Episode 20 - Suzanne Rotondo: The Realities of End of Life

Transcript

Welcome To Hip Talks

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello everyone, and welcome to Hip Talks. I'm your host, Catherine Hinshee. I'm a certified hypnotherapist, NLP practitioner, and Sherm Senior Certified Professional in Human Resources. After spending a decade working in the music industry, my path led me into the world of the healing arts, where science, energy, mindset, and transformation all meet. Each week, I sit down with a different healing practitioner to explore the many powerful modalities available to support our growth, well-being, and personal evolution. So come with me on this journey of discovery and learn about all the opportunities for healing and transformation that are available to all of us. Suzanne

Suzanne’s Background And New Focus

SPEAKER_01 1:30

has worked for decades as an executive leadership coach and organization consultant and is the founding principal of Redshift Leadership. At Redshift, she works with entertainment companies like Netflix, YouTube, MTV, Ad Council, and NatGEO, and social justice and pro-democracy organizations such as the ACLU, Open Society, European Climate Foundation, Obama Foundation, AMNA Refugee Trauma Support, and Outright International. After working as a senior editor at Harvard Business School, she graduated from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government with a focus on ethical leadership. She has also studied at the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland and is a graduate of the Going with Grace Death Doula program led by Alua Arthur. Her attention is shifting to engage with and supporting others to engage with the realities of end of life, impermanence, grief, planning for the end, and contemplative dying or dying well. She is a hospice volunteer and a founding member of Threshold House in Philadelphia, part of the Omega Home Network and Movement, a replica, sustainable model based on the belief that no one should die alone or in ways that go against their wishes, regardless of finances or other circumstances. These homes are meeting a growing need and helping to transform the way our society approaches death. Suzanne embraces all forms of trying to explore and engage with the veil between life in human form and what comes before or next. Okay, Suzanne, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. This is really fun. Can I call you Kat? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:16

Or did we go by Catherine?

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Well, I am Catherine and I am Kat. I'm both, but most people know me as Kat. Is that okay? Or would you prefer mystic with Catherine?

SPEAKER_02 3:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

No, I I love it. And you know me as Kat, and we've known each other for quite a while. So let's get started first by telling us how you fit in. What corner of the healing world are you working in and who are you helping?

SPEAKER_02 3:44

Yeah, well, I appreciate it. And I will say um it's a it's a newer area for me, the healing area. I for 20 years have been an executive coach and executive leadership consultant and working with people on sort of neuropsychology and kindness and care and culture within organizations and emotional intelligence. And while I love that work, I had some events in my life that were sort of moving me more and more toward the work that I do with most of my time now, which is really around end of life care and the movement around end of life that's happening in this country. So that's the that's the world that I'm operating in. It involves hospice, it involves uh being trained as a deaf doula and um working with some national organizations to get some services here in Philadelphia and around the country for people experiencing end of life who don't have resources.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

You're reading, or I have been reading more and more about it. First, I want to go back for a second. That's how we know each other. You were an executive leadership coach at where I was working, and you helped me. You helped me become the chief of staff there. And even having the idea of it, but even, you know, then pursuing it and convincing the CEO that that's what she needed. So I'm forever grateful you changed my life.

SPEAKER_02 5:15

Well, you deserved it and you were ready.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

Different way. But now going back to the end of life work that you're doing, I mean reading so much about it, of course, you know, in the news, Nicole

Why Death Doulas Are Rising

SPEAKER_01 5:25

Kidman becoming a death doula. Right. So, what do you think is the reasoning or the idea behind why this is becoming so prevalent?

SPEAKER_02 5:35

I have been asking myself that a lot. And I think there's a few reasons. Some of them are demographic, and some of them are just perhaps I don't know what you believe or what others believe, but I do think there are sort of energetic evolutions of our species over time. And so I think there's a confluence of sort of the facts on the ground, which is that we have an aging population where lots and lots of people are coming into the end of life without a great support system and in a broken healthcare system. And so um the need is really enormous. The fear is pretty prevalent, both of what's gonna happen to me in in terms of the end um and being sick and what that's gonna look like, but also like what's gonna happen to me at the end, and when I'm no longer in this body. And somehow the fact that there are more and more people facing the fact that they have to plan a little bit more, or they've seen people now who haven't planned for end of life as well. More and more people are getting sort of wake-up calls around paying more attention to that. And it's opened a conversation, I think, around, you know, being more present to our humanity. And this is one doorway, one aspect of it. There's sort of birth at the beginning, which is a bookend, and there's death at the end, which is the other bookend. And we have so much that we've put in place around birth, and there's lots of criticisms and inequities around that. There's been much, much less around death in our society. Of course, there are a lot of places where there's tremendous, even as close as Mexico, just tremendous support and ritual and joy and integration of dying and the folks who've passed into people's lives. Day of the Dead is just a joyful, beautiful, bright, colorful remembrance. We don't really have something like that here in the US. We're still a little bit afraid. So I think it might be a combination of some of those things.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

Interesting. And it really affects, well, for many people, they're alone and dealing with this. But for many people, it affects all of the loved ones around them as well, not knowing what's happening, uh, how to deal with it, how to feel, how to support, how to think about all of that. Talk to me a little bit uh about your journey to getting to this work, you know, why yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:14

Well, I'm a Scorpio, I'm like a triple Scorpio. And so I've always wanted to think about, you know, the fact that we're on a planet that's spinning in the middle of space. And, you know, are there other habitable planets and why is this temporary? And all, you know, all the big questions that I think a lot of us think about. But I was, I, I wasn't really afraid of them when I was young. I mean, I think I had some existential angst, and probably in the beginning of college, when I attended college, I, you know, had some existential angst for sure. I remember crying in my astronomy class to my professor after it was like freshman year, and I went to see him and I was just crying. And he said, What why are you crying? Why are you crying? And I said, I just, it's so overwhelming. Like, how does this all work? Like, we're just so tiny. And he said, This is this is something you need to look at as the spice of life and not as life. And it was really helpful. It was like, oh, right, I don't have to make that my everyday container. I can make my container smaller, you know. So I've always been interested and my my interest has been piqued. But um, I think for me, what what happened is my dad died about 20 years ago. And um, he died really suddenly. And I, up to that point, I'm just one of those people who for had luck and privilege, and I don't know why, I just didn't lose anyone in my family that I was close to before that. And I was really close to him, and it was so fast, and I didn't get to say goodbye. And he died of something called an aortic um dissection, which is hereditary. So it kind of got my attention because I'm like a DNA replica of him in female form, it feels like. And so I, you know, I was just like sorrowful, and my mother was so sorrowful. They had been together for so long. It was, he died like the day after their anniversary. And I just um I found myself just like this with this hole. And I remember saying, if my mother ever calls me, I'm I'm always gonna answer because I would do anything to have my father call me again. So if she ever calls me, I will drop whatever I'm doing. So I started looking more and more into like mediums and you know, the clairs, clairvoyant, claire audio. I really got very, very interested in the veil between life and death. And I believe there is one. So from there, a few years passed, and then my mom was diagnosed with uterine cancer, and it was really far along, and she died in four months, and that was about six years later. And they were both pretty y young. And that was just like I just felt untassed. I thought I died when she died. It took me like a year to realize that I could be here without her, without them. They were, you know, I was I've had a lot of crappy things, but I've had a the luckiest thing I think I've had is that I felt really loved by my parents and they were really good friends. And so I became like at that point almost desperate to like, where are you? And what

Losing Parents And Living With Regret

SPEAKER_02 11:20

what do I do? I can't, like, I don't know how to be here. And so that's when I started working with spiritual teachers and learning sort of how they they taught me to be in connection with them while they were here. Like that that they gave me the tools to stay in contact. But I've come to realize over the almost immediately I had a lot of regrets about my the end of the life of my mother. She lived with us, and there were a lot of things I didn't know I could do. I didn't know I could wash her body, I didn't know it could stay here for three days, and that it wouldn't, you know, that it would be fine, it wouldn't become, you know, decrepit and smelly and all the things. I was so afraid of losing her. I didn't have all the supportive conversations I wanted to have with her at the end. And so I feel like plagued by that. She was the person I I think I loved pretty much the most in the world for most of my life. And I felt like I just could have shown up better. Um, and I just didn't, I didn't know. So I became really, really curious and committed to not letting that happen again to anyone else that I love. I was lucky, I think, because she she died at home. She died the way she wanted to. I was there, her granddaughter, my daughter was there, her two best friends were there. It was not painful, it was on her own terms. She had a really strong, fun personality. So she got got that, but but it could have gone very differently. And I don't think I would have known how to advocate or what to advocate for. So, so that was sort of the turning point for me, where I really started moving from just my own kind of spiritual interest to like, wow, there's an actual physiological process that happens here that can either we can die well or we can die, we can die not so well. And we can be a supportive, awakened force in that process beside somebody, or we can not. And I just realize like I want to help people choose to die well, and I would like to be able to support that.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

I want to go back for a second and come back to the physiological part, but you mentioned in your spiritual quest that you found some tools, right, to connect. At can you speak to that a little bit more? Do you feel comfortable talking about that? Because I think I'm really too.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Yeah. So a few things to connect with them when they're gone. Yeah. So I um there's something called the Forever Family Foundation. And they are essentially people who have lost, it started but with some some families who had parents who had lost young kids, and they wanted to stay connected. And they started meeting regularly. And then psychics and mediums and other people started coming to these gatherings, and they thought, we've got to be able to figure out who can who's actually making like contact. Is it even happening? And so they kind of brought a scientific lens to it. And they started this like very, very rigorous process. I think there's 11 or 13 stages of sort of blind testing mediums who say they can connect with people on the other side. I won't go into it here and I don't even remember all of it, but I remember reading it, and there are 13 people or 14 people in the United States, maybe in all of North America and South America, who have passed all 13 or 14 tests. And they're things like it, it was really cool. They they weren't trying to tip the scales toward mediums. They were like, if this doesn't help, it doesn't help. Like we want real things that help us stay in contact with our children that are missing. So I ended up reaching out to two of those mediums. And that was the first time I felt like I had contact, real contact with my parents. And, you know, I definitely want to believe. And I'm also like this, I think I don't, I maybe this is how many of us are built. On one hand, I absolutely don't believe it at all. And on the other hand, I a hundred percent believe it. And I don't know how I hold how we hold both of those things, but both feel true. You know, so we're looking for confirmation or data or disconfirmation. So I worked with some mediums before I was like, you know, maybe, maybe this is something. But this one, when I worked with this woman, there were a couple of things about my dad, and there were a couple of things about my mother that felt really indisputable. And one of them is that I went right before I got on this, I went and I put on a ring of hers. And my daughter kind of kept all of her jewelry and she was really into her rings and wearing all this. She still is wearing all of this. It's kind of effective, you know, set her style up around jewelry. And so when I got on, the first thing she said is, Your mom's really happy you went to the collection that your daughter has of her jewelry and put put a piece on. And I was like, oh my God. And then I thought, well, maybe everybody does that. No, maybe everybody goes and grabs a piece of jewelry. But the fact that she said the jewelry collection that your daughter has of hers, I was like, because I didn't say I had a daughter anything. She said that they're so happy. It was so specific. Um, and then there were some other things. I mean, a lot about like, she's not upset with you about the end and you know, giving me relief and stuff. I'm one of those people I won't, I used to not give them an inch. I just wouldn't reveal anything. You know, maybe my mother died, maybe she didn't. You know, I would be really a stickler. And then I started understanding the process more and realizing it's not like they get this linear stream of knowledge. They get, they sort of develop their own relationship with the other side about what certain symbols mean and how to interpret them. They basically are shown things, you know, it's not, it's like telepathy, you don't use words, it's images and like the the essence of a sentiment. It's not, you know, this word this way. I mean, sometimes they get letters and things. But anyway, so by the time I saw her, I was a little bit more generous with information than I had been with the previous ones. And I just felt like there was a lot of things that made me feel like these human beings are still in some form. Um, they're like communicable, they're communicatable with. So that was one thing that felt felt really, really concrete. Um comforting, I'm sure. Yeah, it did. It did. I mean, you have you have a child. So my daughter was 11 when my mom died, and two when my dad died, or three. And like for me, the biggest heartbreak is that they don't, they're not in each other's lives. My parents were were good parents, but they were really good grandparents. And so I was just, I'm so bummed for her and heartbroken over that. And like, that doesn't get better, right? You know, it just doesn't. So, you know, part of it is I think still my own journey with like, what does it mean? What does this whole impermanence thing mean? And how do we continue to live, knowing that we're impermanent and that the people we love are and so there was some comfort,

Mediums, Evidence, And Staying Connected

SPEAKER_02 18:45

but it was also just very satisfying to know, like there are real things about this, and our little pea brains and our little uh the way we're designed to feel both part of something larger and want to always maintain our independence and be heard and understood as a self, that tension creates a lot of um a lot of static in our lives and in society. So, you know, it felt really nice to say, like, yeah, there is some continuity. We are we do kind of stay connected.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

I love that. I remember in in my second year of school studying mind-body psychology, and the week that we studied near-death experiences was so mind-blowing and eye-opening for me. It actually that I think is what really uh began my spiritual quest. Because, like the Forever Family Foundation, the research, and I am I can't think of the name of the doctor that did all the research. Yeah, University of Virginia or something, I think. Yeah. And that's just that it was stunning how it went, it went across cultures and religions and ages and races and gender, and and just pe having these common experiences. And I just felt so comforted. Yeah, all right, let's do this, let's see what else is there that doesn't make sense, right?

SPEAKER_02 20:20

Yeah, like these near-death experiences and altered states of consciousness, they tell us a lot. And, you know, if you l you've probably listened to the telepathy tapes, they try, you know, she's trying to get to the bottom of, you know, how do we know things that we weren't told or shown or taught, right? How do we know things just they just come through? And so it's, you know, everything from ESP to savantism to all sorts of things. There's a great trilogy called the When You Die trilogy that looks at near-death experiences, and then it looks at sort of how to prepare for the end of life. And then the third one's called Architecture of Death. And this looks at sort of this the unseen, they say the unseen realities of the dying process from the bedside. And if you talk to hospice nurses and those people, you realize like they see things on the regular, you know, that like ever, you know, something like 60% of people as they're dying in the final days, get visited by someone. And they are not, you know, loopy in some sort of compromised mental health state. They're like, listen, cat, I know this sounds crazy, but my brother just sat down next to me and he's saying, He and my grandmother and this and that, and that they're waiting for me on the other side, and it's gonna, I'm gonna go tomorrow night. I don't know. I'm yeah, he's still talking to me. Hold on. He's saying, Oh, he's saying hi. It's bad to meet you. You know, like that kind of thing. And you're like, and then he'll go on Thursday. And you know, it's just it's so fascinating. There's so much on scene. So and these were big paths for me too. I was just like, wait a minute.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

What? Yes. And when you're talking about getting visited, there's um a podcast I listened to called Ask Julie Ryan, and she wrote this uh book called Angelic Attendance. And she talks about the stages of death in the spiritual sense and how everyone gets visited by loved ones and even pets. Um final days and hours. So uh yeah, that's that's fascinating. So I can I can see that is a very, very personal story for what brought you to this kind of work. So tell me more about then your, you know, the next steps to getting to where you're doing what you're doing now, starting these, you know, different.

SPEAKER_02 22:49

Well, yeah, thank you. So one of the most sort of clear things I did um was I took uh Alua Arthur's Death Doula training program. She wrote that book that's been pretty well known right now, called Briefly Perfectly Human. She runs an end of life kind of organization called Going with Grace. She's really, really cool. It's she's very, very, she's a beautiful, fun, dynamic person. So doing the Death Doula program there, I realized, okay, there's a big space in end of life. There's sitting vigil with people at bedside, being company, you know, hearing their stories or just being a presence, relief for caregivers, those kinds of things. There's helping people plan their end of life. And there's some great things. Like, you know, I use this thing called I Will Die, which is a it's called a creative journal for mortals, where, you know, there's questions in it, like just having you reflect on dying. What questions would you like to have before you die? Uh, what questions would you like to have answers? What makes you feel the most alive? Do you feel you've been able to truly grieve when someone close to you has died? How did the deaths of your pets affect you? What are your feelings about funerals and funeral homes? All these things. And I started to realize, wow, there's, you know, kind of being willing to be in that discomfort around like this really hard thing, which is our impermanence, and supporting people around that. Then there's actual planning, which is what kind of music do you want? Do you want it to be celebratory when you die? Who do you want to be there? What do you want the smells to be? You know, do you want a live band? Do you want people singing? Do you like there's so many things to think about, not to mention there's a lot more than just uh do not DNR, do not resuscitate. There's like maybe 30 or 40 potential things that you need to think about. So then I started to learn, wow, a lot of people don't have the opportunity to engage with what all of this means while we're alive. You know, I love Mary Oliver's poem about, you know, she says, like, it's not just about living the length of life, it's about living the width of life. And I think engaging these kinds of questions are one of the ways, one of the tools of engaging the width of life, but it's also a way I feel like I can connect with my parents. Like when I reflect on memories we have and and I ask them for a lot of help. There's a book called Heaven, I think it's called Heavenly Crew or Ask the Heavens, something like that. And it's basically like there are all the millions and billions of people who have died, they want to help us. Like they're basically just standing by waiting to be asked. And so this person says, like, if you're doing a home building project, like call on all the people who have built things, call on Da Vinci, call on people, like they want to be your crew and ask them to help you get organized, you know, and you don't have to pray to the divine and you don't have to, you know, be at their mercy. You can just politely and kindly ask them and release them when they're done and free them and thank them. And that, you know, going to the dentist, like people who know how to manage pain, people who uh believe in, you know, there are people who have spent their lives in laboratories around hygiene and then died, like, please support this dentist to do a good job for me. So I

Death Doula Training And Real Planning

SPEAKER_02 26:10

start it started to just make things more tangible about like when can I call on people? When can I call on my parents? And right after I did this death doula thing, my brother died. Um, and he died of the same thing my father died of, which is this aortic dissection, and he was only 60. And I started thinking, oh my God, the numbers are going down. You know, um, that that's he's older than me, but he's not that much older. So then it started to feel really personal. What if I died when he dies? That's you know, that's like five years. It got really personal for me about like, how do I live the width of life? How do I not burden the people that are left behind? How do I tell them what I want and what I need? How do I make sure they have my passwords? You know, how do I support them now to have conversations about what our life means together and what it means to say goodbye? So there's sort of those three areas that I started to understand or four, you know, which is just engaging with these really hard topics, which as a society we haven't gotten very good at. There's planning for our death and like being transparent with people about what does it look like to die? What are the stages of death? What happens to our body, and what decisions might you have to make? You know, most people I learned, the vast majority of people say, I want to die at home with people I love, as alert or as awake as I can be, and not in pain. And most people die uh in the ICU, hooked up to lots of machines, often alone, um, or with their family fighting over what needs to happen for them. It looks so different than what most people ask for. And so I just felt like, oh, that is that's so wrong. Like that's something we could do something about. We could have people think about it, you know.

SPEAKER_01 28:05

Do you think I'm sorry to interrupt you, but do you think that it I mean it occurs to me that wasn't always people dying in hospitals and ICUs? Do you think that that's been sort of as modern medicine is advanced and people are, you know, they are living longer anyway, but because I I think about like with my grandparents talking about, you know, their loved ones, their parents and grandparents died. Well, they lived with them and they died. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:32

Yeah. Yeah, I know it's interesting. I mean, this isn't my area of expertise, but I can tell you what I learned, what I've learned. Um, because I became a hospice volunteer at a big healthcare system here on the East Coast. And, you know, some of what I've learned is as technology improves, the conversations that doctors tend to have with people are not, it's probably time to call it quits. The conversation they have with people is there's probably one more thing we can try. And everybody wants to be the miracle. Some people are, you know. So if one out of 500 people this works for, like, what if you're the one and you don't try? So we're always like chasing that tail end of the, you know, of the bell curve.

SPEAKER_03 29:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:22

And um, we're not really taught how to say like enough, you know. Um my husband has always said to me, Don't unplug me, keep keep me going. Um exact. Exactly. That's how my wife feels too. I I don't. I'm like, you know, my my daughter and I always joke, like, if if the end comes and Armageddon comes, like we're not gonna be eating cockroaches and bark, you know, like we're gonna just like lay down and you know, call it quits as soon as we don't need to be the ones surviving out there like a clear desert. Yeah, so I think it's that. And then I think there's a lot of debate about what the Hippocratic oath means, like do no harm. So some people are trying to reinterpret it as like it's harmful to keep people alive on false hope or in this like mechanicalized state. I'm sure that's not a real word. Um, and other people are like, do no harm means like you you go the distance. Um, and so I I think that's part of it. And I think we don't, you know, you know this. We I'm imagining, and you correct me if you think I'm wrong, I think it has to do with some of the social fabric disappearing. Yeah, you know, definitely. Yeah. People did move in with their families when they got older. I was in the a cabin in New York with this guy from Bangladesh. You know, he was probably, I think he was like a surgeon in Bangladesh, and then he came here and he had to drive taxis because it was too hard to get accredited. But anyway, he was saying, I don't understand Americans. He's like, My kids are 22 and 24 now, and they just moved back in. And I am so excited. It's the most fun part of life. He's like, I don't understand why you do it the way you do. Like, you have them stay with you the hardest part, which is like taking care of them. Then you can be friends and like have a fun life together and you kick them out. He's like, I don't get that at all. Like the whole point is to get to the place where you get to live together as adults and have fun. And I was like, that is a really different model. That is, and I love that attitude. That refrain. Yeah. Yeah. So I think for me, I just it was again just trying to decide about where where to put my energy in that sort of bedside, you know, vigil or helping people plan or helping people engage with what it means to be alive while they're still here. And I just kind of waited to see what felt true. I think where I've landed now, just to tell you the full circle, and then we can move on to some something else, but is um, I got involved with this organization called the Omega Home Network. And there are 80 Omega homes that essentially are in the US and they're independent. They're not funded by this, they're they're local, and they're basically like small places, two beds, three beds, eight beds that are like home-like settings that are run by volunteers for people who are already being taken care of by a hospice program, but they they don't have a physical place to be cared for. So sometimes it's people who are homeless, sometimes it's young young parents with young kids and they don't want to die in the home where their kids are. Sometimes their caregiver can't care for them. You know, they were the caregiver for their spouse, and now they're the one who needs caregiving and their spouse can't do it. Um, sometimes they've lost their home. Sometimes they've, I mean, there's so many things. They get discharged from a hospital and they they they or rehab and they they can't live on their own anymore. And so um, so we're starting one here in Philadelphia called the Threshold House with a hospice physician and social worker and chaplains and death doulas. And we're in about the second year of trying to get that started, which is essentially like of your family can be there, but you have volunteers and people who are there to help you. You know, there are people who help you do your end-of-life final planning. There are, you know, tea ceremonies around grief for the family and other people. There are these wraparound experiences for people to really have like a contemplative, supported group of people to hold hands with, to walk sort of through that final threshold with. So that's where I've ended up putting my energy is into volunteering for hospice. So sort of just the direct care. I'm really interested in what people, what's going on for people when they're like at that end. I want to be there for it. And I I just think, you know, sick

Why So Many Die In The ICU

SPEAKER_02 33:55

people, old people, disabled people, when they stop being useful in this society, you know, we're kind of a worker labor capitalist-driven society. There's not many resources for those people who aren't like contributing anymore. And I just feel like, God, can't we at least have a place for people to exit with some grace and some kindness and some support? That's beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 34:19

I'm shocked that that's so necessary. But I and but now that you uh but of course it is. And you know, we were talking about this the last time we spoke about how a lot of people don't have the courtesy or the the ability to plan their death, right? Yeah. A lot of people die in a you know in an accident or um for you know suddenly for whatever reason. So it it is sort of a blessing to be able to have that time and that ability to be have it be meaningful.

SPEAKER_02 34:58

Yeah, totally. But I'll tell you, it's really interesting. Like, so I've done a lot, I've probably filled out, you know, there's another really cool thing called my end of life decisions by compassion and choices. And it's like a toolkit. And you like answer a bunch of things like if this happened, what would you would you want this intervention or would you rather not? You know, do you wanna if you lose your sight, is that the end for you? If you lose your sight and your smell, if you can't taste food anymore, you know, whatever. Like what when when do you call it quits, but also what kind of interventions do you want? And like I want to sit down and go over it with my wife, but she is so fearful of these conversations. Like she just, you know, I think a lot of people feel like if we talk about it, it's gonna it's you know, it just makes it more real, it makes it more prominent. And, you know, so I feel like in my own life, I have my daughter who is like, let's talk about it, let's go over everything. She's fascinated. Also, a Scorpio. My mom was too. And then my wife, who's like, I was with your mom when she passed. That was one of the most terrifying things I've ever seen someone exit this world. And like, I don't, it's too scary. So, you know, there's even me, I talk about it all the time, and it's around in our life. And, you know, I I see how challenging it is to just do that. You know, it's tough. Well, that's where a hypnotherapist can come in.

SPEAKER_01 36:21

Oh, that would be incredible. Tell me about that. Change and and open there. I really mean it. Can you tell me how that could work? Well, yeah. I mean, it's all about changing your neuropathways, right? That your subconscious mind, we're all walking around as an as eight-year-olds emotionally, right? Everything that happened to us prior to the age of eight is what runs the show for most of us that are not right, you know, doing work to transcend that. And so that fear, that primal fear, uh, is you know, it's very understandable. And it's probably, you know, kids begin to have it at that young age about their parents dying, right? I remember going through that myself. And I remember talking to my son about that when he there was a couple of years where every night he just was like, I'm afraid of death again, and we would talk through it. But so as hypnotherapists, hypnosis is a very suggestible state, right? So if you're in hypnosis in this suggestible state, we can make these positive suggestions about opening your mind up, opening up to the possibility of you know, that there's something meaningful there, that there's something you can gain from talking about this, or something that you can gain from exploring your thoughts and feelings and emotions around this, and also to release some of the fear around it.

SPEAKER_02 37:50

So yeah, like my my wife talks about like core survival terror that she remembers from being a child. And like I can see how hypnotherapy could be so helpful for that. Like psychotherapy actually, I am finding is less and less appealing. It's actually bypassing our brain is actually more helpful, going right to, as you said, our nervous system, our DNA, our imprinting. You know, like talk therapy, I think has not proven its worth. It's had it's been given a really long leash and it's helped in some ways, but there's a reason that our society and we keep repeating our patterns. And I think it's because we don't have that happening on the other levels, like no therapy can reach. It's really that's a really cool idea.

SPEAKER_01 38:35

Cool. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, maybe we can uh, you know, riff here and come up with something really good for people in the in the end of life days. I know that's a really, really cool idea.

SPEAKER_02 38:48

It's funny because I've seen a lot of the wraparound services for these places. And maybe once I've seen hypnotherapy, you see a lot of other things. And that is a really that's a really interesting, not wraparound services like people pay, and you know, it's just like what would give people comfort or what modality are they interested in? And um, it seems like such a for family members too, right? And friends and like the people who are close to them and love them and will miss them.

SPEAKER_01 39:16

The number one thing that hypnotherapy is helpful and useful for is anxiety and in all forms, and that's also where most of the research um and data comes, you know, into hypnotherapy.

SPEAKER_02 39:32

So yeah, anything that it feels like a very big Venn diagram overlap with the general population, too. And then you add death to the topic, and I think it's a complete overlap. 99%. I agree. That's really cool.

SPEAKER_01 39:51

So, what what's something that you think people would find surprising about this experience that we haven't mentioned? Two things.

SPEAKER_02 40:03

One is it is really, really a game changer to be able to tell your doctors from the beginning that you don't need them to go to all lengths for you. Like you can start to have more real conversations. And I

Omega Homes And Building Threshold House

SPEAKER_02 40:20

think for me, I didn't I didn't know if doctors would go with it. And I'm learning like they need that permission. Um they appreciate it, right? Yeah, they appreciate it. So that's one thing. I think maybe the other thing that I would say is I thought we had more rituals to rely on as a society around this than we really do. And, you know, if you're a recent, if your family are recent immigrants to this country, that's one of the things that might be luckiest, is like you have something from, you know, like even in Sweden, they have like rituals around death that we don't didn't make it here. Um, like you may, but like in terms of like American multi-generational rituals, like they haven't survived. And I don't even know if we would consider them to be particularly loving the things that you know how death was was handled here, you know, back several generations as people have, you know, populated this continent um from other places. And so I've been surprised that they're I thought like it's just a matter of rediscovering them, but I'm not seeing a lot of that. So that's that's another thing. The other thing is that there are funerals now that are part of this end-of-life movement, and in fact, they teach a lot like shrouding and they are part of teaching people about death and they handle the dying process very, very different. And you can find funeral homes that are in this conversation and in this movement. And I thought that was super, super fascinating. And then I'll just say the third thing, the fourth thing that I wish I had known. When my mom died, I said, you know, I didn't know I could keep her here for three days. Three days is important because there's so much anecdotal, religious, and now sort of emerging scientific inquiry into like what happens, you know. So we have, you know, 28 grams or whatever the number of 21 grams, you know, leaves our body when we die or something. One of the things that I have Wait, what is that? 21 grams leaves our body. When we die, I think there was that movie with Naomi Watts. I think it was called 21 grams, some number of grams. But basically, when we die, they weigh us before and right after we die, and we're 21 grams lighter. Wow. And so it's like, what happened? Like what left our body that weighs 21 grams? Yeah. Right? It's a super fascinating thing. Um, but one of the things that I learned or believe now is that in that final three days, three days after someone passes, there's a lot of religions and history of people who sit with the body of their loved one for three days. And some funeral homes will sit with the body, both to escort it, because there's a whole letting go of like, you know, all the commitments and contracts we signed about being here in this lifetime. Like, what did we come here to learn and accelerate our understanding of and disentangling from hopefully the people we keep living our lives with, you know, multiple times, but whatever you believe. But anyway, that three days, it's both a process of moving on, but our bodies somatically communicate with each other. And the dot, the body of the the person who we've lost and our body that's ours that's still alive, there's a grieving, there's an exchange that bypasses our cognition that actually helps our neurology and our nervous system understand the. This person has left in a way that we can't really process cognitively. So, you know, when I look back on my mom, like I think it would have changed my life had I sat with her body for three days. Because I couldn't grok it. Like I couldn't I couldn't process it, you know, that she was gone and that I was here. You know, and I mean there are other people who, you know, like my wife will want to grok it because it will be somewhat of a relief in her case, you know. So like it's not all, you know, puppies and balloons, but it is like letting our bodies somatically process that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:42

Um, and there are funeral homes that will let you stay with the body. And how is that different from like an open casket wake?

SPEAKER_02 44:50

Yeah, I don't know, because I'm not a funeral person. I mean, I it strikes me as different because that's public. It's public, right? And if they've already done some embalming. Yeah. Like if if it's open castic casket, they're going to do embalming. Yeah. Okay. And there's so many choices about, you know, do you want to be recycling? You know, do you want to be composted? Do you want to be buried at a green burial? Like there's this amazing green burial site that my friend was buried in. He's in in Whidby Island out um off of Seattle. And it's a green funeral. And every year, all the people have people buried there, they have like a barbecue and they come back and they spend time with these people that they've lost as a community, you know, where there no one was embalmed, they were buried in cardboard boxes that, you know, so there's just a lot of conversations happening that are so cool.

SPEAKER_01 45:42

Yeah, amazing. I mean, who knew? And, you know, as you mentioned before, the silver tsunami, as they say, it's not the nicest thing, but it's true. No.

SPEAKER_02 45:54

Yeah. And so true. I know. It's like right in our I'm gonna be part of it not too long from now. Yeah, me too. God, we're getting older. We've known each other for, you know, we were in our 30s. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so holy moly. Yeah. Um, but do you remember we did that mountain pose thing? Yes. Yeah. Well, it inspired when you reminded me of that from all those years ago, you inspired me to come with another activity to leave you with because I know your system's receptive. So can I read something to you? Oh, I would love it. Okay.

Fear Of The Talk And How Hypnosis Helps

SPEAKER_02 46:30

This was this was um in the Death Doula training I did. And I found it, you know, we shut all the lights off and it gets really dark, and you're kind of in a sort of a bit of a meditative state. But I'll um I'll let you get into, you know, maybe a breathing state or whatever you do to get grounded. It's not uplifting, but it is powerful. Is that okay? Yeah. So this is called the nine contemplations on death, or the nine-point death meditation from classic Tibetan Buddhist mindfulness. The intent, I think it's designed to help us deal with fear and you know, this idea of impermanence. So I was just gonna read this to you. Uh, there's three pillars. So, pillar one, uh the inevitability of death. Death is certain. Every little living being will die eventually. There are no exemptions based on wealth, status, or strength. Lifespan is ever decreasing. Your time is continuously running out. Every breath, heartbeat, and passing moment brings you closer to death. Pillar three. Death comes whether you're prepared or not. It will arrive regardless of whether you are emotionally, spiritually, or practically ready for it. Pillar two The uncertainty of the time of death. Human lifespan is unfixed. There's no set expiration date, and life expectancy is constantly shifting. Pillar five, there are many causes of death. Far more things can end your life than can sustain it. I don't know if I agree with that one, because there's so much that's sustaining us all the time. But six, the body is highly fragile. Human life is incredible incredibly vulnerable and can hang by a single breath. Pillar three, only spiritual practice helps at death. Material possessions are useless. Wealth, property, and luxuries cannot delay death or help you in your final moments. Loved ones cannot keep you here. Family, friends, and doctors cannot stop death or alter its arrival. The body itself cannot help. Your own physical form is left behind, and it is no use to you in the moment of passing. So I try to look at that. How does that feel to you?

SPEAKER_01 49:05

That really aligns with where my belief system is now. I mean, I really absolutely believe that rather than being human beings having spiritual experiences, that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. And that makes it so that there's more of a curiosity for me than uh a fear. And I have had that fear. I had cancer, I faced feeling like I might, and I also had I had COVID on March, you know, 16th, uh a mile away from Elmhurst, New York, you know, and we weren't my and my husband did too. We weren't sure if we were gonna leave my son an orphan. But but honestly, I think that my only real fear that I battle with now about death is my son. Right. I want to I wanna be, you know, I don't want him to be a child when I die. I want to be a full blown grown man. I want to know his children if he has them and but otherwise, I like I said, I I have I've come to that. But I know that it that's it's very all of those things, while sort of dark, are are true.

SPEAKER_02 50:34

Yeah, yeah. It does really help to hear reframe, you know, we're we're spiritual beings having human experiences, you know, like the the con the container is so huge, you know, and it just keeps it makes sort of life feel like a constant state of wonder to hear that. I love that. And I I have the same fear about you know, leaving leaving my daughter and my wife because she's younger, but you know, it's uh it's something.

SPEAKER_01 51:08

It's interesting because so many people our age come to that this sort of spiritual awakening with that uh sort of viewpoint. And it makes sense to me because I went through so many trials and tribulations before coming upon this. And I I started studying with someone that's you know teaching me a little bit about spiritual lessons, and and and she has this saying where, well, if God

Rituals, Three Days, And Green Burials

SPEAKER_01 51:45

wanted to make you David, he's gonna bring you Goliath. So that's kind of more religious than than I really am, but I do feel like that having facing those things in your life brings you to a point where it's like, okay, what why? What else is there? What is this all about? And then I think the only logical answer is that we are spiritual beings and we're having this human experience. It's it's all of it, it's this ups and downs and all everything in between, the width as you talk about. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:24

When you um when you were going through cancer treatment, do you feel like things shifted for you around sort of your acceptance, or do you feel like it heightened your desire to live fully? Like how did that impact you around this topic?

SPEAKER_01 52:40

Yeah, no, I was bound and determined to to beat that. And that that wasn't that was not what is gonna stop me.

SPEAKER_02 52:50

You know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:52

And in fact, I I ran my second marathon about six months after my mastectomy. I was determined to have my health, my body. So you've run two marathons or you've run more? I've run two full marathons.

SPEAKER_02 53:08

That is amazing. A couple of halves, yeah. I want to run a 5k. I'm like, if I run a 5k, I will feel more complete in life. A marathon is like a universe.

SPEAKER_01 53:20

I recommend it. Talk about uh oh, you know, coming something, and it really helps realize just how much you have control over anything. Incredible, yeah. And actually how much you don't have control over too. It's kind of both. Wow. So uh Suzanne, I this has been fascinating, and I definitely wanna keep you know up and have you back and hear more about what's going on, you know, with the is it the threshold house, yeah. House, yeah, thank you. And and what's happening and how you're changing people's lives there. And in this topic, it's just uh we could talk for hours about it.

SPEAKER_02 54:05

Yeah, well, hopefully next time we talk, we'll we'll have a donated a house to us so we can start doing this, which is how a lot of these get started. So that's what I'm hoping.

SPEAKER_01 54:15

Oh, good. All right, so people listening here, we need a house in Philadelphia.

SPEAKER_02 54:19

Somewhere around the Philadelphia area. Thank you so much for your thoughtful questions and just like the warm space you created, and I really appreciate it. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 54:29

Oh my gosh, thank you for being here. You are absolutely an amazing person. I truly I'm so glad that we reconnected.

SPEAKER_02 54:39

Me too. Me too.

SPEAKER_01 54:41

You've been listening to Hip Talks, original music by Tracy Moore and the Jazzy Fat Nasties, Podcast Editing and Sound Engineering by Zachary Trainer. If you like what you heard, please like and share and follow us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you make a comment, I promise I will respond.

SPEAKER_00 55:06

Give for love to live your gifts again. Give for love to live

Nine Contemplations And Closing Requests

SPEAKER_00 55:15

your gifts again. I'm so close.