Seeing Death Clearly

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In today's episode, Jill McClennen talks with Lauren Fonseca about the death of her sister at a young age, as well as Jill and Lauren’s love for the state of NJ.

Lauren talks about the experience of having a sister live with and die from Cystic fibrosis. 

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a genetic disorder that causes problems with breathing and digestion. CF affects about 35,000 people in the United States. (source https://www.cdc.gov/genomics/disease/cystic_fibrosis.htm)

When Lauren was 27 her sister died when she was 25.

Lauren shares with the listeners how her sister was a model for how to face death, she even was able to plan out her entire funeral from the outfit she would wear to the songs being sung and who would sing them.

In the end, her sister’s death led to her family being closer than they ever were.  

Join us for this moving conversation.  


Lauren Fonseca works in higher education as both a professional staff and an instructor. 

She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2007 (two years before her sister died) and blogs about disability and higher education (among other things) at proffonseca.com. 

Support the show

Support the show financially by doing a paid monthly subscription. https://www.buzzsprout.com/2092749/support 

Subscribe to Seeing Death Clearly and leave a 5-star review if you are enjoying the podcast. 

Don’t forget to check out my free workbook Living a Better Life. 

[email protected] 

https://www.endoflifeclarity.com/end-of-life-planning to learn more about End of Life Care planning and schedule a free 30-minute call.

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In today's episode, Jill McClennen talks with Bonnie Silva about her background and how it has affected her beliefs about death, dying, and grief. 

Bonnie Silva has worn many hats throughout her working career and in the most recent years being a Postpartum+EOL doula and UX/UI Designer. 

As a doula, Bonnie has transitioned from Birth Doula and stepped into the EOL Doula path. 

Through empathy, and sarcasm but with loving humor, she describes her work and understanding of life. 

Bonnie lives in Brooklyn, NY with her beloved cats Lucifer and Delilah. On her days off she enjoys pole dancing, watching detective movies, and hanging with like-minded friends. 

In this episode we talk about death doulas play an important role in society and will do even more so in the future. 

We discuss the importance of informing people about the end of life and the challenges that come with it.

Jill and Bonnie discuss their common background of being raised Catholic and how it shaped their spiritual beliefs. 

Bonnie became a death doula in 2020 after experiencing a stillborn birth as a birth doula.  

We talk a lot about the importance of the online community, especially since 2020, but also how amazing it is that we could meet and it would not have been possible without the online platforms.  

2020 also showed us a lot about grief and we both learned how to process it partially due to our training to become death doulas.

You can find Bonnie at bonniesilva.com and on Instagram at http://www.instagram.com/realdoulaclub and on TikTok at  https://www.tiktok.com/@doulaclub 

Her podcast is Doula Club on your favorite podcasting platform.  

Support the show

Support the show financially by doing a paid monthly subscription. https://www.buzzsprout.com/2092749/support 

Subscribe to Seeing Death Clearly and leave a 5-star review if you are enjoying the podcast. 

Don’t forget to check out my free workbook Living a Better Life. 

[email protected] 

https://www.endoflifeclarity.com/end-of-life-planning to learn more about End of Life Care planning and schedule a free 30-minute call.

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Rebecca Johnson gives widows permission to widow their own way. 

She is the host of the podcast; Love is not dead…Just my husband, which is a podcast for widows and anyone that is grieving.

As a widow that has survived multiple losses, and is living with a rare cancer, she is dedicated to encouraging widows moving forward in their grief.

After realizing she was falling down a rabbit hole of grief, she was determined to find her way back to the living.

In this episode, we will talk about how our experiences of death and dying will change with age as well as with our relationship with the person who has died.   

Having conversations with our loved ones about what we want at the end of life is important to help prepare them if the unexpected happens. 

When her husband suddenly died, she tried to navigate her grief in an unconventional way, learning that grief does not work the way that we hope it will.

Time is needed to grieve properly and other people will judge how people grieve, but it looks different for every person.  

Not all widows need the same type of support, not everyone has wonderful memories, the romanticized version of widows.  

Your grieving will be different than everyone else, there is no right or wrong.  

You can listen to Rebecca's podcast here. https://loveisnotdeadjustmyhusband.buzzsprout.com/share

Follow her on Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/loveisnotdead_justmyhusband/

Connect with her on Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/loveisnotdeadjustmyhusband

Please subscribe to my podcast to hear more stories about people’s experiences around death, dying, grief, and how thinking about our death can help us live a better life.

You can also connect with me on social media and join my Facebook group End of Life Clarity Circle which is a death-positive community for conversations like these to happen every day.  

Support the show

Support the show financially by doing a paid monthly subscription. https://www.buzzsprout.com/2092749/support 

Subscribe to Seeing Death Clearly and leave a 5-star review if you are enjoying the podcast. 

Don’t forget to check out my free workbook Living a Better Life. 

[email protected] 

https://www.endoflifeclarity.com/end-of-life-planning to learn more about End of Life Care planning and schedule a free 30-minute call.

www.endoflifeclarity.com
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Facebook
Facebook group End of Life Clarity Circle
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Seeing Death Clearly is my new podcast and on the first episode, I have my husband Stephen Wilson.

I decided to have Stephen on as my first guest because we have been together for about 23 years and we have talked about death and dying early on in our relationship but there is still more to talk about and learn about each other’s wishes.

Stephen grew up in FL and I was raised in NJ, which means that our backgrounds in life are pretty different.  

He has basically always believed that life is part of death and that death is part of life.

Stephen’s parents were young when they had him and his grandmother was young when she had his mother, so he didn’t experience a lot of death of loved ones growing up.  

Even though they didn’t experience a lot of death in their family when he was a child, both his parents worked in a hospital and so death was part of their normal conversations.  

When he was a teenager he volunteered at the hospital to be part of a disaster preparedness exercise, the experience was interesting but it didn’t scare him. 

Stephen had a young cousin die from a heroin overdose and we talk about how that experience made it clear that the death of a young person could happen to anyone including our children.  

My worst nightmare is one of the children dying before us, and Stephen has a very grounded way of viewing this. He feels that the reality is, they could die before us, but we take steps to prevent this from happening.  

Communicating with the parents of children that are around our children, and asking about guns in the home and how they are stored, are part of the measures we take to keep our kids safe.  This could be a difficult conversation for some people to have.

Part of life is having conversations about hard topics such as asking other parents about guns and talking about our wishes for the end of life.

Having hard conversations will not prevent the unexpected from happening, it will make sure that when something does happen, we are as prepared as we can be.  

You can’t live in fear of the knowledge that one day someone will die. Thinking about death and dying has made me appreciate the time I have with Stephen and the kids in a way I wasn’t expecting.   

Please subscribe to my podcast to hear more stories about people’s experiences around death, dying, grief, and how thinking about our death can help us live a better life.

You can also connect with me on social media and join my Facebook group End of Life Clarity Circle which is a death-positive community for conversations like these to happen every day.

Support the show

Support the show financially by doing a paid monthly subscription. https://www.buzzsprout.com/2092749/support 

Subscribe to Seeing Death Clearly and leave a 5-star review if you are enjoying the podcast. 

Don’t forget to check out my free workbook Living a Better Life. 

[email protected] 

https://www.endoflifeclarity.com/end-of-life-planning to learn more about End of Life Care planning and schedule a free 30-minute call.

www.endoflifeclarity.com
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Facebook
Facebook group End of Life Clarity Circle
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Welcome to Seeing Death Clearly, I am your host Jill McClennen, a death doula and end-of-life coach.

Seeing Death Clearly is a show that challenges you to think about your beliefs about death, dying, grief, and living life. 

I found through first-hand experience that the more I came to terms with my thoughts and feelings about death and dying, the more present I became in my everyday life and I hope to share that with you too, how you can live a better life by having a healthier relationship with death and dying.  

Each episode will feature a guest that will share with us their beliefs and stories about death and dying, these will be real honest conversations about a topic most of us avoided talking about our entire lives.

I am on a mission to change that, one conversation at a time.  

This podcast is for the purpose of education only and is not a replacement for therapy. 

I suggest you seek out the help of a trained medical professional if you are having thoughts of suicide or extreme fears about death and dying that are preventing you from functioning in your daily life. 

Join me to hear people’s stories about their experiences, you will be able to listen to Seeing Death Clearly on all major platforms.  

Support the show

Support the show financially by doing a paid monthly subscription. https://www.buzzsprout.com/2092749/support 

Subscribe to Seeing Death Clearly and leave a 5-star review if you are enjoying the podcast. 

Don’t forget to check out my free workbook Living a Better Life. 

[email protected] 

https://www.endoflifeclarity.com/end-of-life-planning to learn more about End of Life Care planning and schedule a free 30-minute call.

www.endoflifeclarity.com
Instagram
Facebook
Facebook group End of Life Clarity Circle
LinkedIn
TikTok