SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello, end of life listeners. I am so glad that you're here today thinking about what to plan for and how to work through end of life stories in your head. And maybe you have been reading that more and more states are saying yes to medical aid and dying. And you may not know enough, and you may think I would never ever want anybody to do it. And yet today our guest is here to tell us that she supported her mom using medical aid and dying and then wrote a lovely book to share the process with all of us.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Yeah. She's similarly on the mission to normalize these conversations. And so it was really, really fun to talk to her. So I'm I really encourage you to listen all the way, because some of the best parts are at the end, right? Um, but uh her book is written in a beautiful way, and so definitely want to get uh connected to that and check out what we talked about on the podcast and and uh keep sharing this and keep normalizing these conversations. It's so important. So thank you. Stick around.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Keep listening.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Welcome everyone. I am the Reverend David Matthews. Welcome everybody to this episode of End of Life Conversations. We are really glad to speak with Teresa Evans today because we've tried a couple of times before, and we're glad that we get to meet her today and talk to her about her work, which is fascinating and interesting. Her nursing career spanned 15 years with a focus in critical and cardiac care. And from 2007 till 2021, she taught yoga and somatic movement workshops from her studio, Stone Path Yoga and Somatics in Sister Bay, as well as around the world. In 2020, her mother chose to die with medical assistance in dying or maid. And she's the author of a book called Choosing to Die: A Daughter's Story of Supporting Her Mother's End of Life Through Assisted Death. So we're really looking forward to hearing more about that, of course. Uh, where is Sister Bay? What state?

SPEAKER_02 1:59

Sister Bay is, well, I live in Sturgeon Bay now, but that is all in Door County, Wisconsin, which is that peninsula that juts out into Lake Michigan.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Yeah, yeah, I've been there. That's cool. That's a cool place. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:17

No, that's uh you're thinking of um.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

Anyway, when yeah, we went up there and visited one time when my wife grew up in Wisconsin. So good to know. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

So welcome. Here I'm thrilled to be here. Great to have you here. And I would love to start with this conversation with asking about what inspired you to write your book.

SPEAKER_02 2:42

It was such a profound experience going through that with my mother. Um, I had no idea what it would be like. I she had been suffering physically and mentally, emotionally for m several years. And I knew as a a nurse that there was nothing else that Western medicine could do for her. And we had tried my we had tried on on Western medicine, anything that we could think of. And, you know, I think personally the worst, the worst place that we can ever be is backed up against a wall. And I think that's how mom felt. And I I you know, I actually I I think I was in Australia teaching the day I had this conversation with her, and I said, you know, mom, you live in a country where you have a choice. You don't have to suffer indefinitely. And I said, I just I'm not advocating that you choose maid. I'm just reminding you that you do have that choice. And whatever you choose, I will support you a hundred percent. And it was like I said, it was probably I always say giving birth to my daughter and then um being with my mother on her way out were probably the two most profound experiences of my life. And yeah, I just felt called to share it.

SPEAKER_00 4:03

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's fascinating. You know, when you said something about um trying other things, um, it was a really good article that I'll put a link to today in the New York Times from a woman speaking to um her father who um kind of lung cancer. Yeah, had lung cancer stage four, and um just refused to have treatments um with the Western medicine. The Western medicine treatment, yeah. And spent literally hundreds of thousands of dollars on uh other treatments that basically did very little or nothing. And um, so uh yeah, I but uh what you said too, and what I think is important is that it the person who's going through it has to be the one to make those decisions. And and as you said, you you were there for your mom, whatever she wanted to do, as was the family in this article. So um it's hard, but wow, it's so hard. It's so hard to watch that happen and to be in the place of not not having agency over your own life and feeling like it you're it's hopeless and there's nothing you can do. So yeah, thanks for bringing that to us. I think that's so important for us to realize.

SPEAKER_02 5:13

So and can I say what what you just said about um my mother having agency and my mother making this decision? Because as you can imagine, there's a lot of controversy around medical assistance in dying. Now I'm Canadian. I live I've lived in the United States as an adult, but my family all lives in Canada and mom was in Canada, although now this is legal in 14 states and the District of Columbia, but there's so much false information. And one of the big lies is that, you know, we're gonna kill off our parents for their money, or you know, we're gonna kill off um people that have disabilities because we don't want to take care of them any longer. And I have been enmeshed in this world of maid and death and dying since 2020, and I just have not found that to be true.

SPEAKER_00 6:08

No, they've studied that is statistically non-existent, basically, that that happens. Yeah, and there's many, many safeguards in place. Um so yeah, thank you for making that point. I think that's really important for people to understand when they're talking about and uh assisted, um medically assisted dying. So um yeah, tell us more about the book and and about your current work. And I was we were talking before we got on about a wonderful recording that you just posted today, or today, or was it yesterday? Yeah, today, this morning. Yeah, that's gonna be part of your work going forward. I'd love to hear more about that too.

SPEAKER_02 6:43

Yes. Well, if anything, um, I mean, I've I've always my my mother used to refer to me as the death daughter because I was always talking about death. I have the thing with death, but I think being a critical care nurse, we're around a lot of people that are dying. And for some reason, I was never afraid. I always actually found it very sacred. I mean, I I I mean, if I knew somebody was dying, I'd I'd like do my best to be their nurse that day so that I could be present for it. And my mother was present for a lot of people as they died, also. So maybe it's a genetic um heritage that we hear down. I don't know. But um what I what I really walked away with was just this how death could be such an amazing um sacred experience. And that doesn't take away from the fact that we're gonna grieve the people who are left, you know, dying and death are two separate experiences, or excuse me, dying and grieving are two separate experiences. And so I just feel like my calling now is to help educate people by telling my story about what death can look like if we're willing to think about it, uh make a plan. Uh even for some people, it's even saying the word death. Some people can't even say the word death. So the video that that you're referring to is um a gentleman that I hopped into his Corvette and just had a little conversation with him. I met him at a restaurant where I was working, and and I said, uh, how old are you? And he's like, 92. And I said, and clearly you're wealthy, you're in this $170,000 Corvette, and you're 92 years old. And I said, Do you have a plan in place? Do you have your documents in place for an end-of-life documents? And he's like, nope. And I was shocked. I said, What?

SPEAKER_00 9:02

How because he's he said he said, Well, I'm not gonna die.

SPEAKER_02 9:06

Yeah, he said, I'm not ready to die. And I said, Well, I I wanted to say now I'll know what to say. Dying and having your documents in place are two separate experiences, right? And I mean, I I said, We're we're gonna talk about this more after we will. So I've now taken upon my doing a little like I'm I'm just stopping a person on the street each day and asking him this question. You know, how old are you? Do you have your end-of-life documents in place? If not, do you think it's important? And what would it take for you to make that move? And as I suspect, a lot of it I think is just education and starting the conversations.

SPEAKER_03 9:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Even my own daughter, who knows I'm the death, the death my daughter, you know. You're like uh on the on the reaper's, you're the reaper's like posse or you know, crew. I have you're groupie, a groupie for the reaper.

SPEAKER_02 10:08

I'm a groupie for the reaper. I have, can I like read a two two second a two-minute absolutely, absolutely? Because this is what I think is is this is one of my key uh takeaways and something I want people to understand is so this is from the book. I believe we often confuse the experience of dying with the experience of being the one left behind to grieve. We lay our woundedness over the one who is dying and assume they are feeling the same way, but they're two different experiences. When someone we love dies, it can feel like we might die or we might wish we could die, but we don't. When I worked in hospitals, I tried to be present for death when I knew it was imminent. I considered it a privilege for my presence to be a safe, quiet space for this profound transition. And many nurses feel this way. We become more comfortable with death as we experience more death.

SPEAKER_03 11:15

Yeah, yeah, so true.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

I'm also gonna pipe in and say initially when uh you said uh it's different between death and dying, and then you corrected it to death and grieving. And I and I would say that um it's even different, death and dying. Like, you know, the dying process is what we want to plan for. The death is like that's the inevitable, right? Like you're gonna get there and it's on you. But but the the moments leading up to the in the dying process is such a that's the sacred threshold. That is the the the planning that we hope people can prepare and you know share with their loved ones. So uh I really do appreciate that languaging around that. And you know, that's that you know, people that that gentleman who isn't ready to die, well, that's fine, but you're 92. Guess what? You're kind of like in the latter like moments with with with a large estate.

SPEAKER_00 12:14

Yeah, you know, yeah. So why yeah. And driving zero to a hundred miles per hour in one second, you know, that's kind of teasing.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

My husband's like, my husband said, You got in a Corvet with a 92-year-old and went 100 miles an hour. And I said, Well, I'm not afraid of death, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Well, I like that you're a yes gal.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

I think another piece of this that you've mentioned, and I think that, you know, speaking of the difference between death and dying, that last part, the last hour of life, as you've witnessed, I'm sure, um, can be really scary for people um when they don't don't know what to expect, right?

SPEAKER_03 12:52

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

And so there's been a couple of things that I've seen recently that are really useful and helpful in understanding, you know, the body is knows how to do this, right? The body knows what to do, and the body knows to begin to uh prioritize resources in different ways. So that's where you start seeing um, you know, body changing colors and things like this, and breathing changing. Um, all those things are absolutely totally natural as being born state of the body, the body knows how to do it, and just letting itself go. And even though it sounds scary or sounds frightening or seems odd, um, just being there present with somebody like you've been so many times and we've been, um you begin to realize again how sacred that is and how much the body knows. The body knows what to do. And and even though it sounds scary to you and they're breathing funny or they they rattle or you know, whatever all the things that happen. Um, I would definitely say a good educational program for all of us would be to know more about that. And especially if we're gonna be with somebody who's dying, to know what that's gonna look like. And so you know, find we will put links, but you can also find information about that. And um, you may even want to speak to that here if you'd like, Teresa. But um, yeah, I think that's so important for us to understand. And it's and you're right, the dying part is so can be so frightening for people, especially if they have no idea what to expect.

SPEAKER_02 14:18

Yeah, yeah. I think that that's important, and I think it's being talked about a lot more, or at least in the circles that I tend to be hanging around with. But, you know, even the things that when you think about like even eating and drinking, now we eat and drink so that we can create energy so we can, you know, feed our organs, our brain, and get through the day. But when we're dying, we lose the sense of hunger. We lose the we we might we might feel the dryness and the chappness of the lips, but we're not actually thirsty. Our mouth might need to be moistened, but um, you know, uh seeing families like she's not drinking. Well, good thing she's not drinking. So I I mean, near the end, what little nourishment there is left is just going up to the brain, which is considered the most important organ. And henceforth, you start, you're not feeding the the gut, you're not feeding these organs that we need to stay vitally alive. And we start to see this, we start to see color changes in the skin, usually from the fingertips and the feet up, which is called modeling. And we see that purplish color. Um the death rattle that you spoke of is a very it's a very common um occurrence at the end of life, which again can be diminished some if you're not trying to make people drink in those.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

Yeah. Yeah.

unknown 15:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

And that awareness of that and all of those things is so important and so good. When that's why you should have somebody like Teresa or a hospice nurse around to say, yeah, this is what happens.

SPEAKER_02 16:03

And I'm not a hospice nurse, but there is a hospice nurse out there, hospice nurse Julie, who's like one of the influencers in the world, and she has written a book. I can't think of that.

unknown 16:14

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:14

I recommend her all the time because she she does some really good um.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

She does great stuff, and she has written a book. I read her book because uh it's big right now, and it is states it sh states very clearly this is what to expect, this is what it's gonna look like, this is what it's gonna sound like, this is what it's gonna smell like. I love it. Yeah, yeah. It is. It's it was a great book. It's I highly recommend it.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Yeah, yeah. We'll find a way to link to that too, sure.

SPEAKER_02 16:41

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

So, Teresa? I mean, I hear no, I was like, where am I? Um of the biggest challenges that you find in in going out. I mean, I feel like you're you're getting really exciting new areas to go and talk about how to prepare for death and dying. But and in all of these activities, what do you find is most challenging? And maybe even talk about how people received your book.

SPEAKER_02 17:10

Well, I'll tell you, I I'm shocked at how people have received my book. I have, I thought I would get some pushback, and I'm not saying I'm not going to. I mean, it's just new, right? Um I think I just had had sold 650 copies right around there, which for an indie book is really quite quite good since March. That's with me doing all of the promoting on my own, and it's been a full-time job, but people have loved the book. Men, men have loved the book. I don't know why I didn't think men would read the book. I so let me just give a little my mother was a master gardener, and when I went and spent three and a half, I went and moved in with her for the last three and a half months. And during that time, she asked me if I would put the garden to rest for the season and for her for the end of her life. And I I I it was an honor to do that. I was in the garden for five minutes, and I'm looking around and I'm looking at the plants, and I'm going, okay, all right, nature. As always, you are showing me that what is happening with mom is what is happening with the plants right now. At a certain point, we all need to drop our petals and scatter our seeds and send our energy down to the roots and take a rest. And so the garden became this giant healing metaphor. Everything I saw in the garden was a metaphor for what we were experiencing with mom. And then my two sisters were also live in the same town. So the four of us were going through this together. So I decided to write the book through the lens of botany. And each chapter in the book focuses on a different perennial that was in mom's garden. And I tell the story, I weave in the story of botany and what's happening at that time with the story of what mom is going through. And I thought that might be an easier, a softer way to introduce medical assistance to dying and just death to people. And people have loved it. I mean, I get stopped all the time. I feel like I'm just getting started. Someone said, Well, you know, you're coming to the end, March 3rd was when it was published. And they were like, Well, after the first year, a book has really had its life cycle. And I said, No. I just been laying the groundwork for this book. I you know, the foundation for this book. So I think what people resonate with just this. My mother had a very difficult life, and it's part memoir. And I think people resonate with her spirit, her ability to live through that and still show up and have a life and you know, raise four kids. And then um yeah, I heard your interview, um, Anna Luisa, where you were talking about how you were getting interested in clowning, and my mom was a clown. She went to clown school. I think my mother was an artist, so like her superpower was face painting because she could translate her art, you know, her painting ability to faces, but she was also a great magician. And um, I mean, she just I said my mum did all the playing that she didn't get to do when she was a child as an adult.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

That's what I'm starting right today. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 20:44

Clown school was part of it. I mean, she had the big shoes. She she she said clowning is an expensive endeavor, just so you know. But she supported clowning. Yeah, she supported her clowning by sewing costumes for other clowns. So yeah. Um, I feel like I got some.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

It's a good idea for Joanna Louisa.

SPEAKER_01 21:04

Yeah. You know, I'm open to anything. The universe just I just want to play more. That's all.

SPEAKER_03 21:09

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

But I would I'm gonna say though, uh it she sounds so interesting to me. And I really think that your book does have a toehold because I believe that most people have different ways of like of understanding language and experiencing language. When somebody talks about, you know, the word death and how that lands in different people based on culture, religion, you know, economics. Like there's so many different parts of how you can withstand a word. And you know, uh kind of weaving natur the natural botany world with um how the body goes through its own process, I think is really an important uh tool to meet. More people where they can understand.

SPEAKER_03 22:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

Because we have a we have a lot of books that talk about very specifically, very pointedly, end of life, what this is looked like, what is spelled like you know, we have the how-to books and other with other authors, but I really appreciate that uh the natural world is and and I would say we could also be using your book like as an eco-chaplaincy book. You know, as the by as the body is, you know, moving towards death, what are we seeing in that in the natural world that is also it's there is death around us, not just the abdominal kind of death, but the actual eco-catastrophe kind of death. And what does that mean? How are the lungs of our world starting to slow down? How is our rivers and everything? So I think that you really could find more folks to connect with in a broader range and not just in the human, like centering on human experiences, but you can also center it on the fauna and foliage of our planet.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

I love that. Yeah, we'll definitely send a copy or send a link to our friend who's doing echo chaplaincy classes now.

SPEAKER_03 23:11

Oh, yeah. For sure.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

I love that. Thank you, Annalouiza. That's really well put well well thought, because I think you know, we we talk about this a lot then as part of our spirituality, that the that the the one true scripture is nature, you know. And and um and I always I find that over and over again is such an amazing metaphor for pretty much everything we need to figure out.

SPEAKER_02 23:37

Everything. And we're not separate. I mean, we're living under this illusion that we're separate, but we're not separate.

SPEAKER_00 23:44

Yep. That's the biggest illusion of all, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 23:47

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:49

So I'm hoping, you know, I think as we know back in the day, whatever the day was, what would you say funeral homes got really popular in the 50s?

SPEAKER_00 24:00

Oh, we we heard somebody tell us that in uh Civil War was when they first started. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:06

That okay, but I mean people were still people were still staying in their homes.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

Well it's that was when it became That was when they took the the the industry came into the parlor and acts and acted as though human bodies needed embalming and shouldn't be allowed to lie in three-day wakes. So they moved to the funeral homes during that the right after the Civil War. That's when everything shifted.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

Yeah, because they had to ship all these bodies. Yeah, they had to shift bodies from the south and to the north or vice versa. And of course, uh the other interesting that we were we were interviewing a black woman and she was one who told us about this, and she said the other interesting trivia around that is that many of the most the oldest funeral homes on the east coast are black owned for that reason, because that's who was given that job. And um, and but then of course now like everything we're watching, it gets gets corporatized and gets you know, everything's about greed and money and and there's no longer the sense of caring and yeah, and hopefully your work, our work, is all about bringing it back to what it once was, which is a natural occurrence in our communities, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:20

Yeah, yeah, where you know, your kids ran around grandma's body, yeah. They played, they did their coloring in the same room. I mean, it just no, we need to normalize, I think, as much as I I mean, like I was saying, I just looked this up today. Two deaths happen every second around the world. 150 to 170,000 deaths are happening every day. I mean, that's a lot. Yeah, you wouldn't think we would be so frightened. Like, but we have so we've done such a job of separating the experience of dying, dying in hospitals.

SPEAKER_03 26:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:04

And I I'm telling you, as a nurse, and I write about this in the book with my own beloved mother-in-law, who was like a mother to me. I was there when she was rushed into the emergency room with um a cerebral aneurysm that had ruptured with no hope of recovery. Half of her brain um had was filled with blood. I was there saying she has a living will. Don't put her on anything. And while I'm saying this to one doctor, another doctor is putting her on the vent, hooking her up to you know, every machine known to man. And for seven days we had to battle to have that stopped. And that's with me being right there avocating. So, our system, we have created this system that is just fixated on extending life. And I heard a wonderful story just a couple days ago from a man who had read my book who is who has um um cancer, uh, testicular cancer. And so he's going to have some, he's decided to go have, I think it's radiation. And the doctor, no, it's chemo. And the doctor said to him, if you want, we could uh throw in some hormone therapy for you. It might extend your life a little bit. And the gentleman looked at the doctor and said, I'm not interested in extending your life, I'm interested in quality of life. And the doctor said, Well, then forget the hormones. And he said, forget the hormones. And he said, That was from reading your book. You know, that was from reading your book, just remembering that we have a choice, that we don't have to get lost in this medical spiral. And believe me, I worked heart and lung transplant, so I'm not saying that medicine is bad. I mean, I watched a 16-year-old receive a heart and and have a you know a wonderful full life and children and become a teacher and all of that, but we need to weigh these decisions carefully.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

Yeah. And and and you actually, in a way, might be speaking somewhat to the question we ask about frighten, anything frightening you about the end of life. And um, I think part of what frightens a lot of people is that they won't have that agency and that they won't be able to speak to that, right? Is there anything that frightens you specifically after all this work you've done?

SPEAKER_02 28:39

I want loss of agency. I want, I people ask me all the time, well, would you die with me with medical assistance and dying? And I say, Ha, I don't know. I've never reached a point where my life was intolerable enough that I had to start thinking that way. But I do know that I want the choice. And it is not legal here in Wisconsin. Uh, they just went went legal in Illinois uh September 19th, I think it was. So that's the first Midwestern state. But I plan on uh advocating for the yes, yeah, yeah, good, good. And if it and listen, all of your 10 million listeners out there go out and they buy a copy of choosing to die for a mere $22, think of that as three lattes. But I plan on taking that money and starting a fund because in the United States it's not covered by insurance either. Yeah. Whereas in Canada, it's just part of it's a medical intervention. It's covered, there's no cost. In the United States, it might cost up to a thousand dollars to get the medication.

unknown 29:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:51

And where are you going to need?

SPEAKER_01 29:53

I think it's a little more here.

SPEAKER_02 29:54

Yeah. What if you're homeless? Where is this going to happen? So in the two non-resident states, Oregon and Vermont, I know that there are people that are literally opening up their houses that are made advocates. But I would love to have a beautiful center in each of those states where people could go, where families could go and be completely supported. And money, I mean, you shouldn't have to be thinking about money at this time.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

I totally agree. Yeah. Yeah, we agree.

SPEAKER_02 30:28

I have a lot of big pipe dreams.

SPEAKER_00 30:30

Yeah, me too. Yeah. I have a the new nonprofit I have is basically the idea is that we need to raise money to help people with end-of-life care because it's so expensive, right? And that actually a lot of different ideas I had when I started it have gone by the wayside because they're being addressed. Like things like a database of end-of-life caregivers and uh advocacy and that kind of stuff. But in the end, what comes up every single time is can't afford it. I can't afford it. And most people can't. Um, the majority of people can't afford how much it costs to die in the United States, especially or in the West. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

I'm I'm gonna turn, I'm gonna throw this out too, Teresa. You know, we don't have to build a lot of things these days. I I really after doing three years of interviews, there are people like us out there building small, you know, hoping to grow out and and gather uh steam to get moving across the country. But I was just gonna say, you don't have to build a center. We've interviewed a gentleman here in Colorado who finds beautiful settings all over the state and talks to owners, and they end up um hosting a medical aid and dying process with families, whomever, but they get to go to these beautiful, you know, uh parks and farms and you know, houses next to rivers. And so they don't have to build a center, they just have a collection of people willing to open their homes, which honestly, I feel like we need to stop building buildings and just have more mutual aid and and you know, gather our our folks together and just connect and just say, I'm ready. There was another woman we we interviewed from Oregon, I think, and she was doing the same thing. She was going out and talking to Airbnb owners and asking if they would be comfortable having the database with their homes. So just saying, like, you don't need to make the 2020 million dollars, like, but you've got great ideas, and I I wholly support that you should definitely make that money though.

SPEAKER_02 32:32

I do love that. There are so many, there are so many uh buildings that need some love and that could be put to good use. Right. That's true too. Yeah, you know, there's yeah.

unknown 32:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:45

Anyhow, so one of my last questions to you is when you have worked so hard in your brain to think about all these wonderful things that we're all going to do to support the dying, and you get super tired. What do you do to take care of yourself after that? How do you go out self-care?

SPEAKER_02 33:04

I go out in my garden. Yay! My I plant my mom's ashes are under the Nishiki willow tree. So after mom died, we we moved. We had lived in one house for 21 years, and then we moved to a house that had no garden. And I had brought home some seeds from mom's garden, and I planted this Nishiki willow tree, which I just love Nishiki willows, and I put mom's ashes, some of mom's ashes underneath there. So we've been here just after five years now, and I have, I'm not kidding you, you guys, this is like Jurassic Park Garden. I swear, mom I mean, I am not that good of a gardener. I'm like, holy cow, mom, every time I come home, I look at this garden and I'm just amazed by it. But the thing I learned when I was at mom's too, I had always had a garden. But I had a garden, and the garden was the thing that I did so that the pathway looked nice when people went into the yoga studio, you know. But now I'm a gardener. Now I mean it's wonderful if it looks nice, but everything is wonderful, even the part that's crinkly and brown and all the different parts of it. So yeah, I literally go out there and just I I get lost in it.

SPEAKER_00 34:22

I love that. Yeah. Yeah, that's perfect. That's perfect. That's exactly what we many of us have found is the best way, some kind of immersion in the um ongoing natural world, yeah. Well, is there anything you wish we'd had asked that we didn't get a chance to ask you about before we let you read your quote?

SPEAKER_02 34:46

Um, I mean, there's it's we could have like a four-hour conversation. We could.

SPEAKER_03 34:53

Yeah. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 34:55

I mean, I'm prepared. If you want me to show up for the next, you know, four shows, I'll do that with you. But no, I'm just so happy that you, you know, to have the opportunity to have a conversation that uh lets people start to consider the process of dying, death, and dying in a different way, uh, in a different light. And I just think the more we talk about it, the more people will be more comfortable with it. And that's right. Yeah. So thank you for what you're doing with your show.

SPEAKER_00 35:34

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 35:35

Well, thank you for doing your work too.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

Yeah, we really appreciate you and all you do. You had sent us a quote that you wanted to finish with.

SPEAKER_02 35:42

Yes. So I I I this is came right from the book. Uh, we are equipped to talk about the miracle of life when an infant enters this world. I believe the miracle of death carries the same weight and mystery. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 35:59

So true, so true.

SPEAKER_02 36:01

And that's my mission now is to help us have a sense of that. We as I say, even if you've had a near-death experience, you don't know what it's like to be dead. Because you're still telling us about your your your your near-death experience.

SPEAKER_00 36:16

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:16

Not dead until you're dead dead.

SPEAKER_00 36:19

So true, so true. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 36:23

And that being only the physical body, right?

SPEAKER_00 36:26

Right. Yeah. Who knows what happens after that? It's a mystery. So yeah. So yeah, being curious and being being willing to uh celebrate the sacredness of that is really important. So thank you for being on the mission that we're on.

SPEAKER_02 36:39

That's right. And being okay with being sad. It's okay. I mean, grief, after going through that with mom, I had to put my sweet beloved Lucy dog down a couple years ago. And I remember when I left the that, I got in the car and I was like, oh, this is that feeling, you know, right in my heart center, that burning throbbing. And I thought, how often in your life do you actually feel something this deeply? And I just decided to sink into it and not try to push it away.

SPEAKER_00 37:16

Yeah, that's how we do it. That's it. That's how we do it. It's another important lesson for all of us in our audience. So thank you everybody for listening. Please, you know, like and subscribe and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 37:29

Hang out with us.

SPEAKER_00 37:30

Tell all your friends. And um, we'll see you next time. Thank you so much, Teresa.

SPEAKER_02 37:36

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me on the show.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

Thank you for joining us today. Thank you to Charles Heastan, the composer of the original music you are listening to now.

SPEAKER_01 37:53

And of course, thanks to you, our audience, and all of our amazing guests. Please come back next week for another great episode. Share this with your friends, family, and community. We hope you will subscribe and follow us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky, and Subtech. Each guest additional information will be found in the podcast notes. And of course, if you have a good end of life story to share, please reach out. We are always eager to hear from you.