The Write Path #39 - "Choosing to Die: A Daughter's Story..." with Author Theresa E. Evans!!!

My name is Theresa Evans. I am an author and recently published my first book Choosing to Die: A Daughter's Story of  Supporting Her Mother's End of Life Through Assisted Death. I look forward to talking with you about how we show up for someone at the end of their lives - regardless of how they choose to die.

As an ICU nurse, I witnessed death and dying on a regular basis. I considered it a privilege and an honor to be with someone when they died. And then my own mother chose a date with death after years of suffering at the hands of end stage heart failure and COPD.  My mother chose to die with MAiD (medical assistance in dying) on November 15, her 80th birthday. I spent three months with Mom and my sisters before she died. We supported her and each other during this tender time. 
The book gives a first-hand and personal perspective into the experience of navigating anticipatory grief - the emotional distress, anxiety, and mourning we experience before an expected, significant loss. This is about processing one's feelings of grief, sadness, and loss of future, while the person is still present. 

Her Website:  http://theresaeevans.com/

Welcome to the Write Path Podcast, where being an author, an actual author, still matters. This isn't the place for the Chat GPT experts or the AI buffs to churn out soulless content with no heart.  This is the place where authors share their journeys, explore their creativity, examine the "Why?" behind it all and come together to celebrate each other. This is the podcast for authors, about authors, and by an author, where the truth still counts and words still have power. Join Us!  You have a story to tell!

Contact us on all our social media platforms and email us at thewritepathpodcast@gmail.com  

This is the place where authors know that every page... is a step forward. Let's move forward together, let's move forward today. Listen now.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Right Path Podcast, where being an author, an actual author, still matters. Folks, this is the place that's for authors. It's about authors. It's done by an author. It's where we share our journeys. It's where we explore our creativity. And most importantly, it's where we examine that why behind it all. Folks, our guest today is an absolutely remarkable lady who I've only known for a couple of minutes, and I'm already sitting here smiling and enthralled, and I can't wait to hear the story. She's a first-time published author, and um, she is the author of Choosing to Die: A Daughter's Story of Supporting Her Mother's End of Life Through Assisted Death. Folks, please welcome to the show Teresa E. Evans. Teresa, how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_01 0:47

I'm great, Rory. I'm happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Thank you. I'm really happy to have you here. Um this is I mentioned it to you in our little pre-interview that we had. The this is a very big topic out there in the world. Uh no shortage of opinions on both sides, but you come from this from a person who has lived through this entire process and can actually speak to it from experience. So I'm looking forward to hearing the story. Um, and whatever it is you want to talk about or tell everybody about, um, I can't wait to hear. So let me just turn this over, tell everybody a little bit about who is Teresa, and um what led you to this point where you are now.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Okay, great. Um so I am Canadian, first of all. So this just so we know, this took place in Canada, where uh medical assistance in dying is legal all over the country. In the United States, right now, we have 14 states in the District of Columbia that have some form of medical assistance in dying that's legalized, but it's still being born here. So um I married an American, and that's how I ended up over in the United States. Always thinking I'd end up back in Canada, but with my husband's profession, we stayed here. So I worked as I graduated from Ball State University. I worked as a critical care nurse for 15 years, so I have a medical background, um, which came in handy with my mother. And uh the last job I had while my mother was getting sicker and sicker, I was traveling a lot internationally. So I was trying to call her almost every day if I could, because I had a feeling that my time with her was going to be limited, and um for maybe four years before her death, she just sounded more and more desolate every time I'd call. And there was really no more medical interventions that I knew of from my nursing perspective, from a medical perspective. From uh my sisters and I had tried everything we could to every alternative method we could. She had end stage heart failure and some chronic pain issues and um COPD. And so one day I just remember talking, I was talking to her on the phone, and I said, you know what, mom? I said, You live in a country where you have a choice. And I said, I am not trying to off you by any means. You know, I said it's gonna break my heart. I can't even imagine what it will be like when you're not here. But it's breaking my heart to hear you suffering. And she loved two things, other than her family. She loved gardening and she loved painting. She was a watercolor artist, and she wasn't able to do either of those things anymore. She was still living alone, she was still living independently, and I said, you know, if you want to check that out, go for it. I just need you to know that I will support any decision that you make. I just felt like it needed to be said out loud. Had anyone ever said it out loud that she had an option that she might not have considered. And quite honestly, Rory, I didn't think she'd do it. I didn't think she'd actually, but it's always we always feel, I mean, the worst feeling you can have is being trapped, right?

SPEAKER_02 4:25

True.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

And the research shows actually that once people have made a decision to access medical aid and dying, they don't always use it, but they actually have a better quality of life because they stop worrying about how they're gonna die. They don't have to worry, am I gonna suffer at the end? Is it gonna be is it gonna be even more painful? How long is this gonna go on? There's it, there is a plan B, and instead they can focus on living their last days. So yeah, I mean, you can say no right up to you actually. The last question that they ask you before you receive the medication in Canada, and I'm sure it's the same here, is do you still wish to receive this medication that is going to end your life? And I remember saying to the doctor, I'm like, Really? That's the last word my mother is going to hear. Is that I mean, and he said, Because people do change their minds, and it's all about autonomy, which is one of the things that comes up right in the press, one of the things that we hear for people that are avidly against medical assistance and death is that this is somehow being done against people's wishes. And if it is, I have no experience with that. And believe me, I have been for the past four years diving into this topic. Um, you know, I've read everything that you can read, uh listened to every podcast you can listen to. I became I've become an expert on this topic. But anyway, my own mother, you know, it's one thing to have these theoretical conversations, but then when your mother calls you and says, Yeah, I'm gonna do it. I'm meeting with a doctor, two doctors, because you have to meet with two doctors independently, and uh you have to be approved for it. Not everybody who wants made can have it. There's certain criteria that have to be met. So when she decided that she was gonna go for it, I just it was it was a blessing. For me, it was a really hard time because it was right at the peak of COVID. Oh wow and I I lost my business. I was a subcontractor for a company out of uh Colorado, and I traveled, that's all I did was travel and teach extensively all over the world, India, Australia, the UK, all over Canada and the United States. And so that came to a screeching halt with COVID. And it felt like such a dark time all the way around, and yet I was like, wow, I'm I'm I'm going to move in with my mom. I'm gonna go spend as much time as I can with my mom before she leaves, and so that was the blessing of COVID for me. Um yeah, so that's how it started. So I I just packed a bag and my husband, you know, I have the world's best husband, and he was used to me being gone all the time anyway. And I said, I don't know when I'm coming back. At that point, I don't think mom had set a date. This was in July. So I had to quarantine for two weeks. Canada had very strict um laws on that, and they checked called every day, checked on you to make sure you were still quarantining, and then I moved in with her. And I mean, the crazy thing about this whole story is that I haven't lived with my mother since I was 14 years old. Oh wow, she threw me out of the house when I was 14, and I'm just Italian and Irish and stubborn enough to say, Well, adios, I will figure out the rest of my life on my own. Now, of course, we had mended those angsty years of you know the teenagerhood, but I mean, I literally moved myself to another country, that's how far away from my family I felt I needed to get. So it was, you know, for me to get to spend almost uh three and a half months with my mom was such a blessing. And I'm it was I I mean, how I have I just listened to the book because I did the audiobook and I I hadn't listened to it. I had listened to it in bits and pieces, you know, as we were recording it, and I just listened to it all the way through, and I was like, what a story! Like, I can hardly believe I lived through it myself.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

Yeah, I mean, so many dynamics must have been going on at that moment. I mean just finding this out now about how there was an estrangement and then a healing from that. Um, because this is all you know uh huge enough in terms of just I mean magnitude of decision making and ramifications and whatnot. Yeah. This isn't like you can make a mistake on this. Right. You kind of have to you gotta be sure, right? There's no going back.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Right. Um the uh the way you you sort of propose it at the beginning uh was intriguing to me too, because yeah your mom, just to I want to make sure I'm getting it right, she's um suffering from uh like end stage heart failure, she's got COPD. Yep, these are not curable things. No, it's not like oh, if I hang on and I take my treatment, there's a chance type thing. It's you are where you are and you're suffering.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

Yeah, and she's 79 years old.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

Goodness.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

You know, she's she was still, like I said, still living independently. Um, she wasn't driving for the last year. I have two sisters that lived close to her, thank goodness, and um, and a brother-in-law who really helped a lot with groceries and stuff like that. But yeah, it was you know, I mean, I I had to actually walk away from critical care nursing because and it made me I cried the day I did it, but there's a point where sometimes we just need to die, and it's okay. Sometimes it's just okay to die. And we have this amazing system in place, don't we? That I mean, mom had open heart surgery when she was 60. If she hadn't had that surgery, I'm sure she would have died. She had a very big heart attack, and she had emergency open heart surgery at University Hospital in London, Ontario, and that saved her life. So we got 20 more years with her. So, you know, I talk about this in the book. I mean, when you're when you're faced with a choice, most of us will always say yes. We don't want to see our loved ones dying. And yet, and and and this is one of my big hopes for the book is that people will have these conversations. Like I'm having this conversation with my daughter now, and I I I can tell you, she doesn't want to have it. She's like, Oh mom, you're gonna live for I'm 60, I'll be 67 this year, and I I think I'm a young 67, you know, I'm still really healthy and I'm grateful for all that. But I'm six, you know, anything can happen at any time, and I want her to know. I want her to know what what I feel is quality of life and what I feel isn't. And you know, these are the decisions that I would make, that I'm asking you to uh advocate for me. And if you can't, uh it's okay. I just need to find someone else who can. Because sometimes our family member can't, they're just too close, right? Right. But so we I mean, I'd call I'm known in my family as the deaf sister because I always I'm the one who always wanted to have the conversation with mom. And I think you know, if you've been a critical care nurse, you're around a lot of people that are dying, and you really come away with a perspective that it's not, I mean, dying is part of living. We can't you can't live without dying, right? It's just part of the cycle, it's part of the cycle of life, and I think we've removed it from our culture so much that people are afraid to talk about it. And grief is I mean, grief is there were moments that I thought I was gonna break in half, but it's still never that experience is a different experience than what my mother needed and was going through. I see. Right? So her job was not to take care of my grief, my job was to help take care of her ending.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Wow. The when you mentioned that about you're known as the death sister, um are these your siblings that are giving you the same?

SPEAKER_01 14:08

Yeah, and my mother. I found out later on my mother was like, all she wants to do is talk about death, but I I what I saw in in what I saw, and I worked in transplant for some of those years, heart transplant. So what I saw a lot were families that were in at the worst for some for some of us, this is like the worst moment of your life, but there had been never been any conversations on what the actual person who was facing the medical crisis wanted, and families were arguing, and one person wanted one thing, and one person wanted another thing, and a lot of times none of them cared about what the actual patient wanted, yeah. Um, and so I wanted to make sure that my mom didn't have that experience. I wanted to make sure that I knew what she wanted. I mean, when she had open heart surgery, she wanted open heart surgery, that was her choice. If she had said, even at that age, I don't want to have open heart surgery, I would have supported her. I I don't get to make these choices for her.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

Right. So, I mean, I get the way that we're presenting it right now is is this sort of reclamation of of some semblance of control on things that you've had no, yeah, you've had no autonomy or control on because you've just been the victim of and you know the person these things are happening to. So I can see the um the empowerment that can happen there, uh, you know, in terms of that. But I am curious as to uh your siblings, did they share your feelings or did they think, wow, this is not the way we should go? And how did that go with with you and them?

SPEAKER_01 16:04

Well, no, my sisters and I I have two, I'm the oldest, and we're all very close in age, Italian Catholics, right? Boom, boom, boom. Let's have babies one after another. So um they were they were on board with it. I mean, we had to we had moments of reckoning. I I mean, first of all, you got to think about this. We we had not lived close together for 50 years. I mean, I would go visit them once or twice a year and spend a week or two with them, but to actually come together at this very intense time, and it was it was a very intense time, and I would say, um, but as far as the choice to access made, all three of us were totally okay, mom, if that's what you're want, if that's what you want to do, we're we're we're gonna support you in this. And that being said, I talk about this in the book, you know, and let me tell you one thing. First of all, let me just show you guys the book.

SPEAKER_00 17:07

There you go, show that book.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

Look at the beautiful illustration. So yellow snapdragons were my mother's favorite flower. Okay, and as I said, my mom loved gardening. And when I got there, she asked me if I would put her garden to rest for the season for the last time, which honestly was such a such an honor that she would ask me to do that. So I spent a lot of time in her garden. She had a beautiful garden. And as I worked in the garden, I was just seeing how nature was mirroring everything that my sisters and my mom and I were going through. You know, all of the metaphors of life were just talking to me through the plants. And so when I decided to write the book, I'm like, I'm gonna write the book through the lens of botany. And each chapter focuses on a different perennial. And as I'm telling the story that we're living with my mother, I'm telling it through the lens of botany, you know, when the seeds drop, what rhizomes do, what petals do. What is the sepal? The sepal is that, you know, you have your flower petal, and then you have your green, you know, you always have like say with you think of a rose and you have your rose, and then underneath that you have the green sort of cup that the petals sit in, and then the stem, right? So the sepal is the sepal, it's the support system for the flower. So I thought about that as far as my sisters and I were the sepal that was holding mom up as she's going through this experience. So I started seeing everything, and nature was just speaking to me through uh this story that we were living with mom. Now I talk about how in nature timing is everything, right? And so it is with people, and so it is with families, and oftentimes one person's timing is different than another person's timing. And so those were the kind of kinds of moments that caused all of us to have to stop on our tracks and say, okay, so like an example would be my mom. First of all, she so she decided to die. She's like, When should I die? When should I do it? And I'm like, I don't know, mom. I said it was I said, why don't you do it on your birthday? November 15th. Why don't you go out on the same day you came in? I mean, what the heck? Who knows? And so she decided to do it on her birthday, November 15th. And so August, September, October, we were, I was living with her, we were together and through till November 15th. And I mean, we did everything, we turned it into a ceremony. We we did everything that she I took her on a fossil hunt like two weeks before she died. She loved fossils, she loved fossil hunting. It required a lot of equipment, but we did it. You know, we did it. So all these bucket list things we did. But one of the things about what that mom wanted was to make sure that all of her all of her ducks were in a row. She she had come from a very harsh childhood. She was raised in the children's aid, she didn't know her family, she had been abused, she had married my father when they were 17. I mean, all of this backstory is in the book. But to just to I only say that to give you a sense that my mom had a complicated backstory. The fact that she could even be as much of a wonderful mother as she was is a miracle to me because she never had modeling like a lot of us do. And so, you know, I say that in the in the preface of the book, there's a point where I say uh um the uh the tricky part with mom is that you never knew when she wanted to be the mother or the child, right? So this was a kind of a dynamic that went on for all of our lives, and part of that was because she never really got to be a child. Interesting, you know, she never got to be a child when she was a child, so but anyway, she was so proud that she had this house that she had something to leave her daughters, and so she wanted before she. Died, she wanted all of her possessions gone. She wanted, I mean, we the house was she we we we reset the entire house, we prepared it for sale. She interviewed the like a week before she died. She interviewed the realtor, got the realtor on board, set the price, took care of all of that stuff. She said, This is not my house anymore. I don't want you girls to refer to it as my house, it's your house. So, back to the timing issue. I have one sister whose job is to help people settle estates, and I myself am sort of a purger. But then our middle sister, she's and Mel and I are a lot alike, and we're kind of have fast zippy personalities, but my middle sister, she's more she's slower to make to make a choice, and she's definitely more private, and um there was a point where we were selling off mom's stuff that you know, and and I could I could see that it was really upsetting our middle sister, and because she because in her for her it was why are we doing this now? Why do we have to do this now? Can't we do this when mom is gone? And so rather than I mean, like, and you know what it's like when you're in the heat of a of such an intense situation, we could have just at that point we could have any little thing could have broken us apart. But we had decided that we were gonna not let that happen. And so all it required was an acknowledgement okay, that's how you feel. I I totally understand that. Let's talk to mom. This is what we feel like we're doing, what mom wants. So let's you know, let's have a conversation with mom. Maybe we are doing this too fast, and so rather than just getting pissed off at each other, we we kept taking these moments as they came up to take a breath, you know, pause, respect each other. Nobody's timing is right or wrong or better than the other person's. It is what it is, and we just kept deferring it to mom. What do you want, mom? What is it, how what is it that you need from us right now?

SPEAKER_00 24:42

Love that.

SPEAKER_01 24:43

Because we had, you know, the first the first week, and the whole thing is written out in the book, and I'm not gonna give the whole book away, but we had a major, we had a major blowout the first week. As a matter of fact, I almost left.

SPEAKER_00 24:58

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 24:59

It might have it might have been within the first three days.

SPEAKER_00 25:03

Might have been a whole different book.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

That I it would have been a whole different book. And you know, I and we were all a part of it. My my two sisters, my sisters and my mom. I mean, just all of our worst, all of our the all of our worst unresolved issues, of course, came up because I I I mean I owned a yoga studio for 14 years, and I taught yoga and I studied, I still feel like that is my guiding philosophy, the yamas and the niyamas, right? And one of the one of those is tapas, which is you're walking through the fire. And I was we were in the fire, and when you're in the fire, you want the things that aren't necessary need to burn away. Let them burn away so you can show up as a light, bright version of yourself, and so um I can't even remember. I honestly don't remember what caused it, but I just know that we were in the living room, it was like the four of us in four corners of the living room, and everybody had their heels dug in. And even my mom, and she's like, if you girls don't get along, I'm gonna call the doctor. No, so this was in September, right? If you girls don't get along, I'm gonna call the doctor and I'm gonna move this up until this week. And I'm like, mom, you can't frickin' threaten us with your assistant death. That's bullshit. Wow, we all, you know, we all left. We all left. I mean, we just went to our respective mom went to her room, I went downstairs to my room, my sisters went home, and I thought, you know what? I'm not staying around for this. This is the same shit that I left 40 years for, you know, like it's not and I I actually got my suitcase out, and I like to think I've matured somewhat in 45 years, and I thought, I'm I'm like, Therese, you can leave because again, we need to know that we have an out. Feeling trapped is the worst feeling. So I was like, you you don't have to stay. But do you really want to leave? I mean, you've left once. You left once. Do you do you like this is it? And I texted my sisters and I said, you know what, you guys, and we were all we were all we were all suffering, we were all breaking. And I said, you guys, let's let's come back together, but let's not use words, let's not talk, because words are not our friends right now. Let's just feel each other. I mean, it almost brings up it brings up a lot of the emotion that was there at that moment, you know. We just, it was like such a profound thing that was happening, and we were all trying to our nervous systems were all trying to figure out how are we gonna show up for this? How can we possibly, possibly show up for this? Yeah, and we came together and we just held each other. We literally just held each other and we sobbed out for I don't know how long. All of the just the the emotion, the tension, the ants, the and then we went in and we, you know, laid down with mom, and it was sort of like in that moment was when we decided as a family, we're in this, we can do this, and we're gonna we're gonna do this for mom.

unknown 28:52

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

It uh through most of the story, it sounds like you've sort of taken the lead with a lot of this in terms of like suggesting it, and is that how it was with your sisters, you know, that you were kind of taking a little bit of a little bit of a little topic.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

Yeah. I mean, I you know, maybe um, of course, I like to think that we all made every decision together as a group, but you should probably would have to ask them.

SPEAKER_00 29:20

Ask them. Well, the the thing that that sort of stood out to me was that a lot of people have to deal with this sort of thing. Maybe your sisters found themselves in this position. They have to deal with the sort of thing without all the training that you've had. Because I mean, you know, you're an RN, you're a yoga instructor, you're a somatic uh educator. Yeah, these are things that help you um not just learn but embrace the you know, pause, take a breath scenario. I mean, that that's that's actually a very serious thing to people who don't know that. That's a very, very serious couple of steps to folks who know anything about what you have studied. So you're walking into this with a background of how do I sort of I don't want to say control, but how do I sort of frame and guide my way through this emotional trauma? And a lot of people have to deal with this are walking into it going, now what? Um yeah, I don't know if that was something that you had to deal with maybe with your with your sisters, and you know, if so or if not. How do people who don't have that kind of background walk into this and even begin to make sense of it all?

SPEAKER_01 30:29

I yeah, I mean I don't know. I mean, I don't know. I I I I I really don't know what the answer for to that is. I think that um from the the the great amount of reading and listening that I've done around um MAID, I'm gonna call it MAID, okay? That's medical assistance and and dying. That's the term that they use in Canada. And so um more people than you would suspect learn how to excuse me, learn how to show up in ways that they never thought they could. And a lot of people take this and turn it into a a living ceremony, a celebration. And so this is one of the big fads right now, right? Living funerals have the funeral before the person dies. Have everybody come, have everybody come, and you know, and instead of standing at a podium in a church somewhere or something, say it right there. You can say it to the person, the person can say to you. My now, my mom didn't want at first, she didn't want anybody to know, other than my sisters and I. She didn't want her grandchildren to know, she didn't want her friends and neighbors to know, and it wasn't that she um felt like she was doing anything wrong, she just literally didn't have the stamina to be able to explain it to everybody, because of course everybody wants to understand, yeah, and she really felt like it would break her grandchildren's hearts, and um it turned out somehow that one of the grandchildren found out, one of my sister's grandkids, and I said, Mom, you've got to tell them all. I mean, if one grandchild finds out, if it ever finds out that for whatever reason, you know, I said just I said, you have to trust that they we are their mothers, and when you're gone, we will be there to support them through their grieving process. And it was only my I had I had a brother, he struggled with addiction his whole life and died when he was 50. He died actually four years before mom. My mom found him in his apartment, and um he had a son, he has a son, and he he was the only son. Walker was the only person who didn't know how mom was dying, because mom truly felt like he was still so raw from Paul's death. I didn't agree with her on that. I really tried to play the devil's advocate on that, you know. Um, but she was steadfast that she didn't want him to know. He knows now, and that's why I can say his you know name and talk about it. Um, and he actually said to me, he said, you know, I'm kind of glad I didn't know because I don't think I don't know that I could have supported it. And instead, you know, again, mom died on her birthday. So Walker showed up a week before mom's birthday to visit her and bring his son. And of course, he comes walking in the house with birthday presents all wrapped up, and he has no idea that literally in six days mom's gonna be gone. And I mean, it happened the way it happened, right? He's fine, he's fine. I've made sure of that. So um, so I don't know, you know, everyone uh the doctor, we had oh the doc, you know, the doctor was just amazing. John Clifford, he's retired now, but he said when he walked in the morning of the provision, that's what they call it as a made provision in Canada. Um, of course, we had transformed the house into a just a sanctuary. There was twinkle lights everywhere, there was an altar that we had set up with crystals and mom's favorite and mom was Catholic, so that's another whole thing that we can talk about, right? But we had everything in place, and um, I remember he walked in and he just was like, Oh, daughters are wonderful, you girls have done well. He said, you know, when I show up to do a provision for and it's only sons, a lot of times they're sitting in the living room, you know, or standing in a corner of the room while I'm administering the medication. And you know, but but not to say that not men aren't capable of showing up in a different way, but men have we've never for a long time we didn't promote that in our culture, did we? The women were the keepers of the heart aspect and sure um all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 36:01

So men are taught to sort of not feel, so yeah, yeah, exactly. That's how we show up, right?

SPEAKER_01 36:07

Yeah, and and you can imagine, I mean, when you are put in the most intense situation of your life, the I the worst version of yourself is gonna show up. I mean, everything that you haven't come to terms with is getting pushed to the along with all of the along with all of the tools that you've learned and cultivated and developed over the years.

unknown 36:35

Right.

SPEAKER_01 36:36

Right? And and hopefully those are stronger than those other old patterns.

SPEAKER_00 36:42

Yeah, hopefully. Let's just keep cutting quotes. Hopefully. Yeah, hopefully. Um the oh my goodness. There, I mean, there's so much. I I I only have you know uh the time I have, and uh there's so much to talk about. But uh folks definitely need to get the book if they want to hear this whole story and and find out you know the whole bit about it. But the the topic is so incredibly relevant. Um you're coming at it from a very, very thoughtful uh place, uh an empowering place, and uh I think it's important people to know that as they're looking at you know, considering the book. This is um this is a unique type of story in that there's I mean, I haven't seen a book like this out there yet. Um there may be one, but it hasn't crossed my uh you know my table yet. But um, in terms of that, uh I think the the question I would have had if I hadn't talked to you about this earlier, I would have been like, how was the publishing aspect of this to get this story out? Uh and and sort of did you run into any resistance on that? And and what'd you end up doing? So maybe address the publishing part of this.

SPEAKER_01 37:48

Well, I I like I said, I was uh I had a I was a subcontractor for a company out of Denver, and I taught somatic movement and clinical trainings all over the world. And so I had been teaching, I taught a lot of weekend workshops in between the larger trainings, and I was in Portland and I had taught a three-day workshop, and at the end of the workshop, somebody, a gal walked up to me and she said, I feel like you might have to say something to say in writing one day, and I help people publish books books, and she handed me her business card, and you know, she said, Here's my card, just in case. So that was 10 years ago, 12 years ago, and I don't know why I even kept that card, but I kept that card. And I took a I took a um, I mean, when I got home from mom's, I was exhausted. I had lost my mother, I had lost my business, the world was suffering with COVID, it was a lot. I was just exhausted. And I said to my husband, I don't have it in me to start another business right now, I just need to rest. And um we have a wonderful write on door county uh uh writing program, and they were offering it was a 12-month program meeting once a month, writing this for women, writing the story of your lives. And so I thought, oh yeah, writing would be good. I I'd always journaled, and actually during that whole time with mom, I'll just give you a sense of like what my journal looks like, but I decided to keep a journal. So, like I kept a journal, so there was writing all the way through that guided me um my writing, and so I've always loved journaling. So we were given a prompt of water, and we were told to uh write free write for 15 minutes, it could be anything, but just the word water, and the thing that came to my consciousness, so this would have been in January Hang on, was that it was close enough that mom was still very much in my in my consciousness, right? And I this is what I wrote. I wrote, My mom is drowning. Coarse wet rattles announce her inhalations, followed by incomplete and ineffective impostors posing as exhalations. Her hazel gray eyes glisten as they fix on mine, and we spill into each other the way mothers and daughters sometimes do. An enduring contract sealed with our shared DNA has lasted a lifetime. The bounty of stored memories now and then blurs who is a mother and who is a daughter. Her eyes plead with me. Make this stop. You can do it, Teresa. You can do anything you set your mind to. I've watched you do it your whole life, dear. I scream a silent protest, but I don't want to be the oldest daughter right now, mom. I know there is no amount of setting my mind to it that can repair her tired and broken heart. I only know one way to make this stop. But now is not the time for a life and death conversation. Something that rarely happens when the living is easy. Who wants to spoil a good life by talking about death?

SPEAKER_00 41:33

Well, I can see where this came from. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 41:37

And and that was that was the beginning, and so I wrote about 30,000 words, and I thought, I think this might be a book. I think I might be writing a book. And I had that business card from Bethany, a publishing partner, and I pulled it out of my desk and I just emailed her and I said, Could I would you mind if I sent you something to read? And just could you give me your opinion over whether you think this is worth developing into a book the way it feels like I I want to, I should. I mean, not that I even needed her permission, but I was curious, right? And I mean, she she said, I never read anybody's writing like 30,000 words when they send it. I kind of skim, and you know, she's like, Yes, this is a book, this is a book, and you must write it. And she was she loved my writing style, and um so I hired her. Um, again, remember, I wasn't working, I didn't have a lot of money at the time, so my sister generously helped me, and I hired her as a consultant just to so I think it's like it's either $200, it was it $500 an hour or $250. It was a lot, anyway, it was a lot, but she was willing to break that up into 15-minute chunks, and so I would just as I was carrying on through the book, um, I would send it to her and she would give me her feedback. And then when when it was done, and it's 260 pages, I think it's I'm not sure 80,000 words, would that be? I'm not sure. Um, anyway, uh when I was done, she said, okay, our work together is done. You need to now just go out and pitch this book, and that's when I started doing research on traditional publishing versus self publishing. And I an avid reader myself, and I was thinking like milkweed would be a great, like this. I thought when I thought about what where would my book fit, I was thinking milkweed publishing or like one of these smaller publishing houses. And um I did send out a few pictures. It never I never like put my entire heart into it because it never really felt like and then I just I just asked mom, I said, all right, mom, this is our project. Okay, help me figure out what the next step should be. And that I swear, like within days, I got my copy of Writer's Digest because I thought, well, I'm if I'm a writer, I need to get writer's digest and do all the things. Check the box. And there was right, and there was an article in there about a woman um talking about publishing self-publishing versus traditional. And she had done both. And it really, I mean, it gave me such a clear perspective on the pros and the cons of both, because there's pros and cons to both. But the biggest thing for me was I did not want, I did not want to give away my work to a publisher. I wanted to own it, and that was the deciding factor for me. I really had no idea what I was getting into by making that decision, you know, as far as all of the backhand work that I would have to do. But I decided to hire Bethany full-on. She has this business called Publishing Partner. It's not a hybrid, but um she will guide you through the entire process. I mean, she knows, like I never heard of Ingrid Spark and you know, KDP and all this stuff. I knew nothing about that, right? And I just knew I had lived this incredible experience and I wanted to get it out there. And so, and I also felt decided that the project wasn't worth that the project was worth really investing in. So I didn't want to do anything on the cheap. I paid for an amazing global editor. Um, she happens to live in Australia, but I mean, she I paid for a very experienced and skilled copy editor. I paid for the artwork. I paid, I probably invested $12,000 into this book. And I was like, okay, Teresa, again, do you need to take out a loan? I was willing to do that. I thought I'm just gonna borrow against my house to pay for this, it's worth it. I don't care. I have you know, I'm gonna do it. And then I thought, you know what? It takes a village, it takes a village, and so I, of course, I was lucky because I had my semantic business in my yoga studio. So I had a mailing list of about 700 people that I mean it was much larger when I was actively teaching, but these 700 people had sort of been with me over a 20-year period, and I started a Substack. I do have a Substack. Um, and I just instead of charging, uh asking for a charge for the Substack, I just put it out there. I said, listen, you guys, I've lived through this most amazing experience. I've I'm writing a book, I've written a book. I I'm if you feel if this topic is important to you and you want to see this book get out there, would you consider contributing to my project? And I would say I think I got about $8,000. Most of it was $20, $50, $100. There was one woman who called me and asked me to meet her in a coffee shop, and she handed me a check for $1,000. She had heard about my project, and she said, This is for my mother. This is this is for my mother who died a horrible death. And this is in hopes that your book will help that story to not happen again. And so I was able, you know, I was able to just Bethany and I said to Bethany, you know, I said, you're the leader, you're the expert, you're the expert in book writing. I'm not. I lived it, I I can write about it, I'm I'm smart, I can do what you asked me to do, but I don't want to sabotage this project. I want to be so careful with it all along the way. So I'm gonna trust you. And so we meet weekly. I mean, she's the one, you know. It's just she's gonna, she's amazing. And um now we're deep into deep into the like I didn't even know, like when she said global editor, I I'm like, okay, we're sending it to a global editor. I had no idea what that was, right? And then I get back literally 85 pages from this editor.

SPEAKER_00 49:16

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 49:17

Luckily, luckily it wasn't um I didn't have to do a lot of rewriting. She thought she's my right, I think I'm a I actually think I'm a really good writer, and I had been told this before. And I I had a lot of experience writing newsletters for my businesses and stuff. You know, I just never had tackled anything like this. So it was more the timeline because of course when you've lived something, your brain is putting it all together very quickly. But when somebody else is reading it, like she said, it doesn't make sense that your mother was, you know, three years old here and then getting a divorce in the next chapter and then 10 years old. So it was more a matter of, and that process was harder than writing the book. Finally, what I did was I took the book and I I cut the entire, I printed the whole thing out and I cut it out and I put cut it apart. Every section that that uh NIE, the global editor, felt like should be in chapter one. I put in a chapter one pile, a chapter two pile, a chapter three pile. So once, and then my my job was just to knit it together, which actually once I figured out how to the plan to do it, it was amazing because this whole, for instance, this whole like golden thread that runs through the book now that wasn't there in the beginning came while I was knitting it back together. So I really it was like a very cool refining process. And then of course, um, so yeah, so we we decided to, I guess, I mean Ingram Spark and now KDP is that sort of the traditional way that people go and print on demand. And um I did decide on my own that I wanted I listen to audiobooks all the time and I love them. So I hired, I spent $3,000 um hiring a professional who happens to live in our town. He's a music recording artist, but I said, Hans, would you record my audiobook with me? So it was a bit of a learning experience for him too, but it's just it's just beautiful. I read it myself, and um, it's six and a half hours long. Um and so now now there's now I'm into the promotion part, which blah call this is fun. If I get to talk about it and have conversations like this with you, it's fun. But like getting to you, getting to the you know, getting to somebody that's willing to have you come on their show. I really want um, I really think that um what's his name? All there is, all there is. Uh his mother was Gloria Vanderbilt.

SPEAKER_00 52:19

Uh oh, yeah, I don't know. This is sorry.

SPEAKER_01 52:23

He has a grief podcast that's amazing. And I just think Anderson Cooper.

SPEAKER_00 52:29

Oh, yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 52:31

Yeah, I think Anderson Cooper, if you're listening, Anderson, you should have me on your podcast.

SPEAKER_00 52:37

There you go. Well, when this comes out, take the link for this one and send it to Anderson Cooper. I will. You know, this is me on the podcast because then he can actually hear you, and then you get a shot. Yeah, you got a shot then.

SPEAKER_02 52:49

So I will.

SPEAKER_00 52:51

And this is a fairly big podcast at this point, so that that might also sort of get his attention. So you do that, right? You send that off to him. All right. I will when you get on it, you let me know because I want to make sure I'm rooting for you and sharing it on social media and stuff for you.

SPEAKER_01 53:03

I will for sure. All right.

SPEAKER_00 53:06

The uh I I could uh honestly I could talk to you for another hour. The um in in terms of time, we do need to kind of wrap it up a little bit. Uh, I love what you put out there. And you know, folks, if you want to hear the rest of the story, you gotta buy the book. Period. Um, let me get to that real quick. Uh Teresa, how can people contact you, find out more about the book? Uh, go buy the book. You know, it's only been out for 20 days or something at this point. So new, but how can they how can they get to do that?

SPEAKER_01 53:31

I think the best way, of course, you can find it, you know, at Amazon, BarnesandNoble.com, bookshop.org. All of these sites. I I opened it to are you familiar with Tertulia? Uh authors. Yes. So I decided to go with Tertulia for my website. I had used Wix in the past, but Tertulia just seemed like it was set up. So it's Teresa E, Teresa with an HEvans.com. So on my website, you can actually buy the digital book, the ebook, directly on my website.

SPEAKER_02 54:04

Great.

SPEAKER_01 54:04

And that seems to be at the most popular format for people for reading right now. I still like to hold a book in my hand, and I didn't anticipate too many people would want a hardcover, but that's an you know, you can give that option without having to print a lot of copies. So go to my website, my substack. You can find me. It's Choosing Death, which was going to be originally going to be the uh name of the book, and I found naming the book was really difficult. And then I found a list that my mother had written. Okay, listen to this list. I didn't know it. Choices in life. Okay, so she must have wrote this while she was thinking about this. Having children, having children, stop having children, getting married, divorce, many life choices, big and small, choosing to die, check life insurance, clear your soul, clear my conscience. Wow.

unknown 55:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:08

And when I read that, I was like, okay, mom, you gave me the title, Choosing to Die, right there. Thank you. So yeah, you can go on my website. Yes, go on my website, and you can find all of uh several possibilities for uh purchasing and you can keep up with. I'm just starting now to book some podcasts, and uh I plan on holding some um death cafe conversations in the northwestern or northeastern Wisconsin area where I live. Um, if any of your listeners out there um are bookstore owners or you know, house anything like that, please get a hold of me. So I'm just now stepping into this whole thing, whole world of how to get this book out there. Gotcha. I I know it's good. I'm not just saying that because I wrote it. It's a great story, it's a great story, it's got an important message. We all have mothers, we all have people we love, we're all gonna lose. I mean, my mom chose maid, and that's you know an interesting aspect, but she could have died, she could have it could have been any other way. The bigger question is how do we show up for somebody at the end of their life? Yeah, that is what this story is about.

SPEAKER_00 56:34

It's an incredibly powerful message, and uh I'm looking forward to reading it, to be honest with you. So I appreciate you putting all that out. I think it's gonna be a uh a book that matters uh to people. And it's just come out, so there's plenty of time for that to happen. And I love your attitude about it. It's if it's gonna happen, it's gonna happen. We're gonna put it out there, we're gonna let, we're gonna see, you know, uh let the universe do what it what it does and uh connect its dots. So um I I really do think this is gonna be a book that ends up being one of those books that matters. So I I love the your take on it. I really do. Um all right, goodness. Uh final question, real quick. All right, as we kind of knock this up. Um the you have gone through the entire process now of publishing a book, and it is published, okay? Yes. Um, so we have a lot of folks who've listened who are aspiring authors, they are really trying to get that first book out there. What is your best piece of advice for folks who are not yet where you are in the whole process?

SPEAKER_01 57:34

Well, don't give up. Um, and be patient. And I mean, I would say call Bethany a publishing partner.

SPEAKER_00 57:44

Good plug for Bethany. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 57:45

You know, right? And think outside the box. Because again, you know, people were so happy to support me in this endeavor. So um there are there are several companies out there now. There's hybrid companies. I've you know, I I don't know, I've heard good and bad about those. Um they it's it's gonna cost about the same as what I invest it. Now, again, I invest it heavily because I didn't have to do the audiobook. I didn't have, you know, I wanted this quality. So do just do your due diligence and and and you have to be patient. And honestly, there were moments, Rory, where I was just like, what the heck is what have I gotten myself into? You know, I mean, there were moments, and I think all of us go through from what I the more I've talked to authors now, is like you go, my daughter is a beautiful uh ceramic sculpture artist, she just does amazing work, and there's always this moment where she hates her the piece she's working on. And I know there was a moment too, and where I just was like, is this story even interesting anymore? You know, you spend so much time in the weeds with it, and and you know, that's where it was so helpful to have someone like Bethany who said, Yes, it is interesting, yes, this is a normal phase, yes, all authors go through this, it's normal what you're feeling. You know, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, take a break, take a week off, whatever. So I think finding a cheerleader, and if you decide, I can't really speak to the traditional publishing route because I opted not to do it.

SPEAKER_00 59:34

Sure. But well, I I I appreciate that advice, though. That's great. And from uh from writing your first book, you've learned a ton. You can tell. I have so that's fantastic. All right. Um, folks, um, the author of Choosing to Die, a daughter's story of supporting her mother's end of life through assisted death, Teresa E. Evans. Teresa, thank you so much for coming on today, sharing your story the way you did, and and everything else about your life and what led up to it. It's been uh it's been incredible listening to your story today. Thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:05

Thank you, Rory. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:08

All right, folks, that's been another fantastic episode of the Right Path Podcast where the truth still matters and words still have power. Folks, this is the place for authors who know that every single page is a step forward towards finding your right path. Until next time.