E168 - Alua Arthur: The Conversation About Death That Will Change How You Live

Death doula, attorney, and spiritual guide Alua Arthur joins us to explore how embracing mortality awakens us to life’s deepest meaning. Through her book Briefly Perfectly Human and her work helping people die with peace and purpose, Alua invites us to face what we fear most — not to prepare for dying, but to learn how to live fully. We explore the taboos around death, the regrets people hold at the end of life, and the powerful clarity that comes from asking what remains undone. 20% off Pique Life Tea: https://www.piquelife.com/knowthyself Andrés Book Recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list ___________ 00:00 Intro 04:20 What Is a Death Doula? 08:10 How Facing Death Changes How We Live 12:45 Why We Fear Death 17:15 Imagining Your Own Death 21:40 The Most Common Regrets of the Dying 26:05 What Remains Undone in Your Life? 28:18 Ad: Pique Life 30:10 Facing Mortality as a Spiritual Practice 34:50 The Art of Dying Well 39:25 The Beauty of Grief and Letting Go 43:10 How to Be Present With the Dying 47:30 Conversations About Death With Loved Ones 51:00 How Alua Found Her Calling 55:40 What Dying People Teach About Living Fully 1:00:15 Grief, Identity, and Rebirth 1:05:30 How to Support Someone Who’s Grieving 1:10:45 The Mystery of What Happens After Death 1:15:00 The “Glitter Wave” Theory of Consciousness 1:20:20 Reimagining Rituals Around Death 1:25:40 Living Authentically Before It’s Too Late 1:30:00 Conclusion ___________ Episode Resources: https://www.instagram.com/alualoveslife/ https://www.instagram.com/going_with_grace/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSP6FVYR/ https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/ https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ https://www.youtube.com/@knowthyselfpodcast https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:28Speaker 01

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• 0:57Speaker 02

  When I'm in the space of somebody else dying, I'm doing my best not to put my fears about dying on them so I can just be present for their experience. Death brings up a lot of feelings in us, but I just think societally we don't make space for the conversation. A couple of really key things. I imagine myself on my deathbed. I imagine somebody who's elderly, somebody who has had these grand adventures. And when I have her in mind, then it allows me to direct my actions today. Let's meet the person on our deathbed that we actually want to be. The question is, what must I do? Most of the regret is about what we did or didn't do. I think all of our fears are fear of death, but once we start looking deeper into it, we can learn much about who we are and how we live.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  I love grief. Sounds a little strange, but I really, I love grief.

• 1:46André Duqum?

  You're clearly doing what you love.

• 1:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're not gonna forget. Or me, you're gonna die.

• 1:50André Duqum?

  Yeah. What do you think happens after we die?

• 1:54Speaker 02

  I have this working theory.

• 2:02André Duqum?

  Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Know thyself Podcast. Our guest today is a death doula, an attorney, a spiritual guide who helps people get intimate with living life fully by getting intimate with their death and their mortality. Through her book, Briefly Perfectly Human, and her work, she helps people die well with clarity, with peace, with purpose. And in this conversation, we're, yes, going to talk about death, but how one might be able to live fully so that whenever death inevitably comes knocking on our doorstep, we can say that we've lived a life well-lived. Ilua Arthur, thank you for being here.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me.

• 2:40André Duqum?

  Such a joy to have you. I would love to just start laying some foundation by asking, what is a death doula? Because not everybody understands what that is.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  Sure. A death doula is a non-medical and holistic support person for the dying person and their entire circle of support through the process. That means we're helping handle the emotional, the spiritual, the practical, sometimes the legal support that the dying person may need. But when I say dying person, I mean anybody who has some awareness of their mortality. So that means when people are healthy and they've begun to think through their, the end of their lives, or come into acceptance of their mortality, we can help them prepare for their dying, too.

• 3:22André Duqum?

  How much of the people you work with is like near end of life versus healthy, generally just, you know, death-conscious?

• 3:29Speaker 02

  I'd say about half and half. A lot of the people are, you know, still vital and just want to do their end-of-life planning. And so we'll sit and have end-of-life planning conversations, or do death meditations, or work through their fears of death, or just do courses or something that gets them like in the idea of their mortality consistently, find ways to inject some of it into their daily lives. And then the other half is the people that know what they're going to be dying of and their circle of support that need the help.

• 3:58André Duqum?

  It makes sense that when somebody is confronted with imminent potential death, that they start thinking about it more. What do you see as the most common trigger for people that are generally healthy? What are the themes and consistent things you think are the trigger for them to start questioning and exploring that more?

• 4:16Speaker 02

  It's a couple of things. It's either the death of somebody close to them, like a parent, or a sibling, or a friend, somebody in their friend group, or a serious diagnosis themselves. They just got diagnosed with something. It may not be terminal in any real way, but all of a sudden, they're like, oh shit, one day it's gonna be me. Or something happens with their children, or something happens with the people that are next up on the totem pole after them, and so they want to prepare to save them the heartache or the headache.

• 4:44André Duqum?

  I'm curious, at this stage of your life, how often are you thinking of death?

• 4:47Speaker 02

  All the time.

• 4:48André Duqum?

  Yeah?

• 4:48Speaker 02

  Every day. Multiple times a day.

• 4:50André Duqum?

  How does it come up for you? Just randomly throughout your day?

• 4:52Speaker 02

  All the time throughout my day. Silly things sometimes, and sometimes a little bit more like real.

• 4:58André Duqum?

  What's the silly ones?

• 4:59Speaker 02

  I'll be doing something in my kitchen. Like earlier today, I was trying to cut an avocado, and the knife slipped in a way, and it missed my finger. But then I was like, well, what if it just flipped up and stabbed me in the back and I bled out on the ground? Even though my partner's...

• 5:16André Duqum?

  Those intrusive thoughts.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  They are, they are. And in some ways, they point toward my death anxiety, you know? But in other ways, I keep like bringing myself back to, okay, if this were it, then what? You know, if this were actually it, am I pleased? And if not, then I have an opportunity to change it. But if that would have happened today and I bled out all over the floor, I would, you know, be a little embarrassed about the way I went out, because it would have been a really ridiculous accident.

• 5:43André Duqum?

  Death by avocado.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Death by avocado, by too blunt of a knife. But I also, I think, would be like, all right, we did the best that we could with the time that we had, and this is what we did with it.

• 5:54André Duqum?

  What about some more deep things that get you really thinking more existentially about it?

• 6:00Speaker 02

  Sometimes when I'm with my partner, I got married recently.

• 6:03André Duqum?

  Congrats.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Yay, thanks. And, and I often think about the life that we've had together so far. And, you know, so much of our, our life is made up in the mundane. Like, the big moments are cool, but it's making breakfast and doing dishes and trying to figure out what we're gonna eat for dinner, you know? And how much of my time with him I like really love. And one day, that will come to an end either through his death or through mine. And when I'm really with that, it, it brings up like some sadness and some like, ouch, I, I don't want this to end one day. And so let me be really present with what we have right now.

• 6:41André Duqum?

  For you to come to this point and make it such a big part of your life's journey, supporting people with living and dying well. How, how does someone become a death doula? What for you and your story was the predominant trigger to get you in this line of work?

• 6:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you mentioned that I'm a lawyer by training. I worked for 10 years at Legal Aid, almost 10 years, working in domestic violence and government benefits and working with low-income people. And the work was like really, it was, it was useful work. Like, I was doing it in a way that I think other people would find really noble. And yet, something in me was not as into it as I would have liked to be. I struggled, I think, with the work of an attorney overall. It just, it wasn't a fit. But I did my best. And then I felt crushed by the work. So I took a leave of absence as a result of a clinical depression. And during that leave of absence, I went to Cuba, where I met a fellow traveler on the bus who had uterine cancer.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  And we talked a lot about her life. And then I started asking her questions about her death and her disease. And she answered them. And she was like really willing to go there with me. And all these like, these deep questions that we don't normally ask of strangers, let alone the people in our lives that we love that may have illness. But she answered and she shared with me the things that she feared and the things that she wanted still out of her life. And it, you know, cracked the door open a little bit about, first of all, the connection that can be made when two humans are talking about something with some real depth and some weight to it.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  But even greater on how our mortality allows us to look at how we are living.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  I asked her what would be undone in her life if her disease killed her. And she answered honestly. And I asked myself the same question quietly. And I didn't like the answer for myself. In stark contrast to what I was just sharing with you about death by avocado, that would be like, okay, we did it. At the time, I wasn't pleased at all. And it saddened me, but it also created space and like a little motivation to do something else about it. But during that bus ride, I started thinking about the potential for being with people as they're thinking about death. And it seemed pretty natural and easy. And I loved it because we were just getting up in her life and she was just down to share everything with me.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  When I came back from there, my brother in law became ill, my older sister's husband. His name is Peter St. John. And I got to be with him in the last two months of his life and really see like how the system doesn't really hold or honor people that are dying very well. And that we need much more comprehensive support around death and dying. We need more support for the people that are supporting other people through it than we have. And I couldn't find anybody who I wanted to do the job that I needed. And so I decided to become it for other people.

• 9:43André Duqum?

  What specifically angered you or made you indignant about the system?

• 9:49Speaker 02

  Everything. I mean, I think at the root of all of it was just my grief that my brother in law was dying.

• 9:57André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 9:57Speaker 02

  Okay, that in and alone just sucked. But on top of that was what felt like a lack of anybody speaking very clearly to the issue. People not saying directly, he's dying, or this is not going to work, or we need to prepare ourselves or something. Nobody said anything like that. And so it kind of felt like we were left to.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  To triangulate it from the circumstances, you know. There was also no space to process with him or individually or with anybody. There wasn't anybody to talk about the practical, like what we need to do practically to prepare for his death. But I think overall was just like the helplessness that we felt. I think that's probably present in how we are approaching death anyway. Like, we all kind of feel helpless in its face. And yet, for the people that we trust with our care, they also seemed really helpless. And so it was like, well, shit, now, now what? Like, where are the people that are supposed to support us through this? Or to have the real conversations with us? Or care that we're hurting? There wasn't anybody.

• 11:02André Duqum?

  Hmm.

• 11:03Speaker 02

  I wish.

• 11:06André Duqum?

  It's interesting. We have so much of the gaps we see in the world, like, and that the anger, there's like a righteousness to, I think, these things that ignite us and put a light and fire under our own ass to go and be the change that you wish there was there in the systems. And death is an area of life that not many of us love to look at, certainly not frequently, certainly not daily. Yet, it is an inevitability. And I'm curious why you think there is such a taboo around the conversation of death?

• 11:43Speaker 02

  It feels like such a taboo. And people say that all the time, and I don't disagree. It's just, I notice that when I share about the work I do, people almost always want to share with me about somebody in their life that died and wish that I was there. Or they want to share their ideas about the afterlife, they want to talk about spirituality. Or sometimes, I mean, they do pretend I don't exist anymore. Like, they just put a force field around me so that, like, death doesn't touch them. But for the most part, they're like down to talk about it, you know? They want to talk about it, they're like really curious. So I think people do want to talk, but I just think societally, we don't make space for the conversation. Death brings up a lot of feelings in us. It brings up a lot of helplessness and powerlessness.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  I think in the society that we live in, it's hard to behave as though... I am fragile in some way, you know? We're meant to behave as though we got everything figured out all the time. And to admit one day I'll die suggests my mortality, my humanness. And that that makes people uncomfortable. And I think that just the sadness around it, the grief around it, the the idea that I am going to leave this one place I know for a big unknown makes people uncomfortable. To not be able to eat my beloved plantain anymore, or to feel the sun on my skin, or to be with my man until the very like to all the rest of the time in the world.

• 13:12Speaker 02

  It's sad, it feels sad. I love life, you know? Why would I want to die?

• 13:18André Duqum?

  What context do you feel like it brings to our life? Like, from the perspective of the moment of our death, how does that change how we live? How it is reflecting on that change how you lived?

• 13:28Speaker 02

  When we consider our deathbed self, it creates a chance for us to work to that place. I imagine myself on my deathbed. First of all, I imagine somebody who's elderly. Now, obviously, this may not come to pass, right? But I imagine somebody who's elderly, somebody who has had these grand adventures, somebody who has been really present for life, somebody who's allowed herself to be seen and to be helped, somebody who has helped and has seen people, somebody who who has like gotten the most out of this life and not in the go, go, go, do, do, do way, but rather in like the like being here for life itself, like being up in the super life.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  Like, I allowed myself to grieve and to laugh ridiculously and to really be who I am while I'm here. And that, to me, is the person that I want to meet. I want to meet her on my deathbed. I don't want to meet somebody who has regrets about how she lived or wishes she would have made different choices or wishes she would have said that one thing that one day, which, you know, some of us do to ourselves right now, anyway. Like, let's let's meet the person on our deathbed that we actually want to be. And when I have her in mind, then it allows me to direct my actions today. Is that clear?

• 14:46André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 14:47André Duqum?

  I think we all have those things where there's these things inside of us we just feel that need to get out of us. And you spoke to this feeling of like, there's things undone left in my life, you know, upon death and.

• 15:01André Duqum?

  I think that can be a frightening thought for many of us because the moment that you feel like there was this potential that was not actualized, that you had the capability to do, to bring into this world, to share with others. And you didn't, you know, that I think really motivates us to get our act together, so to speak, and to really use our time and energy wisely in a way that is going to be conducive to whenever it comes, whether it is in the quintessential beautiful Hollywood movie of a, you know, a hundred year old life and, you know, we take our last breath with all of our loved ones around us in our dream scenario, or a blunt knife because you're cutting an avocado and it slips or something, who knows how it's going to happen or when it's going to happen, right? We can meet it fully and it doesn't feel like a robbery, you know, but more of a

• 15:45André Duqum?

  natural returning. And I'm curious, as somebody who works so intimately with people as they're about to leave this life, what are some of the common regrets that you do see?

• 15:57Speaker 02

  Hmm. Well, they're mostly around not being authentic to who they were, either in the way that they spent their time, like they spent more time doing the things that they didn't necessarily want to do than spending time doing the things that they really did want to do, or not being true to themselves, like not showing up authentically for life, not showing up authentically in the body, or how they're expressed, or how they spoke, or where they lived, or any of those things. I rarely see, see people that wish that they'd spent more time working or on their career, you know, but often it's more time for creative pursuits, or their relationships, or the

• 16:39Speaker 02

  people that, that really mattered to them, or something of the sort, like the things that mattered. And that extends not only from relationships, and children, and parents, and partners, but also down to like hobbies and, and the experiences of the senses that people enjoyed that they didn't give enough time to while they were present. And so most of the regret is about what we did in the limited amount of time that we had.

• 17:10André Duqum?

  Yeah, right, or didn't do.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  Or didn't do, mostly.

• 17:17André Duqum?

  I think questions really guide our life in so many different ways. The questions we ask ourselves, the questions we ask of life. A question that I've seen you raise many times is, what must I do so that I can live presently and die gracefully? And you mentioned some of those things now, but I would just want to hone in on this a bit more because death gives us this context of, okay, what does my life mean? And what must I do so that I can feel a sense of wholeness and completeness and fulfillment? I would just love to hear your perspective. If you want to share any more of your own personal of those things that you must do, you feel you must do, and that you think, outside of the authenticity, which of course, you could say covers a whole lot of it all.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:04André Duqum?

  That is supportive for people to get clarity on, right?

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. The must do, and first of all, you got that down. I don't know how you did that, but you got it down. The question is absolutely correct. It's a must, right? What must I do? What must I do? And the answer varies for everybody. And yet, sometimes the things that we think feel like musts actually aren't there. They'd be really nice to, or it'd be great if I. But it's what are the things that by the time I reach there, I must have done? For me, a big one was getting my book done. Like, for a while, it just felt like, God, I really got to finish this because also I didn't want anybody to see it in its not-ready form. Because there was some stuff in there that nobody needed to see, you know what I mean? I needed to go. So, the book was a must do. It was a must do.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  A few years ago, I recognized that a must was also to look into the eyes of my beloved and commit to being his wife. That was a big must, and we did it. Yay. Some of my other, I don't have too many musts now. It feels like, I'm not feeling complete by any means, but I feel like I've done the things, I've done the things. I would love to watch my niece and nephew grow old and to see who they become. They're currently 20 and 16, but I'd love to see them as adults and like really thriving. The must for people look like a lot of different things, but a lot of times they are about their accomplishments.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  But as I was saying, a lot of them are also about their relationships. They're about how they spend their time and what they're doing with their time. Rarely is it about like, you know, going to see the Mona Lisa or getting a massage from like eight hot Jamaicans at the same time. Mostly it's around spending more time.

• 20:00Speaker 02

  Do you have any must?

• 20:03André Duqum?

  I hmm. Must is an interesting word.

• 20:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:10André Duqum?

  There are definitely things in my awareness that I feel like just have a sense, a more, a bigger sense of urgency, you know, that I really would love to get out there. And I think our work largely is like, I think Khalil Gibran is like, our soul made visible is through our work, you know? And this podcast is a big fulfillment of that for me, but I also have a lot of new things that I'm exploring with my writing and for sure, a book and just the scale of bringing together community and ideas that I'm really excited for, that I feel is still in the works. So yeah, there, I think there's, there's quite a few things. There's a level of like providership and like setting up my family, my mom, sister, like really super well, you know,

• 20:55André Duqum?

  that I definitely want to get to a bigger degree. And, and yeah, what do you, I'm curious because obviously when you're talking with people, there's the whole external planning game of like dying well and arranging things. And we can get into that. But this whole internal game, which really becomes like spiritual work and you're this mirror and reflector and guide for people to get clarity on what means most to them. And that of course, kind of comes back down to values. And so.

• 21:26André Duqum?

  Do you have any guiding questions for people to get clear on what their musts are, in a sense?

• 21:30Speaker 02

  Well, the biggest question I'll lead with is what remains undone in your life? The challenge becomes when somebody is really ill or rapidly approaching the end of their life and there is not much time left or life force energy left for the things that felt like a must. So redefining what must looks like when there's a short amount of time left or there's not much energy left. So looking first at what remains undone. Also, I ask a lot of questions about relationships to see if there's any places that still need healing, to consider places where we may still need to say, "Thank you," or, "I love

• 22:10Speaker 02

  you," or, "Please forgive me," or, "I'm sorry," or any of those places that still require a little bit more tenderness and conscious attention to smooth out before we die. I had a client not that long ago that, like, it ended up being maybe about three weeks before she died, she told me that she'd always wanted to work on this workshop. And I said, "Oh, well, that's a lot of work right now, but let's see what we can do." So I busted out my laptop and I started typing as she started sharing with me her ideas. And what it really came down to is that she'd wanted an opportunity for people to come together, to connect vulnerably.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  And by the time we were done, like, working through this workshop idea she had, she realized it could be at her funeral, you know? And so it was a way to still create this thing that she wanted to. And she had, like, a great funeral plan in this idea of a workshop. And it didn't quite happen that way, but it was a, it was a nice way to, like, you know, get into the juice about what was still important to her.

• 23:21André Duqum?

  When we use this phrasing of, like, what's left undone, what do you think, what do you think we're really looking for?

• 23:28Speaker 02

  I think we're looking for... What like calls most true to us about our lives, about life itself. We all have a different phrasing, conception of what it is that we're doing here. And I think for some, this question is more about their unique expression of humanhood. Like, what is it come here to do or to express while it's here? And I use the term do, not in the capitalistic, you know, productivity way, but rather in like the highest expression of myself present here. And I, so I think for most people, that's, that's what we're really getting to was like

• 24:06Speaker 02

  the, that life force, that thing, that spark that ultimately came through and made me human in this particular body, at this particular time, in these particular relationships. Is it complete?

• 24:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what we're trying to get to.

• 24:24André Duqum?

  What is it specifically about death doula-ing that like lights you up the most and just like captivates you so much?

• 24:31Speaker 02

  No, my love, I think it's because I'm just really nosy at the root. I mean, in doula work, like I get to ask these questions, big questions about people's lives, and they answer. It makes me fall in love with them all the time. Like, I get to be with humans, like in the soup, you know? It's such like a really rich time. So maybe I'm not just nosy, I'm also just deeply curious about humans. I'm deeply curious about the human experience. It lights me up when humans bear themselves, when we can have more than just like a passing conversation with one of the eight billion that are here, you know?

• 25:12Speaker 02

  Where it allows me to be like so much more in awe of this really strange life thing that we're all doing together. Like, what the fuck? And when we can pause and just be with it, like I can be with somebody else and theirs, it feeds me plenty, plenty. I love that. I love, I love also being somebody that other people can rely upon when things are tough, when they are in the midst of emotional chaos. I can stay calm and grounded and easy and provide some tools and resources that may

• 25:47Speaker 02

  be of some support. I really love that. I love the tenderness. I love grief. Sounds a little strange, but I really, I love grief. I love it when we get broken open and we have a chance to reevaluate everything about who we are and how we move through the world and rebuild from that place, what feels true for us at the time. So, yeah, those are the things that think like me emo'd up about this work. And I also just get to be myself. You know, I get to ask weird questions and people are down. I don't have to like pretend at all. I could just be weird.

• 26:29André Duqum?

  Yeah. It's so funny because death is like the most sobering thought and reality of life when we contemplate it and sit with it. And sobering in the sense where like it brings us immediacy and presence, right? It's very real. And it's easy to get lost in thoughts and philosophies about life and our own prejudices and beliefs and ideologies, but like death is a thing and we all gonna face it, right? And so I could just imagine how it's become a vessel for you to have those deep and intimate, meaningful conversations because people are in a position where they're really needing that in their life.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And also, I think that when people, people also really, really need that when they are sitting on the precipice of this great mystery with somebody else who can maybe say, no, that does sound really tough or scary or confusing or any of those things, you know, where they don't have to hide those parts of themselves. So I also love the mystery. And I think I also love being close to people that are about to find some type of answer.

• 27:44André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 27:46André Duqum?

  There's an interesting terror management theory, I believe, where like how much of our motivations and desires in life are really undergirdled by this fear of death. What do you do you give weight to that? Do you, what do you think about that?

• 27:58Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. I think all of our fears are fear of death. I think most of our motivation, I think almost all of our motivations is a direct relationship to our dying, you know? So often people talk about wanting to get over their fear of death, or they say like, help me get over it. And I wonder why, like, if it is something that is getting in the way of how we're living, it's really impacting how we're showing up for life. And I think it's something that perhaps we should take a closer look at. But if your death is is kind of is hardwired into us in some way, you know, it's the thing that tells me to drink water when I'm thirsty. And the thing that forces me to rest and the thing that has me stop walking when I get to the edge of a cliff. Like, it's the thing that literally keeps me alive.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  However, when, like I was saying, when it, when it starts to impede in life, then it, I think it should be closer examined. But any place that my fear lies is a treasure for me. Like, when I spend time with my fear, then I start to unlock parts of my life that I hadn't previously considered in that way. And the fear of death is one huge treasure that, once we start looking deeper into it, we can learn much about who we are and how we live.

• 29:16André Duqum?

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• 30:00André Duqum?

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• 30:46André Duqum?

  Again, in my own experience, death is like

• 30:51André Duqum?

  this reflection that allows me to feel into what's most essential in my life. And I'm, I'm curious, when working with so many people, and I'm sure many people come to you when faced with the uncertainty of this transition and what's going to come after. Some maybe are searching for answers and want them from you. How much of do you, how much of it do you see just to be with people amidst their uncertainty is like your kind of role versus providing them kind of context or answers?

• 31:23Speaker 02

  No, I don't have any answers. No, none whatsoever at all. No, I'm just in the soup too. You know, like I'm still here talking out this mouth, looking you in the eyeball. I don't know either, but I think that something that allows me to be in it with other people is first of all, the acknowledgement of I don't know at all. And next, that I don't know, I think allows people to not know either and it be okay. You know?

• 31:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, the answers I can offer are maybe where to find a hospital gown that closes in the front rather than the back, you know? Or how to dispose the medicines after somebody dies. There are answers I can provide for the practical, tangible things that come along with being close to the time of dying. Like how to pick a healthcare agent for your health directive. I can support you with that, but what happens after we die?

• 32:23Speaker 02

  What I can do is mirror back what I'm hearing in the things that you're bringing up to help you get a little bit closer to your belief system, to start to nail down the things that really matter to you, to help you think through your values. But I don't have any answers at all. I'm still, I mean, I'm not trying to figure it out myself. I'm just down for like, I don't know, we'll find out together. And we'll see.

• 32:46André Duqum?

  What have you learned about how it confronts people's beliefs and the solidity of them upon death, whether it's religious beliefs or just general beliefs about life when confronted with death? How have you seen that those things be shaken up?

• 33:00Speaker 02

  Well, I think that as people get closer to the end of their lives, they're perhaps a little bit more willing to bet that their perception of life or everything that they believed is an utter gamble. They're just down to be like, ooh, I don't know. I've seen the most religious amongst us question and wonder if the things that they committed their lives to are actually true because they're soon about to find out. I've also seen some deeply religious folks that just are down to the very, very end for the thing that they believed in that may give them some ease in their dying. But I think for many, as we get closer and closer, we, you know, the things that we held so strong

• 33:42Speaker 02

  perhaps feel a little porous and amorphous. And I think that probably is very helpful and ultimately letting it all go is that you kind of have to be willing to loosen and to surrender. You know, you're loosening and surrendering about it all. Like, all the things start feeling a little gushy gushy. Yeah. Even, even the ways that we identify at our core, those things also have to get a little soft.

• 34:09André Duqum?

  How many people do you think you've been with the moment they've died?

• 34:12Speaker 02

  The moment? Not that many. I don't find that to be the, like, the core part of my job.

• 34:18André Duqum?

  Yeah, I wasn't.

• 34:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Well, so many of, like, so much of the... My job is to support people as they like are starting to think.

• 34:27André Duqum?

  Approaching.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so I want to empower people in their innate capacity to die. And that includes the people around. And sometimes when I'm there, people just turn to me about how to do it. But they know how to do it. You know, they are, we all know how to do it. You know how to do it. I know how to do it. We'll just get there and then we'll do it. And it is nice when somebody is around to support when it's time. But most of the time I'm, I'm trying to create enough space so that they feel supported in the time. But go in. So dozens at the time that they've died.

• 35:00André Duqum?

  Yeah. I mean, that's still a lot. I mean, this is your work, but I guess most people have probably been in either none or one or maybe two.

• 35:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. But on the contrary, I've talked to thousands and thousands about their relationship.

• 35:12André Duqum?

  Of course, of course.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  With mortality.

• 35:13André Duqum?

  Yeah, yeah, no. And I'm interested in both. The reason I asked the former is just because I'm curious.

• 35:21André Duqum?

  What have you really learned about the moment when you see somebody transition, both what it's like to die? And then also, has it raised any spiritual questions or, you know, thoughts of like? Yeah, I'm just, I'm just curious. When you see somebody leave their body, do you have the sense that there's something that goes on after? Or do you see it more of like a turning on, turning off of lights?

• 35:45Speaker 02

  No, it feels more like a filling out.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  First, there's the profound and utter stillness, you know?

• 35:59Speaker 02

  It dims when somebody is dying as a result of disease. Anyway, you can feel it dimming and dimming and dimming. And as we're either counting breaths or paying attention to when the chest is rising and falling. When that stills and when ultimately there's no more of a heartbeat. And while we can't see all the microscopic things that are happening in the cells, it feels like a stillness has descended. And as that stillness descended, it almost also feels like

• 36:30Speaker 02

  injecting water into like a cotton ball or something. So that also expands simultaneously. And the room feels full with stillness in a way. So it feels less like something is gone and more like something has expanded.

• 36:50André Duqum?

  I'm curious, in like the couple of days leading up to someone's death,

• 36:56André Duqum?

  what do you notice change if they're coherent enough to see where they're at psychologically? And then also physiologically?

• 37:05Speaker 02

  There isn't, there isn't a lot of energy left for a lot of communication in the days leading up to death generally. Because when people are dying as a result of a disease, there is like this slowly, gradually pulling away, where there are just moments of consciousness at a time, but the rest of the time they are sleeping or unconscious. And when they wake, probably just like checking in to see what's going on, but not, there isn't much energy left. There's just like a general, you know, people pull away, they get more and more distant. Pupils have a higher, harder time focusing, speeches significantly slowed,

• 37:49Speaker 02

  significantly less time for, for consciousness, heart rate slows, blood pressure, it has a hard time regulating. Actually, urine output becomes darker, the skin starts to change, extremities get colder. They get like purplish in fair skinned people, and maybe like grayish and darker skinned people. The body, you can tell something is, that thing is starting to pull back somehow for it.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  Gets big again and takes up all the space. Anyway, it's a, the process of dying is, well, it's all just such a mystery.

• 38:36Speaker 02

  It's also really beautiful. I think in the, in the way that, you know, we honor and revere the utter mystery and miracle that is birth, I think death has a lot of those qualities too. Where even though science can pinpoint some things, you know, science can pinpoint conception when these two meet. And they can say, hey, death has occurred because these things happen, the, the, the, all the happenings around it are entirely mysterious. And that to me is like, it's so awe inspiring that it can be beautiful too.

• 39:18André Duqum?

  Is there somebody that comes to mind that you've been present for when they've died? That you feel like they've been most aware or conscious while they left?

• 39:28Speaker 02

  I can think of one person that was conscious almost up until the end. She had long periods of sleeping, but getting closer to the end.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, she wasn't asleep all the time. She was awake for, for a portion of it and said she wanted to live her death.

• 39:49André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  As she said, yeah.

• 39:51André Duqum?

  Yeah, I like that because I also too, I feel like it's a once in a lifetime opportunity. I don't want to miss.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:58André Duqum?

  If, if possible.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  Well, you're gonna be there for her.

• 40:01André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 40:02Speaker 02

  One way or another.

• 40:03André Duqum?

  One way or the other.

• 40:08André Duqum?

  So many tangents here.

• 40:12André Duqum?

  So many, so many things I'm excited to, to keep exploring.

• 40:18André Duqum?

  You, you mentioned grief earlier and how you love it in this, in this way.

• 40:25André Duqum?

  I'm curious how grief has been a unique teacher for you and in your own, both navigating grief personally, like through Peter, or supporting countless individuals as they navigate the grief of loved ones.

• 40:40André Duqum?

  What do you think grief has the unique capacity to reveal to us as a teacher?

• 40:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. Grief is such a motherfucker. But as I was saying earlier, one that I think just really allows us to like crack open and it's painful and it's difficult. And sometimes in the depths of it, you think there will never be anything else. You know, how can I ever carry on in the face of what has happened in my life? How do I ever reconcile this thing? But we do, we do. We are resilient. We find ways. We, we keep finding a way to like carry on with our lives and somehow the thing that felt so big and like we would never, ever overcome it is integrated into how we live every single day.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  One of the things that I love about grief is that it does, it cracks us. It allows us to kind of throw all the other things away if we want and rebuild from it if we'd like. I am kind of smiling as I'm saying this because I'm thinking about all the opportunities that we have to do that while we're living, and there aren't that many when we get to say, you know what? Not that anymore. We're this today, and grief is one of the places where we can't, you know? I am in the midst of some grief now, have been for a while, and I've cut a bunch off my hair. I cut like two feet off my hair. I haven't painted my nails in like 10 months or so, but they used to be did all the time,

• 42:09Speaker 02

  and now they're just not. I think grief allows us to shift our belief system and orientation toward the world because loss does that. And as we try to find ways to reconcile the loss, we create a belief system that adheres to who we are in a new. Yeah, and it's, to me, a great opportunity. I can't remember your question.

• 42:35André Duqum?

  Just grief as a teacher.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  I love, I love grief. Grief will teach you who you are, teach you what you're made of. It'll teach you what you value through loss, you know? Once a thing is gone, then it's like, oh shit, that did matter somehow. And sometimes the thing that mattered is not like the love of the person or of the thing, but rather what was created as a result of that. I get frustrated sometimes when people say that grief is the price that we pay for love. Because first of all, why does love have to cost anything? Shit is free and abundant, okay? And next, you know, grief isn't always only happening as a result of love. Like, sometimes we grieve things that we didn't love also. People have to grieve difficult relationships. They grieve abusive parents. They grieve things that...

• 43:24Speaker 02

  Had value in some way, but that value isn't always a positive value. Yeah, so I would love it if we would just think of grief a lot more expansively, other than just love with no place to go. Because it's also, you know, it's also anger. It's also, you did this to me. It's also trauma. It's so many things.

• 43:46André Duqum?

  What do you think's the most effective way to be with somebody in their grief and be with your own? Outside of letting it run its natural course of time? Like, what have you seen really is the most supportive?

• 43:58Speaker 02

  To support other people through grief? Just being present, showing up for it, trying not to insert ourselves in the process. I think many people show up thinking that they want to make it better somehow. But sometimes all of our plans and ideas about making it better sometimes make it worse. I think it's important that we also acknowledge our grief ourselves to avoid filling up the space between me and another person with my experience and just let them have theirs.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  Not try to like rush their process along or slow it down or change it or shift it in any way. Because somebody isn't crying doesn't mean they're not grieving, you know? Just because somebody isn't showing up in their grief the way that we think that they should doesn't mean that their process is any less valid. I wish that we would just let people be. I mean, period, but particularly in their grief.

• 44:50André Duqum?

  Yeah.

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• 45:51André Duqum?

  I'm curious, as you've seen countless people die gracefully, and many probably not, I'm assuming. I'm curious, what are the necessary internal and external arrangements for someone to die gracefully? What are those, you feel? We can take them both separately.

• 46:10Speaker 02

  Okay, the question is-

• 46:11André Duqum?

  Internal and external.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  Arrangements. Interesting, our choice.

• 46:17André Duqum?

  I would say external arrangements, right? Like, the things that one might do while they're living so that they can die gracefully and for those that are around them.

• 46:25Speaker 02

  So externally, you're not talking about the practical things, but more our lives in relationship to death, yeah?

• 46:30André Duqum?

  No, that's more internally. I would say externally, yeah, the practical stuff.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  Oh, the practical things? Oh, easy peasy. Healthcare directives, thinking through who I want to make my decisions for me in the event that I can't, getting absolutely clear on how I want to be treated in the medical care system in the event that something happens and somebody has to make decisions, but clear on what my values are so that they can use my values to really underscore the decisions that they make for me. I want to make sure that I have a plan for any of my dependents and my pets. The best place to do that is in a will for children to be clear on who the guardians will be if the co-parent is not available for that.

• 47:10André Duqum?

  How does someone do that?

• 47:11Speaker 02

  Get clear-

• 47:12André Duqum?

  Write a will, like, and take care of that stuff.

• 47:15Speaker 02

  Well, you can go to a lawyer for support in creating a will. You can also do it yourself. I would suggest that the most important bits is that you think about who you want to carry out your affairs, like, who you trust to say, "You should get this, you should get that." And then also make a plan for the either big-ticket items in your life or the sentimental items in your life, because both those things cause a lot of grief and fighting after death. We also got to be clear on our body and our services. Like, what do I want done with my body after I can't use it anymore? How should it be, you know, disposed of in some way? Back to the earth, or whatever our ideas may be? How I want my life celebrated? Am I trying to have a big party? Or do I just want a gentle gathering?

• 47:59Speaker 02

  Or something of the sort? We also got to think through all of our documents, like, our key documents. Where are they? Where are they? There are so many of them. But gather them in a place so that people are not going on a scavenger hunt after I die. They're gonna have to go through my things anyway, but let me try to make it a little bit easier for them. Okay, so those are some of the external arrangements. Yes, and we could go much deeper into them. Finances and bank accounts and credit cards and social media. A lot of things to consider, a lot of things to consider.

• 48:31André Duqum?

  What do you think is the the best way to bring this up to like fans? Like do this with your loved ones, do this with your family and instead of just spearheading it solo, which I guess you could do, like, how do you think it's best to bring this up to like do it? And address it with your parents or people you care about?

• 48:49Speaker 02

  I think it really depends on who you're talking to. Because my mom, for example, was just like, let's do it. And we sat down one afternoon and we did her entire end of life plan. My father, on the other hand, took a lot of coaxing and a lot of effort. And we didn't even make it all the way through. So we still have some work to do there. Some folks are just down to discuss it and other people take a little bit more effort. One way that I found is useful sometimes is if there has been a death either in the family or the community to say like, hey, this happened. You see what happened here? What did you think? Or here's somebody bitching about something that happened at somebody else's funeral. You can say, well, what would you want for yourself?

• 49:34Speaker 02

  Or if you didn't like that, well, what do you want us to do for you? Or something along those lines, just to break that open. I think, you know, family gatherings is an interesting time to bring it up. I would not suggest.

• 49:47André Duqum?

  Thanksgiving dinner.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  That's what I was just about to say. Maybe not that, and certainly not before any wine has been poured. But like, maybe doing dishes afterward would be a better time. You know, something that, a space that can create a little bit more intimacy.

• 50:03André Duqum?

  In that, though, it inherently speaks to the uncomfortableness that we feel bringing things up, talking about something that is all going to be experienced by all of us. But I get it. I'm fascinated at like the turning away of something that is inevitable. And that like, what is that in us, you know? And how do you want, when you look at the available options of how to be buried, what are your, what's your personal choice? And what do you think? Like, what are the options on the menu for people?

• 50:41Speaker 02

  Wow, so many options now. I mean, we have our two big buckets, right? We have burial and cremation for the bodies.

• 50:48André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 50:49Speaker 02

  Two big buckets. But with burial comes like a green burial, the opportunity to be laid directly in the ground with biodegradable materials around you, not too far deep, so that's not too cold and bugs can still get to you and do their thing. The earth can do what it needs to with your body. And then traditional burials and like a coffin or a casket, six feet underground and like a concrete vault, et cetera, et cetera. Then there is, within cremation, there's a million things to do with cremains, right? You can make it into lead for a pencil or a diamond. So people are tattooing it into their bodies. You can scatter them places where it won't bother the earth too much.

• 51:30Speaker 02

  Everybody, please. But they can also be kept. There just needs to be a plan. Then there are some new ideas lately, like natural organic reduction, which I really enjoy, spearheaded by this person named Katrina Spade, where they essentially turn the body over and over and over, and over time it decomposes, much like composting. There is aquamation.

• 51:58André Duqum?

  And then they what? Just put it in the soil?

• 52:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, then it becomes soil.

• 52:01André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 52:01Speaker 02

  And then they can use the soil. People can use the soil. Cool, right?

• 52:05André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 52:05Speaker 02

  Very cool.

• 52:06André Duqum?

  Plant a garden with it?

• 52:07Speaker 02

  Exactly. Put grandma on the mangoes. That sounds pretty good to me.

• 52:13André Duqum?

  So I'm not eating, if my friend invites me over, I'm not eating grandma mango.

• 52:17Speaker 02

  No, grandma, those joints are probably really tasty. Okay, they've been blessed.

• 52:22André Duqum?

  It depends. Was she a sweet grandma or was she an angry grandma?

• 52:25Speaker 02

  Good question. Regardless, you have grandma wisdom in you. There's also aquamation, which is like water cremation. Essentially, the body is in a vat of lye. Essentially, we're all like the fat and tissue and everything, muscles are decomposed over time. And then all that's left is a liquid and that liquid can be used as fertilizer or whatever else with the body. Yeah. So there's, there's, there are options. There are options.

• 52:52André Duqum?

  What's, what's your choice?

• 52:54Speaker 02

  My choice is a green burial for now. I want to be directly back to the earth. Yeah. Any hot pink, an orange, raw silk shroud, just deep down in, covered back up and left for all the elements to do what they will with my body. Yeah. Just take me right back.

• 53:15André Duqum?

  What else for your own personal, how, how do you, how do you want to die?

• 53:20Speaker 02

  I want to die outside. I would love your deck, by the way.

• 53:23André Duqum?

  You want to do this out here? If you're like, if you are cutting a avocado and you need to rush over here.

• 53:31Speaker 02

  Great, great.

• 53:32André Duqum?

  Permission granted.

• 53:33Speaker 02

  Would be ideal. Trees everywhere, trees. I'd love to see them changing color. So if I get to choose, that's what I'm choosing. I'm also choosing the fall. So that the leaves are changing color. I want it to be around sunset.

• 53:47André Duqum?

  How old do you think you are?

• 53:48Speaker 02

  Um, I don't actually want to be like a hundred or so. I want to be, I want to feel good enough in my body, but maybe tired and sick enough that it's, I'm time, it's time to leave it, you know? So I don't know. We'll see how long that goes. All I know is right now my knees are aching and I'm only 47. So let's see how that goes. Uh, but I want to be outside, everything slowly changing colors. I want to hear like water or something very, very faintly, but not the ocean necessarily agitates me. I want to smell beautiful, sweet things. I want my people around, but I do not want them all looking at me.

• 54:31Speaker 02

  Don't want them looking at me. I want them talking to each other and comforting each other and drinking tea and tequila. I want maybe like a little bit of music, but I really just want to hear the wind. I want to hear wind and trees and birds. And I want it just to feel like a very ordinary moment, much like the ordinary moment, I think, that I was born into, but rather now my exit. Yeah, I'd love that, you know, just to hear that bird just on my way out. That feels pretty great. I think it'd be great.

• 55:10André Duqum?

  Yeah, I don't know if the mics picked that up, but it was nice.

• 55:13Speaker 02

  Well, you and I heard it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What about you? Have you thought about it?

• 55:18André Duqum?

  Yes, I have. What's interesting, though, in contrast to what you just shared, is the reality for the vast majority of people in the cold, hard, medical fluorescent ceiling lights and a hospital room, which medical system obviously bears so many incredible fruits. Birth and death, and many other areas, but birth and death, it really seems to just have so many shortcomings in terms of how sterile and clinical these monumental beginnings and endings, one might say, of life are. And so, yeah, definitely don't want to die in a hospital room.

• 55:55Speaker 02

  Clear.

• 55:56André Duqum?

  Yeah. I'm also, I mean, everything you just said, sign me up for. I maybe won't do the pink shroud silk situation, maybe like maroon. Let's see. I'm down with people not staring at me. I'm down, I'm down to have my loved ones nearby. I want to be, if we're just picking from whatever is possible, I do think it's possible to consciously leave your body. And I'd like that. I want to, I want to be fully present for when I leave.

• 56:29André Duqum?

  So I'm down to live a long and healthy life. And I'm down to live over, I feel like with longevity, escape velocity and the technologies that are coming and what we're learning about the human body, like not only is lifespan extending, but health span really will as well and be able to live healthy for a long time, God willing, knock on wood. And, and yeah, I think the biggest thing is I want to be present for it and surrounded in nature, by nature.

• 56:58Speaker 02

  We'll see, won't we?

• 57:00André Duqum?

  We will see, because the thing is, we can make these plans and then life has its own.

• 57:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, but then still, I find so much value in at least envisioning it.

• 57:09André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 57:09Speaker 02

  For me, it is really supportive because it makes my death then a thing that could feel peaceful. You know, it's full of so much like fear and so much need for like control and want to know and so much anxiety for many. It's like, well, what if I just imagine an end that makes me feel good? I don't have any control over it anyway, unless I choose, you know, unless I actually choose, I don't have any control. And so let me imagine something that feels easy, like a cup of tea and a good book on a Sunday afternoon.

• 57:42André Duqum?

  Yeah. I'm curious if your closest friends were giving your eulogy after you passed. And it's going to, it's probably going to require you to step outside of yourself a bit.

• 57:53Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 57:54André Duqum?

  And what do you think they would say about a Lua, like about what uniquely is distinct about you and your essence? And yeah, the reason I say take yourself out of it, because it's like, I think it's tough to see ourselves always as the people around us see us. But what do you think they would really say?

• 58:16Speaker 02

  Hmm. I think they'd probably say that I feel about life, that I kept looking for my edges. And that I played in them, but I also knew when to pull back. I think they'd say, I loved to laugh and that I loved fiercely. And that there were some things I really didn't play about at all. But that there are other things where just life felt like play. They'd say, I took my french fries very seriously and my Beyonce.

• 58:57Speaker 02

  I think, I think that they'd probably say that I was courageous. It doesn't feel like it to me, but I hear that reflected back to me sometimes. And I'm like, are you kidding? Because I'm terrified right now.

• 59:16André Duqum?

  I mean, yeah, nobody who's feeling courage, right? Doesn't feel the fear.

• 59:20Speaker 02

  No.

• 59:20André Duqum?

  Do it anyways, right?

• 59:21Speaker 02

  Do it anyway.

• 59:21André Duqum?

  That's beautiful.

• 59:22Speaker 02

  Keep it going. Keep pushing that direction. Yeah. Yeah, I think they probably also say that I, I danced a lot. Like I danced with life, but I also would like bust a move in a CVS aisle. I think that's what they'd say.

• 59:46André Duqum?

  Amazing.

• 59:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. We'll see.

• 59:50André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 59:51Speaker 02

  We will see.

• 59:52André Duqum?

  Do you think, have you thought about eulogy? Because I, because I, I think it's an interesting thought experiment to see yourself through the eyes of another as well. But also, what would we say for our friends, right? And can we tell them while they're alive?

• 1:00:07Speaker 02

  I'm doing that with them all the time, which is fun. I often say to people, I'm gonna talk about this when you're dead. Because it's like, listen, you just did that thing that just absolutely encapsulates who you are. And I'm gonna tell them about this when you are dead. I think it would be cool to be able to be in that practice as people consistently. When I was writing my book, I thought a little bit about writing my own eulogy in there. Like, what do I want people to say about me? And so I did this exercise where I asked my sisters what they would say. And they said a lot of things.

• 1:00:43Speaker 02

  It's nice to get that reflection. I mean, it was feedback, you know what I mean? And a lot of it was great. And some of it was like, oh, oh, yeah, actually, you're right.

• 1:00:52André Duqum?

  Can you make sure you just leave out that one line?

• 1:00:54Speaker 02

  Just say these things about me. In reality, I want them to tell the whole truth. You know, I want them to say everything. I want them to say the, the big, beautiful things and also the places where I was difficult. Because inevitably, somebody has that experience of me. There are people that despise me, I'm certain of it. Because I'm the villain in their story. That one time I looked at somebody when I probably just had something in my eye. But that's what they know of me. You know what I mean? So tell, tell everything, tell everything. Yeah. I, I did ask students a while back, I teach death duels as well. But I used to ask students to write their own eulogy and they would always get stuck on that section.

• 1:01:34Speaker 02

  And so I thought, let's just make it like a suggestion for one day when you're bored, as opposed to a requirement of the course.

• 1:01:41André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:43André Duqum?

  What? Because I know you have, just in getting to dig a little bit deeper into you, your work, your life.

• 1:01:50André Duqum?

  What do you think? These three things have uniquely, I guess, stretched your capacity to be with people in the moment that they're dying and the contemplation and all the things leading up to it. Vipassana, Burning Man, and entheogens, psychedelics.

• 1:02:08Speaker 02

  Oh, it's all the same.

• 1:02:10André Duqum?

  All the same.

• 1:02:11Speaker 02

  All the same, all the way through.

• 1:02:13André Duqum?

  Nice.

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  A couple of really key things. First, the, the willingness to just open. You know, to allow what will be to be.

• 1:02:25Speaker 02

  Also, the,

• 1:02:30Speaker 02

  like, the space between stimulus and trigger and the choice.

• 1:02:36Speaker 02

  Like that's something that was revealed to me very clearly in Vipassana. But then I saw it in practice also at Burning Man, where there is so much stimulus, right? And so often with the lights and the every, just a lot, humans and just my mind's getting blown left and right and, and I'm having the time of my life, like just, but there's so much stimulus. And who do I choose to be in the face of all the stimulus consistently? And then also entheogens in the same, like there's stimulus and it reveals something much deeper about who I am. And so who am I choosing to be? What really arises to the surface then too? That's one thing. All of them are just so transformative chances to play.

• 1:03:20Speaker 02

  My assumption is that you've played in those spaces as well?

• 1:03:25André Duqum?

  I did go to Burning Man this past year and it's my second time, which was super,

• 1:03:31André Duqum?

  super amazing experience. I think a lot of people have this notion of Burning Man being like a, a bunch of hippies doing drugs. And for sure, that's an option on, you know, on the menu of that experience. But there's all this to choose your own adventure. Like there's, it's just, it's an amazing adult playground to explore and yeah, make it your own. And so, yeah, Vipassana also has been a big part of my path. I went this past year again. And it's a, I think it's such a transformative practice to carry into every other aspect of life. And then a little bit of entheogens as well. So yeah, they're all great. But I'm

• 1:04:12André Duqum?

  curious what they, you kind of spoke, they all have this ability to kind of open you and I guess be present. You said in between the stimulus and response that like choice that's in the middle and, and creating more space in that to be present. So that directly, you think has expanded your ability to be with people in those moments of resistance and uncertainty and all of it?

• 1:04:33Speaker 02

  I think so, in that also when the space opens where I get to choose how I want to show up, I think it creates space for people to also get to choose who they want to be. And it also just allows me to be present, like to show up for somebody where they are, how they are, and also for me, where I am and how I am. And we can do that with each other, you know, there's a lot of potential for healing. And healing can be happening even when somebody is dying. It just looks a little different than we traditionally think.

• 1:05:05André Duqum?

  Yeah. The great mystery of what happens after we die, which you spoke to. I want to talk a little bit about that because especially somebody who's been in contemplation of the spiritual side of things in their own personal practice and then working with so many people and confronting reality of their of their own mortality. What do you think happens?

• 1:05:29Speaker 02

  I have this working theory.

• 1:05:31André Duqum?

  Great.

• 1:05:32Speaker 02

  Called the glitter wave.

• 1:05:33André Duqum?

  The glitter wave. Wait, you said this at the end of your book, yeah?

• 1:05:35Speaker 02

  I did.

• 1:05:36André Duqum?

  Okay.

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

  This is my working theory.

• 1:05:37André Duqum?

  All right.

• 1:05:38Speaker 02

  Because it's just kind of ridiculous and a good time. And I think really, you know, it had some really key components, right? So in my glitter wave, I'm at the moment of my death. And while I'm on your deck, which is right outside, and it's so beautiful internally, I'm just feeling all the feelings that I felt while I was human, all the things that having this body and being present in this body allowed me to experience. So all the smells and the taste and the love and the fear and the doubt and, you know, the joy and the intrigue and the mystery and all the juiciness of being alive, all of it is starting to like bubble up in my body.

• 1:06:19Speaker 02

  And I'm feeling all like the little experiences too, just not like a not like a tape, but rather just like a deeply somatic experience of all that stuff. So I'm feeling it all and feeling it when I'm so full up of all the feeling that I cannot take a second more, everything explodes. Not my body because it's on your deck, but inside, everything just explodes inside. And it explodes into this really brightly colored confetti, bits of confetti.

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  Shooting out in the cosmos with the force of my human life just behind it, just straight out there, confetti, falling, falling, falling like a soft snow shower because there's gravity and whoever this is shot out to, right? But the confetti is falling and all the confetti represents little flecks of my human life. And so some of it is like that really delicious fried plantain I just had in Ghana the first time I bit into it, you know? And some of it is when my heart was shattered by that stupid boy in the fourth grade, or, you know, all those little tiny, tiny parts of my human existence are starting to fall like soft snow.

• 1:07:33Speaker 02

  And the snow falls and some parts of me, the things that I did or the ways that I touched people or so stick on the people who I touched and the other things that nobody ever knew or cared for or really didn't matter, just keep following, falling, falling, falling and all the snow, the glitter snow just keeps falling around. And all the bits just eventually settle somewhere. And the ones that didn't stick to anybody, those connect with a massive undulating glitter wave that goes on for all of eternity, all shapes everywhere, just glitter everywhere, connecting with everything that ever was and will ever

• 1:08:17Speaker 02

  be and just goes on forever. I'll just buy it a great a bowl glitter.

• 1:08:26André Duqum?

  I'm curious because there's definitely a lot of threads of that in that analogy that give weight to the experiences we have, the quality that we have in our life and how there is a continuation of that, of how memory continues on and is entangled with, with people and.

• 1:08:46André Duqum?

  When you study consciousness, both internally as a practitioner of meditation and as a human being, and then also as you can scientifically and the many different theories of what consciousness is. What's fascinating to me is when you explore who we are most fundamentally in our essence and you start to get more familiar with the stillness of self and you experience a boundless, birthless, deathless consciousness, awareness that is present in our experience. And you start to sit and marinate in that space more and you start to actually identify more with that space and less of just a separate self in a body, which is an amazing gift that we have.

• 1:09:31André Duqum?

  But to me, both internally as I've grown in that awareness and then also been with people who have grown in that awareness, there seems to be an inverse relationship, a direct correlation between the growing of awareness of self and consciousness and fear, lack of fear of death. Because what is dying is not life. Death is the opposite of birth. Life is a continuation that is going to continue on afterwards. And I'm curious, as you've explored beyond your glitter wave?

• 1:09:58Speaker 02

  Glitter wave? Glitter.

• 1:10:00André Duqum?

  Hypothesis? I like that.

• 1:10:05André Duqum?

  What have you? What are your thoughts beyond that in terms of what happens with consciousness?

• 1:10:14Speaker 02

  Well, from what I've witnessed around people, my work really tries to focus on what's happening with the body because it's the only thing that I can actually observe. And the rest are things that I get to play with. But from what I've observed, it seems as though people have the opportunity to... Something shifts. Something opens. Something moves into what I don't actually wish that I knew. I don't wish I knew. But something shifts. I play around a lot with the idea of what actually dies. Sometimes people talk about who is dying

• 1:10:58Speaker 02

  and how we feel about that death in particular. But I think the root of the question is what dies? What is it that's actually dying? And pinpoint our focus on that to maybe try to soften the...

• 1:11:13Speaker 02

  The pain, the anxiety, the fear around death itself.

• 1:11:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. I do my best to keep my personal beliefs about what happens after we die to myself. Because if I don't, it's really hard for my clients or anybody else to come to me with what they think.

• 1:11:31André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:31Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? Because then they're, then they think I already know something. And I'm like, boy, you can have yours too.

• 1:11:38André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:39Speaker 00

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• 1:12:40André Duqum?

  Yeah, it's interesting to think what is actually dying. And you could also argue that what's fundamentally dying is our own belief of separation.

• 1:12:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Which is part of the, like, the cool thing about being human, or the interesting thing about being a human, right?

• 1:13:02André Duqum?

  Yeah, for sure. Thank God.

• 1:13:02Speaker 02

  I have this first player perspective, and this is what I know, and this is what I see. And that's it, as far as I'm concerned. But some of that is what makes dying so challenging, because we're so tied to this first player perspective, that I cannot possibly fathom, I, the general I, cannot possibly fathom that there could be anything other than this one. And so if this were to die, then what? It's just so disconcerting. But there are currently human eight billion, let alone all the beings, all the trees, all the other forms of consciousness that exists with us.

• 1:13:42André Duqum?

  What do you make of what seems to be a lot of very similar reportings on near-death experiences in terms of the experience of what happens when people go and they are clinically dead for seconds, up to a couple of minutes? You know, like, what does that raise questions for you? And, yeah.

• 1:14:03Speaker 02

  I love it because it all sounds so similar, you know? They all sound so similar that there is something happening, they're experiencing something in the physical body, but then what's happening otherwise with consciousness is that they are moving toward something that feels so warm and enveloping, and there's light, and there's ease, and there feels like peace. And I think most say, I don't want to go back to earth, I'm just trying to kick it here. But then for others, there is still something that needs to be done, or there's grief, or their work isn't complete in some way, and so they come back.

• 1:14:39Speaker 02

  I love hearing, I love hearing about near-death experiences, I love hearing people's stories. And I, I want it desperately to be true, you know? I want that for them, I want that for them. You know, I don't know what I want for myself, but I want that for them.

• 1:14:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:03André Duqum?

  I find it very fascinating. We had, which I mentioned to you, Anita Marzoni on the podcast, and also, I think that's probably the only predominant NDE experience or story we've had on the show or highlighted. But I find it so interesting, the conciliance between what people say, which of course there's a big variance, but there are like some core things that are repeated. And somebody who has gone through death, I mean, they didn't make it fully to the other side, but they got a, they got a peek into the window, right? So to speak. And, and so that to me is also comforting for, like, you know, and raises so many questions about, okay, then what, what really is life? Who is it? What is it that actually dies? And, oh.

• 1:15:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. And the fact that we will never know, ever.

• 1:15:52Speaker 02

  What we try to think through is with the human mind, you know, even as, even when I get to the space of stillness in myself, even when I can feel beyond what this might be like, it's still through this perspective, through this aperture. The mystery and like the force of that mystery is one of the things that I love most about working in death. I can tunnel as deeply as I want to over and over and over again, and I won't get any closer. I've just got to wait and find out.

• 1:16:31André Duqum?

  When you

• 1:16:34André Duqum?

  project yourself to the end of your life and you look back with hindsight onto your life now, I'm not a huge fan of the word legacy. But when you think about what it is that, because there were things that you felt that were undone, that you ended up doing, that are now out in the world and that you, how you served and showed up. What, for lack of a better term, would you want your legacy to be? And how important do you feel it is for people to reflect on that or not important?

• 1:17:03Speaker 02

  I think it's important to think about who we are being because I actually think that's our legacy. You know, a lot of people have the idea of legacy tied up in like-

• 1:17:13André Duqum?

  What you do.

• 1:17:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, our money, our accomplishments, like our names on the side of buildings and et cetera. But it's more just about how we're showing up because we're leaving a legacy all the time. Through every action, every inaction, every word spoken, every time I chose not to say something, you know, how I showed up for Palestine or did- everything is part of our legacy consistently. And when we think of it through that lens, I think it's helpful because it's the same, it's the same conversation as thinking about my deathbed self. Like, who am I? Who have I become? So I think it's useful in that way. But I don't think it's useful when we tie it to productivity and like dollars.

• 1:17:53André Duqum?

  Yeah. Who knows how good my ego was compared to other egos, you know, instead of how I showed up for people and-

• 1:18:00Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. That to me is where the real juice is. It's like-

• 1:18:08Speaker 02

  How did I human? But less in a grading, like A plus, C minus way, and more in the was I true? Did I do this?

• 1:18:21André Duqum?

  In the last chapter of your book, you kind of raise this question of like, why? Like, the more meta philosophical of like, why life? Why death? Like, why the meaning of life? And contemplate in so many of these things.

• 1:18:35André Duqum?

  Since the time of like, sharing your thoughts there and in this present day, right now, what? How do you answer the question? Why life? Why this whole drama of birth and death and all this? What are your current thoughts?

• 1:18:46Speaker 02

  I still don't have any. I don't. And with the number of mosquitoes in LA recently, I've just been asking a lot. Why?

• 1:18:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. But the not knowing, the space of surrender, like, the actual falling into the utter perfection of the natural world. And this entire experience we're having has to keep arising for us to be okay with life as it is. Like, over and over and over again. Otherwise, we're gonna have a very hard time.

• 1:19:25André Duqum?

  What do you feel like we have in common today that is essential for people to reflect on?

• 1:19:30Speaker 02

  Well, I was just curious about, what do you think about why?

• 1:19:34André Duqum?

  Why?

• 1:19:35Speaker 02

  All of it.

• 1:19:36André Duqum?

  Why?

• 1:19:38Speaker 02

  Why eyebrows?

• 1:19:42André Duqum?

  I think

• 1:19:45André Duqum?

  that life and the intelligence of life is so vast that the human mind is always going to be a futile endeavor to try to explain. It's always going to be such a small percentage of, of like, of the whole. You know? And I think that there is something to the reflection that life takes on this.

• 1:20:09André Duqum?

  Illusion of separation in many sense to gain access to various infinite different perspectives of itself. So I kind of look at life and all phenomena around me as the universe experiencing itself. And through its own experience of being a beetle, or a tree, or an ilua, or an andre, it gains knowledge of itself in that unique context. So I think in many ways, like the why is like to be, to be us, to be the fullness of the expression of who we are. And I think that is also what is most radiant and magnetic when you meet people that, you know, authenticity has gotten a good PR agent and like everyone loves to talk about authenticity, right?

• 1:20:49Speaker 02

  A plus.

• 1:20:50André Duqum?

  But the, you know, the essence of that, of being yourself and knowing your values and who you are, I think, to me, feels like my reason for the meaning of it all, which I think is personal. Like, the why question is a personal question we all get to explore. And I think that also, there's this, there's a saying, "The heavy chains of worry are forged in idle hours," meaning the question of why, from more of the existential stance, usually comes up when we're not living, you know, when we're more, those contemplations come up when we're kind of more stagnant in our energies.

• 1:21:33André Duqum?

  But when we're creating, when we're playful, you know, when we're living life in that sense, I think the, the why question is, doesn't arise because we're in the act of, of it, we're creating, creative beings, you know? So those are a few things that I'd say, but who knows?

• 1:21:50Speaker 02

  None of us, ever. It's not so fun.

• 1:21:54André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's, I think, more fun this way.

• 1:21:57André Duqum?

  Yeah. I think there's something inherently liberating, which I get from how comfortable you seem in this conversation with just the mystery of this, of this all of life, of death, of what happens after. And I'm sure, you know, there's many moments where maybe you're not comfortable, right? But like, coming at ease with those terms, the words, I don't know, you know, is, is so liberating. It's so liberating and I'm...

• 1:22:25André Duqum?

  Yeah, I'm curious, how much of your work do you feel like is helping people just arrive to those three words?

• 1:22:29Speaker 02

  So much of it.

• 1:22:30André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:30Speaker 02

  It's so much of it. I think a lot of my work is really about surrender, too. You know, because the constant trying to figure it out is trying to create some context, try and make it make some type of sense, like, again, using that human mind to try to encapsulate it or get context for this really strange experience that we're all having. And if we can just be with it as it is and take it in. And when I'm taking it in, I'm often far more in a space of awe and wonder, which is a place I really like to sit, as opposed to the, you know, cute little human, like, I'm gonna figure it out, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna find a solution, I'm gonna solve it. And there are a lot of things that we just can't solve, you know?

• 1:23:12Speaker 02

  And I cannot bend the will of life in my direction all the time. Some things I can do, some things I can't do, but the larger will of life is gonna go how it's gonna go, including how it is that I meet my death again, unless I choose. But even then, is me riding the wave, if you will. So the surrender into the, I don't know, the surrender into like this existence is the thing that is, is a tough practice for many.

• 1:23:42Speaker 02

  It shows up, I think, when people fear what happens after we die, or have a lot of, a lot tied up in it, because it's directly tied to the unknown and our, our lack of control, our need to surrender, that really gets panties in a bunch. It's tough. It's tough, but we don't know what's gonna happen this next minute.

• 1:24:09André Duqum?

  I think that's a really important reflection, like, that we simply don't know what is going to unfold in our awareness the next millisecond of our experience. There's no certainty we can provide to that, like, knowledge.

• 1:24:19Speaker 02

  Anything.

• 1:24:19André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:20Speaker 02

  To absolutely nothing. And it's terrifying if we're really present with it, but also the space where utter freedom, if we choose that, too, is one or the other. Yeah, I try to get to where I'm going on time and then there's something happening on the street and we just gotta sit back into it and be like, I'll get there when I get there and I cannot do anything about it. And you know, either I raise my blood pressure by trying really hard to still make it there or I just chill and watch the other cars on the road. Yeah, I'll get there.

• 1:24:49André Duqum?

  Yeah, I think there is a big part of my path that was like switching this narrative from maybe a more pessimistic view on life to like the optimistic side. And I mean, they're both equally in many senses, kind of like a made up fantasies, like projections onto life, whether we have fear because of something negative that might happen in the future versus excitement because we think something positive from our perspective might happen in the future. You know, the surrendering, which is like, I'm okay with whatever actually happens is like, that's that that level of freedom is something that I'm way more interested in that I'm glad you brought up.

• 1:25:28Speaker 02

  It's juicier. It's tougher. It's tougher. I think it's it is almost easier to choose optimism or pessimism in one way or the other. Either every nothing is working in my favor and it's all for shit, or it's all for good and everything will work out in my favor. And also regardless of what happens, I'm gonna be okay is one that, you know, we we I strive to sit in. It works a lot with clients too, just a consistent trying to come back to the space of surrender because most of these people are in these situations when they had other ideas for what they were doing with their lives and with their time. You know, how many of them expected to get diagnosed with cancer at 49? How many? You know, how many expected this and that they would meet?

• 1:26:13Speaker 02

  Nobody, really. How many of them had the ideal death that they sought out or that they started thinking about if they ever did? Not very many. And so we must just surrender to the circumstances that are before us. But it's it's tough. It's tough. I think we also, you know, the human feels so much power and yet I am sitting here utterly powerless against trillions of functions that are happening in my body at this moment and I got nothing to do with them at all.

• 1:26:47André Duqum?

  Yeah, we rely on them to be alive. And that, you know, this is largely why I was so excited to sit down with you today, because we've definitely talked about death throughout many different conversations and a theme that's been brought up. But this is one of the few where we like really dive deep and focus on it a lot more as an episode. And I just think that there's something so powerful about how reflecting on life in this way and death in this way reveals to us the gift and the awareness of the gift that is life and how that shapes how we live, you know? Because that's what I'm really, I think it's really important to talk about all the arrangements of death and the moment of death and these things that are underexamined as well.

• 1:27:32André Duqum?

  But what ignites me so much about is like what that means about who we are and how we live. And I think that you provided so many different useful perspectives about questions that we can ask today about what we must do so that we can live fully presently, die gracefully, the things that really give us most meaning and value and showing up to value our essence, not just our ego's productivity and accomplishments, you know? Yeah, so I can imagine that your best friends at your eulogy would say really beautiful things because in the past, plus a little over an hour of getting to meet you, I would say, I would say some amazing things as well. It's, yeah, it's been a really nourishing conversation.

• 1:28:17Speaker 02

  Thank you, Andre. Yeah, they probably also want me to shut up about death.

• 1:28:20André Duqum?

  But it's good. You're clearly doing what you love.

• 1:28:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're not going to forget. You're going to die.

• 1:28:27André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:28Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me.

• 1:28:31André Duqum?

  Of course. Is there anything less on your heart that we covered a lot of ground in today's conversation?

• 1:28:36Speaker 02

  We did.

• 1:28:37André Duqum?

  But is there something that you feel like would be uniquely supportive? We didn't?

• 1:28:40Speaker 02

  I think something that is helpful that we didn't really talk about it. We talked about how to support other people through grief, but I think people are often curious about how to support other people through death because most people are doing it. You know, a lot of people will, most people will do it at some point in their lives. And I get questions about it consistently, so I think it could be useful as a secondary thing to supporting people through grief.

• 1:29:03André Duqum?

  I would love to hear that.

• 1:29:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, one of the ways that, well...

• 1:29:11Speaker 02

  I just said, I think people ask me this all the time, and they do. And now I'm like, what am I gonna say? But mostly, as an aside, somebody has told me recently that one thing she appreciates is that even though I get asked similar questions all the time, I answer differently always. So this is today's answer. Yeah.

• 1:29:32Speaker 02

  Most of us will like support somebody in our lives as they're dying. Either we're the primary caregiver and we're there passing medicine and learning how to change people and change sheets and et cetera, or somebody in our lives is dying and we're calling to check on them, or hearing about what's going on with their care from people around, or there'll be a sudden death or a traumatic death and we gotta show up for it in some way. I think it's wildly, wildly, wildly supportive that we make space for our own personal relationship with death first, so that we can allow the person who's dying to just have their experience. So that when I'm in the space of somebody else is dying, I'm doing my best not to put my fears or my concerns about dying on them, so I can just be present for their experience.

• 1:30:16Speaker 02

  It's a hard thing to do, to be clear on our relationship with death, but there are a lot of tools that can be supportive as people, like if you're in that process yourself, think about your immortality, bring it to the surface, bring it to the forefront, because that's gonna be, I think, like the key to showing up for your person, as opposed to just putting yourself in their shoes all the time and not actually listening to them and being present for them in a meaningful way.

• 1:30:43Speaker 00

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• 1:31:12Speaker 01

  What's the secret to being a great host this season? Keeping things deliciously simple, like mixing Simply Cranberry into a festive drink as guests arrive, or serving up a warm mug of Simply Apple on a chilly night. That means less time behind the scenes and more time in the moment with everyone. Crafted with real fruit, Simply juices and fruit drinks make any holiday drink effortless, inviting, and completely delicious. Simply, say yes to simple.

• 1:31:45André Duqum?

  Is there anything else that comes to mind, specifically when supporting?

• 1:31:50André Duqum?

  I think the inevitable thing is like, we start to get older and then we start to see our parents get older faster.

• 1:31:56Speaker 02

  That's hard.

• 1:31:58André Duqum?

  What are you think, even before like the moment of death and the certain arrangements that you need to meet, what are some questions and conversations that you think are really important to have while people are still healthy enough to have them?

• 1:32:10Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, a very important one is about their values for living. A lot of these things we can ascertain just by being in a relationship with somebody, but I think it's very helpful to hear for them what they value about their lives so that if faced with a decision about healthcare, we can rely on what we already know about what they value to make it. As opposed to, I mean, if we can, get a healthcare agent, medical power of attorney, write down very clearly your desires for life support, specifically all the decisions that your healthcare agent can make, all the different types of life support you want. That would be the gold standard. In the absence of that, being clear on what your values for living are, because I think we find that not only does that help in the healthcare that we receive, like across the

• 1:32:55Speaker 02

  board, not only medical decisions, but also in this facility, or that one, or this doctor, or that doctor, but it also helps us figure out how we are living our lives presently all the way up until that point. So when, like, let's start talking about values, like what do you value about living? What do you value about your life? It's also a question that reveals more of the human that's in front of us that we presumably love and care for. And I think we, I've gotten surprised by it for sure. So, you know, let's keep asking those questions.

• 1:33:27André Duqum?

  I think it's also fascinating when you grow up and you realize that your mommy and daddy are also just human beings on a path.

• 1:33:35Speaker 02

  It is an experience, isn't it? And then when they get older.

• 1:33:38André Duqum?

  Yeah, right. And then, you know, there's this turning of like, we're all sons and daughters, you could say, of life at large and start to view how like the cycle turns, you know, and like I have at periods like seen my mother more as like my sister, even my daughter at times when you like have that love that wants to take care of. And I think

• 1:34:04André Duqum?

  it's, it's interesting to me to like be able to re-meet somebody in adulthood who you had a certain relationship at a certain phase of life, obviously. And then you get to re-meet who they are, what their values are and like what their life was like, the challenges that they face and like get to get those things expressed, you know? I know that there's certain things, for example, my mom, I know certain fears that she has, like certain things that I really know she wants to experience that like I'm excited to experience with her for sure. And and it's, I think it's important to figure out what those are.

• 1:34:37Speaker 02

  Have you all talked about death at all?

• 1:34:40André Duqum?

  A little bit, yeah.

• 1:34:43André Duqum?

  I would say actually quite a bit.

• 1:34:44Speaker 02

  Great.

• 1:34:44André Duqum?

  Yeah. Yeah, we're, we're pretty open with talking about all that stuff.

• 1:34:48Speaker 02

  Wonderful. So you have a sense of what she might want or how she wants to be cared for nearing the end?

• 1:34:54André Duqum?

  I think in terms of like the, those certain arrangements, I need to, we need to talk more about those.

• 1:35:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:03André Duqum?

  We've just talked more, I guess, like existentially about death.

• 1:35:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:06André Duqum?

  But the practical stuff is, I think, good to get down and.

• 1:35:09Speaker 02

  But what about her life as a whole? Like the things that she's loved in it or desired more of or less of or?

• 1:35:14André Duqum?

  Yeah, I mean, all those things. I think getting to also get context for like. Her growing up life like in Palestine and Lebanon and coming out here and like, we have so little context as growing up with these parents, you know, of like what it took for them to give us the life that they that we have. And so getting to get more of that context of her upbringing, I think was really, really powerful. And then the things that, you know, she still wishes to experience. And so I think it's cool to, and at least I desire to help be a champion for those things to be experienced, for sure.

• 1:35:56Speaker 02

  Yay.

• 1:35:57André Duqum?

  While she's alive.

• 1:35:57Speaker 02

  Lucky mother.

• 1:35:58André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:59André Duqum?

  She's a great mom.

• 1:36:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36:00André Duqum?

  Love her.

• 1:36:00Speaker 02

  And it sounds like she deserves it too, you know?

• 1:36:02André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:02Speaker 02

  I mean, we all do. We all do. But especially for those that poured so much into us, like, I just, I hope that I can make like the dying time of my parents just a little bit more cushy.

• 1:36:14André Duqum?

  Yeah, for sure. Hey, Lua, you're awesome.

• 1:36:19Speaker 02

  Nah, so are you, Andre.

• 1:36:20André Duqum?

  Thanks.

• 1:36:20Speaker 02

  It's great to talk to you.

• 1:36:21André Duqum?

  Yeah, it's great to connect. I'm excited for many more conversations in the future.

• 1:36:25Speaker 02

  Same.

• 1:36:26André Duqum?

  And yeah, I'm here. I'm a friend and I'm excited to expose our community for those who aren't already with you and your work. And we'll leave links down in the description where people can stay connected with you and your book and your foundation and all of it.

• 1:36:41Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:36:42André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:42Speaker 02

  Well, I'm dying on your deck, so.

• 1:36:44André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:44Speaker 02

  You're not going to.

• 1:36:45André Duqum?

  Hopefully not anytime soon.

• 1:36:46Speaker 02

  No, well, let's see.

• 1:36:47André Duqum?

  I think I'll probably, I mean, listen, I'll probably have a different place by the time.

• 1:36:51Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:36:52André Duqum?

  But if there's an emergency and you need to come, you got my deck.

• 1:36:55Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:36:56André Duqum?

  Yeah. You got it.

• 1:36:57Speaker 02

  I mean, it's pretty, that's it.

• 1:37:02André Duqum?

  I'm grateful. I'm grateful. Thank you. And thank you for everybody who's been tuning into this episode. Appreciate you guys. And until next time, be well. We did it.

• 1:37:29Speaker 01

  What's the secret to being a great host this season? Keeping things deliciously simple. Like mixing Simply Cranberry into a festive drink as guests arrive. Or serving up a warm mug of Simply Apple on a chilly night. That means less time behind the scenes and more time in the moment with everyone. Crafted with real fruit, Simply juices and fruit drinks make any holiday drink effortless, inviting and completely delicious. Simply. Say yes to simple.

• 1:37:59Speaker 04

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