Don’t Learn This Too Late: Make An Authentic Life Now, By Getting Real About The End

Order your copy of The Let Them Theory 👉 https://melrob.co/let-them-theory 👈 The #1 Best Selling Book of 2025 🔥 Discover how much power you truly have. It all begins with two simple words. Let Them. — By the time you finish listening, your perspective on death—and life—will be forever changed. Today, Mel sits down with death doula and best-selling author Alua Arthur for a transformative conversation about how embracing the shortness of life can unlock a profound sense of joy and purpose in your life right now. Alua shares three powerful questions you should ask yourself today and reveals an inspiring exercise to perform on your birthday to help you live with more intention and gratitude. With wisdom, warmth, and humor, Alua shows how getting real about death can unlock the authentic, fulfilling life you’re meant to live. Prepare for a mindset shift that will change how you look at life, death, and everything in between. For more resources related to today’s episode, click here for the podcast episode page: https://www.melrobbins.com/podcasts/episode-229 Follow The Mel Robbins Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themelrobbinspodcast I’m just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is NOT intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I’ll see you in the next episode. In this episode: 0:00 Introduction 3:03 Why confronting your own death can help you build a better life 11:53 Alua helps people die for a living, here’s what that means 14:21 The ONE exercise you should start doing on your birthday 18:21 Why does talking about death actually bring more life to you? 24:03 The step-by-step guide for how to show up for sick or dying loved ones 26:53 Why Alua says people should be clapping at your funeral 28:47 So what even happens after you die? 35:23 How to have the hard conversations with your aging parents about death 42:05 Exploring one of the hardest questions: what happens to you after you die? 45:31 Your funeral is just another wedding, here’s what Alua means 47:51 Alua’s shares the most common regrets of the dying 48:42 The 3 questions you need to consider when thinking about death 51:42 The handbook for mourning a complicated relationship 54:18 Alua gives you her personal guide to processing grief 58:32 How to turn grief into a powerful tool to improve your life 1:03:30 What you should know about leaving a legacy behind 1:05:30 What does Alua think her last words will be? — Follow Mel: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melrobbins/ TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@melrobbins Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melrobbins LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melrobbins Website: http://melrobbins.com​ — Sign up for Mel’s newsletter: https://melrob.co/sign-up-newsletter A note from Mel to you, twice a week, sharing simple, practical ways to build the life you want. — Subscribe to Mel’s channel here: https://www.youtube.com/melrobbins​?sub_confirmation=1 — Listen to The Mel Robbins Podcast 🎧 New episodes drop every Monday & Thursday! https://melrob.co/spotify https://melrob.co/applepodcasts https://melrob.co/amazonmusic — Looking for Mel’s books on Amazon? Find them here: The Let Them Theory: https://amzn.to/3IQ21Oe The Let Them Theory Audiobook: https://amzn.to/413SObp The High 5 Habit: https://amzn.to/3fMvfPQ The 5 Second Rule: https://amzn.to/4l54fah

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

• 0:00Mel Robbins?

  Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

• 0:08Mel Robbins?

  Have you ever thought about how you want to die? Yeah, me either. Mostly, I think about how I don't want to die. What if I told you that thinking about your death could be the key to living your most vibrant, fulfilling life right now? Today, you and I are sitting down with someone who will transform the way you see not just death, but life itself. Our guest is bestselling author and death doula, Eloua Arthur. She says that there's a way to use your death as something that's incredibly empowering. She has three questions that she's going to ask you today and an incredible exercise to share that she wants you to do every year on your birthday.

• 0:51Mel Robbins?

  It's going to help you unlock deeper joy, purpose, and happiness in ways you've never imagined. This conversation will challenge you, move you, and my hope is that it inspires you and how you live the rest of your life, starting today.

• 1:16Mel Robbins?

  Hey, it's Mel. I am so excited that you're here. Welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. It is always such an honor to spend time with you and to be together. And if you're brand new, welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. Thank you for choosing to listen to this podcast. And you know what it tells me? It tells me that you're the type of person that values your time and you're interested in learning ways that you can improve your life. I love that. Me too. You know, recently, I read something that just stopped me in my tracks. It was written by a woman named Eloua Arthur. Here's what she wrote. "Our deaths are practically begging us to live. When I'm thinking about my death, I can see very clearly who I want to be.

• 1:59Mel Robbins?

  I've never thought about death that way, that it's going to help me clearly see who I want to be." Well, that's exactly what we're going to talk about today. Eloua, she's a bestselling author and a death doula, and she's the founder of Going With Grace, an organization that has trained thousands of people in end-of-life planning. And she's flown here today from Los Angeles to be in our Boston studios to speak to you and me. She says that simply allowing yourself to think about your death, how you want to feel. Where do you want to be? Who do you want to be surrounded by? What kind of life do you want to live so that you're proud of yourself? Just thinking about it unlocks deeper joy, purpose, and happiness in your life in ways

• 2:43Mel Robbins?

  you can never imagine. She also has three questions to ask you today and a powerful exercise for you to do every year on your birthday. And if you answer these three questions with courage and honesty, it will inspire you to make some incredible changes in your life. After you and I spend time with Elua today, I promise you, we'll both be looking at our lives and our death in a whole new way. Elua, welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. Thank you very much for having me. I am so excited that you're here. And there's a number of reasons why I'm excited that you're here.

• 3:23Mel Robbins?

  But the main one is that I watched your TED Talk and it is one of the most beautiful, profound, and just kind of jaw-dropping 20-minute talks I have ever seen in my entire life. I was absolutely captivated. And that led me to your book, Briefly, Perfectly Human. And I have to say, first of all, before you even crack this book open, this is one of the most gorgeous books I've ever seen in my entire life. And I cannot wait for you, as you're listening to us, to hold this book in your hands because

• 4:06Mel Robbins?

  it's going to make you think completely differently about your life. And where I wanted to start is there's so many passages in your book that just had me gasp and reread. And I want to open up to page 10 and have you read to the person listening from your beautiful book. Thank you. Okay, ready?

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Looking out the window toward the thorough cumulus clouds blanketing the countryside, I think about what I want for my life and who I want to be at my death. It's the first time I'm asking myself these questions. I'm 34 years old. I realize that the ilua I want to be on my deathbed is a woman who has filled her life cup all the way up and has built a life she feels comfortable leaving. On that bus in Cuba, I feel far off from being that ilua. I'm a shell of a human with the mere pinprick of light left inside my body. I feel the heat of shame for not knowing I've been living dead for so long. My insides tighten.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  Looking around the bus, I take stock of the individuals aboard and wonder what end they will meet. These people are currently distracted by the daily business of living. One day, they will die. If they sensed the immediacy of life, the preciousness of it, the insignificant significance of it, what would they be doing differently now? How many unwritten books, undeclared loves, and unfulfilled dreams lie dormant here in these seeds and in these bodies? Would they be content dying from the lives they live? Or do they hunger for more?

• 5:55Mel Robbins?

  Beautiful. Beautiful. This book begins where you start to talk about how death brings you back to life. What does that mean? And can you tell the person listening where you are in your life right now, just personally? Because you're 34 years old and you're not facing death. You're just contemplating it. So what does this passage mean?

• 6:21Speaker 01

  This passage means that I'd spent

• 6:25Speaker 01

  Ten or so years in a career that didn't really fit me, doing work that while very important and noble, wasn't really working for me. I'd put on somebody else's life. It felt like I was wearing somebody else's skin, pretending I was in somebody else's life. But I was in my own. And at 34, at this moment, I was finally noticing that I was not in my life. I wasn't living it. I was surprised to find out that this was my life, even though I'd very carefully created all of it. And when I looked back on my life, I saw somebody who hadn't lived the way that she'd wanted to. I saw somebody who was living out of alignment with who she was. But yeah, I kept going and just kept putting one foot in front of the other. That's not the death I wanted to meet.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  So something had to change.

• 7:12Mel Robbins?

  Have you always been this deep?

• 7:16Speaker 01

  I don't find myself to be very deep.

• 7:18Mel Robbins?

  What?

• 7:18Speaker 01

  You should ask my mom, maybe.

• 7:20Mel Robbins?

  Well, the reason why I say that is because I think almost everybody has the experience of feeling stuck. And boy, oh, boy, did I relate to that sentence that you said, that you felt like you had put on someone else's life. That even though you had carefully created it, now that you're in it, you're thinking, well, this doesn't feel like I thought it would feel. And what's interesting to me is you're the first person that I've ever talked to, who in that very normal, real, human experience of waking up and being unsatisfied with your life, or having the courage to recognize, this isn't what I wanted to feel like,

• 8:02Mel Robbins?

  that you immediately jumped to your death. Why is that an important leap? And how did it help you to access something within you to truly change?

• 8:16Speaker 01

  In full reality, our deaths are practically begging us to live. My death is my best advisor, is my greatest teacher, is my greatest motivator. It's the one that tells me all the time that this life is brief and is precious and is short. And so when I'm thinking about my death, I can see very clearly who I want to be. I can see how I'm spending my time. I can see if I'm pleased with what it is that I'm doing. And if I'm not, well, my death is asking me to change it all the time. I'm going to be the one who has to meet myself on my deathbed. I want to make sure that I've been happy with what it was that I did while I was here. Wow.

• 8:53Mel Robbins?

  Can you tell the person that's listening how their life might change if they take to heart absolutely everything that you're about to share with us today?

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Well, my hope is that when we are thinking about our death consistently, that we, we think of our lives in context like a big glass bubble that holds all of our hopes and our dreams and our wishes and our authenticity and our fear and our doubt and our insecurity. And when I'm thinking about my death, it allows me to see exactly who I've become. And knowing that I'm still living, I have an opportunity to change it. I think death can be a great inspiration for us to start living more authentically and be real with who we are and who we want to be.

• 9:37Mel Robbins?

  And you're going to teach us how to do that?

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Well, I'm going to do my best to share what I've learned along the way.

• 9:42Mel Robbins?

  I have a feeling you're going to teach us how to do that because I'm already thinking about time traveling ahead. And I, of course, create a lot of space for myself between where I am now and where I am when I'm on my deathbed. Why is it that we have such a hard time talking about death?

• 9:58Speaker 01

  It scares us. It makes us uncomfortable. It brings up all of our greatest fears. It brings up our inadequacy. We feel really, really small on the face of it. We don't know anything about it. And nobody who's ever been there all the way has been back to tell us exactly what happens. We use our human minds to try to think through something that is not part of the human experience. To die is human, but the death part, well, then it's over. And so my brain can't quite fathom what that might be like, and that makes us uncomfortable.

• 10:31Mel Robbins?

  I hadn't even thought about the death part. I guess I'm more focused on the sadness that I feel for leaving.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:41Mel Robbins?

  How does that also prevent us from seeing death as our greatest teacher and advisor in life?

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Well, we've shown it because of the sadness and because of the pain and because of the grief and the loss. You know, we're conditioned to feel the good things all the time. I want to feel happy and free and joyful and like I have everything I need. But to think that one day my life will end, or that of people that I love also makes me really uncomfortable. You know, we shy away from pain. We try to do our best to guard ourselves from pain, and that's a certain pain that's coming. And so people don't want to think about that too much either.

• 11:15Mel Robbins?

  It's true. And there's this saying that you have. That I find both hilarious and comforting that talking about sex won't make you pregnant and talking about death won't make you dead. And why is it important for us to be able to talk about this?

• 11:32Speaker 01

  People pretend it's not happening and they pretend it's not happening by not talking about it, but it doesn't change the fact that it's happening. And then there's the other side of it that says, well, I can't talk about it because if I talk about it, I'm going to bring it on myself. But it's gonna happen anyway. And so not talking about it doesn't make it not happen. It just means that we are ill-prepared and it goes unexamined when it's time. So we may as well just start talking about it. It's gonna happen anyway.

• 11:59Mel Robbins?

  You have made it your career to be a death doula and a lot of people have not even heard that term before. Can you explain what a death doula is?

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Sure. A death doula is a non-medical care and support person for the dying person and their entire circle of support through the process. When I say the dying person, I mean anybody who has come into recognition of their mortality. That means that even when people are healthy, we can help them create comprehensive end-of-life plans to think through their ideas about or thoughts around their death. When people know what they're going to be dying of, which is typically what we think of a death doula doing, we can support them in creating the most ideal death for themselves under the circumstances. And then after a death occurs, we can help family members wrap up affairs of their loved ones' life. And so we're doing all full-scale, emotional, logistical, practical, spiritual support for the dying.

• 12:55Mel Robbins?

  Wow. A lot of people have heard of hospice. How is this different from what hospice may provide to a family or someone who's dying?

• 13:03Speaker 01

  It's collaborative. It's supportive. I like to think that we play really well together because often what happens is that I can either catch somebody much further upstream, like they're still healthy and they're starting to think about their death, or they have a serious diagnosis and they're not yet on hospice and they're trying to figure that out. But when somebody's on hospice, we work really well together. Like oftentimes a hospice nurse will come into the room and ask me what's going on with today, how is everybody doing, what needs paying attention to.

• 13:33Mel Robbins?

  But it also sounds like you work with people who aren't, well, I guess I should correct that. We're all dying.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  We're all dying.

• 13:39Mel Robbins?

  And we're all gonna die.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 13:41Mel Robbins?

  And you work with people that don't have an acute diagnosis and aren't even that close to dying. They're just wanting to use death as a teacher and as a way to really think about and reshape their life.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  And also get their plans down, you know, start to think practically through it. I notice that a lot of the clients that come for end of life planning, probably have parents that have died recently, or they're seeing the elders in their family die, or a friend died, and they think, what a mess. I don't want to create that for myself. And so what can I do right now in order to get that going?

• 14:15Mel Robbins?

  You know, when I think about end of death planning, when I'm about to get on a plane with my husband, and I can't help but think over and over in the back of my mind, okay, do we have our affairs in order?

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Great.

• 14:27Mel Robbins?

  Like, what happens if this plane goes down and we die? And I don't want to think about that.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  Understandable. Speaking of which, how's your planning going?

• 14:38Mel Robbins?

  I think it's done. We've done some things with, with, with people, my husband, we've done some things with lawyers and, and planning and setting things up, but I haven't looked at it in three or four years.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 14:53Mel Robbins?

  I probably should.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, that'd be helpful.

• 14:55Mel Robbins?

  How often should you look at this?

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Yearly.

• 14:57Mel Robbins?

  Yearly?

• 14:58Speaker 01

  I think so. I love to do it around my birthday. And I know that sounds wild, but being able to celebrate another year reminds me that I'm still here, but one day I won't be like, I may not see my next one. And so let me take some time to reflect. I think we need to look at all the practical things, but also start asking like the tougher questions, like, what kind of death do I want to experience? Who do I want to make my decisions for me if I can't? How do I feel about life support? How do I feel about my life currently? Who do I need to say I love you to? Who do I need to forgive? Think about it like big picture.

• 15:35Mel Robbins?

  I love that you do this on your birthday.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a nice, it's a nice little ritual. It's a nice little touch.

• 15:41Mel Robbins?

  So if you were to In fact, my birthday is coming up.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  Great.

• 15:46Mel Robbins?

  So what questions could I ask myself on my birthday to really invite the subject, or the, I guess I should say, reality? Look at this, I'm even sanitizing the way I talk about this to create distance between me and something that is going to happen. I will die. How do I use my death to shape my life? And what questions could I ask myself on my birthday to invite the reality of my death in and help me truly think about how I want to live my life?

• 16:21Speaker 01

  There's a lot of ways to go about this. You know, we can spend time on the practical, which I think is an easier entry point for some people, thinking about your affairs. You know, who do you want to make your decisions for you? What do you think about life support? What do you want done with your body? What services would you like? How would you like it celebrated, et cetera? Also, your possessions, any dependents, all your important information and stuff. But I also suggest that we think about the life that we've lived so far. If folks are interested, there's a little exercise that I like to do, which is to think of my life as a line, think of my lifespan as a long line, and place myself somewhere on that line, my birth being one end and my death being the other.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  So if I place myself someplace on that line at that current birthday, how far do I think I am? How much further do I have to go? And what do I want to experience in the time that I have remaining? It allows me to conceptualize my life in terms of a lifespan and then see visually where else I still have to go, hopefully.

• 17:24Mel Robbins?

  How old are you?

• 17:25Speaker 01

  I'm 46.

• 17:26Mel Robbins?

  How long do you think you have?

• 17:28Speaker 01

  I would like to live another 40, 45 years. I don't want to be like 100th and something.

• 17:38Mel Robbins?

  I'm thinking about it right now because I'm going to turn 56 and I'd like to be 100.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  You would?

• 17:44Mel Robbins?

  Well, I mean, when I pull out the line and I visualize what I want, because I get to say, that might not be what happens, but I get to say what I want. I want to be vibrant and active and engaged and connected to my family.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  Great. So what you just said is you listed also some core values, which is really helpful when we start thinking about how we want to experience the rest of our life. If we have a serious illness or if there's treatment or something coming, you can think about your values. You said engaged and with your family and all those things. That can be helpful when you're starting to think about what is remaining of your time and how you're going to spend it.

• 18:26Mel Robbins?

  I love that. How the heck did you get into this?

• 18:29Speaker 01

  Into death work?

• 18:30Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  I, you know, I'm still wondering that myself. I mean, I know some events happened that made it so, but big picture. Sometimes I'm like, now, how do we pick this one? But I really don't think that we choose death work. I think death work chooses us.

• 18:43Mel Robbins?

  I was just going to say, do you think you picked this?

• 18:45Speaker 01

  No, not at all. I mean, when I look back, I can see how perfectly set up everything was so that this is what I'm doing with my time right now. I am a attorney by trade. I worked at Legal Aid for about eight years. And while I was doing so, I grew a very, very thick depression. And I say thick because it was heavy, it was dense, but I was incredibly thin. My body was a hollow shell. I wasn't living in it anymore. And during that depression, I took a medical leave of absence. By my psychiatrist was like, girl, you can't work anymore. And I said, I think you're probably right. So I took a leave of absence and during that leave of absence, I went to Cuba,

• 19:30Speaker 01

  where I met a fellow traveler on the bus and her and I talked a lot about life. And we talked a lot about death because she had ovarian cancer. And that's how the ideas around being with mortality really started.

• 19:41Mel Robbins?

  Can you share more about that story?

• 19:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:44Mel Robbins?

  Of meeting this woman on the bus? And how that impacted you?

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, so through all this beautiful serendipity, I ended up in Cuba. And as I was heading to the bus stop to go get on the bus to go to Santiago on the other side of the island, a car almost hit me along the way. And I slammed my hands on the hood and thought, don't die on these streets, please. Like your parents will kill you.

• 20:10Mel Robbins?

  Well, you'd be dead.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  Right? I would be mortified also with roots in death, but I'd be mortified that this occurred. And I, as after the almost car accident happened, I was just kind of like shocked back into myself. I did what I had to do and raced out to the bus stop where I met a woman in line and we started chatting. She offered to hold the bus for me so that I could get on it because I was in the wrong line and I was running late. She did hold the bus for me in a really interesting way. And when I got on the bus, we started chatting. She told me that she was in Cuba to see the top six places in the world she wanted to see before she died because she had uterine cancer. And it was jarring to me. I didn't know anybody my age who had died. She was 36, I was 34.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  And we started talking a lot about her mortality. I asked her questions that I still don't know where I got the hubris to ask, but I asked her about herself on her deathbed. I asked her what meaning her life's work had had up until that point. And it created a really fertile ground for us to get into the thick, thick, thick bits about how we're living and ultimately how we're dying.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  During that bus ride, I thought there should be somebody that people can talk to about death because she hadn't been talking about it. Because when she would, her friends and family would tell her to focus on hope and healing. Instead, don't think about that. No, you're going to get better. Don't worry about it. Oh, think about now. But the reality is that she is dying. We are all dying and we should be talking about death. And the fact that we'd had an opportunity to do so together, it seemed to create some value for her. And I also felt totally in my pocket talking to her about death. Like I could ask all the weirdo curious questions I have anyway, and somebody finally answered them. So it made it really a right place to begin talking about mortality.

• 22:00Mel Robbins?

  Do you remember the first question you asked her about death?

• 22:05Speaker 01

  I think I asked, what would happen? Well, she was telling me about uterine cancer.

• 22:10Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  She said she was sick. And she said, I might die. And I said, well, what would happen then? And she said, well, I guess I'll be dead. And it was the beginning of like, well, what happens if this is it? Like, what, what does that mean? What does that mean? So we started talking about the afterlife. We talked about herself on her deathbed. I asked her to look at herself on her deathbed and tell me what she saw. And while she did that, I started to think of myself on my own deathbed. And I didn't like what I saw. I didn't like what I saw, which is where that passage came from. I wanted somebody who was really full of her life. You know, somebody who like enjoyed it, somebody who was present for it. And I wasn't.

• 22:49Mel Robbins?

  And that's what you meant when you said, talk of death is starting to bring me back to life.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. I finally felt signs of life in my body again. I finally felt like myself. I felt like a version of myself I really liked. Somebody who was curious and engaged and connected and present. Like, I was really present for that conversation. You know, I was leaning forward and maintained eye contact and wasn't thinking about what a mess I've made of my life. Rather, I was almost hopeful that I could feel myself again.

• 23:26Mel Robbins?

  Well, it's interesting because if you do time travel forward, it creates this space that allows hope and something different to come in to your consciousness. And there are so many of us have this experience in our day to day life of just going through the motions.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:48Mel Robbins?

  And it is true that when you allow yourself to push through the fear and the sadness and truly think about that moment on your deathbed, that it forces you to think about how you want to feel about your life. And ironically, creates an opening to change. What are some of the things that people say wrong? When they are talking to someone and maybe it's a friend that has a cancer diagnosis, or maybe you find out that somebody's parent is, you know, got dementia and their hospice is called in. What are some of the things not to say? And what can you say?

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Let me start with what you can lead with.

• 24:35Mel Robbins?

  Oh, great.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Which is perhaps that you don't know what to say if you don't know what to say. That's a great place to begin.

• 24:42Mel Robbins?

  What does that mean?

• 24:43Speaker 01

  I don't know what to say. This sounds really tough. This is a really big deal. This sounds really difficult for you, but I just, I really don't know what to say now. That's a great place to begin, rather than try to fill the space with platitudes and, you know, the things that we think that we're supposed to say. We can just begin with saying, I don't know what to say, and acknowledge and validate their experience. It sounds really hard. Or, um, how are you feeling? How are you doing with this news? I think if we can keep our focus on the person who is in the experience of it, then we can avoid getting into some really yucky muddy waters where we're trying to tell them how to feel about their experience.

• 25:19Mel Robbins?

  Hmm. That's beautiful. And that's probably where the problems come. You're like, oh, it's gonna be okay and you'll get through it.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  We don't know that. They might die from it.

• 25:28Mel Robbins?

  Well, they're gonna die at some point.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  They're gonna die at some point. It might be this disease, Alzheimer's and dementia's gnarly. It might be going downhill really fast. Like saying it'll be okay, or, you know, I know what you're going through. That's another thing we should avoid because we don't know what their experience is like. Even if we have a similar family situation ourselves, I don't know what it's like to be you experiencing this thing right now. And so we can also avoid trying to put ourselves in their shoes, or trying to, I say invalidate what they're experiencing by filling it with what I've experienced, or what I would like to experience, or what I think the experience should be like.

• 26:04Mel Robbins?

  I love that. That I don't know what to say. It sounds like it's very difficult. How are you doing today?

• 26:11Speaker 01

  Great. A plus.

• 26:13Mel Robbins?

  Oh, my gosh. Thank you. You know, I'm very motivated by doing well. So, thank you. I appreciate it. I can do that one. I can do that one. Um, in your experience as a death doula, what are some of the best ways that you can show up for other people when either they're dying, or they're supporting somebody else who is?

• 26:30Speaker 01

  It's a similar way to approach it, which is you show up, you acknowledge and you validate, and you create space for the person to have their experience, and you keep asking questions, and you just allow them to be, and you allow them to guide the conversation, because maybe they also don't want to talk about it, you know? Maybe they want to talk about the Kardashians instead, and that's totally fine. That's totally fine. So it's important that we create space for them to be where they are and to be in their experience primarily.

• 26:58Mel Robbins?

  Elua, that's so helpful, especially that visual of creating space, because I'm always thinking about what I need to say, but if I can just focus on creating space for them to have their experience, that makes it a lot easier to do. So, thank you. You know, I want to take a quick pause so we can hear a word from our sponsors, but don't go anywhere, because Elua has so many more profound takeaways to share, and a little bit later, she has three questions that she wants to ask you, and you're not going to want to miss it, so stay with us.

• 27:42Mel Robbins?

  Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. You and I are here today with the amazing Elua Arthur. Now, Elua, you know, I mentioned earlier, I've seen this amazing talk that you did online, where you talk about how you want to die at sunset with socks on. If I die with a bra on, you're, you're coming to haunt everybody.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Everyone.

• 28:09Mel Robbins?

  You want to die at home with your affairs in order. And then you said, "And when my loved ones notice that I've released my last breath, I want them to clap. I want them to clap because I died well, but I died well only because I lived well." Can you talk more about that? I've never heard anyone say, I want you to clap.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  I want them to clap. I want them to clap at how authentically I lived my life. I want them to say, yeah, she did her. I want them to clap in honor of a life that I lived and the grace with which I let it go. I want them to have been proud of me. You know, even at my death, I still want the people that I care about to think, yeah, girl, you did it. I want them to feel as though I filled out my life and that I lived by example. I want them to think that I was generous and present and I cared and I did my best, that I was here for the time that I was here.

• 29:19Mel Robbins?

  I just love the visual of everyone clapping.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  It's like cool.

• 29:23Mel Robbins?

  It is, because if I didn't have the context, it sounds like, you know, your cranky grandmother who you couldn't stand. Oh, my God, thank God, she's finally let go. Oh, baby. But even in that instance, you're clapping because they were a fighter.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:37Mel Robbins?

  But I love the acknowledgement of the spirit. What do you think happens?

• 29:44Speaker 01

  After we die?

• 29:44Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  I hear so many theories that I'm constantly cobbling it together myself. One of the things that I really love is when somebody presents something that I'm just really struggling to understand and they give me a little bit more context. Can I share one with you?

• 29:59Mel Robbins?

  Please.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  Okay. So there was a client not that long ago who, at the 11th hour, decided that she needed to be baptized, that she was not sure about anything that happened, but she felt that she needed to go back to the religion of her childhood because that may get her into heaven or wherever else after she died. And so I asked what had been going on, like, why she got to that point? She'd been having these really incredible dreams right before she died, when she was in her unconscious state, and she'd see a great big eye in the sky. When she said that, I thought she meant the, you know, the capital I and the non-dualistic perspective, like the I that exists within us all. But she meant an actual like eyeball in the sky.

• 30:42Mel Robbins?

  Really?

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:43Mel Robbins?

  That sounds scary.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Like watching us all the time. I got very uncomfortable all of a sudden. And as we talked through that, she said, yeah, an eyeball that she sees in the sky that sees all and also that we'll go back to so we can watch all. And she thinks of that as heaven. And so she wants to get baptized to go to heaven, to that I in the sky.

• 31:05Mel Robbins?

  And is that a piece that you cobbled together that helps you think about what you believe about what happens?

• 31:12Speaker 01

  I like the idea of an I, but I like the idea of the letter I, the capital I.

• 31:17Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, the eyeball scares me.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  Eyeball makes me a little uncomfortable.

• 31:21Mel Robbins?

  So what have you cobbled together in terms of how you think about what happens?

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Well, what I've cobbled together is, oh, this is tricky because it's changing all the time. And also, the more I talk about it, the less it makes space for my clients to have whatever experience that they may be having. You know, when I, when I fill the space with what I think or how I feel, it makes it a little harder for other people to share with me what they think or feel because first of all, everybody thinks I'm right because of the work that I do.

• 31:56Mel Robbins?

  Now I really want to hear it.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  They think I'm right because of the work I do. You know, my hope is that we can all return to all that ever was and all that ever will be in a place of absolute perfect and profound stillness and perfection and peace and love, the transcendent, the space from before we were born where I have no conscious memory of. Which I think was also a perfect place because it made a perfect human along the way. And my perfect death will hopefully lead me back to that real juicy, perfect place.

• 32:32Mel Robbins?

  I think, I think I believe something very similar.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:35Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, I think a lot about the fact that when you're at the moment of creation and you're in your mother's womb, you have no consciousness about the world that you're about to be born into.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:47Mel Robbins?

  And I feel that death is the exact same sort of birth, that there is an entire world, and I have no consciousness of what it might be. I know what I hope it might be. But I just trust that as the transition happens, that it is another form of birthing yourself from one world and one state of consciousness to another.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Well, every death is a birth into something new. And every birth is also a death. You know, upon my birth, I died from the womb. I changed the way I breathe. I changed probably how I think. I changed how I experience the world. I changed my sensory experience. I died from that experience into this. So I'll likely be dying from this into something else. Now what? I don't know. I hope it feels like riding a glitter wave for all of eternity, where I just see sparkles and I am in that perfect place, reconnected with everything that ever was.

• 33:48Mel Robbins?

  Hey, Lou, I'll see you there.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:49Mel Robbins?

  Right on that sparkle wave. I have never been present when somebody died. Can you walk us through kind of what happens in those moments?

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Sure. So dying itself doesn't happen linearly when people are dying from disease. However, it generally happens that the cells shut down and then the systems, the tissues, et cetera. So it goes outward like that. So it looks different for every person. But for the most part, what I experience more often than not is that the person starts to recede in the days before death. You can tell that there is a distance that's happening. If they have a death rally, it'll probably happen right before that time. And the death rally is, I think, when the last little bit of life's light is just all burned off. All the energy is used up.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  And so if the rally has occurred, there is a stillness that starts to happen that you can tell in the person. They recede, they likely fall asleep and stay asleep for a while. And the breathing changes, the skin color changes, breathing gets kind of jagged. You can tell that the body has kind of taken over. It is doing what it needs to do to die. And I trust everybody's innate capacity to know how to die. And so it's doing what it must do. And at some point, when the space between the breath gets very long, you can

• 35:23Speaker 01

  tell that there is a separation that's occurring. And then there is a stillness. And the stillness comes when the breath has stopped.

• 35:36Mel Robbins?

  And do you, in your work, feel that separation? And you feel an essence or spirit of a person leaving? Or?

• 35:49Speaker 01

  I can tell that something has occurred because the room seems to get very full. Like, it feels like there's a blanket in the space, but like a warm cozy blanket, you know?

• 36:01Mel Robbins?

  Wow.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  If you've been in the space of it, you know what I'm talking about. Like, after the breath is complete, it, the room is still very thick.

• 36:12Mel Robbins?

  The clapping would help.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  The clapping would break it out.

• 36:15Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  For sure, for sure.

• 36:16Mel Robbins?

  Wow, thank you for sharing. How do you bring this conversation up with your parents? There are so many people listening around the world who have parents that are aging. And I personally kind of tap dance around it. I'll then say, hey, you know, we should probably have the conversation. And my mom will say something like, yeah, we should. And she'll remark about how there's so much stuff in this house. Like, I'm not even going to do anything with it. You and your brother are going to have to clear it out. And so it's more about the surface. Level stuff, but do you have advice for the best way to set up a conversation with

• 37:00Mel Robbins?

  your parents so that you can talk about this topic?

• 37:03Speaker 01

  I love that your mom is bringing it up.

• 37:05Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  And she's bringing it up that way.

• 37:07Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  And I think that the practical is a great way into the deeper emotional, spiritual, psychological stuff that happens.

• 37:13Mel Robbins?

  Great.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, because as she's talking about it, like, oh, I won't be here. And so I don't need this thing anymore. She can explain to you what the meaning behind certain objects were. That meaning has her look back on her life. Oh, I got this in 1967, and when we were kids and we were doing this, you know what I mean?

• 37:29Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  So it's a way into like, the deeper emotional stuff.

• 37:32Mel Robbins?

  Thank you for saying that.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:33Mel Robbins?

  Because I, maybe it's my discomfort, but every time I go home to Michigan where I grew up, and we start going through stuff, and she's like, so focused on, what do you want? What do you want? Let's get this stuff out of here. And she's only 70 something. I mean, she is like, full of like, oh, you know, like, let's go. She's got a lot of life in her. Thank God. But I always was thinking, this is a deflection.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:03Mel Robbins?

  And that's not, you're saying, actually, no, this is fantastic.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  She's talking about it. I'm so glad to hear she's talking about it. It's an entry point, you know, to talk about the things or the practical things. And often, as I was saying, it shows what else is under the surface, you know? It may be through an object, but when talking to people about what they want with their body after they die, I'll hear people say things like, I can't think of my body burning when talking about cremation, or I can't think of myself burning. That suggests to me that they think of themselves and their body as one, or they don't, because they said, my body's burning. So that's an opening into the deeper spiritual conversation. This, it's all in front of us. We can tell how people think about their death based on how they talk. And certainly, when they're

• 38:48Speaker 01

  talking about their stuff, that's another way into, thank you, Smell's mom.

• 38:53Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, thanks, Mom. In fact, you know what I'm gonna do while we take a quick pause and hear a word from our amazing sponsors? I'm gonna send this episode to my mom, because I think it'll spark an even deeper and cooler and awesome way to talk about this important topic. And why don't you do the same? Share this with someone that you love. And don't go anywhere, because Elua and I will be waiting for you after a short break.

• 39:25Mel Robbins?

  Welcome back. It's your friend Mel. I am so grateful for this time that you and I are getting to spend with the extraordinary Elua Arthur. And you know, as we were listening to our sponsors, I couldn't help but think about a moment that I had with my mom just a few weeks ago, when I was back in Michigan. We were down in the basement. We're flipping through a bunch of framed things that used to hang on the wall that have now been replaced. And like, oh, I love that thing. Oh, those are drawings for my kids. Like, we'll take that. Like, I love this. Is there, in that moment where you're engaging in the stuff, is there a way to just crack the door open a little bit more to go a little deeper?

• 40:04Speaker 01

  Into the emotional stuff?

• 40:06Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  Well, one way is if you're noticing that she likes particular objects, or if there's some things that she likes, maybe you can ask if this is a way that she liked to be remembered. When I see a spoon, will this help me think of you? And she'll maybe say yes, or I don't care, or whatever else. But maybe she'll say, well, I really like butterflies, or I feel like your Aunt Helen visits me through the butterflies, or something to start that part of the conversation also.

• 40:33Mel Robbins?

  She's been very funny about it, because I know exactly what she wants to happen.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:37Mel Robbins?

  She's literally like, melt down all my jewelry.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Great.

• 40:40Mel Robbins?

  And then get an urn, and let's put the jewelry all over the urn, cremate me, and then that urn can rotate between you and your brother's house, and when your father dies, he goes in there too.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  Great.

• 40:51Mel Robbins?

  I'm like, okay.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  Thanks. She's giving you some pretty clear instructions.

• 40:55Mel Robbins?

  Oh, yes.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  I'm into it.

• 40:56Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  Mom gets an A+ too.

• 40:58Mel Robbins?

  Wow. She's gonna be really happy about that. And meanwhile, I feel like a jerk, because I've been sitting here going, we haven't talked about the end of life care. We haven't talked about where you're going. We haven't talked about whether or not you're gonna stay in this house, or whether or not we're gonna look for something else, when what you're saying is that those conversations actually are an open door, and they represent somebody processing this reality.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  It's starting to happen. You know, people often say people don't want to talk about death, or older folks don't want to talk about death, and I think that they do. I think- We're uncomfortable with it. And so when we hear the opportunity, we shun it. Or we pretend it's not happening, or we make it mean something else, or there goes mom being crotchety again. Or mom is starting to engage you with her end of life because they are thinking about it. Okay. I mean, the older I get, the more I think about my mortality because I feel it in my kneecaps. And so at like eighty something, you're definitely thinking about it more and more. Your friends are dying. You're seeing people that you grew up with die on TV like.

• 42:00Mel Robbins?

  It's true. I think about my dad who just turned eighty and he's had three very close friends die very suddenly, including his best friend. He had a surgery, you know, on his eye for like glaucoma go wrong. And so he's got now floaters in there and he can't quite see. And I know that makes him feel like frail. And he just had back surgery because of a pickleball injury. And so I've been thinking a lot about him. And he's very stoic and doesn't talk a lot about that kind of stuff. The way my mom is very out there. Get the urn, melt the jewelry. Let's go. Get this crap out of this house. I'm not cleaning this out. This is on you and your brother.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Bless her.

• 42:45Mel Robbins?

  How do I engage my father?

• 42:49Speaker 01

  You already said some really useful things. The fact that his friends are dying, that's a great place to begin. What's his grief like? What happened when they died? Did somebody have an accident? Was there a surgery? What happened medically? Like using the deaths of people in their lives is a great place to begin, just to ask them how they're feeling or what their thoughts are around it. You can also, if that's not happening in your family, you can also talk about celebrities or people that are happening in popular culture, people that are dying there as another entryway in. Did you like what happened? Did you not like it? I got to be with a group of black elders around the time Aretha Franklin died. And when I tell you all their end of life plans were done by the time that we left.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  Because one of them was like, I can't believe they had her in all these outfits and I would never want a glass coffin. And then nobody better put shoes on me when I die. Got it. Got it. Got it. You know what I mean? These are great ways to start the conversation. It's available.

• 43:48Mel Robbins?

  Well, you know, it's true. We all go to weddings.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:51Mel Robbins?

  And let's be honest. We enjoy ourselves and then either on the way home or the next morning, we're like picking apart. I do this. I wouldn't do this. Why did they do that? Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. Never even thought about funerals. Being a point of understanding what people like, what they don't like, what they want, what they don't want, what they're comfortable with, what they don't, what they're not like. Get no open casket for me. Absolutely not. Cremation all the way. You don't want to be viewed at all? Oh, my God, no. That's helpful. Absolutely not. Yeah. And there was this thing that happened at my father-in-law's funeral that I thought was the coolest thing in the world that I had ever seen. I absolutely want this to happen. He was cremated and my mother-in-law, I don't know if she went to like eBay or

• 44:35Mel Robbins?

  whatever, she bought all of these tiny little, remember the film canisters that were metal that you would kind of screw apart? She got like a hundred of them. And I just have this image of her spooning his ashes into all these canisters. And at his end of life celebration, she came out and had them in this huge salad bowl. And she invited anyone who wanted to have a piece of Ken to come up and take a canister. But there was one requirement. You had to spread his ashes somewhere or keep him in a certain place. And when you did

• 45:17Mel Robbins?

  it, she requested that you write her a letter and send a photo of the place where he is. And she now has this extraordinary photo album of him all over the world. We, I have a friend that snuck onto the US Open golf course, the last night of the tournament and poured him into like the 10th hole and then he was sealed up. He's overseas. He's been on bike trips. He, you know, my husband, every time he rides his bike, he puts his little, he takes his canister of his father and tucks it underneath and is just a beautiful way to see what he meant to other people. And that's what I want.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  That's incredible.

• 46:03Mel Robbins?

  Isn't that cool?

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Have you written it down?

• 46:05Mel Robbins?

  Uh, no.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Okay, well, I'm glad now we've recorded it.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  Now we know, that's what you want.

• 46:12Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  That is so great.

• 46:13Mel Robbins?

  What do you want? I know how you want to die, but what do you want to have happen after?

• 46:18Speaker 01

  I want a green burial. I want a natural burial.

• 46:21Mel Robbins?

  Meaning, they put you somewhere and light you on fire? Is that what that is?

• 46:25Speaker 01

  No.

• 46:25Mel Robbins?

  Oh, okay, see, I would like, like boom.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  I see.

• 46:28Mel Robbins?

  Okay, because I feel like, okay, that's a beautiful, natural thing to do.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  It is also a very beautiful, natural thing. I want to be in a hot pink and orange raw silk shroud, no more than three and a half, maybe four feet underground, so that the natural decomposition can happen, the bugs can get to me, the elements can.

• 46:45Mel Robbins?

  Really?

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:47Mel Robbins?

  Why do you want that?

• 46:47Speaker 01

  I want to go back into the earth. Also, I spend a lot of time like in all the cellulite, like the bugs should feast. You know what I mean? You want the chocolate can't go to waste, let's use it. Let's use it, let's use it.

• 46:57Mel Robbins?

  Oh, my gosh, and I love that you're sharing this and that we're going to details. And as you're listening, think about what you want.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:09Mel Robbins?

  Allow yourself to truly reflect on this. I feel like my daughters popped into this world and they've been planning their weddings ever since.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:20Mel Robbins?

  And it's interesting to think about your own death and celebration of your life and how you want it to feel as something that can be as amazing as wedding.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  Even more so.

• 47:36Mel Robbins?

  Why even more so?

• 47:38Speaker 01

  Well, weddings are cute, you know? I wish that we focused more on the marriage than on the big day itself. But weddings are cute, weddings are cute. I think funerals, to me, are a nice, big, beautiful period on that sentence that really would be nice if they, if they showed who the person was, if it really showed who the person was, you know? And people had a chance to be together in their grief around the end of this person's life. I ask all the students that come through the Going with Grace End of Life Training Program, what kind of death that they would like, what kind of funeral they like, about their legacy, et cetera. And there was this one student years ago who got stuck in the question about who her body belongs to

• 48:21Speaker 01

  and who her life belongs to. I thought it was so rich. Yeah, because when we were talking about who her body belongs to, it got her thinking, got me thinking about what happens to this body after I die. You know, in the story that you shared about, it's the same, Ken, that his body now belongs to all these people and they are now spreading it everywhere. They are doing what they want with it. And so we can use our value system, like try to figure out, what do I actually, what do I care about? And now you see, I care about eating enough cake so that the bugs can be happy after I die. Like, I'm trying to give back, you know? It's not just about me and my taste buds. No, it's about the earth. I'm trying to help the earth.

• 48:58Mel Robbins?

  Well, I think some people do that when they think about whether or not they want to be an organ donor. But there's a even deeper, richer way to think about who you are.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:07Mel Robbins?

  And how that gets expressed through your death.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  That's what death does for us every single time. About my work, about my relationships, about my love, about how I care about my body. Certainly what I want to have happen to it after I die, how I planned for it. That's what my death does every single time, if we let it. But most of us are way too scared to even engage in the conversation.

• 49:32Mel Robbins?

  In your experience, what are the biggest regrets that people have on their deathbed?

• 49:39Speaker 01

  They're mostly around how they spent their time, how they lived, about being authentic. I wish I'd lived a life for me, not for my parents or society or my partner or my kids, but what was most authentic for me. People also often regret how they spent their time, you know, spending more of it at the office or not playing pickleball or not doing the things that they really wanted to do with their time. I also find that people regret how they showed up for the people that they loved. Or didn't show up for the people that they loved.

• 50:14Mel Robbins?

  Probably more.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  Far more, how they didn't show up, not saying their I love yous and thank yous or please forgive me's. That's the big one.

• 50:23Mel Robbins?

  That's something that I think a lot about, that... It's only when it's over that some people find the ability to forgive or to ask for forgiveness. And for somebody that's listening to us right now, could you speak directly to them about what's available today? Based on the reality of death? And what to do today? In order to not die with regrets?

• 50:59Speaker 01

  There are three big questions that I suggest people ask themselves when thinking about their lives and their relationship and their death, which is who did I love? How did I love? And was I loved? Now, these questions, I speak of them in the past tense because I'm thinking about somebody who's on their deathbed. But those questions are available for us right now and should be available to us right now. I don't say should very often, but this is one where it's wildly, wildly important for us to think about how we relate to one another? And what's still sticky between us? Too often, I see people at the deathbed where they're wishing for that, you know, magic moment where that person that they've been loving from afar,

• 51:44Speaker 01

  because they did something or the other person did something, they're waiting for that to be reconciled and it just isn't. Can I tell you a story?

• 51:51Mel Robbins?

  Yes, please.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  There was a client a few years ago who was in her late 80s. She was a grandma and one of her grandkids was there. She'd had three biological children, nine grandchildren, and only one was there. This one grandchild had been busting her butt to make so much money to put grandma in one of these homes where there was maybe like six people in a room. You know what I mean? It was not fancy or top of the line, but this kid had worked really hard for it. Turns out grandma was a terrible parent. Her kids didn't want to be there. They'd made their peace. But grandma insisted that she did not want to die until those kids came to say goodbye to her. And I talked to all those kids and they were all done. They'd made their peace with her dying. We eked out a letter.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  And when I say eked, I mean she was practically nonverbal at this time, but there were things that she still wanted to say. So we tried really hard to get all these things out. Some of them were asking for forgiveness, but also some of them were staunchly, I did what I need to do and how I need to do and you kids should be grateful. And she moved into active dying a very short while later. I don't know what happened with those letters. I don't know if those kids got them. I don't know what they thought of them. But I know that they did what they need to do for themselves. Sometimes we don't have to forgive just because somebody is dying. We need to speak the truth about how we feel about people while they're living. And if grandma maybe had tried that earlier, she may have been in a different position when she was dying.

• 53:20Mel Robbins?

  Wow. Well, I have a very good friend who's been estranged from her parents for a number of years and her father just died.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  How's she feeling?

• 53:27Mel Robbins?

  I don't know how she's feeling today, but I can only imagine that her feelings are all over the place. And mourning someone that you have been estranged from for a long time must just, it doesn't, it doesn't prevent you from, like, you still grieve somebody, even if you haven't seen them for a long time, even if you ended on bad terms. And so I don't know how she's doing today, but as soon as I heard the news, I told her that if you want to go to the funeral, I will get on a plane with you. I will go. If you do not want to go to the funeral, that is okay, too.

• 54:09Mel Robbins?

  I will, I will come and support you if you want somebody to be there. And she thanked me and said, you have no idea how much that means. And I just felt like I wanted to do something. And so I decided to send her just a beautiful arrangement of flowers from my husband and I. And I thought and thought and thought and thought and thought about what to put on the card. And so I put this, never forget, you cut ties with your father, not because you didn't love him, but because you loved yourself enough to know you deserve to be treated better.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Did you get another A plus?

• 54:43Mel Robbins?

  Oh, really?

• 54:43Speaker 01

  That is incredible. That's so good. That's so good.

• 54:50Speaker 01

  What I'm hearing from that is the reinforcement of the choice that she made. And what I think is wildly important is that we remember just because somebody is dying doesn't mean that we then have to undo all the things. It doesn't make them a great person anymore. It doesn't make them a great person for us anymore. I think it's important that we tell the truth about who people are when they were living and after they die. They tell the truth. We tell the truth about their impact on us. It doesn't change because they died. And when we make people saints after they died, it marginalizes, it disenfranchises the grief of those people that didn't experience them like that.

• 55:29Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  You know?

• 55:30Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  So people still have to grieve complicated relationships. They still have to grieve when they haven't seen their parent in decades because they chose to step away. And sometimes to me, healing looks like that. It doesn't look like, maybe speaking of forgiveness, it looks like making a choice and reconciling it within ourselves.

• 55:49Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 55:52Mel Robbins?

  That's a lot.

• 55:53Speaker 01

  It's big.

• 55:54Mel Robbins?

  What advice do you have for all of us as we experience grief? Like, how do you think about the process of grieving, which I don't think ever leaves?

• 56:06Speaker 01

  No, it doesn't leave. It just changes form. You know, when I think about my brother-in-law, I still get emotional thinking and talking about him. And it's been, it'll be 11 years this December.

• 56:16Mel Robbins?

  Can you tell us about Peter?

• 56:17Speaker 01

  Oh, I would love to. Peter was my older sister's husband, Bosma St. John, as her husband. And I loved Peter. He was the only big brother I had. I didn't have one. And I was his younger sibling because he was the youngest of seven and didn't have anybody he could exercise dominion over until I came around. Peter, Peter was gregarious. He was silly and really, really smart and probably just as stubborn and self-righteous as I am, which made for a lot of butting heads because he was really conservative in nature and I am not. And so we would just go to war over the death penalty and vegetarianism

• 56:59Speaker 01

  and veganism and just anything. We got along really, really well despite our challenges. And I got to support him in his death.

• 57:09Mel Robbins?

  Did he know it was coming or was it an accident?

• 57:12Speaker 01

  He knew it was coming. It wasn't long. He got diagnosed with Burkitt's lymphoma in June, and by October, they said they couldn't treat him anymore. So it was fast, but it was, there was some awareness it was coming, even though the doctors never, they never said he was dying. They, they said they couldn't treat him anymore.

• 57:35Mel Robbins?

  Oh.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  And that, for somebody who was wishing, hoping with all hope that he would live, I did not hear that he was dying. I heard that they weren't going to treat him. My brain maybe, maybe made the jump, but my body, my spirit, my insides didn't want to hear it, didn't want to receive that.

• 57:54Mel Robbins?

  How old was he?

• 57:55Speaker 01

  He was forty-three.

• 57:57Mel Robbins?

  You write about his death in your beautiful book, Briefly Perfectly Human. Would you mind reading us that passage on, it's on page fifty-three?

• 58:10Speaker 01

  Oh, I'll do my best. Okay. As I'd done countless times before, I took my position at Peter's feet, which I'd regularly massaged with moisture-rich lotion to prevent them from cracking. The day they were cold and yellowing due to jaundice. I since learned that in some faith traditions, the soul disengages from the feet first to leave through the head. I held them quietly and tearfully, thanking him for walking the earth and walking into my life, and wished him well for wherever he was walking to next.

• 58:53Speaker 01

  Shortly before four AM, four days before his forty-fourth birthday,

• 59:00Speaker 01

  my brother-in-law, Peter St. John breathed his last.

• 59:04Mel Robbins?

  I feel like I'm right there in the hospital with you.

• 59:07Speaker 01

  Every single time, every single time. The grief doesn't go anywhere. I just learn how to live with it, you know, I learn.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  I think I learned how my grief wants to express. Gratefully, I get to talk about Peter all the time because of my work. Because I learned how to do love through Peter. Many people don't get that chance. You know, people stop asking about their person after a while. But I still get to talk about Peter. I still get to remember him. He feels very present for me, even though I haven't heard his voice in almost 11 years. And, you know, he hasn't seen my niece as a teenager. He hasn't seen me finally get it together.

• 59:51Mel Robbins?

  I think he'd be pretty proud of you.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I hope so. I hope so.

• 59:56Mel Robbins?

  What do you want the person listening to know about Peter and how he lived his life and how it impacted you?

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  It sounds wild to say, because when I look at it at a distance, it kind of pinches in a way. But Peter's death did serve as a gift to me. Of course, I want him to live. And with the reality that he died, it ultimately created a lot of opportunity for me. And that's something that we don't think of. You know, I don't want to, I don't mean to bright side it. That's not what I'm doing. But rather, I'm seeing what was created from his death, which was, for me, a real purpose. Like, I learned how to do love. I got really angry about how society does death. I wanted to do something about it. I created a company to do it. I teach people how to be death doulas. I'm still angry about how he died.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  I still wish that he got better. But that has now turned into fuel to support other people. Grief allows a new version of ourselves to emerge. It allows whatever version is being held and boxed in to come to light. It allows a ceiling of self to grow. Because when it's all cracked open, who wants to come out? All bets were off. I didn't even wear pants for a while. I was like, forget it. I don't have to. I'm grieving. I'm sad. Everybody's just gonna have to deal. And what I saw was a me that was really on purpose, who was really on fire, who was clear about what she wanted to create in the world. And I used my grief to support me in doing it.

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  That grief became, it became a way through. It still is a way through. Grief can be useful. It's hard, but it can be useful.

• 1:01:44Mel Robbins?

  You talked earlier about how all death is also a birth, and it sounds like Peter's death was a birth for you. Like, a new version of you was born in that moment.

• 1:01:56Speaker 01

  I met myself in my grief, and I think we often do if we're willing. You know, I saw really who I was and what I wanted and how I showed up in the world.

• 1:02:05Mel Robbins?

  What did you see?

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  I saw fire. I saw anger. My grief expressed a lot through anger, which is something that I typically had not allowed myself to feel much. You know, I think a lot of women are socialized to sadness first before anger. I also, as a Black woman in America, being angry is something, is a trope. And so I did not often allow myself anger. I just would defer to sadness. But I was pissed. I was hot about the medical care system, about how we care for our dying, about our lack of support for it, and I wanted to fix it. Now, anger can move mountains if we'll let it. You know, I'm sitting here right now because I got really pissed.

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  I'm still a little mad.

• 1:02:50Mel Robbins?

  It's all right. You're using it to make incredible change.

• 1:02:54Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:02:55Mel Robbins?

  And those feelings are valid?

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, that's the thing about grief, too. I think when we're allowing ourselves to just be in the experience of it, we see how nuanced it is and that we have a lot of emotion, and all of them are fine. They're all totally okay. You know, grief allows us, finally, to express all the things that perhaps we keep repressed because we're too busy trying to pay the bills and do our taxes. But grief allows us to be in a deep emotional space.

• 1:03:23Mel Robbins?

  You know what else I love that you touched on is the fact that when somebody dies, it's almost as if we anoint them with sainthood.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  Come on.

• 1:03:32Mel Robbins?

  And you read these, these eulogy, not the eulogies, you read these things that people put in the paper, and you're thinking... Did this person also walk on water?

• 1:03:42Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:03:43Mel Robbins?

  Like, what, what, what? And you see at funerals, sort of that quiet murmuring of, you know, and now we're just talking about all the good stuff. And there's no acknowledgement that there are real difficulties in the relationship that you may have had with this person. Is it important to kind of acknowledge that for yourself? So that, you know, as part of the process of grieving, like grieving even who that person wasn't for you?

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  Absolutely. It's a necessary component of grieving is being honest with ourselves about the nature of the relationship, what we got from it, things that still stuck and rubbed us because those don't change just because a person died. Not everybody lit up a room when they walked in, but virtually every obituary says she lit up the room. Maybe she was meek and hung out in the corner. That would be fine, too. That's how her humanhood was expressed.

• 1:04:35Mel Robbins?

  Right.

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  And people experienced her that way. And we don't give them an opportunity to be with their grief if we don't tell the truth about somebody. We need to tell the truth. I want people to tell the whole truth about who I am. I can also be a massive pain in the ass. Yeah.

• 1:04:52Mel Robbins?

  What does it mean to leave a legacy? And how do you advise people to think about creating yours or what you want yours to be?

• 1:05:03Speaker 01

  Our legacy is often sometimes rooted in who we are. I think people often mistake a legacy with the money or our accomplishments, but rather it's more about who you are as you're accomplishing those things. I noticed that at funerals, people do talk a little bit about, you know, how many lives a person changed, but they also talk about the fact that they changed lives because they were kind or generous or thoughtful. Legacies aren't optional. You know, we're all leaving one every single day. Even people that we think of as those that maybe don't hold a big position in society are still leaving a huge legacy. I tell you another quick story.

• 1:05:41Mel Robbins?

  Absolutely.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  There was a human that came to me for some support because she wanted to plan a funeral for somebody who did not have much of a family, at least that she knew. He was unhoused. He lived on the corner where she got her coffee every morning on her way to work. And so she would talk to him sometimes and got to know him a little bit over the years. One day she noticed he wasn't there anymore and searched. Up and down for him and found out that he had died and she wanted to honor his life. What happened was we planned what we thought was going to be a small ceremony and about 400 people showed up because of the impact that he had had on her life, because of how she talked about him, because of the gems he dropped on her, because he was a touch point

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  for her every single day. In her grief, or in her sadness, or in her anger, or in her joy, she would talk to him when she got her morning coffee. That was his legacy. Somebody who otherwise folks would just disregard, you know, pretend that their life had no meaning or purpose. He touched that many people through her. That's a legacy.

• 1:06:47Mel Robbins?

  Yes, it is. Elua, what are your parting words?

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  In my life?

• 1:06:57Mel Robbins?

  In this conversation, in your life? What are the last words you want to say?

• 1:07:01Speaker 01

  I hope the last words I say are thank you. I hope they are thank you, because this life is an utter gift. I am so grateful that I get to look you in the eye and feel connected just by virtue of my sight, that I get to feel joy and cold and crunchy french fries. I'm also grateful that I get to feel anger and grief. I'm grateful that I get to live in my purpose and teach death du la's and spread the message as far as it will go. I'm grateful for cake. I'm grateful for exercise. I'm grateful for feeling my heartbeat. I'm grateful for this air that I breathe. I'm grateful for my life. I want my last words

• 1:07:46Speaker 01

  to be thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. To all the beings that journeyed with me, to you, to everybody that I met today, to the folks that'll fly the plane, just thank you. Yeah.

• 1:08:04Mel Robbins?

  We'll all be clapping, that's for sure. I got the memo. And I'll see you on that glitter wave.

• 1:08:12Speaker 01

  I hope so.

• 1:08:14Mel Robbins?

  I believe so.

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  In gratitude.

• 1:08:17Mel Robbins?

  In gratitude. You are a remarkable human being. I am so deeply moved and changed by our conversation today.

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  I'm glad to hear that.

• 1:08:28Mel Robbins?

  And I also want to just take a moment and thank you for being here with us, for staying all the way until the end. And in case no one else tells you, I wanted to be sure to tell you that I love you, I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to create a better life. And what an extraordinary gift to use your death as a way to help you make the most of the time that you have left, so that when you are on your deathbed, you are saying, "Thank you, thank you, thank you for this life, too." I'll be waiting for you in the next episode.

• 1:09:08Mel Robbins?

  Wow, you're so good.

• 1:09:12Mel Robbins?

  You are so good.

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  I will take that. I think I'm just doing, you know, the things that come up for me.

• 1:09:19Mel Robbins?

  Oh, my gosh, I thank you for the gift of you. Thank you. Great. Oh, you are so amazing. Well, I know who I'm hiring for that deal.

• 1:09:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:09:30Mel Robbins?

  Oh, my gosh, I would feel so safe with you. Great. Yes, I will, I would feel so safe. Oh, I have like a little thing where Tracy can talk to me in this thing next to you. So we have an iPad sitting up there that reflects, just so that if she has to be like, you know.

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, very cool.

• 1:09:47Mel Robbins?

  Stay right here, you're doing great. Oh, my God, oh, my God, am I getting marbles? It's like, oh, my God, oh, my God, so good, so good. I'm just in awe.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, well, I'll take it.

• 1:09:59Mel Robbins?

  Take it.

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:10:00Mel Robbins?

  You're welcome.

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  Thank you, although I didn't do anything for it.

• 1:10:03Mel Robbins?

  You showed up.

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

  My nature.

• 1:10:05Mel Robbins?

  You woke up today.

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  I did wake up today.

• 1:10:14Mel Robbins?

  Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  Stitcher.