Learn how The Death Deck helps people have important and necessary conversations about death and dying.

My guests today are the co-creators of The Death Deck, a card game to help inspire conversations about death, dying and grief. Lisa Pahl LCSW is a Hospice Social Worker and ER Crisis Interventionist. Lori LoCicero is a writer and entrepreneur and runs a website to help others travel their paths through difficulty. Together they will share why they decided to create The Death Deck, how it can be used, and why conversations about death matter. Learn more about The Death Deck at the website:

www.thedeathdeck.com

Watch on YouTube

Listen here:

• What The Death Deck offers and how it helps inspire conversations about death
• Why it’s important to talk about death, dying and grief
• How Lori feels she and her husband would have benefitted from talking about these issues before he became ill
• New version (The EOL Deck) coming soon to help people who are facing terminal illness or at the end of life
• Creative ideas for using The Death Deck in various situations

• Previous interview with Lisa and Lori: Episode 204

• Leave me a message by email: [email protected], Twitter, Facebook or Instagram
• Support your local bookstore by buying my books on Bookshop and Indiebound: 7 Lessons for Living from the Dying and The Journey from Ego to Soul
• Subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Stitcher Radio
• Check out the Series I’ve recorded in the past here
• Join the team at Patreon.com/eolu and receive free gifts like the “Mind if we talk about death?” mini-poster or Love Your Life sticker or coffee mug. PLUS get our regular bonuses: the monthly EOL News Update, occasional movie reviews from 2 Doctors and a Movie, and automatic access to A Year of Reading Dangerously!

Buy me a coffee

Donate on Paypal

If you enjoy this content please share it with others and consider leaving a review on iTunes. Thanks again to all supporters on my page at Patreon.com/eolu, and to all who have made donations through Paypal or Buy Me a Coffee! Your contributions make all the difference.

Learn about some educational webinars to help unique groups of people learn about grief and also why we need to pay attention to grief after all types of loss.

My guest Lindsey Whissel Fenton is a senior producer and director at WPSU, the PBS/NPR affiliate station in Central Pennsylvania. She produced, directed, and wrote the documentary Speaking Grief, which we discussed in our previous interview. Today Lindsey shares how Speaking Grief continues to educate about grief in new sectors and also talks personally about her own recent losses. Learn more at these websites:

www.lindseywhisselfenton.com

www.speakinggrief.org

Watch on YouTube

Listen here:

• How Speaking Grief continues to help people “get better at grief”
• New webinars created by Speaking Grief initiative to reach service professionals, young grieving adults, neurodivergent grieving people, and underserved communities
• Why it’s important to educate people about grief in all walks of life and all occupations
• How to access the webinars at no charge
• Lindsey’s personal journey with grief
• Why grief over loss other than death is still grief
• What to say to a friend after divorce
• How pet death is often overlooked in our society though the grief it causes is significant
• How grief-aware people do a much better job of supporting others in their grief
• A new app to remind friends to check in with the grieving person they are supporting

• Learn more and sign up for Grief Coach ($10 discount for 1 year)
• Previous interview with Lindsey: Episode 263
• Follow the Nudge app for grief support reminders
• Speaking Grief Documentary
• Speaking Grief Webinars

• Leave me a message by email: [email protected], Twitter, Facebook or Instagram
• Support your local bookstore by buying my books on Bookshop and Indiebound: 7 Lessons for Living from the Dying and The Journey from Ego to Soul
• Subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Stitcher Radio
• Check out the Series I’ve recorded in the past here
• Join the team at Patreon.com/eolu and receive free gifts like the “Mind if we talk about death?” mini-poster or Love Your Life sticker or coffee mug. PLUS get our regular bonuses: the monthly EOL News Update, occasional movie reviews from 2 Doctors and a Movie, and automatic access to A Year of Reading Dangerously!

Buy me a coffee

Donate on Paypal

If you enjoy this content please share it with others and consider leaving a review on iTunes. Thanks again to all supporters on my page at Patreon.com/eolu, and to Don Sambol for making a donation through Paypal! Your contributions make all the difference.

Learn about the importance of having a directive to let others know about your spiritual wishes at the end of life, even if you are not religious or spiritual.

My guest Rhonda LoPresti is an end-of-life coach, home funeral guide and longtime practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism. She has created a Spiritual Care Directive for Buddhists and also a Universal Spiritual Care Directive to guide people in expressing their spiritual wishes at the end of life. Rhonda offers a 9-week course called “Writing Your Spiritual Care Directive–A Buddhist Plan for the Time of Dying” and she shares why it’s important to plan ahead for our spiritual care at life’s end. Learn more at her website:

www.peacefullyprepared.com

Watch on YouTube

Listen here:

• How Rhonda became interested in working as an end-of-life coach and home funeral guide
• What is a Spiritual Care Directive and why is it important
• Why people who do not consider themselves religious or spiritual still need to consider their spiritual wishes at the end of life
• Components of a spiritual care directive (for Buddhists and non-Buddhists)
• Why a spiritual advocate is helpful at the end of life
• Why some people may prefer not to be touched during the active dying process
• What a “goodbye ceremony” might consist of
• Why create a “spiritual will”

Planning is an act of kindness.”

• Volunteer Hospice of Clallam County Soul Care Speaker Series October 12th at Noon Pacific: Register here
• DDNBC Workshop with Barbara Karnes and Karen Wyatt October 13th at 6:30 pm Pacific: Register here
• Contact Rhonda for a free copy of the Spiritual Care Directive: [email protected]

• Leave me a message by email: [email protected], Twitter, Facebook or Instagram
• Support your local bookstore by buying my books on Bookshop and Indiebound: 7 Lessons for Living from the Dying and The Journey from Ego to Soul
• Subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Stitcher Radio
• Check out the Series I’ve recorded in the past here
• Join the team at Patreon.com/eolu and receive free gifts like the “Mind if we talk about death?” mini-poster or Love Your Life sticker or coffee mug. PLUS get our regular bonuses: the monthly EOL News Update, occasional movie reviews from 2 Doctors and a Movie, and automatic access to A Year of Reading Dangerously!

Buy me a coffee

Donate on Paypal

If you enjoy this content please share it with others and consider leaving a review on iTunes. Thanks again to all supporters on my page at Patreon.com/eolu, especially my newest patrons Laura Sue Cleminson, Nancy R. and Charlotte VanVactor, and to Athena Berens for making a donation through Paypal! Your contributions make all the difference.

Learn how a bioethicist found himself in a decision-making dilemma after his own father suffered a healthcare crisis and was on a ventilator in the ICU.

My guest Travis Rieder is a bioethicist and the director of the Master of Bioethics degree program at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. He is also an author and TED Talk speaker who recently penned an article titled “A Father’s Wish, A Bioethicist’s Dilemma.” He shares the dilemma he faced as a healthcare proxy for his father during a dire health crisis, which sheds light on the challenges of making the best decisions in the moment when the outcome is uncertain. Learn more about his writing at his website:

www.travisrieder.com

Watch on YouTube

Listen here:

• What bioethicists do and how Travis was attracted to this field
• What is “preventable catastrophe” and how that concept informs his work
• Bioethical challenges during the pandemic
• The personal dilemma he faced when his father was in the ICU
• The importance of clear communication during a health crisis
• Why knowing your loved one’s wishes may not always lead to easy decision-making
• How to make the best decisions even when information is limited
• How this experience changed what Travis teaches his bioethics students

• Volunteer Hospice of Clallam County Soul Care Speaker Series October 12th at Noon Pacific: Register here
• DDNBC Workshop with Barbara Karnes and Karen Wyatt October 13th at 6:30 pm Pacific: Register here
• Travis Rieder’s Article: A Father’s Wish, a Bioethicist’s Dilemma”

• Leave me a message by email: [email protected], Twitter, Facebook or Instagram
• Support your local bookstore by buying my books on Bookshop and Indiebound: 7 Lessons for Living from the Dying and The Journey from Ego to Soul
• Subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Stitcher Radio
• Check out the Series I’ve recorded in the past here
• Join the team at Patreon.com/eolu and receive free gifts like the “Mind if we talk about death?” mini-poster or Love Your Life sticker or coffee mug. PLUS get our regular bonuses: the monthly EOL News Update, occasional movie reviews from 2 Doctors and a Movie, and automatic access to A Year of Reading Dangerously!

Buy me a coffee

Donate on Paypal

If you enjoy this content please share it with others and consider leaving a review on iTunes. Thanks again to all supporters on my page at Patreon.com/eolu, and to Binta Sumareh for making a donation through Paypal! Your contributions make all the difference.

Learn about a free curriculum you can bring to your community to foster conversations about death.

My guest Rev. Karen Johnston is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister and the founder of Date with Death Club. Her own spiritual practice centers on “befriending death” and she shares how this led her to create the curriculum for Date with Death Club. We discuss how to work on befriending death and why education about death is essential. Karen tells us how to join the Date with Death Club and register to use her curriculum for free. Learn more at her website:

www.datewithdeathclub.com

Watch on YouTube

Listen here:

• Karen’s spiritual practice of befriending death
• The benefits of making friends with death and losing fear
• We must go through the fear of death rather than around it
• How Karen became inspired to create the Date with Death Club
• The subjects included in this secular curriculum and how they can be used in a variety of ways
• What are “third things” and why they help us explore our heartspace about difficult issues
• The importance of addressing our “eco-grief” right now
• Why Karen is offering it for others to use at no charge
• How to get involved and utilize the curriculum in your own community

• Link to register for Barbara Karnes RN and Karen Wyatt MD presenting online to DDNBC
• Death and Dying Class Instructor Training
• Step-by-Step Roadmap for End-of-Life Planning
• Date with Death Club monthly online
• Date with Death Club monthly in-person
• Lost Souls Public Memorial Project
• Poem: Feeding the Worms by Danusha Lameris
• Joanna Macy and her work
• Donate to Rev. Karen’s work (Scroll down to find Venmo QR code)

• Leave me a message by email: [email protected], Twitter, Facebook or Instagram
• Support your local bookstore by buying my books on Bookshop and Indiebound: 7 Lessons for Living from the Dying and The Journey from Ego to Soul
• Subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Stitcher Radio
• Check out the Series I’ve recorded in the past here
• Join the team at Patreon.com/eolu and receive free gifts like the “Mind if we talk about death?” mini-poster or Love Your Life sticker or coffee mug. PLUS get our regular bonuses: the monthly EOL News Update, occasional movie reviews from 2 Doctors and a Movie, and automatic access to A Year of Reading Dangerously!

Buy me a coffee

Donate on Paypal

If you enjoy this content please share it with others and consider leaving a review on iTunes. Thanks again to all supporters on my page at Patreon.com/eolu, especially my newest patron Bob McInnis, and to Dawn Greene for making a donation through Paypal! Your contributions make all the difference.

Learn useful tips for caring for a dying loved one at home and how to be better prepared for the challenge.

My special return guest is Barbara Karnes RN, hospice nurse, author, thought leader, and expert on end-of-life care. Barbara is going to be a recurring guest from now on, joining the podcast every other month to talk about hospice care. Today we discuss practical tools that caregivers need in order to care for themselves and their loved ones at the end of life. Barbara has written a new guide for caregivers called By Your Side that offers a tremendous number of resources and practical tips and she’ll share many of them with us today. Learn more about Barbara’s work at her website:

www.bkbooks.com

Get By Your Side here

Watch on YouTube

Listen here:

• The needs of caregivers are often overlooked by both hospital and hospice staffs
• What caregivers need to know about food intake for patients at the end of life
• The importance of keeping a written record of patient’s status throughout the day because it’s too hard to remember
• The impact of sleep deprivation and fatigue on caregivers including lack of patience and flexibility
• Why self-care for caregivers is essential and not selfish
• How to set boundaries with a patient and why they are necessary
• It’s not a failure to decide that home caregiving is too difficult
• Why understanding the dying process is important for caregivers
• How to find support in your community as a caregiver
• How care of patients with dementia differs from other hospice patients
• Basic information about pain management and symptom control

• Link to register for Barbara Karnes RN and Karen Wyatt MD presenting online to DDNBC
• Death and Dying Class Instructor Training
• Step-by-Step Roadmap for End-of-Life Planning

• Leave me a message by email: [email protected], Twitter, Facebook or Instagram
• Support your local bookstore by buying my books on Bookshop and Indiebound: 7 Lessons for Living from the Dying and The Journey from Ego to Soul
• Subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Stitcher Radio
• Check out the Series I’ve recorded in the past here
• Join the team at Patreon.com/eolu and receive free gifts like the “Mind if we talk about death?” mini-poster or Love Your Life sticker or coffee mug. PLUS get our regular bonuses: the monthly EOL News Update, occasional movie reviews from 2 Doctors and a Movie, and automatic access to A Year of Reading Dangerously!

Buy me a coffee

Donate on Paypal

If you enjoy this content please share it with others and consider leaving a review on iTunes. Thanks again to all supporters on my page at Patreon.com/eolu, especially my newest patron Donna Fleming, and to those who have bought me a coffee and made a donation through Paypal! Your contributions make all the difference.

Learn some ideas for how you might teach others in your community about death and dying and why you should.

In today’s solo episode I’ll share with you my thoughts on why death education is so essential in our society today. No matter what type of work you do in the end-of-life field (estate attorney, hospice staff, death doula, home funeral guide, green burial practitioner, bereavement counselor) you need to help educate your community about death, dying and grief if you want people to utilize your services. Right now we ALL need to become death educators in our own special way and I’ll talk about why that’s true and how you might get involved.

Watch on YouTube to see the slides

Listen here:

• We are living longer and developing complex diseases (like Alzheimer’s) with increasing incidence.
• Medical tech continues to advance rapidly allowing us to prolong life (even when patient’s don’t want that).
• Our society is divided over ethical and moral dilemmas around end-of-life issues like medical aid in dying and removal of life support.
• Being unprepared for death has a high financial cost (too much medical care and wasteful after-death care)
• There is also and emotional and spiritual cost to ignoring death.
• Where we need to be teaching about death, dying and grief:
  • The home – showing parents how to talk to their children about death
  • Schools – teaching high school and college students about death through classes, book clubs, discussion groups
  • Churches – clergy members need to know about EOL issues in order to better serve their congregations
  • Workplaces – employers and staff need to know how to deal with death and grief at work
  • Medical facilities – of course all medical personnel need much more education about death, grief, and how to deal with EOL decisions
  • Assisted living and nursing homes – staff also need to know how to handle grief, help residents with ACP, create sacred space for dying residents

• Death and Dying Class Instructor Training
• Step-by-Step Roadmap for End-of-Life Planning
• Episode 127: The Consequences of Ignoring Death
• Map of Memory Lane by Francesca Arnoldy

• Leave me a message by email: [email protected], Twitter, Facebook or Instagram
• Support your local bookstore by buying my books on Bookshop and Indiebound: 7 Lessons for Living from the Dying and The Journey from Ego to Soul
• Subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Stitcher Radio
• Check out the Series I’ve recorded in the past here
• Join the team at Patreon.com/eolu and receive free gifts like the “Mind if we talk about death?” mini-poster or Love Your Life sticker or coffee mug. PLUS get our regular bonuses: the monthly EOL News Update, occasional movie reviews from 2 Doctors and a Movie, and automatic access to A Year of Reading Dangerously!

Buy me a coffee

Donate on Paypal

If you enjoy this content please share it with others and consider leaving a review on iTunes. Thanks again to all supporters on my page at Patreon.com/eolu, especially my newest patron Francesca Arnoldy, and to those who have bought me a coffee and made a donation through Paypal! Your contributions make all the difference.

Learn how this man’s experience with grief led him to start a Death Café in Japan and become a death doula and Willow EOL educator.

My guest Masatoshi Shoji is a licensed acupuncturist, health communicator and medical translator in Sendai Japan. He started Death Café Sendai in his hometown in 2015 and since then has trained as a certified grief counselor, death doula and Willow EOL Educator. He shares why he first became interested in working with grief and death and his experiences with Death Café in Japan.

Visit his website

Watch on YouTube

Listen here:

• Masatoshi’s experience with grief as a young widower in Japan
• What inspired him to create Death Café Sendai
• How he organized and promoted his first Death Café
• Resources that Masatoshi is using to further his own death education
• The gradual growth in popularity of Death Café in Japan
• The obstacles to talking about death in his community, including the use of implicit language
• How Masatoshi felt socially marginalized as a young widower in his community
• His goal to bring acupuncture to hospice and end-of-life care

• Death & Dying Class Instructor Training
• Widowed and Young (WAY) group in UK
• Movie: Departures
• Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation Education Series
• DeathCafe.com

• Leave me a message by email: [email protected], Twitter, Facebook or Instagram
• Support your local bookstore by buying my books on Bookshop and Indiebound: 7 Lessons for Living from the Dying and The Journey from Ego to Soul
• Subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Stitcher Radio
• Check out the Series I’ve recorded in the past here
• Join the team at Patreon.com/eolu and receive free gifts like the “Mind if we talk about death?” mini-poster or Love Your Life sticker or coffee mug. PLUS get our regular bonuses: the monthly EOL News Update, occasional movie reviews from 2 Doctors and a Movie, and automatic access to A Year of Reading Dangerously!

Buy me a coffee

Donate on Paypal

If you enjoy this content please share it with others and consider leaving a review on iTunes. Thanks again to all supporters on my page at Patreon.com/eolu, especially my newest patron Merlin Murdock, and to those who have bought me a coffee and made a donation through Paypal! Your contributions make all the difference.

Learn about a creative game to help foster conversations about death.

My guest Angela Fama is an artist and photographer who lives in Vancouver Canada and is also a recently trained death doula. She created the Death Conversation Game and facilitates online seasonal Let’s Talk About Death conversations. She will share how she became interested in exploring death as a subject and why she created the game. We will also play a few rounds of the game so you can see how it works! Learn more at her websites:

www.angelafama.com

www.deathconversationgame.com

Get the game here

Watch on YouTube

Listen here:

• Angela’s What is Love project
• How focusing on love led her eventually to learn about death
• Why Angela needed to talk about death after a serious accident
• What inspired the Death Conversation Game
• How playing a game helps facilitate conversations about death
• Why it’s important for people to talk about death
• How to create a safe, trauma-informed space to discuss death
• We play the game to demonstrate how it works
• Who might benefit from using the game in their work
• How Angela’s time in Zimbabwe influenced her decision to become a death doula
• Angela’s request for a collaborator to extend the reach of the game

Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die?“

• Song: Do You Realize by The Flaming Lips
• Get in touch with Angela: [email protected]

• Leave me a message by email: [email protected], Twitter, Facebook or Instagram
• Support your local bookstore by buying my books on Bookshop and Indiebound: 7 Lessons for Living from the Dying and The Journey from Ego to Soul
• Subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Stitcher Radio
• Check out the Series I’ve recorded in the past here
• Join the team at Patreon.com/eolu and receive free gifts like the “Mind if we talk about death?” mini-poster or Love Your Life sticker or coffee mug. PLUS get our regular bonuses: the monthly EOL News Update, occasional movie reviews from 2 Doctors and a Movie, and automatic access to A Year of Reading Dangerously!

Buy me a coffee

Donate on Paypal

If you enjoy this content please share it with others and consider leaving a review on iTunes. Thanks again to all supporters on my page at Patreon.com/eolu, especially my newest patron Martha Lundgren, and to those who have bought me a coffee and made a donation through Paypal! Your contributions make all the difference.

Learn the benefits of having a personal practice to increase our death-awareness.

In this encore solo episode I’ll be sharing with you research that shows that the human brain has a primal mechanism to protect us from thinking about and acknowledging our own personal death. Even those of us who study death and teach others how to prepare for the end of life can be in denial about our own mortality. However, living with “death awareness” is the best way to grow spiritually and make the most of every moment of life. My book The Tao of Death (with a companion journal) can be used for daily contemplation and help you become more death aware in your own life. Let’s talk about why we need to maintain our death-awareness and how to do it!

www.eoluniversity.com/taoofdeath

Get the book here

Download journal

Watch on YouTube

Listen here:

• A study that shows the defenses against death-awareness that exist in the primitive human brain
• Why personal death-awareness must be intentionally cultivated
• How death-awareness can expand and transform our lives
• Why daily death contemplation is essential to our growth
  • Think about the fleeting nature of life
  • Acknowledge fears of death and dying
  • Recognize barriers to awareness
• Benefits of increased death-awareness:
  • Enjoy the present moment
  • Find comfort in stillness
  • Experience authentic gratitude for life
  • Experience awe
  • Become less attached to material things
  • Be more inclusive and less exclusive
  • See everything as sacred

• Get The Tao of Death here: https://amzn.to/3zTKSLC
• Download the Companion Journal here: https://eoluniversity.com/taoofdeath

• Leave me a message by email: [email protected], Twitter, Facebook or Instagram
• Support your local bookstore by buying my books on Bookshop and Indiebound: 7 Lessons for Living from the Dying and The Journey from Ego to Soul
• Subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Stitcher Radio
• Check out the Series I’ve recorded in the past here
• Join the team at Patreon.com/eolu and receive free gifts like the “Mind if we talk about death?” mini-poster or Love Your Life sticker or coffee mug. PLUS get our regular bonuses: the monthly EOL News Update, occasional movie reviews from 2 Doctors and a Movie, and automatic access to A Year of Reading Dangerously!

Buy me a coffee

Donate on Paypal

If you enjoy this content please share it with others and consider leaving a review on iTunes. Thanks again to all supporters on my page at Patreon.com/eolu and to those who have bought me a coffee (thank you Elisa Weger!) and made a donation through Paypal! Your contributions make all the difference.