What would a meaningful life look like for you?
According to Death Doula Alua Arthur, conversations about death can be the most enriching conversations we have.
It’s not about accepting death, or avoiding grief - it’s about building a relationship with yourself and others that doesn’t hold anything back. Why should you listen? Yeah, because you’re mortal and one day you'll die, but more importantly: because one day, hopefully in the far off future, you’ll look back at this life you’ve lived. Conversations about death can make that life so much better.
Alua’s new book is Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real about the End. For more info visit aluaarthur.com
In this episode we cover:
We're re-releasing some of our favorite episodes from the first 3 seasons. This episode was originally recorded in 2023.
Looking for a creative exploration of grief? Check out the best selling Writing Your Grief course here.
Related episodes:
Trauma Surgeon Dr. Red Hoffman on the surprisingly broad umbrella of palliative care
About our guest:
Alua Arthur is a Death Doula, recovering attorney, and the founder of Going with Grace, a Death Doula training and end-of-life planning organization that exists to support people as they answer the question, “What must I do to be at peace with myself so that I may live presently and die gracefully?” She’s been featured in the LA Times, Vogue, Refinery29, The Doctors, and alongside Chris Hemsworth on the docuseries, Limitless. Find her at aluaarthur.com and on Instagram at @going_with_grace
About Megan:
Psychotherapist Megan Devine is one of today’s leading experts on grief, from life-altering losses to the everyday grief that we don’t call grief. Get the best-selling book on grief in over a decade, It’s Ok that You’re Not OK, wherever you get books. Find Megan @refugeingrief
Additional Resources:
Read Alua’s new book - Briefly Perfectly Human
Megan mentions this book - Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia
Want to talk with Megan directly? Join our patreon community for live monthly Q&A grief clinics: your questions, answered. Want to speak to her privately? Apply for a 1:1 grief consultation here.
Check out Megan’s best-selling books - It’s OK That You're Not OK and How to Carry What Can’t Be Fixed
Can we just be human?
Yeah? Like, what is wrong with just being human?
To have pain, to feel sorrow, to feel disappointed, to be insecure, feel disappointment, failure, Like, can we just be human?
This is it's okay that you're not okay and I'm your host, Megan Divine. So what would a meaningful life look like for you? According to death Doula Ailua Arthur, conversations about death can be the most enriching conversations we have. You're curious about how facing death plays a role in a good life, not actually sure what a death doula is, and should you live each day like it's your last?
Like?
There are a lot of questions answered in this week's show, all coming up right after this first break before we get started. Two quick notes. One, this episode is an on poor performance. I'm on break working on a giant new project, So we're releasing a mix of our favorite episodes from the first three seasons of the show. Some of these conversations you might have missed in your original seasons, and some shows just truly deserve multiple listens so that you capture all of the goodness. Second note, While we cover a lot of emotional, relational territory and our time here together. This show is not a substitute for skilled support, for a license mental health provider, or for professional supervision related to your work. Take what you learn here, take your thoughts and your reflections out into your world, and talk about it. Hey, friends, So, Ailua Arthur and I have known of each other for a lot of years. We've got a lot of friends in common. Our professional spheres overlap a lot, but I never actually got a chance to talk to her until this episode. Ailua Arthur is a death doula. She facilitates conversations about more mortality for people not planning to die anytime soon, and she helps people at the end of their lives, supporting them and their families through death. If you don't know her work, you might think that all of this stuff she does, these conversations about end of life and facing your mortality, it sounds kind of morbid. But here's the thing. People who directly engage with the reality of life tend to be immensely joyful, not morbid. Ailua is this expansive, generous, joyful person, and she just happens to talk a lot about death. It's a serious subject, obviously, but it's rooted in this truly embodied joy. That's like a conversational sweet spot that's hard to nail, but Ailua does it over and over and over again in this conversation that we're having here today and out in the world now. In this episode, we get into ideas of what makes a meaningful life, like what a meaningful life even means. We discuss why, with all of her work on normalizing conversations about death and getting friendly with your own mortality, why Alua may still leave this particular life kicking and screaming and clawing at the door. Alua also confirms this age old annoyance. I have a little pettiness on my part, but this like the squishing together of end of life like death and mortality and preparation, the squishing together of that stuff as a subject and grief as a subject like death and grief are not the same things, but they often get treated the same. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you will after you listen to the show. So what does a meaningful life look like for you? And how can exploring mortality help you figure that out? Also, why is the relationship between end of life and grief? More like an open marriage than a monogamous marriage. All of that and a whole lot of joy, starting right now with the excellent Alua Arthur.
Aleena.
I am so glad to have you here with me today like this. I feel like this has been a long time coming for us, so welcome.
Thank you, Megan. I'm actually really really really happy to be here myself.
We love this and honestly, like us, being so excited about spending this time together is something that I want to get into in my second question, but my first question so that people know where we're starting, I introduced you in my introduction, but can you give people your definition of what a death doula is.
A death doula is somebody who does all of the non medical and holistic Karen support for the dying person, their circle of support, and their whole community through the death process. When people are healthy, we can help them complete comprehensive end of life plans when they know what it is that they're going to be dying of. We help people create the most ideal death for themselves under the circumstances. And then after a death, we help family members wrap up affairs of their loved ones life we just offer holistic death support.
I think that people on the outside of your profession and of mind profession, think that these are really depressing things to spend your time on, And all of the death and grief people I know are the most joyful people that I've ever met. Do you think that's true for you? Like, have you experienced that?
Absolutely true in my experience?
What is that?
Like?
What is it about those of us? Maybe it's just my sample size, but like, what is it about those of us who do these really goodbye intensive professions, these emotional landscapes that a lot of people try to avoid, Like, how are we happy?
That's a good question. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that we touch those emotional landscapes and we kind of ride them. I think we give ourselves permission to be in it all all the time, which means that we have access to joy I think, and access to like the full spectrum of life that makes it so much richer and fuller and more exciting and twinkly because we can also always see and we can be with the difficulty too.
I think there's something in the energy it takes to hold back the truth s that's juicy. Yeah, I know that, Ailiu, and I know what I'm talking about when I say that, But diving into conversations that a lot of people try to avoid, Like, that's a struggle to not tell the truth about these things.
Absolutely, it's really hard to keep the truth hidden and also just to keep the truth of where I am and how I'm feeling inside, certainly at the bedside or as death is approaching. I've certainly had families who have been like, don't tell the dying person that they're dying, And I'm like, you don't.
Think that they know?
I get in there, and then the dying person's like, don't tell my family I'm dying. I'm like, y'all need to start talking to each other, because it's going to be so much more complete and easy once you do, well, easier once they do. I think that extrapolating from the bedside into our lives itself, Like I have a hard time not letting I love you jump out of my throat when it's ready to do so, or I'm hungry, or I'm tired, or I'm out of social energy and I have to go back home. All these things just come out, which I think gives me an opportunity to be with the truth of who I am at that moment.
This is really what this work is. I mean, you have one of your signature taglines is thank you for giving me a moment of your life to talk about the end of yours. I might have just butchered that close enough, close enough, okay, but I love what you just said there about the conversations that we have at the bedside when somebody is dying, or when we know they're dying, or we're talking about our own mortality. Like those skill sets transfer to the rest of life. One of the things that bugs me about grief work is we think it's silo right, these are only conversations you need to have when something terrible has happened. One of the things that I love about you is that you don't silo this stuff. On PBS News Hour, you said, I really struggle with why we're not talking about death culturally and societally, because it seems to me the most enriching conversation we could have.
Death touches every aspect of society, every aspect of our lives.
It's present with us all the time.
It's not just when somebody's body is starting to not respond to treatment anymore. It's everywhere regularly, and when I can see, I think when I can see death in the living, it.
Amplifies the living. You know.
When I can see that my body one day won't have access to delicious food, I want to eat the delicious food right now. When I'm aware that because of my death, I won't be able to do my work anymore, well, it drives me to want to do the work as completely as I can right now. This is not in favor of hustle culture, but about being true with what it is that I want to put out and what I want to do. Death constantly highlights my life over and over and over again, and when I let it, it magnifies it.
I think it gives us an opportunity to do kind of a constant value assessment. Yes, of what am I doing with this life?
Yes, who I want to be, how I want to spend my time? What of me I'll leave behind. I'm constantly checking in with that while I'm living, because one day I'll die, and I want to make sure that while I'm here, I'm doing me as best as I can. I'm the only one who's going to have to contend with all the choices I made at my deathbed nobody else.
This reminds me of so when my partner died accidental drowning of a thirty nine year old, perfectly healthy male, like that shook our community up, and I remember one of our friends coming to me and saying like, this is messed up. Like it's made me start thinking, like, you're supposed to live every day like it's your last. But honestly, that's a lot of pressure. Yeah, So when you start saying like keeping death in mind, thinking about this makes you really conscious of the choices that you make in your life. Is there a lot of pressure there to be like I can't have any days where I wish I had made different choices, Like is there pressure for you in that?
No, it actually is very freeing.
I think it's a stress reliever that I'm going to die, Like it makes the thing not seem so serious and so important anymore, And it gives me permission to take a nap, you know.
I think one read on using death as.
A motivator is go go go do doo doo, get everything right now when you can. But for me, it's also what type of life do I want to lead? And I want to lead a rested life. I want to take naps. I want to take my time, take a walk, lay in a hammock. I don't want to be producing and going and getting everything all the time. For me, it's not about gathering all the experiences. It's about experiencing the magic with what my life is right now.
I love that distinction. I hadn't thought of that, that this idea that you're supposed to live each day like it's your last, is a product of hustle culture. Like what can I produce? What can I optimize? What can I make the best of because tomorrow I might die?
Yeah, go get it, go do it, Go experience everything right now. And it's like, also slow down and take a deep breath in and marvel at the wonder it is that we bring in oxygen and we spin out carbon dioxide.
What it's under magic?
It totally is, And that is right.
That's so exciting to me.
I heard recently or I read it someplace, and I wish I could remember who I read this from, because it really just rocked my socks. Rather than living each day like the last, about living each day like the first.
Ooh, right, that's fantastic. Yeah, that brings that, like that sense of wonder into things right back in the nineties, I mean, the book still exists. Is called Pronoia is the antiitude of paranoia.
Right.
Pronoia is marveling at the precise wonder of the world. Right. The sun is the exact distance it needs to be to warm us without killing us. The chemical content of our air depending on where you live and how much pollution is happening. But like the chemical makeup of the air is exactly what our lungs need and our bodies need. Like that, that is wondrous. I love that live each day as if it was the first.
That's magic.
I love that. I use the phrase goodbye intensive professions without defining my terms here, but like, you spend so much time at the bedside at end of life, and also not at the bedside talking with people about their mortality, helping them explore what kind of life they want for themselves and what kind of death they want for themselves. You started out your sort of professional career as a lawyer, though, boh, yeah, I know it's a silly comparison between like what did the world look like as a lawyer versus what are the word world look like?
Now?
But because end of life is so in you and in your face and in your consciousness, Like, how has this work changed what you see in the world.
Well, this work is it's created a I want to say, a new filter, not the absence of the one, but a new filter, because there's always one. And when I was practicing law, I was working at Legal Aids, So I wasn't working in the big corporate you know, doing the whole big thing, but rather doing work that other people found very meaningful.
I did at the time.
I've always wanted to live a life with service, and so I was doing that on some capacity. But what has happened now is that I see the world I think, for more of its wonder and awe for us being here. I also think that this work allows me to use more parts of who I actually am naturally, and so it's just a better fit. May not have been death itself, but whatever work I went into had to have me be at my optimum, where I can be in wonder about humankind and I can ask all the questions I want and be super nosy and not have to fill out too many forms for anybody and be really sensitive and have it be okay, and be a little weird and have it be okay. I value my weirdness and my lack of bored and my curiosity about humans humankind.
So it sounds like, you know, doing this work almost lets you see this sounds so corny, but like, lets you see your correct place in the world, right, like that you see the world as a place that supports and encourages all of the parts of you. Yes, And it happens to be in a profession that a lot of people would run screaming from.
Absolutely, it just happens to be.
I think a lot of people mistake that my work is a thing that gives my life meaning. But in contrary, I think it's the way that the work in my life gives it meaning, you know what I mean? Like, I don't have meaning just because I do death work. But I think I have a creating meaning because I look at the world differently because I do death work.
Interesting, we're such a meaning making culture, right, Like, oh, you do such meaningful work. But what I just heard you say is different than that.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the meaning making out of the baseline.
Right, Meaning making as a baseline for life is not helpful.
No, it's so unfair, it's so hard. It makes people, I think, winners and losers somehow.
How so well.
Some people are like, oh my god, you work at so much meaning, Like I've won something.
You unlocked the secrets of life by doing death work. Yeah. My problem with meaning is that it is completely prescribed by our filters and our experiences, and we often like ascribe meaning to others. Yeah, and that's problematic for me. Like you know, oh you had you had a dream about this, it means this, Or you know, I saw a white feather on the ground and that means that your mom is nearby? Like hello, can you not tell me what my symbols mean to me?
Like?
Meaning is just I think meaning is that that desire to put an order on something amorphous and living.
Yeah, and try to make it make some sense. How can any of this make any sense? We're in a giant blue rock spitting through space. Yeah, none of it makes there's no sense. There's no sense to that. There's no sense to that.
If you're going to make meaning, make your own right, Like, what is it that that feels meaningful to me. And this goes back to what we were talking about with like do you live each day as as if as if it were your last or as if it was the first? Like what does a meaningful life look like for you? And I feel like that question of what does a meaningful life look like for you is a lot of what you do when you are doing workshops and guiding people who are not actively at end of life, but they're exploring their immortality. Does that feel accurate?
It is absolutely accurate.
Help people like zoom out and look at their lives and figure out their values and their priorities for themselves, you know, not the ones that we've been told or given, but what actually matters to me, and then support folks as they try to figure out how to help their lives match up as closely as possible, because it's not possible for most to do it exactly the way that they want. We have a bunch of responsibilities that must get taken care of, and then we have questions about privilege and access. But to the extent that we can, we could.
Hey, before we get back to this week's guest, I want to talk with you about exploring your losses through writing. There are lots of grief writing workshops out there with prompts like tell us about the funeral, that sort of thing. My thirty Day Writing your Grief course is not like that. The prompts are deeper, there, more nuanced. They're designed to get you into your heart and into your own actual story. Now, writing isn't going to cure anything, but it can help you hear your own voice, and that is incredibly powerful. You can read all about the Writing your Grief Course at Refuge in Grief dot Com backslash wyg. That is WYG for Writing your Grief. You can see a sample prompt from the course and get writing your own words in minutes. My thirty Day Writing your Grief Course is still one of the best things I've ever made for you. Come join more than ten thousand people who have taken the Writing your Grief Course Refuge in Grief dot Com backslash wyg, or you can find the link in the show notes. Do you think that exploring your own mortality will make dying suck less? No? Why not?
I don't think at a baseline rule. I used to romanticize it and think that it would. But you know, even with all this rob deathtalk I do, I might go kicking and screaming it might be my turn and.
Be like, oh, I'm not ready.
I'm doing my best right now to be in my life so that when that time comes, I can be like, all right, I did it, but who knows?
Who knows?
I think I have value for today, It's not necessarily value for the future.
You know, Matt and I talked a lot about death and end of life. He was very much into meditation and all of these things and awareness and the ephemeral nature of life. And I remember at his funeral people actually said he was so friendly with death. I know he went gently, and I was like, pitch, I was there, he did not go gently. Like, being friendly with death does not mean you're psyched about it. I think this gets really confusing. Like you and I, you definitely work in the death positivity space, and I'm sort of a death positive field adjacent here. But being friendly was with death does not protect you from grief.
No.
I think being friendly with death means that you can acknowledge grief. Perhaps I can identify when I'm grieving when maybe previously I wasn't capable of. But I'm gonna have a hard time when my parents die, when my turn is coming, when my partner's turn is coming, when anybody in my life's turn is coming.
Oh yeah, shit, it's gonna stop. And I think that's okay.
Yeah, I think that's the nature of this work, right, Like we don't say all of these goodbyes to make goodbyes not hurt us. Like we say all of these goodbyes so that we're okay with being hurt. Yeah, Like we know how to care for ourselves and care for each other and identify it and know that saying goodbye is fucking painful.
Yeah, that's really hard.
Something else I've been really playing with lately is along the same vein, where how much of my practice, of any practice I do for today as opposed to putting in the bank for later. And I'm really trying to stick with the practices that I do because they have value right now now. First of all, I don't know that I have a later and next, Like, why not for today? You know this is what I have right now. Let me be with it right now, as opposed to meditate because it's going to give me something, or think about my death because I'm going to get something. Yes, I want to prepare for my death now because it will eventually make it a little easier on my loved ones. But I also get value out of doing it right now.
I love that you brought up that sort of transactional nature, like we do this stuff so that something in the future doesn't harm us. And really like I feel like you and I are like joining hands and saying no, like let the world hurt you, yeah, because it is hurting you, And can we make space for that and learn how to care for ourselves and care for each other and come together in the pain of this world instead of pretending that there's something we can do to protect ourselves from.
It, yeah, or like things that we should do to clar ourselves out of it.
But if we could just be with it.
You know, a big part of my work I think there's a misconception death doulah's jobs or to help people get over their fear of death. I might here trying to be like, oh, you know, here's all the things that you can do steps one through fifteen to get over your fear of death, or saw them happen like that and next that doesn't do anybody, any favors, you know, like, I'm just here to be with people where they are, to meet them in the trench, to sit alongside with them, to bear witness to their pain, to acknowledge what is that they're going through. And if they want to start working things to move on or get through, then I'll be there with them.
But what is really moving on when it comes to grief.
Yeah, I think that's a really good question. I'm going to bring up a small sore spot for me, not with your work, but with end of life work in general. End of life usually gets lumped in with grief, like in training programs, in counseling school and like all of these things, you get like one in the course of an entire master's program in counseling or in social work, you get like one day or maybe a half a day in death and dying, which is not enough time, and they lump grief in with that. And if you go to a physical bookstore, you will support your independent bookstores, people go visit them. But if you go to a bookstore, you'll see that the grief books are in the very tiny death and dying section. And you go to an end of life conference, and there's like one speaker on grief, and the speaker on grief is talking about getting your memorial rituals correct. Right, like I rant on this stuff that like, death and grief are not the same thing. They are cousins, they are not the same thing. I love the way that you talk about grief because, like I mean, am I just like am I splitting hairs here? I guess this is my question. End of life and grief are related. But I feel like people think that if they just get the funeral correct, if they just get their rituals correct, if they just make the bright art project very soon after their person dies, then again we come back to that transactional thing of if I get my rituals correct, this won't hurt. Have you seen that? Am I the only one seeing that? Is that just my personal pusiness? What's happening here?
I see it all the time.
In our end of life training course, there is a module on grief, and the languaging about it is the two are inexorably linked. They're married as far as I see it, however, it's an open marriage. Everything is Paul, everything is Paul, everything is queer, and grief gets to go and play with all the other partners it wants to. Now, death is pretty tied to grief, I think, but there's so many other ways that grief shows up. And I find that people do often try to fast track the grief after death in an effort to try to get over and move on or something of the sort, but also don't take time to think about the full spectrum of the grieving that they're doing, all the different things that they're grieving in the process. And I love being able to highlight that and call attention to it. You know, so many things died when somebody dies, and the grief shows up in so many ways, and let's like acknowledge the loss of the sexual relationship, all of it.
Yeah, all of it. You've said that an element of the grieving process is the reidentification of self. Yeah, what do you mean by that?
I'm going to take it away from death for a second to do it make it land a little bit easier. But I have been an avid runner for most of my adult life, and a few years back my knees started really hurting, and I'd have the pin in the middle of the night and would hurts so bad and I'd be aching afterward, and I was like, God, I got to stop doing this, you know, I have to stop doing this. I have been grieving it ever since. And the reidentification is, am I still a runner if I'm not running? Because I've identified myself as a runner for so long. So I have to come up with a new definition and find a new way to identify myself out there in the world.
And it's painful.
And every time I think we go through a shift in identity, there's a grief that's occurring, Like when we go from maiden to mother, even though we think of it as a happy thing out there in the world, but holy shit, there's a lot of grief in that we go from single to engaged.
Massive grief.
Massive grief in that every time that we have to think of ourselves differently out there in the world, we're leaving something behind. It may not look like a loss, but there is a loss occurring, even if we're moving forward into something beautiful.
Yes, I've been talking about this so much lately. I did a lecture a couple weeks ago about the everyday grief that we don't call grief, and in my sort of list of things that we can grieve. I made what I thought was just like a throwaway statement. I said, the grief of getting what you've always wanted, right, And it was just like in my list of things. And then like there's time at the end for Q and A and that we're going through the Q and A and people are like, what do you mean the grief of getting what you've always wanted? And you just described it so perfectly and so beautifully, Like with every yes, there's a noah, and with every no there is grief. Just in the same way that our deaths are always is walking beside us and inside us. Grief is always walking beside us and inside us. And that is not wrong. Yeah, all of this work, like all of this work is about like can we just see and acknowledge the fullness of all of this life?
Yeah? Can we just be human? Yeah?
Like what is wrong with just being human?
To have pain, to feel sorrow, to feel disappointed, to be insecure, feel disappointment, failure, Like, can we just be human?
Yeah?
You know, the full spectrum, not just like the happy, giddy and getting everything I want. My body's banking, but I have cellulite on my arms and I'm still dealing with internal life fatphobia, human too, like the full spectrum of it.
Yeah, showing up for that and learning the skills that we need for that. People ask me, like, how do you survive grief? And I'm like, you survive grief by building communities, building a community with yourself and community with others that allows you to feel exactly how you feel and feel seen and supported in it. Like, that's how you survive grief. And how do we practice that stuff? How do we build that stuff? We do it by saying exactly what you just said, like, can you be fully human to yourself in your day to day life? Can you be fully human with the people you love and that you choose around you? Like, we build this stuff every single day. It's not break this box in case of emergency, right, it is do this for today, for right now, for the body and the being you are in this life, and in case you need it later.
Yeah.
Absolutely, And I think that some of that being with that consistently is what turns out to be a practice that can support at the end of light. Yeah, because I'm doing it daily. It's like a well worn groove in my body and my heart. And if when I get to the end of my life, if I am having a hard time with what's going on, if I've practiced plenty before I get there, then maybe I can also say, hey, that's hurts, or hey, I'm really uncomfortable, or I'm scared, or I don't want to right now or whatever, and I'm just not fighting against it anymore because I've given myself permission.
Yeah, and you're not trying to learn a new relational skill. Yes, in a moment when you're right now needs your attention, honey.
And there's so much to be doing at the end of life, let alone be also trying to figure out how to give myself permission to feel things.
Who yeah, yeah, that's like, don't do that to yourself. And also like trying to learn the communication skills you need to advocate for yourself, to say what you need to ask, the card questions, like all of that stuff. It gets infinitely easier if those communications, if those kinds of talks aren't.
New for you, absolutely, Yeah.
Like diving into goodbyes is a beautiful, beautiful thing. I feel like we could talk for nineteen thousand hours, and I hope that we get to do that more. But I want to make sure that we have time to ask you the question that I ask everybody. You spend so much of your time inside things that a lot of people work very hard to avoid. We already know that this work is full of joy, because it is. But I'm also really curious about hope. You spend so much time saying goodbye, so knowing what you know and living what you've lived and what you live. What does hope look like for you?
It feels like I'm going to get disappointed.
I want to be as present with today and what I've got as possible. When I am hoping for something, when I'm reaching out there for something else, what I find is that I'm living out of relationship with what is because I want different or better. And when I can just be with what is, that's a far more comfortable, well, it's a far more present place to be. It might be harder, but it's a for me. It's a better place to be than reaching for something that might not be, because then the pain that comes along with it. I think hope at the end of life can be a really dangerous game. People hope for a cure, they hope for a miracle, They hope to get better. When they don't, then there's a big let down as opposed to hoping you make it to see your grandson graduate from high school, you know, keeping the hope realistic.
For lack of a better way to put.
It, so, hope often leads to disappointment and sadness and supporting folks as they think through what they hope for and reconcile what they actually got is challenging, but it's a big part of the work that we're doing.
I think hope is so complicated, honey, it's so complicated, Like it shows up so clearly at end of life with like, Okay, we don't have time to get into this one and bring it up and leave it here anyway. Is like when you are facing a terminal diagnosis and you want to not allow quote unquote failure, allowed death to be a possibility because you want to fight, right like that? For some people, is hope like that machinery that drives let me see if I can fight for myself. Right like that, there's hope in that. I've also seen a lot of people miss the territory of end of life because they are holding on to a hope that it gets better. Yeah right, I hope that I am going to have like a last minute it's miracle, miracle. I feel like hope in that instance can really rob you of something beautiful.
I agree one hundred percent. I'll just tell you a very quick story. I think it's actually too funny. My sister, my older sisters with Saint John, my brother in law, Peter, Saint John, and getting close to the end of his life. They had a lot of hope, a lot of hope that he would get better, and that didn't happen. He died and at some point we were sitting there is not long after the audacity of hope came out and she said, you know what, I'm going to write a book and I'm going to call it the Fucacity of Hope. That's not what a book will eventually called, but that would have been a good one, the fcacity of.
Hope, because it fuck them up.
Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I think that's a great subtitle, or like the secret title, the secret title for a book that's also good marketing. This book has a secret title, Join this club to find out what it is.
All right?
It is so fitting that we end this conversation about end of life and somewhat difficult topics cracking up because this is who we are and this is how we show up. I am so glad that we finally got a chance to meet and spend time together, and I hope it is the first of many. And I am so glad that you are here in this world me too, Megan. I'm going to link to your website and your Insta and all of those things in the show notes. But is there anything else that you want people to know or where they should find you or where they should not find you because you are out in a hammock somewhere having a beautiful moment.
Yeah, the website's a great place to find me and us, I'll say us, because I'm not pushing this thing by myself, but I do plan to be in a hammock off the grid.
My phones can be inside the house, so good luck.
But they can reach your team at the website, which's not leaving y'all alone at end of life. That will never ever happen. All right, everybody, stay tuned. I will be back with your questions to carry with you right after this break. Each week I leave you with some questions to carry with you until we meet again. This conversation was so much fun. Before we started recording the actual episode, Alu and I spent like over half an hour just hanging out talking about writing and work and the work around the actual work that we do, like the mechanics of doing the public facing work that we both do. At one point, aluis said, I just want to talk about death. You know, I don't don't want to live my life dealing with HR issues and tech platforms. And I felt so seen when we were talking about that stuff, the frustration, the fiddly bits that get in the way of the work that we really love to do. So from the episode itself, I loved the perspective Alua shared around meaning that her life doesn't have meaning because she does meaningful work. It has meaning or meaning is constantly created by what she takes from her work back out into the world. Right Like, one way of looking at a meaningful life is defined by your labor, your profession, your work. Another way to look at it is to center the fullness of your life and find meaning there. And there's a nuance and a subtlety there that I really really like. I am wondering more about it in my own life and I'm carrying it with me. So how about you? What's stuck with you from this conversation. Everyone's going to take something different from the show, but I do hope you've found something to hold on to. If you want to tell me how today's show felt for you, or you have thoughts on what we covered, let me know. Tag at Refuge and Grief on all social platforms so I can hear how this conversation affected you. You can follow the show at It's Okay Pod on TikTok and Refuge and Grief everywhere else. To see video clips from the show, use the hashtag It's Okay pod on all the platforms, so not only I can find you and my team can find you, but other people can too. Community building is important. None of us are entirely okay, and it's time we started talking about that together. It's okay that you're not okay. You're in good company. That's it for this week. Friends, Remember to subscribe to the show, share it with your friends, and leave a review. Reviews are super important. They make the show easier to find, It makes the show show up in search results a lot easier, and it also makes me happy to read them. I love to read your reviews. So wherever you find your podcast, leave a review, subscribe and share it with everyone you know want more on these topics. Look, grief is everywhere. As my dad says, daily life is full of everyday grief that we don't call grief. Learning how to talk about all that without cliches or platitudes or simplistic dismissive statements is an important skill for everyone. Whether you're trying to support a friend going through a hard time, or you work in the helping professions, get help to have those conversations with training's professional resources and my best selling book, It's Okay that You're Not Okay at Megandivine dot Co. It's Okay that You're Not Okay. The podcast is written and produced by me Megan Divine. Executive producer is Amy Brown, co produced by Elizabeth Fozzio, with logistical and social media support from Micah, Post production and editing by Houston Tilly. Music provided by wave Crush, and today's background noise provided by an overly caffeinated me wiggling around in a slightly squeaky chair