I'm I'm I'm gonna dissolve that concept out of my awareness or out of my approach to things. And so then I was sitting in this empty place and I thought, well, what is it that I'm doing? And I thought, well, they're bringing their situation and they're inviting me into that to share it. So I'm bringing all of what I've got to that moment, and together we are just in it together, and we are moving forward in that step by step, day by day, week by week, until we're in the next bit, which is the death occurring, and then I'm there with the family, and then I'm there with the bigger situation. And so the concept of co-creation is the best I can offer until I've realized something else. But I've holding space is exhausting, it's also patronizing. When you are not dying, you're gonna go out and have a nice time with your family members and your friends. It's a it's a job for us. It may be a calling, it may be a vocation.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00We are not dying, and we we won't know what that's like until it's happening to us. And so I think to be able to sit with someone in a way where you bring the best of what you've got to meet them in their experience, but you can't, I would say, I'm happy for anybody to do whatever they want to do, but I know that I cannot hold space in that situation. It it just doesn't make any sense to me, and I see it as either patronizing or matronizing.
SPEAKER_01Wow, I shall never do that again. That really drops for me, that really resonates. I it you know, language is is so important.
SPEAKER_00Because it's their journey, it's their right to feel everything. Yeah, and you can offer what you have, insights or um experience or whatever it is that they're they're inviting you into that share. But to be as honest and as present and as I mean authentic, whatever that is for people, respectful, fascinated, yeah, uh curious, open. I'm playful. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sitting on 30 years of a li of a full life. When I started, I was I was a little bit playful because I'm living in a different sort of community. But um I think the most important thing you can do is is really look again, look in, see what the assets, what qualities you bring to that situation that you're in with that person. And again, you know, try and be the very best match you can be in that experience, because they're not inviting someone else to be there, they're inviting you. And you have to be the very best person that you can be in that situation, even that involves I don't know the answer to that. You know, just you know, you don't have to be an oracle.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, just be honest. But you can find out. I don't know, but I can investigate or I can look into or I can find some resources.
SPEAKER_00I see it now much easier because um I think what it comes down to is some people expand into love and others contract into fear. Ah, wow. And so for a lot of people, dying, and we I know that the fears or concerns uh about dying are about lack of control, a range of controls. So when someone's if the only they can't control the disease, they can't control how the other people feel about it, they can control who goes into that bedroom and how much they talk to them, or how much they even talk to their own family about anything.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so I sort of understand all that. So when someone says, you know, they don't even say, no, I don't want to talk to her, they just go, they don't say anything.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00They because that's the they're on the inside, I imagine that they are, you know, struggling uh so deeply with what's happening for them. And that that the only control they've got is over their own response and and what affects them immediately. Some things, you know, aren't they aren't able to control. So I don't worry about that. Yeah. Yeah, because it's their journey. You're just stepping into that for a short moment.
SPEAKER_01It does get complicated though, doesn't it, when you don't know who you're working for because the lines can get crossed when you go in and and say that that father spoke to you and said, Oh, Zenith, I want this, but the family wants something else. And then next minute you're in between this situation.
SPEAKER_00Well, and then you have to work out, uh is it in your job description?
SPEAKER_01Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00And so I've had situations that have occurred and I've just said, you know what? I mean, not in as frankly as this, so that it's clear to people without tell a whole story, that, you know, they've asked for something, and I said, you know what, that's not in my job description. I don't see that I want to do that, I have the capacity to that, whatever it is that I'm responding. So I think it's very important for people to know what their boundaries are, what their capacity is, because you can always say no. And your prevention is better than cure. So if you're in a situation as a worker, as a death worker, where you are uncomfortable, you you know in your gut that you don't have that capacity or you don't like them, you don't want to be there, then just be courageous enough to say that at the beginning, because preventing something from happening is much better than letting it happen when you know it's wrong, and then trying to cure the outcome of that. Yeah. Superb advice. And and it's sort of because we all know, you know, we have a gut, it gives us a gut response, and generally it's looking out for us.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It wants us to be okay. Yeah. Um, because if we, you know, if if we burn out, if we take on stuff that isn't ours, like I, you know, part of it is not merging with the family. Yeah. And the or the person suffering. And just because even at the kitchen table, you can have two siblings that are completely in a conflict.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00You have to decide if you're a referee, you have to decide if if um you know if that if that dispute has been running for 50 years, whether you want to even sit in the same room with it. Exactly. Yeah. And so you you really have to get clear and and courage, I think growing courage is one of the greatest things. And that sometimes comes from familiarity, or it can be hard won by experiencing something that you wished you hadn't, and you learn from that. Absolutely. Yeah. But you're much better to just, you know, be in that, you know, strong central position, yeah. So that when that uh situation may occur, you can respond accordingly.
SPEAKER_01You you do place a l a lot of emphasis on language. Um and I notice that you choose not to use the word denial.
SPEAKER_00Anybody over 25, you don't have to have an IQ of anything to know that we're all gonna human beings die. Die, yeah. So um, but what I do know is that some people, when they receive a diagnosis, they go into shock. Yeah. And anybody who knows a little bit about shock knows that often it's a sort of loop. And so, for example, you know, you can be caught in a rip and come back in and say, Oh my god, I nearly drowned. And people say, Yeah, but you didn't drown. And you say, No, but I nearly drowned. And you're sort of caught in that loop of because your nervous system has is registering shock in order to keep you alive.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Because some shocks can kill you, some situations. So that shock is uh things start to close down, it pumps the blood to the heart. So those situations. So for some people who may be dying and do not want to discuss it, but if they've never dying's an intimate personal experience. Yeah. If they've never discussed their intimate personal life with anybody other than a partner, you know, they haven't discussed it with their children. So it's a bit like sex. You know, a lot of people might might discuss sex with their best friend. Yeah. Um, but they're not discussing it with their parents or their children. And so dying, you know, I think you just have to have a lens in it. That's a very personal experience because it's an internal experience. So it it's not like how you do your job. There's not it's it's all about what's happening on the inside. And so I it's never the whole denial thing, I have to say, I was I sort of I was laughing when you said it because it's just not in my awareness. I've always said denial, denial, but wow, yeah. Because it's their right not to talk about it if they don't want to. But it doesn't mean they are denying they're gonna die. They don't know they're gonna die, they just don't want to talk about it. Or they are so frightened, or a range of other responses that they can't. So sometimes you can work with them in a way um where you can sort of dissolve some of that um resistance or incapacity. Um, but I have to I do think that we the base, you know, as a baseline, you won't know how it's going to be until it's happening to you, how you're gonna be until it's happening to you. And so you can never have an opinion of what someone else is doing on the inside. Because even just in life, you know, you're having a disagreement with someone, or you've got an opinion about their behavior, and you say, Oh, well, of course, you know, blah, blah, blah. But that doesn't mean that is how that person feels. It's complex. And our lives are complex, our thoughts and emotions are complex, and you know, you it's about working with what presents itself, what's in front of you. Um and either respecting that, or so sometimes the right thing to do is just acknowledge that that's how they feel and respect it.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, if someone kept poking at you, you know, come on, tell me all about your how you're feeling, you know, you might have a range of responses to that. Unless you've you really trusted that person, that person was really there for you. And uh, you know, or you might encourage them to talk to someone else. And sometimes, as we know, you can talk to someone on a park bench looking at the same view, or on an aeroplane or at the station, whatever, and have a chat but that you wouldn't have with your own children.
SPEAKER_01That's so true.
SPEAKER_00And so it's just all about it's all a dance. Dance with the the right steps with that person. To the right rhythm.
SPEAKER_01A lot of the reason that I focus my work upstream while we're living well to really think about these things is because you have more ability or accessibility. Um, it's just difficult to motivate people because it's early on and they think, well, I've got time, I've got time. And I find it quite difficult with most people because they're not interested in thinking about it all until they they get a diagnosis, or until That's right. The earlier you do it, the more liberated you'll be, because you'll be freer to live your life, and you can go and you have to always go back and revisit your death prep anyway. But the earlier you start and the m earlier you lean into it, while you're not in anxiety or fight or flight or dealing with um facing death, um, and I really find it quite frustrating that people are so resistant and spend a lot of time resisting, which takes, as you were saying before, it takes up a whole lot of energy. Whereas if you just do it and or do it over a conversation like you and I are having, or over a cup of tea, or on the park bench, and say it and and store it. And I mean we have a smartphone these days. There's so much things, so many things we can do, but this resistance or this lack of motivation to do until it's happening is is quite fascinating.
SPEAKER_00So there are a few things. One is we all know that very well-used saying, you can take a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Um and because the horse might not be thirsty, or it might feel that that water's poisoned, or whatever, whatever. And the other thing I know now is that people can only do what they can do. And for some people it might be a little step, for others it could be everything, but you won't know how you feel. And it's good to revisit it because, for example, now um at this stage of my life, now I'm a grandmother. So I when I first started the work, my children were um, the youngest was uh like 15 or something, oh no, it was actually 10. So he was still a child, and I thought about oh, what happens if I die? And you know, he's still going. Of course, then they all get to adulthood, and you think, well, they're all adults, they're all off on their own now. That's fine. But of course, then they have children, and then have to think, oh, I have to do all that work again. Yeah. Um, to readjust to the fact that you are not gonna see those grandchildren grow up, or that they're gonna love you and it's gonna be painful for them. But the other thing I know is um, you know, I can't I can only do my best for everyone, which is what I've spent 30 years doing. The best example I can be is what's really useful of being because some people have people saying to me now, Oh, I've always loved the way you said that. And I at the beginning it, you know, it pissed me off or it rubbed me up the wrong way, or it's really challenging. But of course, now they see the wisdom of it. And um, and I've also become much softer in my old age, I'm like Yeah. But now I'm an elder, so my response to things now with another with 30 years experience is very different to how it might be not very different, but it's it's deeper and richer than it would have been. And now as an elder, my role is not so much to work with the people, but is to share that learning and all of that experience with people through podcasts like this, through the training, through teaching people and mentoring them so that they are doing the work. That's the most prudent use of my um experience now and what I have to offer in that. But also when I die, I don't want this body of knowledge, body of wisdom now to die with me. Have you learnt with a lot of indigenous cultures? Yeah, I I've I've explored not in a theory way, but more in a being way. I've traveled a lot. I uh I've lived the most the fullest life I can live. And I think because I'm English born, that one of the wonderful things was I lived in New Zealand first and then in Australia. But to live in a country that has an indigenous culture and what that offers us about life, about land, about death, I think is is very useful. We cannot underestimate what like it uh on every single level what those indigenous cultures have to teach everyone. And so because I didn't have it growing up, because I grew Up in England, that um I'm very grateful to have lived in New Zealand and Australia and traveled extensively to other cultures and and just you know to broaden my understanding, to broaden my awareness and and to be in the you know incredible appreciation and the fact that they are still so generous, so committed, even though they've suffered so much and and still suffer. I have you know lots of friends, indigenous people here and and in New Zealand. Um and wow, you know, my my hat is off to them every day.
SPEAKER_01Something that you spoke about is the ceremony that you held for your son after his father killed himself, and he was thirteen, and you did it recently, and he was a 30-year-old self. And what I found incredibly beautiful about that was one that you did it, and two, that you said it was akin to 12 months therapy. And I thought that was really an amazing way to look at it.
SPEAKER_00For him, so we you know, obviously we did the funeral for his father when he died, and that was but he was 13, it was shocking, it was sudden, it was unexpected, it was dramatic, it was a whole lot of things. Um, and then on the 20-year anniversary, um, I spoke to him. And I have to tell you that when he was 13, uh my son was very resistant to ceremony and anything that I had to offer in that line. He was like, I don't want to do that, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, okay. And um age appropriate. Yeah, he's a father himself, you know, he's a great husband and um, you know, the family. And so uh the the people that were important for him came, we came together to mark that moment for him. But and it wasn't so much really about the father who had died and was long gone. It was really about acknowledging the man that he'd become and how that death had polished him and given him because really what he had from that was a post-traumatic growth, which is a very common thing that we see, but we don't always put a name to it. Because he grew into it, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't detrimental and it wasn't something he'd wished for, but he was smart enough to know that it was it's what had happened and he was going to make the most of that situation. And as part of that, I said to him, you know, I love my relationship with you, but if I thought you could have your dad back, I would give it up in a moment. And he responded to, I mean, everyone was in tears. And at that moment he responded by saying, you know what, I wouldn't change a thing. Because he he was mature and wise enough to know that everything that had come after that death had actually been uh good. And he'd become a good, you know, he'd become a a full a full man, he'd become a great partner, then he was now a father, and he was um you know, doing uh all the right things, as it, you know, the best job he could do. Yeah. And um, and that was just this most incredible moment. And it's sort of like watching a circle close up completely, you know, that little chunk that was there. And or it's like a scar healing, so or an open wound healing. And you know, I think any ceremony can save you a any good ceremony can save you a lot of therapy. And that because it it's in the moment, but that so I have a list of something like 37 purposes a ceremony can serve. Wow. Yeah, and that's a lot. Yeah, that's a lot. Um, but if it does at least half to two-thirds of those things, it's gonna be enough. But if it does five of them, that's a shit ceremony. And we all know that we've been to ceremonies that don't do it for us, that or even that we feel worse than we did when we walked in now because someone's been patronizing, they've you know, they've tried to they're unskillful. Sometimes clergy are not doing their best, they're just giving you a sales pitch for their religion. It's true. And um be very hurtful to people. I'm I'm unapologetic about that. You know, I I love it. I love it. I love it. Great. But when the chips are down, um, you know, when someone is dying, if that if that set of beliefs does not support you in a humane and kind way, you might want to think again.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Zenith, as we wind up our interview, I just want to ask you, do you ever take any time off?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. You do? Yeah, great. I've always had a really balanced because I live, I live at the ocean, I live in a I'm always out having a great time. And uh, but when I was young, I worked for nine months and I traveled for three. So I always took the winter off to be anonymous, to be unavailable, to just be quiet in my own thing. But now um I'm 68 and I took a year off when I turned 66. And I thought, now what how what do I want to do? I'm, you know, I I've got limited time. I don't know how long that will be. And I thought, but there's still a demand for me.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01So I thought, oh. There is, and that's that's what I mean. I you you can I can imagine people just calling you all the time.
SPEAKER_00Well, it it isn't it isn't, but now what I do is I work for three months, uh travel for nine. Great. How good's that? I love that balance. It's so great. So when I'm working, I'm I'm you're on there, I'm giving. But you know what? The universe has really made a w the mystery, whatever you want to call it, has really made a wave for me, and it's been an effortless journey. And because I'm always um present to what I'm doing, it it's been it's been really it's been effortless, and it's been very exhilarating and exciting to to lead that cultural change. And so it's not like some people who are slogging away, you know, and and they've also got other commitments that they have to maintain. So it's not been arduous at all some people's experience and full respect to to what a lot of people have to do with their lives. But I I can't say it's been arduous at all.
SPEAKER_01I think that's simply wonderful. And it comes across in all of your teachings. And I'm a big believer in if you're in in your path or your your ikagay, you know, where you're in your vocation and you're able to get paid for it and you are contributing, participating, and leaving uh a a body of legacy that's just going to be the gift that keeps on giving uh to everybody to benefit from. Can you be able to step up and meet it in volumes?
SPEAKER_00Life has been very kind to me. I have a baseline which has been very useful to me. I have a few baselines, obviously. But one of them is um if I I only have to make a difference for one person a day.
SPEAKER_01It's your humility that is just so nourishing and inspiring. And and it's true, you only need to make a difference for one person, even just one conversation or a smile in a day, an interaction, make someone feel good. It's helping me um to refine, refine the way that I approach things. Um, really investigate more and uncover more and be more careful and diligent in the way that I see things, um r receive how I give and really question myself and be accountable all the time and just keep on keeping on in that that direction. So thank you. It's uh it's a gift that I will forever be refining. One, two, three, four, five questions. All right, so Zenith, question number one. Do you believe in the afterlife? I don't care.
SPEAKER_00Tell us something we wouldn't know or expect about you. Uh I've spent so much time giving everything away on the radio and I'm I love a hot water bottle.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's good. Love it. That's perfect. God, I do as well. What song on your death playlist might surprise people?
SPEAKER_00I don't have a death playlist. My friends will get it together.
SPEAKER_01Ah, wow. I'm not great with music. Well, there you go. That's something that we wouldn't have expected about you. What's a moment at a deathbed or a funeral that has never left you?
SPEAKER_00The very first time I spent time, I've been with people who were dying without fear.
unknownUh-huh.
SPEAKER_00But then I met a guy, a young 42-year-old guy called Phil, and he was dying with grace. And that afternoon changed me and my life and my work forever. And um he I just I just hold such a wonderful place for him. Because he's he made a difference for me. I said to him, you know, he said to me, Oh mate, you know, you've just changed my life today. And I said, mate, I said, you've changed mine, and because you've changed mine, you are gonna change a lot of people's.
SPEAKER_01Ripple effect. Beautiful, beautiful answer. And finally, if you could whisper one message into the heart of someone who just lost someone that they love, what would it be?
SPEAKER_00Just be with it. Be with it in the way uh that is right for you, and don't take on any shit from anyone. I love you.
SPEAKER_01Thank you so much, Zenith, for your time today and for the profound wisdom that you brought to our conversation. It was a true honor to share space with someone who walks so gently yet powerfully alongside death, and in doing so helps so many others to live more fully. Your work is not only important, it's essential. A steady light in a world that too often turns away from what matters the most. And thank you for reminding us that intimacy, dignity, and authenticity have a place in death just as they do in life. With such deep gratitude and admiration. You've been listening to Live Well, Leave Well by me, Bachi. If you or someone you know would benefit in some way, shape, or form from this episode, please share it. It would mean the world to me. And hopefully, it might mean the world to someone else. I'll catch you soon on the next episode. Live Well, Leave Well was recorded and mixed with original music by Brand Music and produced by Michael Burroughs.