Big Ideas:

1.Bringing Back the Awareness of Death Being a Natural Part of Life. [2:55] – l – there were two things I’ve learned over the course of my career as a Hospice and Oncology nurse that made it go 80 to 90% better for people: The first thing is planning ahead with Advanced Directives and thinking about what you do or don’t want at the end of life. The second thing is knowing the basic skills for how to care for somebody at the end of life in order to facilitate a good death.

2. The Five P’s [5:00] – Darren is a veteran and there is an acronym they used in the armed forces that is referred to as “The Five P’s”. It stands for Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance. This can equally be applied to the end of life and death care. If you don’t plan for it, nine out of ten times the end of life will not go well. If you do plan for it, people know where they stand, and the end of life can be a pleasant and enlightening experience. If we don’t plan, everything falls on our family to make decisions and very rarely do families agree on big decisions about medical care at this stressful time. When we empower people to choose their wishes before the end of life, it makes us subconsciously want to live our lives each day the way we really want to. To live with as much joy each day as we possibly can.

3.The Inspiration Behind Darren’s Work [10:30] – Darren has worked in Health and Social care providing technology services for over 25 years. He had no work-relation to end of life at the time or with end-user applications like the ones he develops now. Two and a half years ago, Darren’s wife and sister-in-law became the primary caregivers for his mother-in-law who was suffering from aggressive Lewy body dementia. After his mother-in-law’s funeral, he and his family were going through photo albums and discovered that they did not know many of the people in the photos and now that his mother-in-law had passed, that part of their family history was effectively lost. This led to Darren thinking of a way to incorporate technology to help individuals keep track of their family legacy. He created a “memory box” to use in hospice and palliative care for this purpose. Doulagivers are also trained in conducting life reviews with their patients for the purpose of legacy creation and retention as the end of life nears. It is an incredibly important, powerful, and healing exercise for them.

4.How the After Cloud App Works [16:05] – Darren’s After Cloud app has been utilized in real world environments such as hospice to enable patients to create content based on four main focal points: Letters, Images, Videos, and Audio. Patients can use these all at once to create really valuable and meaningful moments and record things they want to share and celebrate into the future. A lot of people within Hospice wanted to see a chronological account of their life stories in addition to the content they had created. Darren got to work on making a timeline feature that anyone can use to create a legacy and have a highlight reel of their life to look back on forever. At Doulagivers, we talk about the importance of using techniques that allow the end-of-life patient to take control. This app is a beautiful example of this because it lets these patients choose the highlights of their life they want to leave behind for others to see. You also don’t have to be at the end of life to use this app!

5.Memorials [21:11] – When end of life shows up in people’s lives, it is often a crisis. This extends to when we hold remembrances for people – there tends to be a scrambling to put together a service and memorial and the rush of it all leads to things not going well in this regard either. When things are moving very quickly, and everyone is experiencing the trauma of loss, it becomes a difficult and unfortunate situation for the loved ones to navigate. There is usually a lot of complicated grief and bereavement being felt after a person dies and then you are tasking the grieving individuals to plan a memorial they weren’t prepared for. Not allowing ourselves to stop and be present and process our loss so that we can begin to heal from it leads to a prolonged state of grief as well. Having a memorial plan in place before the time comes can make a huge difference to all of this. Personally, I would like to have a say in my own memorial, and I believe most other people would also. Utilizing technology, such as Darren’s After Cloud app, can assist people with planning their own memorial and make that plan accessible to their loved ones after they’re gone.

Resources: FREE Level 1 End of Life Doula Training. REGISTER HERE: https://www.doulagivers.com

Visit https://myaftercloud.com

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