A Sweet Conversation About Dying with Death Doula Alua Arthur

Death is a word we like to avoid. We dance around the subject or use vague euphemisms to not hurt anybody. But what if being open about our deaths meant we could live happier lives? That’s where Alua Arthur comes in. Alua is one of the most prominent death doulas in the country, which means it’s her job to help people die. She offers support to her clients and their families as they embark on their dying journey, tackling everything from financial planning and insurance policy to emotional support and grief. When I sat down with Alua, I was prepared for a grim conversation. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised by her candor and good humor about dying. She shares with me how she made a career pivot from lawyer to death dula, the most interesting stories she’s heard from people on their death bed, and why thinking about our deaths is the key to living the way we wish to live. This…is A Bit of Optimism. For more on Alua and her work, check out: Going With Grace

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

• 0:00Simon Sinek?

  What is the most interesting secret or story you've ever heard somebody tell you on their deathbed?

• 0:04Speaker 01

  I've heard so many secrets.

• 0:06Simon Sinek?

  Oh, tell one. What's your favorite? Come on, come on.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  About the kids, about mistresses.

• 0:11Simon Sinek?

  The kids.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:12Simon Sinek?

  Other families.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  Other families. There are so many other families, so many other families. And I think that 23andMe and ancestry.com and all those places, we're about to find a whole lot of other families.

• 0:23Simon Sinek?

  That's right. It's all coming out.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Nobody is dying with secrets anymore.

• 0:29Simon Sinek?

  Let's talk about death, dying, being dead. Those words are so jarring, literally just hearing them make many of us squirm. It's such a morbid conversation. Who wants to have it? Or maybe we're thinking about it the wrong way. That's where a Alua Arthur comes in. She's flipping the script. She's a New York Times bestselling author and one of the leading death doulas. Like a doula helps some people prepare for birth, death doulas help other people navigate life's final chapter with clarity and grace. But for those of us who aren't currently in the process of dying and aren't navigating

• 1:08Simon Sinek?

  grief, thinking about death may actually be the best hack to focus on life. This is a bit of optimism. So I'm always fascinated by people's career paths, right? Doctors and lawyers tend to know pretty young that they're going to be a doctor or lawyer because you have to make a decision, you know, pretty young to start going through that amount of schooling, et cetera. And I have to believe that being a death doula wasn't like your childhood dreams, you weren't helping your teddy bears take their final breaths. I'm so curious how someone finds themselves doing this.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  It was a sharp right turn. I was a lawyer. I started out on the path of lawyer. So I did all the schooling and took the bar and started practicing and was not having a good time. It was not working for me. It wasn't a fit. And I also just felt frustrated and still do that. We ask young people to choose their profession so early in their lives, you know, and like commit to something, something with the big financial responsibility of law school up with that as a side. But I was a lawyer and then life came and worked its magic on me and grief worked its magic on me. And here we are, practicing death work instead.

• 2:22Simon Sinek?

  So did you start in grief work and find yourself to death work? Or do you do you talk about them as that one thing?

• 2:28Speaker 01

  To me, they're inexorably linked. You know, they belong together. They can be separate, though, because grief doesn't exist only with death. But, you know, it's like an open marriage where death is married to grief and monogamous with grief. But grief is super polyamorous and goes wherever it wants to.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  So when talking about death, I can't help but talk about grief, but I'm mostly.

• 2:48Simon Sinek?

  But I mean, you're but the way you got in like what came? What was what was the chicken? What was the egg? I guess that doesn't help resolve the problem because that's actually a debate. But, you know, in the actual way and thick way, things worked out like what happened?

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:01Simon Sinek?

  What happened that you're doing what you're doing now?

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:04Simon Sinek?

  I didn't even know death doula was a thing.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  It's super a thing. So I was practicing law at Legal Aid. I got really burnt out, absolutely depressed and like a clinical depression. And I took a leave of absence where I went to Cuba and I met a young fellow fellow traveler on the bus. We started talking a lot about her life and we started talking about death. She was traveling because she wanted to see the top six places in the world before she died because she had uterine cancer. And so that initial spark was like, oh, wait, hold on a minute. People die. And I'd been privileged enough in my life not to have known anybody who died. All my grandparents were dead by the time I was of age. So nobody close to me had died. I hadn't had that experience yet. And I was really fascinated that she was looking at the end of her life or at least contemplating it. So we talked a lot about her relationship to her death.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  I asked her a lot about her life and what meaning it had and what she'd made of it thus far. And it helped me look at my own life through some lens that I hadn't previously considered. And that lens helped me see that I did not like the life, the life that I was living. Like it wasn't, it wasn't what I wanted out of my life, you know? So I on the bus was like, well, shoot, if we can talk about this and it can create purpose for people like it did for me during that very brief exchange that we had about our mortality. What was 14 hours? It wasn't brief, but in that one moment of time, then it held so much, it held so much weight for me. And so I started really leaning into that for myself. When I came back from Cuba, my brother in law became sick, my older sister's. Husband, his name was Peter St. John.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  And I got to journey with him through the last two months of his life really, really closely. And I saw how isolating it is to be and dying to be in the system and not have the support there that we needed. You know, there were plenty of doctors, there were plenty of medical folks, but there wasn't somebody just to hold our hearts and to, you know, remind us that it was hard and to offer resources and a kind word and a listening heart. There was nobody like that. And so I really decided that I wanted to do that for other people. So grief came first in the way that I was grieving deeply. I was grieving my brother-in-law, but I was also grieving a system that I didn't feel cared for the people within it. And so grief pushed me into death work ultimately.

• 5:17Simon Sinek?

  So, so the, the job that you described or the role that you played, I should say, you know, with your brother-in-law. I mean, you were the sister-in-law.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:24Simon Sinek?

  So you were family, sitting by his side as the doctors and everybody came in and through. And I think perhaps the reason that the concept of a death doula is not on the tip of everyone's tongue is because I guess there's an expectation that that's what the family does.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's kind of what the family does, but we're also so deeply emotionally entrenched in what's happening that it's hard to pull back. It's hard to take my feelings out of it and be able to show up for the dying person the way that they need to. The death doula is somebody who sits on the outside of the circle of support. Sometimes it's family, but not everybody has a family around. So it could just be, you know, folks that love the person or their chosen families that are around. And so the doula is kind of the person that sits on the outer rung, kind of holding everybody else up and holding the whole thing together. There are, there's a number of things that death doulas do that family members, I think, don't know how to do or wouldn't even know where to begin. And that's where I found myself with Peter often, like, how do we do this thing? Is this a thing we should be considering?

• 6:22Speaker 01

  I wish that there was so much more we'd known at the time, his death would have looked a little different.

• 6:27Simon Sinek?

  For, for example, so what was missing when, when Peter died that you wished you knew or had been there?

• 6:33Speaker 01

  I wish somebody had said very clearly to us that he was dying. That didn't happen.

• 6:37Simon Sinek?

  What?

• 6:37Speaker 01

  It was more that they couldn't treat him anymore.

• 6:40Simon Sinek?

  That's what say, this is, that, that, what, what, may I ask, what was it that ultimately caused his death?

• 6:45Speaker 01

  Uh, Burkitt's lymphoma.

• 6:47Simon Sinek?

  Okay, so, and nobody said, he's going to die, they said, this is no longer treatable?

• 6:52Speaker 01

  They said, we can't treat him anymore.

• 6:52Simon Sinek?

  They spoke in euphemisms, so to avoid the D word?

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Everybody danced around it. The palliative care team came in, they would like nod and smile slowly when it was clear that something was happening, when he was not responding anymore. Uh, A plus B equals C, you know, he has an incurable illness, they cannot treat him anymore, he's going to die, but I did that. You know, I did that in my own brain, in my own body, and it was really, really difficult to take in, because it was also the unimaginable. And I think anybody who's been in this situation understands, when it's somebody close to you, and they're getting close to the end, it's like, this can't be it, like, this cannot possibly be it.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  And so aside from just somebody saying very clearly, hey, it looks like he's dying, they could have helped us find ways to, uh, engage my four-year-old niece at the time into the, into his death. You know, we didn't have support for that properly. Nobody explained what the death rally was, which is something that I noticed in Peter, and I've seen many times before, and many times since in my work. Nobody explained how we could find certain hospital gowns that closed in the front, because he had all these sores on his back, or getting him up to change the gowns was difficult. Getting his will in order, trying to figure out what he wanted to do with his cremains, like, there were so many items that I wish that we'd known beforehand, that we just didn't have.

• 8:08Simon Sinek?

  What's a death rally?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  A death rally is often a surge of energy nearing the end of life, that often looks like the miracle that people have been waiting for, but in fact, it's a sign that life will soon reach its end. I think it may be the body shedding off the last little bit of life force energy, but the person often starts behaving like they did before, and maybe they're making jokes, or asking for food, or asking to see certain people. Um, they look a little bit more robust than they have, and typically happens right before the person begins to actively die.

• 8:42Simon Sinek?

  Do the doctors and the palliative care specialists, are they avoiding the D word because there's some weird stigma? Is the word death or die, is it too aggressive? Because we do, we do, at least in the West, you know, we speak, we speak around it, right? Like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry for your, for your father's passing, you know? What happened to your, your, you know, your brother-in-law? He, he's no longer with us. We don't like the, the D word. We don't say, oh, yeah, he died a bunch of years ago. Or, oh, yeah, yeah, he's dead. You know, it's, it is a very sudden, even the D, the, it's a hard consonant, right?

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:17Simon Sinek?

  It's an aggressive word.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 9:20Simon Sinek?

  So I, you know, why is it that even medical professionals are so afraid of using that word? Is it because they've triggered families before and they've just learned over time not to use the word?

• 9:29Speaker 01

  I think there's a lot of different reasons for it. That may be part of it.

• 9:32Simon Sinek?

  Because you don't call yourself a, like, end-of-life doula.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  No, I don't.

• 9:35Simon Sinek?

  It's a death doula.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't. There are many that call themselves end-of-life doulas or end-of-life specialists or practitioners.

• 9:41Simon Sinek?

  Right, right, right.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  But, you know, I'm kind of a straight shooter. Like, what you see is what you get, and people die. It is a big word, one syllable, that lands like an anvil. But it really, it holds a lot of truths that many of us seek to avoid. And I think doctors and medical professionals are also human. You know, I think that on some level, there isn't enough training in hospitals or training in medical school about dealing with people nearing the end of life. I think that oftentimes, folks want to have saved the person, they want the medicine to work, and maybe it feels like a failure of some sort. I think as long as we think of death as the opposite of health, or we think of death as a failure in some way, the folks that are meant to cure folks will always have a hard time with it. But then also societally, we shy away from it, like you were saying.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  We speak in euphemism about it. Passed away, somebody lost somebody. One of the times recently, somebody said that to me, not in the context of work, so I did not have my death doula hat on, but she said she'd lost someone, and I thought, like, you couldn't find her. I didn't realize she meant she died, you know? It's tricky. I wish that we would be a lot more straight about it.

• 10:49Simon Sinek?

  I wonder if we're all overly sensitive because we don't want to offend the people we're talking to, or is that we're offended by the word?

• 10:56Speaker 01

  I think we're offended by the word.

• 10:58Simon Sinek?

  Are we tiptoeing around a sensitive subject and being overly cautious? It's like a weird end-of-life political correctness.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:04Simon Sinek?

  We're all tiptoeing around for fear of offending somebody, so we go the most euphemistic way, when in reality, if you just say what it is, everybody's actually okay with it.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  And much better with it, in fact, if you just say what it is. Now, I've noticed that sometimes it takes family members or the people close to the person that died a while to come around to it, because it is so final, it sounds so final. And yet, we, I think, do everybody a favor when we just call it plainly for what it is. You know, when we speak in euphemisms, we also run the risk of continuing to pass on our death avoidance and our death phobia in culture, particularly when talking to children. There was a guy I talked to not that long ago, who told me that when his grandmother died, they told him that grandma had gone to sleep. He was terrified to sleep for years. He was seven when she died, terrified to go to sleep, because they thought he wouldn't come back either, you know?

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Thereby reinforcing the idea that it's something that we don't talk about, something that we don't address, something that we put over there. We don't say, "Somebody died." We say, "They went to heaven," or "They went away for a long time." "You won't be seeing her anymore." We cause more confusion and we reiterate death phobia in our culture.

• 12:13Simon Sinek?

  It's so interesting, especially when it comes to children, right? You're so right, because we don't upset the child, and yet, you can watch cartoons from the 50s, like Bambi.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  It's wild.

• 12:25Simon Sinek?

  And there's death all over these cartoons.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Everywhere.

• 12:29Simon Sinek?

  And like, these are for little children, and they're... And none of them, you know, I don't think anybody would say that a Walt Disney film caused some sort of lifelong trauma.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, but like, I cried big, grown-up tears at Moana, very recently, when the grandmother died. Spoiler alert. But we're, we're, children are watching these films and they have their own relationship with death and grief and loss. Either through the films or in their own lives, or their grandparents die, or their parents die, or their siblings, like, they, they know the experience. And yet, adults, we try to shield them from it, I'm using air quotes, but they know it. And when we don't address it, it creates a strange cognitive dissonance. It also sends for the message that it's not okay. Whereas it's just a part of the cycle of life, you know, we all are part of the cycle, we all will meet our end at some point.

• 13:16Simon Sinek?

  How, how, are you afraid of death?

• 13:18Speaker 01

  I wouldn't say afraid, I'm curious about it, I'm very curious about it, there are things that-

• 13:22Simon Sinek?

  Like if you're on a plane and there's really bad turbulence, you know, do you have fear of death, like fear of dying, you know? Or are you totally relaxed and are you like, well, this is my time, this is my time?

• 13:33Speaker 01

  I feel more like if it's my time, it's my time, but I've also spent a lot of time thinking about my death and preparing for my mortality, you know? But there are things that still make me a little uncomfortable about it. I am so deeply in love right now and it would, I would really, really, really like to see elderhood with this man. And I think about him dying and it makes me want to cry. Uh, so sometimes I fear death, well, it's in somebody else, you know? I'm maybe not afraid of my own mortality that way. I would love to see elderhood with him. But also, I don't want him to die either, that's a fear of death, that's showing its head.

• 14:07Simon Sinek?

  Who hires you? Does the family hire you, or does the person dying hire you? Does the hospital hire you?

• 14:12Speaker 01

  It depends. Never a hospital, or at least not yet. But often the family members or the circle of support or the person themselves. Because sometimes we're not there for the person that's dying, sometimes we're there for the circle of support, like they need an additional hand. Or they need some information or some comprehensive end of life planning. I also want to be clear that death doulas work with anybody who has some recognition of their mortality. Which means that when somebody is still healthy, we can help them complete comprehensive end of life plans. So we can help folks think through their end of life plans, think through their fears of death, think through their death avoidance when they're still healthy and they're not yet looking at the end of their lives.

• 14:52Simon Sinek?

  It's such a good point, right? Cause I think we all know that we're supposed to, whether we do or not. You gotta have your will, you gotta have your living will, you know, you have to make your estate in order, make sure somebody knows where all the paperwork is, where the bank account numbers are. Insurance policies.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  You're good!

• 15:06Simon Sinek?

  Like it's, I mean, no, I know the stuff. As you get older and you sort of reach a middle age, you're like, ah. I gotta do this, you know? And somebody will say to you like, I just finished my living will. Did you, Simon, did you do yours? I'm like, ah, I gotta do it, damn it, you know? And like, you know, because we don't think of about our mortality when we're younger, of course. It's basically mostly financial. It is helping our loved ones be prepared or be, you know, there's insurance policies, for example, to make sure that they're taken care of, et cetera. But none of us think about the emotional care. We think of the financial care. Like, you know, people have insurance policies so that their spouses will be taken care of. After my dying, my, my kids, you pay the mortgage.

• 15:47Simon Sinek?

  But none of us think about, they're gonna go through frickin' hell, emotional awfulness, when this happens, I'm gonna also have a plan for them, maybe for myself, but at least for them. I, it's, we, it's so interesting that death is a financial thought.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:04Simon Sinek?

  And we've completely neglect the emotional components to help our family grieve our loss.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's an absolute mirror about the capitalistic society that we live in. It shows us where our values lie, not in-

• 16:18Simon Sinek?

  What society does it well?

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Um, many of them do. I think a lot of societies don't really focus on the financials, but they focus on the community event of it. You know, dying is a, it's a social event. It's not a medical one, it's not a financial one. It does trigger a lot of financial responsibilities and conversations. But it's a social event, it's a community event. And there are a lot of places that treat it as such. Which is part of the reason why a death Doula in today's day and age, in this society, a Western society, seems interesting or strange. But it's a role that has been inhabited since time immemorial, because since humans have been alive, humans have been dying. And other humans have been supporting them through it.

• 16:56Simon Sinek?

  Literally.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, literally. And other humans have been there for them. It just seems strange now, maybe, because we live in these individual pods where, you know, the nuclear family is the center, and I am the center of the universe, and my life matters, and I, I, I, I, I, so it's that, I forget about all those around me whose lives will continue after I die, who I would like to take care of in my dying as well, who are gonna be taking care of me.

• 17:21Simon Sinek?

  One of the things that I find also fascinating about the concept of death, and I studied anthropology in college, and a universal is ceremonial burial. That every culture in the entire world, everywhere, big or small, there's ceremonial burial. And when anthropologists go back and look at sort of early bones of early Homo sapiens, they're amazed that they find ceremonial burial. It's a thing. And I wonder if that, you called dying a community event, that the concept of the ceremonial burial is sort of the community death doula-ing, if you will. And to your point, which is the decline in ceremonial anything. We ship ourselves off to the cities and leave our families far behind.

• 18:03Simon Sinek?

  That I wonder if the need for a death doula is a very modern construction because we are so community-less in this modern day and age.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  I absolutely agree with you. That that role used to be inhabited by a member of the community. There was somebody that the people knew, that when the dying is happening, you call them over and they come and support. There are still some cultures and some religions that hold on to those. There's a shepherds' kaddishah within Judaism. They're the folks that you call when the dying has occurred and they prepare the body. And there's ritual written into the religion about how to grieve afterward. But it's written into it, so everybody knows that's what you do. But in the absence of culture that dictates that, then what do we do? What we do is that we ship it off to hospitals. People are dying in very sterile environments, not in the way that they want, not in the way that their whole humanity is being cared for. And then we pass on their money.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  And we give them three days off for bereavement leave for their grief. And we don't give them any time to be with this massive event that is taking place.

• 19:04Simon Sinek?

  I know, I really want to talk about living in just a second, but I'm really just so fascinated by this, which is, if you think about it, when a couple gets pregnant, right? When someone gets pregnant, there is thought put to how I want to have my baby.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:16Simon Sinek?

  Do you want to do natural childbirth? Do you want an epidural? Do you want to be in a tub of water? Like, where do you want to be? Do you want to be in a home? Do you want to be at your hospital? Like, do you want a C-section? Like, what are the medical considerations? Like, there's lots of thought in how to bring a child into this world. And so little thought about how I would like to leave this world. I've never thought about it. I've never thought about it.

• 19:36Speaker 01

  Here we are. Now's the time to think about it.

• 19:38Simon Sinek?

  Now's the time to think about it. Okay, let's talk about living. How did you change how you live your life as a result of this experience? And take me on the journey, which is, what changes did you make right after that bus ride in Cuba? So, in the very short term, before you decided to go do the work, how did you start living your life differently?

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Well, I also took that invitation to start living like I was dying, essentially. I was still, I was under a leave of absence at work. But when I came back, I extended that leave of absence a little bit longer because I thought that I need a little bit more time to decide what direction I want to take my life in. And I'm glad I did. I applied immediately for a graduate degree program in death and spirituality because I thought maybe I wanted to be a therapist and sit and talk to people that were dying. So I started making the changes. I downsized my apartment because I knew I wouldn't be able to afford it anymore, given that I wasn't collecting my salary at the rate that I was. I made changes in my own life. But since then, so much has changed, you know? Not only did I not go back to the practice of law in any capacity, and I built a business and a career around supporting people when they're dying.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  I also, I think I speak a little bit more clearly about how I feel. I brush up against my vulnerability a lot more often. The idea of individualism seems to be fading in me, that I'm more comfortable being needed and needing people in my life because I see how communal our lives are and can be. And I want that for myself. But, you know, this idea of individualism has us say that we can do everything on our own. I also, I eat more delicious foods. I'm not as concerned with my weight, if we're going to be silly about it. Like, I eat whatever I want because this life is short. And I want to use my taste buds as long as I've got them. And I love french fries and cake, so I'm trying to get them all I can.

• 21:25Simon Sinek?

  Yes, and? But if you eat too much, too many french fries and too much cake, that day comes a little sooner.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:32Simon Sinek?

  Theoretically.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Theoretically. Because I don't know, tomorrow could be it. And if it is, I really hope I had a french fry. And also... Also, as I'm going about eating my cake and my french fries, at some point, I also want some kale and spinach, alright? Like, I don't just want that. When I eat a little bit of it, I'm satisfied. Then I want to eat something else. I want to nourish my body.

• 21:51Simon Sinek?

  Because you don't want to be, you don't have diabetes along the way either. That's not funny either.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  And I also really like squats. Like, I like squatting. I like muscles. I like exercise. And so I do that plenty as well.

• 22:00Simon Sinek?

  What do you think about the obsession right now of longevity? I live in California, so everybody's in some sort of, you know, supplement, something or other.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Everything.

• 22:07Simon Sinek?

  And you ask them the reason, why are you doing this? And they, longevity is the answer they give you. I'm curious, your, your thoughts. Is it fear of death? Is it, is it a good thing?

• 22:16Speaker 01

  I think it's death denial at its core. I think we live in a highly death avoidant, death phobic culture. And that tells you that you take pop enough supplements, and you drink enough baby's blood, you'll live till 117. But why do you want to live till 117 anyway? You know, what is it that we're trying to avoid by wanting to live for forever? And what are you doing with that extra time that you wouldn't do now? With the finite time that you have?

• 22:40Simon Sinek?

  That's such a great point, which is I'm taking all these vitamins, and doing all these things, and spending hours a day to prolong longevity. So that...

• 22:50Speaker 01

  For what?

• 22:50Simon Sinek?

  It's, you know, you know, it's the equivalent of, it's the same mentality of, I'm gonna make a lot of money so that I can give to charity later. It's like, why not just give to charity now? And give to charity later also?

• 23:02Speaker 01

  With what you got. Yeah, start with what you've got. And none of us know how much time we have. You know what I mean? Like, I could live to 104 anyway. But I could also, tomorrow could be it. And if that's the case, then why not live my life right now with the fullness that I can while I'm still here?

• 23:18Simon Sinek?

  What's the youngest person you've, you've helped die?

• 23:23Speaker 01

  Well, I supported a family with their newborn died.

• 23:26Simon Sinek?

  Okay.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  She took like three breaths.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Are we about ninety-five?

• 23:33Simon Sinek?

  Ninety-five. So, um, what have you learned from the people who and a newborn doesn't help me with my argument here, but like, somebody who's in their forties or fifties, right? So who we would say they've died young, right?

• 23:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:48Simon Sinek?

  Relative to the, to the national averages. Versus somebody who lives way beyond the national averages, eighties, nineties, right? Have you noticed any patterns in how the older ones have lived their lives? What is their attitude to life? How have they lived their life that, that you can perceive that they have lived longer than everybody else?

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Can I tell you a story?

• 24:11Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  A client of mine, one of my absolute favorites, although they're all my favorites, so don't tell anybody I said this. One of my favorite clients, Ms. Bobby, she was about ninety-five when she died. And in the time that I sat with her, she told me all these stories of her life, you know, about how she was the first black woman to integrate multiple neighborhoods in Los Angeles. She was a traveling nurse that traveled abroad and saw the French rolls in France. And so she swears she was the one to bring it to America. She chased off lovers with guns, a cheating husband with a gun. She threw newspapers at nosy neighbors. She did a big life while she was here, okay? Near the end of her life, I asked her if, looking back on any of it, made any sense or anything like that.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  And she responded to me in a super husky gravelly voice, because she's also smoked like packs a day and drank a bunch of whiskey while she was living. I think it was cognac, actually. She drank a lot of cognac. And she said, first of all, none of it made any sense, but it was one hell of a ride. To me, the, the indication of the, like, how people approach their dying is based on how they view their lives themselves. You know, if I'm spending my whole life resisting my death, it's not gonna be one hell of a ride. But if I can just sink into it for what it is, utter miracle it is, the joy, the benefit of being able to eat food and travel places and meet people and, and like, be here for the times that I'm here, then I think they reach the end feeling like, okay, that was

• 25:40Speaker 01

  All right. And I noticed that same attitude in the younger folks. There was a woman I supported who was about twenty-six, twenty-seven, who also was like so, so joyful. She did not want to die young, air quotes. She didn't want to die young. But there she was, and she embraced it with, um, with a wisdom that a lot of older people didn't have, that I certainly didn't have, even at the time that I got to support her. She had, she had enjoyed her life for the time that she was present in it. And I think that's what we can all take away from it, is to be here.

• 26:15Simon Sinek?

  It's, it like, it never, it never made sense to me why, you know, people would save their money to go on, you know, like you see the retirees who go on these incredible world tours that they've been saving up for, for thirty, forty, fifty years.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:28Simon Sinek?

  And I always think, why not just take a small trip every year? You know, as opposed to the grand tour near the end. Because to your point, I think a lot of what we're talking about is gratitude. I'll tell you one thing that I find absolutely poetic and beautiful. When I asked you what you changed about your life, you know, after, after that bus ride in Cuba, I expected you to say, well, you know, now I take more vacations. Like, I, I expected you to say those kinds of things, but you said something more beautiful, which is you said, I've become very comfortable being needed and being needy. Like, I've been very comfortable needing the help of others, and I've been very comfortable feeling needed. And I think that is absolutely beautiful, which is to recognize that, like, we're not alone in this.

• 27:12Simon Sinek?

  And to be open to being needed and needing others is something you appreciate more since you've learned about death.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  Significantly, significantly more. I see how as we approach our dying, those that are resistant to the support of others, those that are so afraid to be vulnerable, that are afraid to have a need, are the ones that tend to struggle because they're still trying to do it all by themselves. Uh, there's a client that I got to be with who, a big burly guy, who, uh, in his dying, in his illness, got so thin and frail. And he was a classic, you know, pulled himself up by his bootstraps and the American success story. Came from nothing, he made everything. And then his dying struggled so much with the fact that he could no longer stand on his own or pull his pants up by himself.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  He was angry, he was frustrated, he, it was breaking him. He couldn't surrender into being vulnerable. And that's not something that I want for myself. I also see how all of us become vulnerable. You know, dying is probably one of the most vulnerable acts we'll ever undertake. It's certainly one of the most intimate. Everything, my whole life is gonna be on display for other people. Somebody's gonna go through my sock drawer and that one drawer by the side of the bed that I do not want my mom to see before anybody else does, you know what I mean? That one drawer, like, every, everything's gonna be on display. My body's gonna be cold and naked on a slab at some point. Um, it's vulnerable. It's very vulnerable. If I'm ill, even more vulnerable. Why not practice it a bit now?

• 28:48Simon Sinek?

  Do you cry?

• 28:49Speaker 01

  All the time.

• 28:50Simon Sinek?

  When your clients die?

• 28:51Speaker 01

  All the time. All the time, I go close to them.

• 28:55Simon Sinek?

  Who helps you manage that grief?

• 28:57Speaker 01

  My partner, my friends, the other death doulas in my life, the grief therapists in my life, everybody, the cashier at CVS, if they ask me how I'm doing that day.

• 29:05Simon Sinek?

  They ask the wrong question.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  And they catch me at the wrong time, or the right time.

• 29:09Simon Sinek?

  You've been there for a lot of final words. What, some of the best final words that you've heard that have left you like, yes, thank you?

• 29:17Speaker 01

  I wish there were, but it's more like, yes, or no, or mhm. Like, there's not that much energy to come up with something poetic, you know? No, I haven't heard anything that's been like, wow. I think that's the stuff of the movies.

• 29:32Simon Sinek?

  My grandmother died when she was about ninety-five or ninety-six. She, she had a weird relationship with death. And, you know, I remember I'd visit her in London, she was already in a home because her, her body had not worked like it used to. Her mind was fine, right until the end. And it was caused her endless frustration because she was an adventurous woman and she couldn't really do the stuff she wanted to do. So she was in a home and I would like visit her in London. And I'd leave, I'd say, well, I'll see you, you know, next year when I'm back in London. And she'd scream out, maybe not, you know? Like she's just this weird relationship with death, very comfortable with it. When she died, some of the nurses from the, from the home came, which is very unusual because they're around death all the time. They don't go to funerals, you know? It's part of the job. But a few of them came to her funeral, which I found really touching.

• 30:16Simon Sinek?

  And the one who was with her when she died, she, we were standing next to the grave with her. And I said, I have to ask you, did she have any last words? And she said, yeah. She, we, she was sitting in bed and she said to me, I think I'll have another pillow. And she left to get another pillow and she'd come back and she died. And, you know, I kind of love that. You know, I kind of love that.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 30:46Simon Sinek?

  I think I'll have another pillow.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:48Simon Sinek?

  And I think she was telling her to leave, I think she knew she, that it, and I think she wanted to be alone.

• 30:56Simon Sinek?

  But those are like the best, the best final words I've ever heard.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  That happens often where people want to be alone. I'm so, I'm so touched that that nurse not only remembered, but shared that with you. It is beautiful. And I also just love the idea that she was like, oh, let me get a little bit more comfortable. Psych, I'm out, you know?

• 31:13Simon Sinek?

  I, I think she, being English and polite, didn't want to say, could you, could you get out for a moment, please? I'd like to die.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  It happens a lot, you know? And I often talk to folks that are experiencing some grief or sadness because they stepped out of the room. Because either the person dying needed something or they stepped out to get a phone call or to go to the bathroom or so. While they were gone, that person died.

• 31:38Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, they, they waited for their moment, right?

• 31:40Speaker 01

  They waited for the moment, they wait for the moment, they wait for the moment.

• 31:44Simon Sinek?

  What is the most interesting secret or story you've ever heard somebody tell you on their deathbed?

• 31:49Speaker 01

  I've heard so many secrets.

• 31:51Simon Sinek?

  Oh, tell one.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  There are all types of secrets, family secrets about mistresses and babies and kids and people who died under mysterious circumstances.

• 32:02Simon Sinek?

  Ooh.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  Juicy stuff.

• 32:04Simon Sinek?

  Were they confessions or were they more like, you want to know something?

• 32:07Speaker 01

  Both. There's a lot of you want to know something because I'm not going to die with this secret, or this is so juicy.

• 32:15Simon Sinek?

  What's your favorite? Come on, come on.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  About the kids, about mistresses.

• 32:19Simon Sinek?

  The kids. Other families.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Other families. There's so many other families, so many other families. And I think the 23andMe and ancestry.com and all those places, we're about to find out a whole lot of families.

• 32:31Simon Sinek?

  That's right. It's all coming out.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, they don't have to be that confession anymore.

• 32:35Simon Sinek?

  It's like, that drawer next to your underwear drawer, that's coming out, and the 23andMe that you have two other families.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Nobody's dying with secrets anymore.

• 32:44Simon Sinek?

  Look, everything we're talking about, obviously, is partially about planning for death, but it really is about a celebration of life. And you've talked about the 26-year-old who just lived in gratitude, you know, and the 96-year-old, 95-year-old, who lived in gratitude for the wild ride, and whatever time you have, make it something that you'll be grateful for when your time is up, whether it's a short time or a long time, right? But we speak in these faux philosophical, like, every day's a blessing, and, you know, count your luck, and, you know, like, we say nonsense like this all the time. The only time we really, really, really appreciate that life is short, and the only time we really, really appreciate that how stupid most of our problems are, is when we or someone

• 33:25Simon Sinek?

  close to us suffers some sort of real awful tragedy, whether it is a cancer diagnosis or a natural disaster. And then we sort of all sit around and take account, you know, somebody goes, "Did you hear, you know, Stanley has terminal cancer?" You know, and you're like, "Oh, it really makes you want to appreciate every day." We say things like that, and by the way, we mean it. You know? Every lesson I've learned about the value of life, and the shortness of life, blah, blah, blah, and the fragility of life, I've always, for about a day, maybe a week at most, lived a better life, and then I forget. And I go back to the, go back to normal.

• 34:04Simon Sinek?

  A, is that okay? And if not, how do we stay aware? How do we, you know, without having to suffer tragedy regularly to remind us? Or be surrounded by tragedy around us to remind us? How do we find joie de vivre? How do we live a life of gratitude and joy and make joyful decisions more often? On just a regular, normal day?

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Well, I think that's part of the beauty is in the question. Is that these regular, normal days are where the magic lies. You know, the magic is absolutely in the mundane. It's not just in the tragedy and it's also not just in those perfect days where the concert tickets for your favorite artists are half off and you get like the last ones. Or you're at the concert. That's the ma- there is magic in both those things, but it's in the every single day where I can be reminded, where I can remember what a wild miracle it is that I get to touch and look at you through these eyes, through a computer no less, and speak. I am sending air into my da- into my lungs, sending up, pushing my diaphragm out through

• 35:13Speaker 01

  these vocal cords and make noises, random noises, that somehow you understand and are alchemizing in your own brain and making some sense of and causing a reaction in you and then thinking of the same thing, then you'll do the same thing and send it right back. That is a miracle. And that's happening trillions of times a day. And yet we get so caught up in the little, the little annoyances of life, you know? Taxes, a big annoyance, or like, traffic, or not having the particular type of peanut butter I want at the grocery store, forgetting that peanut butter itself is a miracle. Like, being alive is an absolute utter gift. It's an utter gift. When I can remember that, when I can remember that, it allows me to be more like, present. I was talking a bit about gratitude when I was talking about summer, that client I was

• 35:57Speaker 01

  telling you about, the young one, but also a lot more about presence. Like, she had a way of just zoning out and noticing raindrops, noticing the pattern as the raindrops came down the window. That may have been because she was approaching her end and she was very present with her mortality and could think, wow, I won't be seeing this much longer. That gift is available to all of us, every single moment. I don't know when my end will be. At all. At all.

• 36:25Simon Sinek?

  I mean, like, you're already making me feel bad, right? Because, and I don't mean this in a bad way, but like, I was snippy this morning. I was annoyed by something at lunchtime, you know? And it's so, all of it was stupid.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:41Simon Sinek?

  And the reality is, I don't care. Like, if I really, if you really push me, I don't really care. And so, what I'm grappling with in my mind is like, I know everything we've been talking about. Like, and I think everybody knows everything we've been talking about, you know? Like, just to look around and be grateful for, as you said, because I think we do sort of gratitude practice. I think most of us who've tried a gratitude practice, you run out of things real quick. Like, you have an amazing vacation, so grateful for that vacation and that dinner. And by like, the third or fourth or fifth day, or second or third week of this, you're like, I'm grateful for my family again, like I was yesterday. I'm grateful for, I guess, I'm safe at home again.

• 37:25Simon Sinek?

  I said that, I think I said that yesterday. But your point is, is you could say the same thing every single day, and that's good.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And get minute with it. You know, you're safe at home, what about the roof? It doesn't have any leaks, you know? What about the fridge? And the food that's in it? What about the ability to chew? What about teeth? What about saliva? What about digestive enzymes? Like, we can get really, really minute with it. And when I'm thinking about the minute, is where the magic is. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of suffering also in the world. There's so much suffering. And yet, when I can zoom out and think about what this life is for me at this moment, it allows me to snap back into it. I think the most effective practice of gratitude for this life itself is a reminder that I'm going to die.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  When I can remind myself of that, it pulls me right back from the annoyances and the minor grievances and the frustrations. And at the same time, it allows me to be with them in a way that allows them to be so, because I'm also human. And to be human is also to be like, a little annoyed sometimes. It makes me like, not be, feel so like, tight about the emails that I send, you know what I mean? So I didn't get all the wording right, no, I'm gonna die. But also, you're gonna die, you know? And so when I'm thinking about that, I don't just hit the email on like the really nasty thing. I don't hit send really easily. When I'm standing and I'm being a jerk in line someplace and somebody else is having a bad day, I think about their death and it allows me to be a lot more compassionate toward them.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  One day, whatever it is that's troubling them is gonna be a thing of the past. All of their history, all their doubt, all their fear, all their regret, that's gonna die too. It allows me to like soften toward them. It allows me to like hold my fellow human for being a human, to have like hard days, to be angry about things, to one day be really vulnerable, to be laying there like a baby bird. Like it allows me to soften.

• 39:19Simon Sinek?

  Oh, I love that, which is some, I'm standing in line at, you know, the coffee shop and the person in front of me is having a conniption because they gave them oat milk instead of, you know, almond milk. To, instead of being like chill out, or it's just a small step, to say, you're gonna die and this won't matter.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  At all.

• 39:38Simon Sinek?

  And it does, it really sort of like gives you a little compassion for somebody else's troubles.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  A lot of compassion. I don't think that any society that reveres death, any individual that reveres death, can also hold any of the systems that keep us disconnected from each other. It's impossible. Because when I'm revering death, I'm honoring the individual for their entire life, for the totality of it. Like I can't do that and also walk down the street across all those people that are laying there and not think twice about it, you know? Or hold up transphobia, like it's impossible, you can't.

• 40:10Simon Sinek?

  For people who say grace before a meal, I think that everyone should learn to say grace, even if you're not religious or that's not in your, in, in, that is not associated with the, the religion that you practice. Because I think sometimes when I've sat around a table with friends who say grace, sometimes I sort of like giggle to myself, like it's a, I, I always think of it, it has to be this big religious thing and some of it's funny and silly, you know? And I think it's good. I think, I think the more funny and silly it can be, the more genuine it is. It's a little gratitude practice. You know, thanks for this meal. Thanks for having the friends and family around the table. Thanks for the nice weather.

• 40:51Simon Sinek?

  I think, I think that's a way to do it, which is to build it into the, to build it into the, the routine of life. You know? Say thank you when you're brushing your teeth for your teeth every single morning.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  That'd be great. Thank you for the teeth.

• 41:03Simon Sinek?

  And when you lose your teeth, say thank you for your gums.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. Thank you for having had teeth.

• 41:08Simon Sinek?

  Thank you for having had teeth.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Thank you for having to hold the tooth.

• 41:11Simon Sinek?

  Boy, I'm grateful I had to chew.

• 41:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Lucky me. Lucky me. Lucky me. I'm really partial to the concept of grace overall. I think, I think of grace as like the basket that gets to hold all of us in our lives and also in our death. I name my company Going With Grace for that reason. That if we can like go along in our lives, but also into our deaths with grace. That's, feels like a high bar, but it's also so available immediately for all of us at any turn.

• 41:42Simon Sinek?

  And I swear that wasn't a plant. I actually didn't know the name of your company.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  You did it.

• 41:47Simon Sinek?

  That was spontaneous. But yes, it is grace. To have grace, to go with grace. And, and how do you, when you named the company To Go With Grace, how did you define grace? Why grace?

• 41:59Speaker 01

  Well, I actually.

• 42:00Simon Sinek?

  Was it your anti-grace?

• 42:01Speaker 01

  I don't know, no, right? People often think my name is grace. I think that's just so funny. Uh, cause I'm still not graceful, but.

• 42:06Simon Sinek?

  That's, but that's funny to go with grace. It's like, ah, I'm grace and I'll go with you.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  And I'll come along with you. That's right. Um, I, I don't know that I ever had a solid definition of what grace could be. I grew up in evangelical. I no longer practice that particular faith tradition. But the concept of grace was through all of my upbringing, my religious upbringing. And I started to think of grace as allowing things to be as they are. You know, to, to be with the gratitude for what is. Uh, for that thing that holds us through everything that we journey through. And so going with grace, like going into life, but also into death with grace. That would be really pretty cool if we could. And we can.

• 42:46Simon Sinek?

  By the way, even though I, we're both anti euphemisms and we're both pro, just like, just say what it is. Cause everybody knows, everybody knows they died, just say they died. Right? But let's be honest, the best euphemism I've heard is going with grace.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  I win? Yeah.

• 43:02Simon Sinek?

  I mean, it's a really good euphemism.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  It's really good. We'll take it. We'll take it.

• 43:07Simon Sinek?

  It's actually a very cheery conversation.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Surprise, surprise.

• 43:10Simon Sinek?

  Beautiful conclusions here. Grace.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  Grace.

• 43:13Simon Sinek?

  Presence. Gratitude. My favorite, which is getting comfortable with feeling needed and needing others. All lessons that intellectually we all already know. And I think to be reminded of of the fragility and temporariness of it all is one mechanism. And I have to believe you know this. But your life seems to help us feel inspired on two levels. Tactically, the people you're holding their hand and working with them, you know, as they're coming to the end and their families. And then talking about it. Talking about it with me and writing about it and TED Talks and things like that that you've that you've offered to the world. You know, helps us all greatly benefit from

• 43:58Simon Sinek?

  the gifts that your dying clients have given you to pass on to us.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  I'm the luckiest person in the world. I feel so grateful to be constantly in relationship with my mortality in such a way that it has allowed me to create a life that feels really good. That ultimately I can feel comfortable leaving at some point. Where I can live in service, where I can wear all the wild colors I want to wear because I don't care because I'm going to die. Where I can just be myself while I'm living. That, that to me is the greatest gift that I think this work has been able to give me and I just hope to pass a little bit of it on.

• 44:33Simon Sinek?

  Well, thanks for letting me be a part of that journey with you.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  Thank you, Simon.

• 44:38Simon Sinek?

  Ah, such a delight.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  Yay. So one so bad, right? Just death talk. That's all.

• 44:43Simon Sinek?

  It's just death talk. That's all. I mean, that's what it is.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:48Simon Sinek?

  If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts. And if you'd like even more optimism, check out my website, simoncinek.com for classes, videos and more. Until then, take care of yourself. Take care of each other.

• 45:07Simon Sinek?

  A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company. It's produced and edited by Lindsay Garbenius, David Ja and Devin Johnson. Our executive producers are Henrietta Conrad and Greg Ruderschann.