Rethinking Death, Dying, and Community Care with Dr Emma Clare

In this powerful and thought-provoking episode, we’re joined by Dr Emma Clare – Chartered Psychologist, End of Life Doula, and CEO of End of Life Doula UK.

Emma shares her unique journey into end-of-life care, from working as a domiciliary carer to becoming one of the UK’s leading voices in death literacy and community-led support. With honesty and compassion, she explores what it truly means to support someone at the end of life – and why these conversations matter more than ever.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Hello and welcome to Before You Go, the podcast where we open up honest conversations about grief, loss, and everything that surrounds the end of life. I'm Matt Brook, and each week I sit down with people who support families through some of life's most difficult moments, sharing insight, compassion, and real understanding along the way. This podcast is supported by M. Piker, who helped bring important conversations just like this from across the breathing sector to a wider audience in partnership with us. I'm delighted that today's guest is Dr. Emma Clare, End of Life Dooler, Charter Psychologist and Chief Executive of End of Life Dooler UK, a national charity supporting more than 450 doulas working in communities across the UK. Emma supports people approaching the end of life as well as those closest to them, offering practical, emotional, and sometimes spiritual care during one of the most significant times in a person's journey. In this conversation, we'll explore what an end-of-life doula really does, why communities play such a vital role in death, dying in grief, how death anxiety shapes the way that we live and what the future of bereavement care in the UK might look like. Emma often says that people who are dying are contagiously alive, and that perspective alone tells you that this is going to be a powerful conversation. Emma, it's a real pleasure to have you here. Thank you very much for joining us.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 1:14

It's a pleasure's all ours. Um, to begin with, uh, could you could you tell us a little bit about your journey into this work and what first drew you to put uh supporting people at the end of their life?

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Yeah, sure. So my first job after my undergraduate degree was in domiciliary care. I took the job not really knowing anything about what it would involve, and I certainly didn't realise that most of the people that I would be visiting would be in the very last weeks of their life. And I think, like a lot of people, I know people say to me when I say I'm an end-of-life doo, oh, that must be a miserable job. That was my view of what the work was going to be like, and it was completely the opposite. I found it really brought perspective to my own life. I found it really uplifting. I absolutely loved it. So then, even though I then went and did a few years of work in mental health, I was always trying to find a way back into end-of-life care, and that's when I came across the doula training and thought I would see what that was all about and just got hooked really.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

So, for people that don't know, what is a doula?

SPEAKER_00 2:10

So, doulas span really the professional services and just being another citizen, a fellow human being in a community. So we we don't do anything medical related and we're certainly not experts, but we aim to have a little bit more confidence and knowledge than the average person around death and dying, and that enables us to support people who are approaching the end of life through either through age or through having a terminal diagnosis. And as you mentioned in your great introduction, we very much support the people around the person as well. So I'm sure you'll appreciate and your listeners that the work looks different for every single person that we work with. But I think a good way to sum it up is that we try and fill the gaps in support around somebody. So if they have they might have great practical support around them, but maybe they need somebody neutral to talk to about their fears or their hopes or their preferences around death and dying, or maybe they've already got that emotional support around them, but they need help navigating the complex health and social care system around them. So we we try and fill those gaps where we can, and where we can't fill those gaps, we try and pull in other people to strengthen that circle of support around somebody.

SPEAKER_02 3:19

Your charity supports hundreds of families directly each year and many more indirectly across the UK. So, what does the national picture currently tell you about what people truly need at the end of their life?

SPEAKER_00 3:31

I think we've sort of got things the wrong way around because I think when people think of what people need at the end of life, they primarily think of the medical support. And of course, that is a really vital thing that people need, especially access to timely and adequate pain relief. But beyond that, people's priorities tend to be very much social and community focused. So they want to be able to spend quality time with their family, their friends, their pets. They want to remain connected to meaningful things in their community, perhaps faith groups. And all of those things are neither provided by services nor nor should they ever be provided by services. Those things can only come from other people in the community. So I think helping people to stay connected to them through through that might be practical support to help them get to those spaces, or it might be simply helping people to avoid going into hospital. That's one of the most common reasons people contact us because they know that they want to die at home, surrounded by their people, usually, but not always. So often I suppose it it's nothing fancy that we're doing. We're always quite clear to say that this work has been going on since human community started, but by being open and having these conversations with people and empowering them to believe that they can follow their wishes, you know, they don't they don't have to go into hospital, they have choice. People often don't know they have choice, just like your work, including after death as well, people don't know they have so much choice around funerals and things. So helping people to understand their options and feel confident making those choices is a big part of the role.

SPEAKER_02 5:01

Have you seen changes uh in in how people engage with grief and bereavement support in recent years? And the reason I ask that is because obviously you've just kind of mentioned that people aren't aware of their choices, so therefore it's an ongoing piece for you. But I mean, I guess to pick a moment in time, probably since the pandemic, have you noticed a step change in in people that are requiring your services or at least inquiring out of curiosity about what you do, how you do it, and how you can support a loved one?

SPEAKER_00 5:27

I think you're right. I mean it came out of a really tragic situation, but I think the pandemic certainly putting my psychologist hat on for a minute increased what we call mortality salience, our awareness that we're all going to die. That was, you know, all over the news every day, and it felt very close to home. And I do think that that changed our work as doolers in several ways. So we certainly noticed more people wanting to become doolers during that time. Maybe they'd had a personal experience of bereavement and they wanted to help other people. NHS services becoming more aware of what we do. There was a sort of all hands-on-deck feeling at that time, and people that perhaps weren't as open to working with us before were then the door felt open to us after, and we've continued those relationships ever since. I do think, like you say, that and I hope very much that things are changing. I guess if you went back not that many years, people were much more, much less aware that there was more choice than just the traditional options, particularly around funerals as well, and and with with support prior to death as well. So we still find now that most people don't know that they can make legally binding decisions around their wishes and preferences at the end of life, for example. But one of the things we do as well as offering direct support to people is running community workshops about advanced planning. And we do find that more people are coming to those, more people want to seek out this knowledge for them and people they're caring for as well. So I think people are starting to feel more empowered around their healthcare, not just in the death and dying world either, just generally as well. I think some of that isn't always, you know, there's so many things online now, people Googling things, AI giving us not always good health information. So I think some of that's related to that and people feeling distrust of services, but the opening up the conversations is definitely a positive that's come out of it.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

You mental you mentioned the term um mortal saliency there, and another one I've heard quite a lot recently is death literacy and death competency. And what do those what do those terms mean to you and what do they mean in everyday life now?

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Great question. Yeah, mortality salience is a bit of a fancy psychology term, really, but it as I say, it means the awareness that you are going to die, that you are mortal. And I think people might hear that and think, oh well, we all know that surely, but we often don't engage with that knowledge, we don't let ourselves think about it, and we know that our brains don't help us in that department either. Our brains are primed to keep separate anything to do with death and dying and our own identity. It doesn't let us put those things together, so it can be a real effort for people when they start these conversations, like you say. I do I do definitely prefer the phrasing of important conversations as opposed to difficult. Of course, they can be difficult sometimes, but I think calling them difficult sometimes puts people off even more. And then death literacy and death competency, thinking about my my PhD work, kind of tried to unpick those two concepts. And in my view, which I guess would potentially be disputed by other people, is that they're both vital if we're gonna improve how we do death and dying. So death literacy is is primarily around having the skills and the knowledge, you know, knowing what to do when somebody dies, knowing who to call, knowing your choices and your options, knowing how to have a conversation with people. So that's quite grounded in factual information, I would say. And then death competency I really like because it brings in a person's own feelings and relationship with death and dying. And I don't think you can separate those things. My my view is that somebody can have all the factual information you'd like, but if they still feel uncomfortable having those conversations, they're still not going to do it. They're not going to change their behaviour. If they're a healthcare professional, they're not going to have these conversations with their patients. So death competency brings together death literacy, the factual information, with their death anxiety, which we all have. You know, that's partly what keeps us alive in an evolutionary sense. You know, we have to have a bit of a fear of death to keep us protecting ourselves. But I don't think you can put that down. And it's particularly relevant for healthcare professionals because you know, when you put that work hat on and you go into those settings, you're still somebody who's experienced grief and bereavement yourself, you're still somebody who's one day going to die yourself. So I my view is that we need we need to help people build their death competency alongside their death literacy because otherwise they're not gonna it's not gonna result in meaningful change for anybody.

SPEAKER_02 9:49

What are the most to your mind, what are the real most realistic and compassionate ways of enabling people to learn and understand more about those things?

SPEAKER_00 9:58

I think a recognition that talking about it isn't always the easiest way in for people. Um it's one reason why I really love some of the work that our members do around community festivals around death and dying, where yes, there's spaces, there's death cafes, for example, where people can come and talk about death and dying, but there's so many other ways to ease people into the topic. Maybe they want to write a letter to somebody that's died, maybe they want to do something art and creative around it. There's dance, there's singing. There's lots of ways to engage with this topic that don't have to be having a sit-down conversation. And then as doolers, when we're doing advanced planning with people, we'll often help people explore the the most gentle way into the conversation. And we do very relevant to your work again, find that it's not always easy, but people often feel most comfortable starting by talking about funeral wishes. Maybe that feels a little bit more acceptable to people, it's more familiar. So it might be starting off with, you know, what music would you like? What kind of where would you like it to be? And then working to a place where this isn't the case for everybody, but I generally find that the most tricky topics for people to talk about are those like advanced decisions to refuse treatment, where people are making decisions about treatment they would want potentially to refuse, because then you have to really understand these medical interventions, you know, things like ventilation, which people became more familiar with again during the pandemic. Some of those things are quite unpleasant to imagine happening to you. So, but again, not everybody's like that. I've definitely worked with clients who've just said, no, I want all the information laid out clear so I can just go through it all in order. So obviously, we work to the person in front of us.

SPEAKER_02 11:34

Every time, kind of when you're responding to a question, I've seen so many similarities between your work and our work. And whilst they're valuable, you know, incredibly different things and with people in in different places and moments. We are about to start a uh like a rollout of information sessions called from first call to final goodbye. And the idea of that is to go into communities to welcome them in, to talk to them about the whole process from when someone passes all the way through to the funeral service and then beyond. And I think that's because you can prepare yourself as much as you kind of would like for for knowing that someone is going to pass, but actually, it doesn't really present itself until that moment comes. And I think at that time there's a there's a lot of pressure that's instantly felt to people where they think, well, what do I have to do first? And I think there's there's a false sense of an expectation that there's loads of decisions that need to be made instantly. Almost when when you know, say the first time that you see a funeral director, you speak to one, and actually we want to we want to try and help and support people to understanding that actually that's not the case. This is what comes after. Here comes the questions, these are some of the things you'll need to think about, and actually take them through step by step through that guide. So I just see a lot of similarities between between the work that we're doing, and as a collective, I think that's that's really important and really impactful stuff because we're trying slowly but surely to break down a topic of conversation that is really, you know, is is historically really, really tough. Um, but I completely agree with your sentiment. It's so important, and I say this to everybody that I come across and say the reason it's so important is if you just take an example, and I uh you know, I have a family member that that doesn't talk about it, even though I've worked in this industry for 10 years now, and I say to her, When you pass, we're gonna have to deal with the grief of losing you, and that's one thing, but if you don't tell us what you want and how you how your wishes will be carried out, we kind of we then have to second guess everything, and that compiles it, and that almost in a way makes it harder because we're gonna be wanting to grieve for you, but we're gonna be questioning each other about have we done the right thing here? Is that what they would have wanted there? So I think by doing these collective things, I think we're we're doing a you know a joint good for for the for people that are having to to to have these these kind of important conversations. Um, in our in your research um notes for us, you describe death anxiety as part of the uh the human condition, but also something that can lead to avoidance and silence. So, in your opinion, how how does death anxiety shape the way that people live, plan and care for one another?

SPEAKER_00 14:00

Yeah, I think like you say, the two, whilst death anxiety is completely normal, we all have to have some level of it. Again, with psychologist hat on, with a lot of anxiety, you'd be trying to reduce, reduce it as much as possible if somebody has anxiety that's affecting their day-to-day life. But with death anxiety, we have to acknowledge that we're all still going to have some of it. So it's more when I when I did my master's research, I found that what actually made a difference was people's awareness of their death anxiety. It didn't really matter how death anxious they were, as long as they were aware of it and they were trying to overcome it and not letting it particularly healthcare professionals, not letting it affect the conversations they had with patients. Because the two main coping strategies that our our brains use for death anxiety are distancing and avoidance. So that means if something comes up about death and dying, we either avoid thinking about it, we get ourselves out of the conversation, we change the subject, or distancing, we sort of imagine that that happens to other people and not to us. And both of those are really unhelpful when you're trying to make these plans. I totally agree with everything you said there that making these plans is is not just for us, it's for the people important to us as well. So they don't have that weight as well as the grief. But it makes it difficult because obviously to to engage in this, you have to imagine your own death, you have to think about it, you have to um yeah, think about your preferences around it. So our brains again aren't really working with us in this sense. But the more, like anything, the more you practice doing it, the easier it gets. And that you don't have to jump in and start with something super heavy to start with. As I said, there's so many gentle ways into this conversation. And I think that m sadly, most people leave having these conversations until they're in a crisis situation, and then it's even harder, like you say, there's so much panic, there's so much rush. By leaving it, we're not absolving ourselves of having to make those decisions, we're just making sure that we're gonna have to do it when it's already stressful, basically. So, yeah, it's a big favour to ourselves and other people.

SPEAKER_02 15:56

You mentioned there about easing people into and gently towards kind of reducing that anxiety. What are some of the examples of some things that people can do to gently ease themselves into trying to, you know, ease up that anxiety?

SPEAKER_00 16:11

Many of our members, I mentioned death cafes before. I think they are a perfect way-in. Um, when I worked in mental health services, if there was somebody who was really struggling with death anxiety, that would be a nice thing I would suggest in terms of gentle exposure. So death cafe is its own separate movement. I think they're they're held in something like 85 countries around the world now, and they really became more popular during the pandemic, I guess, because people wanted space to talk about that mortality awareness they'd gained, talk about their grief. So they are just open community spaces where people can go and talk about death and dying. You don't have to talk, you can just go and listen. Really gentle. There's tea and cake there, as the cafe name suggests. So they're positive spaces, but not in a as doolas I often say, we we don't positive wash death. We don't say, oh, it's all always lovely, because obviously it isn't. So they're realistic spaces, they're spaces without judgment, they're free to access to anybody. Death Cafe have some really good, strict strict in a in a good way to hold people. So they say, for example, you know, people shouldn't have to pay to attend. There shouldn't be any marketing or promoting a service in that setting. It it's just a community space for people to taught. So I would say that that would be my number one starting point for approaching death anxiety.

SPEAKER_02 17:27

Really powerful environments as well, because you've got a room full of people that are potentially in the same situation as well, which could mean that you can, you know, you can find people that you can relate to, that you can form bonds with, that you, you know, that can help and support each other during really difficult moments as well. I did a death cafe many, many years ago uh in in Somerset, and I was asked to go and present and talk a bit about the crematorium that I that I worked at, which is um Sedgemore, which is part of Westerley's um portfolio. And uh when I got there, there was in the social about 30, 30 people. Um and we ran through the basics, uh just uh, you know, the high-level stuff about the crematorium, what it does, how many people they support each year, and stuff like that. And uh someone put their hand up there and said, Oh, could you do the next one at the crematorium? And I said, Yeah, okay, no problem at all. Like so went away and I was like, Oh, you know, we'll probably have about 30 or 40 people here, I would have thought. Um, and there was in excess of a hundred people that came to that that second one because I think there was there was a genuine desire to want to demystify and to to kind of aid some curiosity around around that place. Many people working in in kind of this field, I mean, this is it as a doula or in healthcare in general, have personal experiences of loss and and they and that helps shape what what they do. Um, how has your own experience influenced the way that you support other people?

SPEAKER_00 18:52

I think like a lot of doolas or or anybody in end-of-life care, perhaps I came to this work through my own bereavements, I would say. Well, a mi a mixture of professional curiosity and personal experience. I was very much brought up with I'd say like four parent figures in a very lucky way. So I mainly grew up with my mum and her grandparents, and that meant that I think through school I was more aware that some of my parent figures were closer to dying than other people's. And when my grandparents died, um, in very different circumstances. So my grandma died when I was 21 very suddenly from a brain hemorrhage. And I went to the hospital and all the family were there, and I think that was quite I didn't know it at the time, but that really did inform many years later when I saw the doodle training, me being pulled towards doing that, because even though it was very hard and obviously very upsetting, I f I felt quite at home in that situation. I felt like very practical, very focused. I remember suggesting to my family that maybe we'd each want to say something, you know, so we don't leave anything unsaid to her. I I felt, I mean, it was my way of coping with it as well, going into sort of coordinating a little bit. But I felt comfortable doing that. And then quite a few years later, when my granddad died, that was much slower. So we had sort of a week where we sat vigil with him. And by that time I'd done the do the training, and I guess I was I was definitely driven to do the do the training because I wanted those skills for my own people as well. You know, I wanted to know what to do when when my relatives died, um, and I I imagine that draws other people to it for sure, as well as wanting to help other people. Yeah, I think my and I I think people come to the work as well. I was lucky and had a relatively, relatively positive experience, but I think other people come to work because they had a really negative experience and they want to take what they learned from that to try and help other people avoid that happening to them.

SPEAKER_02 20:45

Sharing that, appreciate that. Um, one thing I I ask every guest that comes onto the podcast is you know, when you think about a meaningful farewell or an act of remembrance, um, what what makes it truly personal and healing? What what do you think good looks like in that in that space?

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Yeah, starting with choice for sure. I still you'll know more about this than me, but I definitely think that when people think of funerals, they still think, you know, traditional burial, traditional cremation, black hearses, all the all the classic stuff, which some people love and and want, and that's fine. But I think it starts with instead thinking what other options in terms of the service, starting with what what was your or what is your loved one like? What what does this person enjoy? What would what would translate their personality into this event? And I know there's also a big um there certainly is a bit of a debate in our field at the minute around direct cremation, you know, not having a service at all. We actually did my granddad chose to have direct cremation and and that was fine because we did make sure that as a family we went and did our own service up on the moors of the Peak District, which felt very him. But I do think that as humans, that ritual is very important for grief and healing. It's there's a reason we have funerals that it brings communities together around grieving people. So I think that a a good goodbye, like he phrase it well, involves having the people around you that you need to support you. Um, trying to get rid of this stoic British stip-of-fallip, which we're not very good at, you know, saying this is a space where we can show our emotions and there's no judge this is the place for it, helping people rally around you, your circle of support, then and then just making sure that that event, whatever that is for you, however big or small, is is reflective of your person, but not to the point where you're you mentioned before, if the person doesn't tell you what they would have wanted, then you're left thinking, oh, this has to be perfect and exactly what they would have wanted, and we can never know what that is if they haven't told us. So I think trying to remember as well that that that event is for you, it's for the people that are left behind, and it can it's just as important that it fits what you need as well as what they would have wanted. So a mixture of all those things.

SPEAKER_02 22:54

Absolutely. You raise so many great points in there around a number of a number of things, and a lot of them stem back into educations. You know, you mentioned about so personalization. So we see so much personalization on a daily basis, and it's only increasing because of the questions that are being asked of families about, you know, what what embodied that individual? What were they like, what were their likes, what were their dislikes, and the offerings that are being given to people now for what are known as traditional services, um, so you know, are flexible and agile, and it and it can be things such as you know, it might be that the floral um display is is representing a hobby that they love, motorbikes, or maybe maybe a sport that they loved. When it comes to the direct cremation side of things, you know, it's about making sure that people are making informed decisions and understanding what it is that they are that they're asking for, because the ritual of a funeral is an incredibly important part of life. And actually, not having that is very difficult at this stage, I think, um, to understand the impact of not having that. Naturally, there are there are people that will will want it and they'll go and they'll do their research and they'll understand and they'll have an onward service and things like that. But I think it is really, really important from an educational perspective to understand everything in um totality. So looking ahead over the next kind of five or ten years, where do you where do you see end of life care and bereavement care heading in the UK?

SPEAKER_00 24:18

I think it's a timely question because I know you were at the National End of Life Care Coalition launch this week, and I hope that that is the start of us recognising the the massive role that communities they already play in death and dying, and we just don't we don't recognise it. We think of, like I said at the beginning, we think of death and dying as something that services do. And I would love it if we could flip it round so in 10 years we have an understanding that everybody does, that community is what and the end of life is about, and then the community is supported by services, it's not something that's provided by services with a bit of an add-on from the community. And what I mean by that is that, and it's definitely our message as doolers, that yes, there's space and there's necessity for specialist knowledge at end of life, but a lot of this is just ordinary human knowledge that we have lost. You know, if you went back a hundred years or so, not even a hundred, maybe eighty, most people were dying at home. Most people knew what ordinary death and dying looked like. And some people might think, oh gosh, well, I don't want to know that, I don't want to think about it. But because we're all going to experience it, either for our the relatives around us and for ourselves, we're not very good at uncertainty as humans, and death is already uncertain. So if you can reduce the uncertainty around what you're gonna witness as a family, what you're gonna hear, when those things happen, yes, of course they're still difficult and they're still upsetting, but at least you haven't got the panic of is this normal every time something changes, and there can be a bit more calm around the person, which is helpful for the person too. So I would love I would love to see more resource and more strengthening of those community networks around people at the end of life, more recognition that we don't need to serviceify everything, not everything that is useful needs to be turned into a professional service. We can just recognise it and support that in a more organic way. And then on the funeral point, I know we already see this changing, and maybe you do too, that I do think people are more aware of their choices now. And and we've seen some beautiful examples from our members where um a community has has done the entire things themselves. I know there's certainly still a role for funeral directors within that, but people can do all of this themselves, communities can do this themselves, and that's particularly relevant when we have, you know, cost of living crisis and things are getting more expensive. So, yeah, I would just love to see more community empowerment around death and dying, both in the lead up to somebody dying through the dying process and afterwards as well.

SPEAKER_02 26:45

Thank you for that. The um the National End of Life Care Coalition was a fantastic event, uh launch event. I think the thing I took from that is that there are so many different services and work streams that are doing such fantastic jobs, and they are individually they're chipping away at a lot of the things that we've spoken about. Um, but actually getting everyone in that room and getting them all to link arms and say the same message at the same time has got potential to be really, really impactful for us as a nation. Um, I'm really excited to see to see where that goes next, and hopefully, uh maybe be able to come back on and we can talk a little bit more about the National Life Care Coalition at a another time because I think it would be a topic that our listeners would love to hear more about.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

Um, I'd love to.

SPEAKER_02 27:30

Wonderful. You often say, and uh you said this in the again in the research, that people who are dying are contagiously alive. Could you share what that means to you and perhaps a moment that captures that feeling for you?

SPEAKER_00 27:40

I I think it's something I learned when I was doing domiciliary care that, as I say, I had that expectation, like many people do, that it was going to be a miserable job. And I I found that people really their diagnosis or just through age, you know, many of the people I was visiting were over a hundred and they were under no illusions that they were in the final part of their life. But they wanted to share their knowledge, they wanted to teach the people around them, they wanted to enjoy everything around them, including nature, and they often talked that that was a quote I stole from somebody I supported because she said that when she'd been diagnosed that everything was brighter, everything was more colourful, she started noticing things she'd never taken the time to notice before. And I think that it's one of the reasons I love working as a end-of-life doer that I get I get to feel that without having my own diagnosis, and hopefully we never know, but hopefully not being that close to dying myself, because I think sadly, people do often wait until something like that shocks them into really noticing the amazing things around us, but like particularly in nature, I think I would often take people I'm supporting out into nature and just spend time there, spend time enjoying things, things that we've been around all our lives, but we're just rushing most of the time. We're not taking time to notice them. So I I think that one of the beautiful things about end-of-life work, not just do the work, is that it enables you to have that constant perspective and to yeah, again, just really notice the things around us.

SPEAKER_02 29:14

Thank you. That's really powerful, really poignant, um, lovely, lovely messaging, and completely agree with you. To finish off, we do like to do a bit of quickfire questions. So the first thing that comes to your mind, and uh we've got probably about five or six questions altogether. So the first thing comes to your mind, one word people most associate with death.

SPEAKER_00 29:33

Sad.

SPEAKER_02 29:34

One word you wish they associated it with instead.

SPEAKER_00 29:36

Joy.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

Something small that brings comfort and grief.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

Nature.

SPEAKER_02 29:39

A misconception about dying you would love to change.

SPEAKER_00 29:41

Painful.

SPEAKER_02 29:42

The most important conversation families should have sooner.

SPEAKER_00 29:44

Wishes.

SPEAKER_02 29:45

And one thing you hope listeners take away from today.

SPEAKER_00 29:47

Normal. Just this is all normal stuff and it's nothing fancy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:52

Couldn't put it better myself. Emma, thank you very much. Um, it's been such a thoughtful and deep human conversation. It's it's a powerful reminder that death, dying and grief are not only medical or professional experiences, they're human experiences. Um, and you know, they're shared with families, with friends, with communities, with everybody that that that touches someone that's passing, to be to be quite honest with you. Um, you can find out more about Emma's work in the End of Life uh Doula UK in the episode description. Um, where can people find out a little bit more about you if they want to learn a little bit about you or End of Life Doolers?

SPEAKER_00 30:24

Yeah, I would search online at End of Life Dooly UK. All our information's on our website. If you're looking for doula support for yourself or somebody else, there's an easy contact form on there that you can fill in and we'll get back to you promptly, or you can give us a ring. Yeah, I hope that's helpful for people.

SPEAKER_02 30:39

Thank you very much. Um, if this episode has resonated with you, please consider sharing it with someone who might need to hear it. Uh, because the more we talk about death, um, the better we can support one another in living. Thank you very much for listening, and we'll see you again soon. Bye bye.