SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, welcome everybody. So good to see you all again, or at least hear you all again. And we're so glad you're here for our weekly dispatch at the beginning or well, middle of July, I guess. And uh we are glad to have Sam back with us again. Woohoo! Glad to be here again. All of our wonderful voices. And uh so one of the things that's been on our minds, our mind, my mind, and I passed it on to these folks, is um uh an article I read um that was saying was talking about the impatience we have. Kind of first of all, the way we in our culture, our society, we we give ourselves so much to do, we expect so much of ourselves, and then we expect so much of everybody else. It's just this fast, fast, fast, get it done, get it done culture. And the way that manifests, especially for people who are older or people who are disabled in any way, is a kind of ageism, ableism where people get pissed off, you know. Like if you're in line behind somebody at the grocery store and they're taking too long to you know find their money or whatever, you know, people get angry and they like, come on, hurry up, speed it up. Um instead of just being compassionate and saying, hey, can I help in some way or something? You know, so there's there's options here, and we just thought we talked about that a bit together and what how that manifests in our lives and how it might manifest in yours.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

Yeah, I I have some thoughts because I I experienced that on both ends. Uh, I don't I don't think that I don't have an active social life outside of my home, but my home keeps me really busy. And, you know, I get frustrated with myself that I can't keep up, that I'm I am older now, and the 23 things that I could get done before 7 a.m. 10 years ago, I can't get done in a year anymore. Right. Like it's like I have house projects and and every day I see them and I'm so impatient and and I'm sad about it. I, you know, and I try to get to them and it's just it's really hard. And I understand, like, there's also shame with us, right? Like I can't keep up and I don't want anybody to see how behind I am. And I think that that is a um something that happens as you as we age and sure uh and the and the young people are you know moving fast and it's kind of embarrassing. We want to do what they do. Young man, what do you what do you say?

SPEAKER_01 2:32

Um I would say that uh I may not have the best representation because I spend a lot of time with aging and retired people. And so I live a half-retired, very slow-paced life most of the time. And then I have these bursts of energy. Uh, so I don't live that that conventional sort of pace. But I do I would say also that the pressure to move fast and dealing with that is also part of younger generation work. And there are concerted efforts to slow down.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

There are there's a whole movement in uh youth culture in China and Japan. Uh I think in China it's called the lying down movement, and it's just it's fully rejecting the idea of increased productivity and and this like boom, boom, boom, do it all the time, be you know productive. And we have a lot of that in this country, and I think there's a lot of young people who are checking out or checking in in a different way, because no matter how fast you move, it doesn't show the fruits that were promised, that we're told.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

The faster I go, the behinder I get. Right.

SPEAKER_03 4:11

Right. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Yeah. And there and there's this go ahead. Sorry. Oh no, please go. Well, I was gonna say, reflecting on what Ana Luisa said, there's this sense of bec be uh because or with that shame comes this sense of distress all the time. Like I'm stressed because I'm not getting these things done. And um I'm expected to get these things done. And how how are people gonna think of me if I don't get these things done, or who's gonna be mad? Who's gonna think I didn't do right, or who's gonna judge me? Um, yeah. So that that creates an ongoing pressure, stress on ourselves, which it does.

SPEAKER_02 4:48

And I I like that the young people, I mean, my daughter is like, I'll try to go as analog as possible. You know, she's still doing her web stuff, but she moves, and because of her health, she can't move very fast. She has to really prioritize how much she can do in a day. Otherwise, she's spent for a few days and has to figure out how to resource herself. So, you know, she's in that model, she's modeling for me to do less. Although, you know, we're still working on dishes. So, yeah, there are some things that mama still has to do, right? Cook and clean and such. So, and you know, I was thinking about the times when both my kids have taken my phone out of out of my hand because I'm not going fast enough. I can't see the thing. I'm losing my sight, you know, and I don't spend a lot of time on some apps or whatever. And so I don't instinctively know where to look for things. And there is an impatience, right? Which occasionally I'm like, you know, like I've so I've had a toddler. I'm like, whoa, whoa, let me let me figure this out by myself because I need to learn. Uh and then, you know, juxtaposing what I'm going through with with the young people who are moving with, you know, our elders right now are the generation between like, what is it? Like our booms are 60 to 80 right now, right?

SPEAKER_03 6:04

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:05

And so I'm sure there's a lot of loss of agency. And, you know, as our joints and our hands get, you know, they hurt, you can't move your hands to do the things that most people are doing quite, you know, with facility. Um it is, it is something to to like acknowledge. And it is a grief that happens, and it happens in your deepest, you know, in the morning. I hurt my my finger a couple of weeks ago volunteering, but now in the morning I wake up and it's really stiff and it hurts. And I'm like, this is what it feels like when you grow old. Like you wake up and you're like, ow.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

You know, because some things are harder.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Yeah, that's definitely a loss for as we grow older, the all the things that we used to be able to do easily. And now, yeah, like sitting on the ground listening to jazz last night.

SPEAKER_02 6:56

Did you have a hard time last night?

SPEAKER_00 6:58

Well, it wasn't bad until I tried to get up. Took a while to, you know, it just the body just my body being as a in my 70s, it uh it stiffens up pretty fast if I'm not moving around. And so um, yeah, I just had to keep switching the way I was lay laying there on the ground. So I you know, I'll always bring a chair when I can, but um, but it was fine. I mean, it was such a beauti beautiful place, beautiful time, beautiful music, beautiful people. So I I can't complain. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:28

Yeah, but you know, so going back to your initial uh starting point, it's just like the impatience we have with differently abled humans, be it elders or you know, young people with disabilities, like it is a thing that our culture just kind of pounds that you hurry up.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Yeah. Have you experienced that example? And I actually wanted to ask too what um things you've noticed in the in our culture that are tending toward more um slow. I know there's something that slowed food slow food movement and that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

Yeah, which I think came out of France in the 70s and 80s, the slow food, slow life movement. Um yeah. And I think it's a big it's a tension point because I think you're right, there is that impatience and and there's survival based on moving fast. Um But what when you were talking uh I was really I was thinking about a story or this experience that I've had recently with uh a dear elder friend of mine uh in northern Washington who was a prolific actress and had a stroke a couple years ago. And and that grief and frustration at losing agency, facilities, faculties, you know, autonomy, use of your body, your uh I hear more and more uh body rebellion. The body is rebelling against me in this moment, and you know, not being able to walk as well, or um experiencing intense fear at the body not doing what we demand it's supposed to, what we demand, what it's supposed to do, and and and with you know, in the aftermath of a stroke and how that affects emotional um capacity, things like that, to hang out with this person. I I I stayed with her for two weeks um up in the San Juan Islands, and I used to drive her to appointments and and we have a good rapport in navigating these moments of frustration, like walking through the grocery store, things like that, um to witness and hold and be patient with somebody that's just like, ah, fuck my body. Like I I hate this. Yeah, I hate where I'm at right now, and to just be so raw about it and to breathe with that, breathing, take a deep breath. When your when your um aging friend, parent, family member, whoever, is taking a little longer on their phone or navigating technology, take a breath. Yeah. Take a breath.

SPEAKER_02 10:53

Take a breath. And and you know, also going back to your friend and myself and everybody as you were talking, I realized like in this culture specifically in the United States, the metric for health is always based on 20s and 30s, right? Like it is in your prime of physical mobility. Uh, you know, the assumption that your brain, you know, your brain finishes growing by 23 to 25. So, like, you know, between 25 and 30 is probably like the youthful moment. And beyond that, it's like you're shifting, you're growing. And I think that if we remember that the metric for a 57-year-old is this, you know, for a 70-year-old it's this, then we're doing great. Right? Like it, I'm not moving as a 25-year-old, and I don't want to be moving as a 25-year-old. I really like being an older woman, and I can't begrudge my my stiffness of joints because, you know, I'm doing pretty good for my age. Like it's okay. And based on your friend who had, you know, um a kind of a cascade of physical impairments, she's out there with you too, right? Like so I think you know, the we could hold both the grief of the constant change in her physical bodies and the exhilaration that we're still here in this moment in corporal bodies moving towards the end. It'll all obviously our bodies can't be like, you know, the same because we gotta check out at some point. It's like a library, it's like I need to check my body back in.

SPEAKER_03 12:34

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

So the idea too of this this finding a way to be compassionate and caring um in any of these situations for ourselves, of course. Like quit judging ourselves. And then as we're walking through the world, so much good can be done by our stopping. Like you said, Sam, take a breath. And and in that breath, remember who remember the the beauty of this person, the beauty of yourself, the beauty of the thank the gratitude for one more day on the planet. And think, I what can I do right now to be of service for this person uh in this time instead of how can I move this person out of my way, you know.

SPEAKER_02 13:22

Right, or help them move faster, right? And also I was thinking about this last night, uh, because as we were conversing and everything, uh, I realized like there's an assumption based on the human, like you watch people move and you notice that there's stiffness or slowness or uh an impairment of sorts, and you think, oh, this is not a very interesting person. They're already broken, right? But the reality is it again to stay curious because even though some of our bodies may start uh shifting, changing, breaking down, our brains might be okay. And sometimes our brains are breaking down in different ways. So we got to stay curious with what can they, what what other aspects of this human being are are still the faculty that are still moving them forward in this world? Where else can we like connect with them? Because I realize like there is a huge assumption on physical ableness, on people's ability to have connection, right? Like, oh, they're old, they must be feeble-minded. Oh, they work, they walk funny, they must be like disabled, right? So yeah, I was thinking about that quite a bit last night.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

And the and and the contrary, too, uh, as somebody who has had three traumatic spinal injuries over my life, but walks and is fairly mobile, right, uh, and masculine presenting, people come to me for highly physical things all the time. All the time. And and I'm really lucky and have put in a lot of work to be become more capable in those in those ways because I love it. I love to to use my body. Um, but there are limits. And there have been times where it's just not in the cards and it's and it causes social friction when I'm like, I really don't, I can't, I can't show up in that way. Yeah, I don't have the capacity. I'm, you know, I'm on the edge of being laid out for a week.

SPEAKER_03 15:28

Yeah.

unknown 15:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:29

And if I if I help you carry this couch, it's done for me for a year. I think, you know, one of the one of the the valuable pieces from like chronic pain and disability um circles that has gained traction is spoon theory. I don't know if you're you guys are aware of that, but it's basically it's shorthand for you have a certain number of spoons throughout the day.

SPEAKER_02 15:59

Yes. And my daughter knows task. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

Yeah, each task takes a certain um number of spoons. Yeah. And so it's it's basically about budgeting your capacity to do things, whether it's physical or mental, social, any of those things, and to really get um get dialed in in your relationship to yourself.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

Yeah. So continue to hold the the boundary around resourcing yourself on a daily basis so that um and also being honest, right? I was just thinking as you said that too, my daughter does use a spoon um, you know, verbiage with me. Uh I don't use it. It's not something that's easy for me to think about. But I do say to her or anybody else, like, I got like two or three hours of good sleep last night because sometimes I really struggle with sleeping. It is, you know, my age. I'm a woman, perimenopausal. Like some days I make plans for tomorrow. I'm gonna go do like five different things around the house and I'm gonna get the laundry done. I'm gonna go make meals, whatever. And I get three hours of sleep and I just slog through the day. And I'm just like, and then I really do have this very uh self-loathing around like, come on, like you should be able to like do it. But I'm tired, I'm exhausted, you know. So uh, you know, also recognizing that every day is different for a lot of us and checking in as a friend and saying, hey, so how are you feeling? Can you go for a walk or can you help me move a couch? You know, maybe to not today. Maybe not today.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

Yeah, that's really important. That isn't that yeah, honesty with yourself and that um compassion with yourself to to like know how many spoons do I actually hold today, right? What what is in my how how resourced am I? We've we talked about that um with students from Qi yesterday a little bit, um, because we're both teaching a class uh about end of life. And um it came up a couple of times that if people are going to be companioning with others, they need to make sure they're resourced before they begin. They need to check in and say, Do I am I resourced right now to be here and present and do this work? Um, or if I'm not, can I be honest about it? Yeah, I need to be honest about it and step away or just say, you know, I can't do it right now. Maybe hear somebody else who could, whatever. But that's so true, everyday life, you know, and and yeah, right. It also puts us in often. I I find myself in the same way, actually, Sam, because I'm a large person and tall. Everybody always wants me to lift shit up, you know. Would you put this on the top shelf? Yeah, yeah, which is great, no problem. Um, you know, the way that my arms sore, and I'm like, no, sorry. You know, yep.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

Yep. Well, and and and the other piece of that, so physically we need to make sure like we have enough rest, we have enough water, we have enough food, we're able to, you know, physically move into spaces. Emotionally, you know, people may not know how sad I've been about, you know, X, Y, Z, and my life has come up, and it's really um, it's making me sad. So maybe, you know, coming over to like share some of your sadness, it may not be appropriate for me to say, like, yeah, bring it, right? Like, or and the intellectual fatigue of trying to figure out, you know, your loved ones' medical needs and making appointments and driving around may tap me out so that when somebody has a problem to solve and they're like, hey, could you help me figure this out? And sometimes I, and I have said this, I have Wacho, you met my friend Julia. Julia is really good at has taught me about how, oh, right now I'm very like uh not resourced in my mind because I've been trying to figure out my job situation. I'm stressed about it. So I may not have any space to handle what you've got. So can we just hang out and you know, go sit outside and just have some tea and just rest it with each other? So, you know, we are three parts mind, body, spirit. And those three parts also need resourcing. And, you know, to to say to your friend, are you are you available? Not just physically, but hey, like I'm gonna, I actually got a text this morning, like somebody really wants to talk to me and said, Hey, this is a I want to tell you like overall the trigger warnings for this. Are you ready for this? And I could say, sure, right? Because she warned me ahead of time like what she wants to talk to about. So yeah, and that's really good.

SPEAKER_00 20:27

That and I and I love that the importance of learning. I love that we're suggesting ideas for people. Like, first of all, how do you check in with yourself and what are you checking in on? And secondly, how do you um outreach out to others? And what maybe Sam, do you have any ideas of good ways that we that you found at work for yourself or for touching in with other people about like I love the idea of trigger warning, I'm gonna talk about this. Are you resourced for this or not? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:55

Um I mostly I wanna say that Anna Lisa, your friend sounds like she has amazing boundary communication skills. She really does.

SPEAKER_02 21:07

She really has taught me so much. I am impressed with her.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

And developing those is is critical. Um you know, social intelligence is not something that our society here in the United States of America is particularly good at. Yeah. But it is critical for like foundational, foundational uh communication, navigating these things. Um taking care of each other. Taking care of each other. Yeah. Consent culture is a great place to start. Is is you know, do you have capacity? Can we engage on this? Can I can I I have some uh emotionally heavy things on my heart? Do you have space to hold that right now?

SPEAKER_02 21:54

Yes, yes. I'm gonna stretch out just a little bit more in this because we do talk about. Death and dying, and you know, after death care. You know, one thing that my friend Julia has also really taught me about is sometimes I'm like, hey, let's just go grab a glass of wine at the corner or whatever. And she'll say, you know, financially I'm not in a good place. So, you know, are you capable of like taking me to this place yourself? Like, and you know, can I pay for it? Or, you know, or can we wait and do something else or do something free? She's been very clear with me. So bringing that back into um like our death and dying, like we make assumptions that, you know, the things that we ask for will be paid for after we die. You know, unless you plan for your death and you know the numbers, because based on what these students that we just taught yesterday, they had numbers from like 4,000 to 20,000, right? That for based on the zip codes of where they live, how much a funeral costs. So, you know, if mom's saying, I really want, you know, these little things to have like the wherewithal to say, kids, can you afford this? Right. Or if the mom's past and you know, siblings are getting together and one sibling wants a full on church, everything. I mean, I don't know, you know, the biggest thing you could possibly get in. And then they're like, and we're all gonna split it so we can afford it. And one of the siblings is like, I actually really can't afford that. Right. So the communication is like, do we still continue and we'll take, you know, we'll we'll we'll add the costs of your or you can pay us back later, or or we can just have you do certain parts, physical parts, right? Like you can do break it up. It doesn't always have to be financial, but financial pieces are really important around death and dying. Like it's a hard piece.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Which is why it's so important to talk about this ahead of time, right? Yeah, yeah, because then you can you can have that conversation before you're sitting around in deep mourning and trying to figure it out. Pissed off at each other. Uh yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

And that's so important. That as you're talking about that and talking about your friend, you know, asking, can you cover me this time?

SPEAKER_03 24:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

The level, the level of surrendering the economic pressures that we put on ourselves to be self-sufficient, to ask your friend if that is okay. That's a huge thing. And then moving that into what you're talking about with the death realm or siblings. And I'm just I'm thinking about like in particular, like maybe my mom's uh familial dynamics and the the stratification of economic uh class in her family and the judgments that people can carry around monetary contribution and monetary capacity.

SPEAKER_03 24:52

Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

You know, and that changes too. We've been talking about physical and and personal and social economic capacities shift, and we have all sorts of judgments about that. I can't afford to go do this fun thing, and everything costs money. Right. Everything costs money all the time.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

All the time. Yeah. The other thing that that points out to me, Alan Luisa, that I really love is that you have developed a relationship with your friend that's that's uh that is open enough and trusting enough that she feels comfortable saying, you know, can you cover me this time? And that is another one of our responsibilities as we live in our lives and as we share with each other as we create our communities, is to create that level of trust and caring between us so that people can feel comfortable saying, you know, can you help me out this time? Or I can feel comfortable saying, you know, I can't, I can't push that log this time.

SPEAKER_02 25:52

Well, you know, and it's a commitment because uh I dearly love my friend. And I mean, she's like 15 years younger than me and has a job that is not what's that?

SPEAKER_00 26:03

Oh, I I really love meeting her. She's a very sweet person.

SPEAKER_02 26:06

Yeah, she's like my best friend because she um sometimes when I'm having a hard time, she's like, Do you want me to come over? And she masks up in the house. She knows exactly all the protocols that we do in this house, and there's no like discomfort with it. She just always comes prepared and she can take care of Lucetto in a pinch. And but we have uh, you know, she doesn't have economic stability because of her job, but she does say, like, do you want me to come over and wash dishes so you can rest? Because I will tell her, like, I didn't sleep last night, I'm having a hard day, you know, or she doesn't like walking my dog, which sometimes I'm like, please help me walk my dog. But uh, but you know, the other thing is I I set aside, I don't tithe to a Christian organization and I don't have monies that I set aside for a religious something, but I do set aside the same amount of money every every month that goes to anybody that it comes into need, right? And so I told her two years ago, I said, everything's getting more expensive. If you need groceries, just come grocery shopping with me and we're gonna just call it good. If you need help with like uh electric or whatever, no questions asked to say, I need help this month. And so, yeah, so our relationship has been like we she's she gives me so much by showing up and being able to take care of me sometimes, and I can financially support her in times when she's like, I don't know how I'm gonna make it. So yeah, it's beautiful. I mean, it's you know, even with friendships, sometimes it it it happens that it's discomforting to like talk about financial pieces or like talking to Wendy yesterday about bot our bodies, like friends just do not get really clear about the reality of how we're inhabiting our world. And we pretend, you know, oh we're good, we're good.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

Don't worry about me. Don't worry about me.

SPEAKER_02 28:01

I got this. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:02

That I mean one of the things we hear often when we're talking to people about what they fear at the end of life, it's being a burden, right? There's that stigma around if you're a bur to somebody, you're not a you're not a good person anymore. You're you're now something less than a perfect person, and uh and for that reason maybe you should just take your own life, or maybe you should, you know, whatever. Right. But you know, that that uh that comes up a lot. And I think that's part I think that's part and parcel of the same shame and the same cultural um expectations that we're talking about today of just not being able to be patient and be loving and being compassionate for people wherever they might be, age-wise, ability-wise, anything. And not assuming, like Sam, you're saying, not assuming that just because somebody presents as able-bodied, yes, that there's not something going on, because how many times have we heard about people with invisible disabilities? It's it's quite common, actually.

SPEAKER_01 29:02

And more and more common, you know, to to talk about the the complex of the world that we live in right now.

SPEAKER_03 29:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:11

You know, we have a rise of autoimmune and chronic illnesses in young people.

SPEAKER_02 29:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

You know, there's the COVID of it all and and the increase, I mean, just that and like environmental degradation, chemical degradation, microplastic, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, emotional that that you have more and more young people who are like at risk of heart disease and stroke and uh and dealing with these like chronic inflammation and endocrine endocrine immune system things that limit all of these things that we're talking about, hopefully, hopefully, that creates um not adversarial like, well, I'm struggling too dynamics, but as we we younger people uh are working with these things and watching and and companioning um this huge part of our population, the the boomers moving into end of life, that it creates a compassion. And and I and I am seeing that in some places where where younger people with uh capacity limitations, especially physical or or whatever, living and companioning elders who are moving into that as well or in that, and then you you can combine your limited abilities to help each other out in some ways.

SPEAKER_02 30:40

That's so beautiful. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 30:43

And so that that plugs into that greater complex too, thinking about um that pace at the beginning and talking about the fast pace, and the world is also accelerating and product productivity pressures are accelerating. And and one of the pieces around disability justice and oh what's the word I'm looking for? Anyway, around uh accessibility and inclusion uh with those things and and radical politics and economics is that when the social pressures, you know, like think cost of living is skyrocketing. Yeah, the the number of people who at a different economic pressure level are viewed as normal and functional, shifts, and more people are considered disabled or non-productive at the different standard. And that can that can cause a lot of grief. We can carry a lot of self-judgment about that because we still have we're bombarded with the bootstraps language every day, with the self-sufficiency, the atomization, the do-it-by-yourself. And so those things, these things that we're talking about around building connections and support systems in our communities critical and super duper scary because we are not well trained to be accountable and responsible for each other and to accept the the the exchange of being burdens. I was, I don't remember where I encountered it years and years ago, but to refigure the conception of burden, we are all burdens at some point, and that's okay. Yeah, it's inevitable.

SPEAKER_00 32:48

It's inevitable. Yeah, even be in celebration and gratitude for the fact that we can accept that of ourselves either. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:00

I just was having this image through throughout this whole conversation about um babies. Like nobody begrudges the baby for just pooping and puking all day long. Why can't we swaddle our elders in that same love and attention and say, you know, we're just we we love you and it's okay. We'll tend.

SPEAKER_00 33:23

Yeah, what a what a beautiful vision of a world as it might be. So thank you. That really was really, really beautiful. I you know, and just really appreciate this conversation. I hope our audience will appreciate it as well and think about it and send some information, you know, give us your thoughts. Join us on our Substack chat, tell us what you think. And uh yeah, anything else before we say bye-bye.

SPEAKER_02 33:51

No, just I just want to make sure that if people are feeling overwhelmed with this all this new information, that they will take a breath and ground down and re realize like it's just and I love how Wach Hill's like, just take another step. It's okay.

SPEAKER_01 34:08

One inch at a time. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 34:11

So thank you. Well, if you do uh do subscribe and watch our other stuff, and yeah, tell all your friends we love it, and like liking and all that stuff. So we appreciate you all really very much and would love to have conversation.

SPEAKER_03 34:28

So adios, adios conversations at the end of life.