DEATH and DYING with Death Doula Jill Schock

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This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)

Welcome to Synchronicity. My guest this week is Jill Schott. Jill's a death doula. So we know what a birthing doula is. That's someone who aids and facilitates the birthing process. A death doula is someone who aids and facilitates the dying process. Both for the person who would be dying and the people around them. 'Cause this is, as you'll hear in this episode, there's not a lot of clarity, not a lot of experience, not a lot of practice with dying for the vast majority of people. If not almost all of them, especially in this country and the West. So she helps bring awareness to that. She helps kind of de-stigmatize some of the connotations around death, the negative connotations.

We tend to not look at and face things that we're afraid of or that scare us. We can refer to these as psychological complexes, shadow sides and things like that. But one of the biggest sub-dies, which is like this creepy specter looming in the darkness ahead is death. Because it's one of the few things in life that's guaranteed for everything. So we don't like to look at that because it means that these worlds, these castles made of sand that we've built for us, this existence which can be both heavenly and hellish. Well, one day we won't be here for that. And the people we love won't be here.

And so this is a lot of heavy stuff. And we just, rather than deal with that, we just go and say, you know, fuck it. I'm not gonna think about this anymore. I'm not gonna be too into this. It's morbid, it's disturbing. I'm afraid of it. I don't wanna look at it. And obviously as we know that causes a lot of trouble, not just individually but collectively. So anyone who's bringing more awareness to the topic and subjects of death and dying, I love. I just think it's a really, really noble thing to do. And it's something you really can't fake. You know what I mean? Like no one is like, you know what?

Let me force myself to engage with death. I don't really like, I don't really not, don't think there's value in this. I'm just gonna do it 'cause I think people like it. People don't do that. You do this because you have a real passion for it. And find it to be helpful, right? What she's doing is helping people with this process, demystifying, you know, having people come up with plans. So it's not a burden for them and the people around them. A lot of really just positive stuff that I think genuinely would help almost anyone, especially who, you know, anyone who's gone through losing someone and having to deal with the ramifications of that.

Not just fiscally but emotionally, psychologically and all of the things that come with that, having someone to speak to about that alone is worth its weight in gold if you ask me. So this episode, we deal with not just the practical aspects of death and dying, although there's a lot of that. We deal with some of them more. What do we think happens, reincarnation? If you listen to this podcast, you pretty much know my stance is on that. But it's fun to hear from someone and interesting to hear from someone who's around dying people all the time. I've been around two dying people in my life. That's not that many.

She's been around a lot more and to see the stages that people go through physically, emotionally, spiritually. That's gotta be. I mean, that's really, it's like psychedelics. I mean, if you've heard Ram Dass ever talk about being with dying people, it's a very psychedelic experience. There's a space that opens up that is just pretty nuts. It just alters your perception of reality. It's like taking a conscious, altering drug. So we get into psychedelic talk at the end of this episode. So rather than give the entire episode away, how about you just listen to it? That's a good idea. You can find Jill at her website, deathdullalay.com.

I'll have links to all this stuff on syncpodcast.com. Minepodnetwork.com, where else? The episode notes, podcast pages, all that stuff. Speaking of Minepod Network, redoing the site, moving it from WordPress to Squarespace. This is not an ad for Squarespace. But I'm moving it there. It's been a long, arduous journey exporting a ton of content in a ton of categories. But that'll be happening, hopefully, in the next month. So stay tuned for that. Speaking of not ads, here's an actual ad. Forcigmatic, guess what? Guess how I know Jill of Jill and how we connected through Michael Donovan and Kelly McLean.

Kelly McLean introduced me to Forcigmatic. Forcigmatic sponsors this show. So tie it all together, amazing. Forcigmatic.com/synccync, if you use that, go to that link. There are links on this. Again, everywhere else, there were links before. There's where links where this is now. Click that, go there, 15% off your order, right? That's pretty cool. Mushroom coffee, mushroom tea, mushroom hot cocoa. It doesn't taste like mushrooms. It's not weird, it's not gross. I drink it, it's not terrible at all. It's actually quite good. So if you've ever been interested, if you have somehow your podcast listener and haven't heard of Forcigmatic, now's your opportunity.

I'm the first one to introduce you. The chances of that are virtually zero. But, you know, off chance you have and you're like, you know what? I'm gonna give it a shot. Go through that link, use that link. And then it looks like I'm doing my job good. So, do that. We'll be happy. I have new sponsors coming and next week you're gonna hear all about 'em. I am pretty excited too, about them. So we'll talk about all that. You get the down low on how we're trying to monetize a podcast without being shitty, only supporting people who are aligned with what this podcast stands for. Really easier said than done in terms of offers and how people monetize podcasts.

Well, one day we'll have an episode just about the business of podcasting. Learned so many things over the past few years, seen so many people have different levels of success in different ways and see how people look at numbers, and download. It's very interesting stuff to me at least. So one day we'll do an episode about that. I've rambled on enough here. Let's get back to the topic at hand. The death duo, Jill Shock. Here she is, without further ado, Jill Shock. Thanks for coming on.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Noah.

My pleasure, I'm glad we're connected. Two people I know and admire and respect very much, Kelly McLean and Michael Donovan, both have recommended I have you on and connect with you in general, and then I've listened to you and I was just saying a little off air. I'm particularly excited for this episode for a variety of reasons, but one of those reasons is you, and kind of like what you bring to this whole kind of death and mortality thing that I think is really, really, really important and also something that is shied away from almost all of the time, so I'm just excited for this.

Heck yeah, let's do it.

All right, so I tried to figure out where to start with this, and then I just started with the most obvious place for me, at least regarding death, and you know, you're a death doula, well, people will know from the intro going in kind of what that is, my best explanation, but I'm curious, like, death for me, the first thing that comes up is fear, right? It's without a doubt, even for someone like me who is very kind of woo and new agey and just not totally buying that reality is as real as we like to believe it is, I still, you know, when faced with my own mortality, but especially the mortality of people I love and care about, my kid, my wife, and my family, you know, freaks me out, and whenever I get freaked out, I've learned, after like 35 years, I get really angry.

Like, it's very easy for me to just get in this weird, like, space of not being in control of anything, which death is kind of the ultimate thing of that, so like, we know there's a ton of fear associated with death for almost everyone. What inspired you to move towards something that's so associated with fear and kind of pain and suffering, like, what was the motivating factor to get you into doing what you're doing?

Okay, well, there's two things here that I'm pulling out. One is that a fear of death and the denial and the sort of anger that goes along with it is totally normal, you know, if people say like, I mean, I accept death, that's, you know, how I cope with my fear, but if we look at the work of Ernest Becker, and now more modernly, we have Dr. Sheldon Solomon talking about terror management theory, which is basically how we've built up coping mechanisms our entire life to sort of manage our denial of death.

Right.

So if we have these fears, which we all do, myself included, it's totally normal, and, you know, as you go through your dying process whenever you do have that, it's something you, you know, work through naturally. I never thought I would be working in healthcare or with the dying ever. I graduated college to work in museums, so, and I was really happy doing this work. Like, I was like a little, I did archives, so I was like a basement rat, you know, with my eye earbuds in and stuff, and I was having a great time, but I was engaged to be married to someone at that time, and actually his father suffered a brain aneurysm, and consequently died from that, which is a very chaotic way to die.

Yeah.

You know, someone's on a ventilator, they look like they're breathing, but they're actually dead, it's really complicated, so I went through that with this man in this family, and I was shattered, you know, by grief and death, and I came out with this one big question of like, why didn't anybody help us? So, I turned my life around, we didn't end up getting married, we canceled the wedding and everything. I turned my life around and I started to, you know, study and work with people whose life had been interrupted by crisis and death and illness. So, yeah, I had a lot of fears coming into this too, and it's totally normal, but that's where I started.

Well, I mean, I'm glad to hear that like, you didn't grow up being like, yeah, I was just fascinated with death, and I always wanted to know, and I knew I was always gonna do this, like because to me, that's different than actually having the genuine experience of facing it, and then because of that lack of support, as you described it, and just kind of the, I mean, you know this as well as anyone, there's just not even a dialogue about this stuff. How often do we talk about death, just like we shy away from it as much as possible, and that speaks to how fearful we are of it. So, I mean, once you started getting into it and delving into it, and then started, you made the decision at a certain point to be with the dying.

That's like a very conscious decision one has to make at that point. What was that like when you were like, yeah?

Yeah, I mean, well, it was, I was, I came to the dying because they needed the most. They, when you die in the healthcare system, you're sort of seen as a medical failure, right? 'Cause doctors actually, I love doctors, but they aren't trained, you know, so much in the way of death and dying. There are some out there that specialize in death and dying, but for the most part, you're general practitioners. If you die, you know, they're like, oh, I failed. I, I, you know, I didn't save them. They're not a survivor or that kind of language. So, you know, that sort of perpetuates onto the patient. And when they go home on hospice care, it's like, you know, the system almost just drops them and forgets about them.

But that's where my work begins, is where the terminal diagnosis starts and the healthcare system, you know, really stops. And I do work with my patients all the way through. So from their diagnosis, all the way through their disposition, meaning what they're gonna do with their body after they die. So yeah, and they, they need so much resources. I mean, the lack of resources in the area of death and dying is ridiculous. And that's why people tailspin through grief and loss and chaos. And in my practice, I actually try to reverse all of that. So by the time the death actually occurs, everybody's at peace.

Which is like, I mean, we're kind of somewhat glossing over it, but maybe like the greatest thing anyone could do for anyone. Like we don't, we don't think of it like that because we focus so much on our lives and living. And, but I mean, we are gonna die. No one has escaped it yet. And what you're describing, and I've been really lucky in my life to date that no one very close to me, my grandparents have passed away. I had a very good friend. That's not actually not true. I had a very good friend who passed away from a rare blood disease at 24 or a college friend, which was nuts. That was my first kind of like eye opening, like holy shit experience.

Yeah, that's what does the people. That's totally, it just like, it just wrecks you. It's like, you're different. You're different.

Yeah.

Yeah, it really, it was one of those things that like, I was, you know, I was still pretty young. I was his age. So this was, I think, you know, still in my twenties and we were just like, all of our group of friends were just kind of in shock and awe and like, I didn't even realize how much it was affecting me until, you know, like a week after. It was crazy. But I mean, this is, we're so unaccustomed to dealing with that because A, we don't talk about it, but B, what you're just having, when it actually happens, the idea that this could actually even be something that isn't a terrible, horrible thing, doesn't even enter people's minds.

I mean, like, how do you begin to have that kind of discussion or bring that like energy for lack of a better term into, you know, that that space when you're with the dying and the family of the dying? Like, how does that happen?

Yeah, so my first point of contact with any client, I do consultations to sort of see what their situation is.

Yeah.

Sometimes it's the actual dying person that contacts me and sometimes it's their family. But what we do is I do a round table death plan. That's what I call it. That's what I bill for. And we sit down and this takes a couple hours, but we talk through exactly what the patient or client envisions, what their ideal ending would look like. We talk about what's realistic and what is likely, you know, to happen. And then we get all their documents prepared like advanced directives, pulse DNR forms, which means do not resuscitate. I coordinate them with a hospice, but we sit down and we talk about death at this table.

And it's kind of funny to see some of the family members do like, what the hell am I doing here? Until they see how they fit into the patient's process. You know, whether it be, if they're the person that makes all the phone calls after they die, or if they're the person that's gonna be washing the body, or if they're the person that's ordering Mexican food, you know, for the family, while all this is going on, everybody that's around the client has a job. And I think once they realize that, they're like, I'm a part of this. And it feels good, you know, to work together as a team towards a really beautiful goal.

And I mean, I've seen it time and time again, what it looks like to have a dying person have their whole family around them, hugging them, loving them while they go. I mean, I don't know what else could be better, but that's what we address in that initial plan. And people seem to really like that. Sometimes they take the plan and they do the work on their own, which is great. Sometimes they take the plan and I come back, you know, in intervals. So it just depends what they want.

Well, it's funny to hear you talk about this because, you know, you approach it kind of the same way I approach like my consulting clients. It's for marketing, it's not for people who are dying, but it's something that like it, I mean, you're not gonna have a tremendous amount of competition in this space just because as great of work as you're doing, it seems like our culture, if we're resistant to anything more than anything else, it's death and mortality, right? I mean, this is something like so, so what do you see kind of like, what could you impart to people listening who maybe aren't going through a dying experience or have someone who's dying with them or haven't even gone through it, like, what can we do as individuals to kind of broaden our perspective of what death is and what the dying process is like?

Get closer to the dying, that would be my advice to anyone who hasn't experienced, you know, some kind of loss because it will happen to you. There's no avoiding it, you know, your parents will die, will die, your spouse will die, your pets will die, which is what I'm most afraid of. (laughing)

My dog is my child, so, but, and I'd also, so get closer to dying, you know, volunteer at a hospice, don't be afraid of elderly people just because they're old and, you know, might not be as young as, and beautiful as us, go talk to them, you know, volunteer, get closer to it. And I'd also give a little bit of historical perspective 'cause as an ex-historian.

Yeah, museum, yeah.

Yeah, you know, like my history background's playing out here a little bit because it's important to understand where we lost our connection with death in America. And this is a very American thing that has happened to us. It actually, we're looking at the Civil War, okay? So, pre-Civil War, we're like in Victorian period, and we have no qualms with death in the Victorian period, right? We are having people die in the home, the hospitals aren't a thing, we're caring for our dead, we're laying them out in the parlour room for a week, you know, so family can travel and come see, we're dressing our dead, we're photographing our dead, even children, I mean, we've all seen the pictures of the dressed up dead babies and, you know, holding hands and stuff, it's like, okay, so how did we go from that to all of a sudden, we're paying the funeral industry $45,000 plus to take our loved one off of our hands.

If we actually look after the Victorian era at the Civil War, that's when the technology of embalming actually came around, and President Lincoln was actually a pretty big proponent of that. I mean, people were paying embalmers privately to go find their loved ones and pump them full of chemicals so they could come back less decomposed. So, again, we're managing our terror, we're dealing with the crisis of the Civil War, Lincoln had his own son embalmed because, you know, his wife had a pretty difficult time grieving their son. And, of course, Lincoln himself was famously embalmed and taken around the country for, what, like, three weeks or something, he was like the ultimate embalmed body.

And actually, the embalmer who embalmed Lincoln said he never wanted to be embalmed himself because that stuff is toxic, which is a huge reason why I am a proponent against embalming in my own practice. So, after the Civil War is what we see is all of a sudden, we're calling professionals in to do, to take care of our dying because we're just connected from it, we're traumatized. Again, it goes back to that terror management. So, that's when we see the rise of the feudal industry, also the rise of hospitals and industrial medicine. So, you can kind of see how we got more and more separated over time, and now here we are.

You know, it's really interesting. I listen to a biography of an audio book of Ulysses S. Grant. So, I have a lot of Civil War knowledge and just the carnage and just kind of the dark shadow aspect of the United States really like rearing its head. And obviously, before that did, the amount of death and carnage was just like, it was like a hell, like for us to try to imagine that when we walk outside and like go to the store, take a nice walk, like it was just like a hellscape for what was the United States, then it's really interesting. And it makes sense in a lot of ways that that's where the disconnect happened because who can stare that in the face?

Who can stare the terror? And we're talking about it, you know, conceptually and somewhat abstractly, like if everyone you know from your town went off to fight in the regiment and like three of them came back out of like 75, like your whole world is drastically different. And it's interesting that we also see kind of the industrial capitalist system build that void immediately.

Immediately, it's so American. It's the story is so American, it just, I mean, we look at, you know, other cultures, Buddhist, Judaism, Muslims, you know, they don't deal with, you know, they practice green burial and, you know, washing their dead and all that kind of stuff. It's really like, it's so, it's like middle class, like non-denominational Christian Americans that are really struggling with it.

Well, yeah, and I mean, that culture, right, is superimposed onto most of our lives 'cause that's kind of the dominator culture of where we are. So what do we do to kind of educate ourselves to outside of being with the dying, which is clearly the best thing to do, but I'm gonna be completely honest. I don't think a lot of people, I think it's gonna be a small subset of people who are like, you know what, I'm going to do that right now. 'Cause again, whether it's fear, time, or just the modern stresses of being a human being, what do we do to shift our own perspectives kind of on how to approach this, even if it's a far away or just like a concept to us?

Like how do we fight that kind of, you know, artificial capitalist approach, denial approach to death? Like how do we begin to change our minds on this?

I think the best thing other than, you know, familiarizing ourselves with death is also to consider the fact of choice here. So like my body, my choice might inspire a lot of people. It's like, if you don't make plans, if you don't tell people what you want, and you die in a car accident or something, you're not gonna have, your body's, you know, you're not gonna have any control over what happens and who's making medical decisions. So putting yourself in that situation, and I might be a little bit hard into this because I worked in healthcare and trauma and hospice for so long, but make a plan.

I know it's hard to think about, but make a plan. I mean, you have a wife and kids. I doubt you have an advanced directive.

Definitely not. We tried to get a wheel done once. The lawyer flaked on us, and we never did it again. And now we just talk about how we should probably get a wheel in instructions, and we don't even do that.

Yeah, yeah, see, it's like, you know, sit down with a couple of beers or something and just be like, all right, this is not gonna be pleasant, but let's talk about this. And it's for you, you know, most of all, selfishly, we wanna protect ourselves. But then also, like, as your family starts to grow older, one day it might be up to your kid, you know, to make these decisions. So you don't wanna put burdens on other people either. The more clear of a plan that you lay out, the easier it is for people to follow.

Right, right. And it also, it's like anything, like if you are just doing goal setting, not that it's a goal to die, but when you write it down and when you actually come up and structure something, even if consciously, that doesn't change your perspective unconsciously, you have radically altered how you're engaging with something that, let's be clear. I mean, I think outside of just the fear of the not knowing what's gonna happen, just the idea of oblivion, I think, for people is what really gets some people. So this is where I kinda wanna shift, not shift, but move into the part of the discussion where we go into kind of the more mystical and esoteric stuff, because the truth is, I've spoken to one other person, I think, who's really been around the dying, and that's Joan Halifax.

I've had the pleasure of knowing her for several years and just, you know, did pioneering work on a lot of this stuff.

I love her books.

Oh, God, she's the coolest. So, what is your take? And she has a very different perspective on death from her Zen perspective at this point than me. What, I know you've witnessed a lot of things, specifically in Michael Donovan's interview with you in conversation, you know, you get into some stuff and we'll certainly talk about that, but what is your, from being around the dying, so many times and kind of making this your work, what can you glean about what happens? Not necessarily after you die, but what is happening during the dying process outside of just the physical extinguishment of life?

You use the word oblivion. And I kind of like that word, and recently I've been thinking a lot about how before birth and after death are probably a lot of the same. And so I think we're in oblivion on both ends, you know? I think, I mean, it's complicated to go through, you know, what you think about after death. I also kind of believe that whatever you believe is real. And when people go through this, they almost seem to have an individualized process. Like, you know, they'll see their own family members, you know, weeks before they die, and they'll start talking to them and reaching out to them.

I mean, this happens like 90% of the time. I know that's a high percentage, but it's true. It's actually something I look for as a stage in dying to see how close they are. And usually they're about a couple weeks out, you know, when they start to hallucinate a little bit, are our brain, I don't know if it's our brain, or if that we're so close to the veil, you know, when we're dying that we kind of go back and forth. I actually believe that. Yeah, yeah. Me too, me too. I see people go back and forth through the veil. And also very much in dreams. I think there's a huge connection between dreaming and death and sort of the afterlife in dreams.

I mean, how many of us have had dreams where we interact with our dead loved ones? Well, that's also like Jung's quintessential example of synchronicity is someone having a pre-cognitive or exact time, no possible way of influencing it in either direction, something related to death or a big catastrophe that's like classic. Yes, exactly. You know, dreams and death are two of my favorite subjects. One, because we don't speak about them enough, both of them enough, but dreams at least are more acceptable to people. I mean, this is where the kind of liminal boundaries between reality and stuff we can't perceive.

This is like, this is the wheelhouse for me. Just 'cause I love this stuff. You know, I don't know if you know this, but the reason, and I don't go into this every episode, be a shitty podcast, but the reason this show is called synchronicity is I had an experience in the early 2000s, I was in my early 20s where I took a normal dose of LSD, something I had done many times before, and had an experience where for the following three months, I was tripping, and I didn't take any more drugs after that. I was just tripping for three straight months and everything, and I cannot stress this aspect enough was one giant synchronicity, and it extended through my waking life and my dream life, which is what was really freaking me out at the time is because there was no ceasing of realities.

They were connected in a very real way, and so retrospectively, I've unpacked that and kind of helped put it into perspective as best I can into my life and put the practical ability of something like that, but one thing it showed me is that there are aspects of reality that we are not privy to with our five segments in our conscious mind, which is somewhat of a cliche at this point, but very much a real, real thing, and when these things kind of merge and overlap, it can shake us out of what we kind of normally view as day-to-day life. So what I guess the question is is when, basically what I'm saying is the veil was lifted for me for an extended period of time, which is overwhelming, incredibly overwhelming because--

That's terrifying.

It was, it truly was, and I mean talk about facing death, so what was essentially happening in any given moment for a day is if I started thinking I was dying, I'm dying, it's like a psychedelic trip where you're having a bad trip, you're dying, you're actually going through the ego death of that point, all those things are happening, so it was terrifying, but it also luckily having a good support system to help me out of the situation, months later, when I finally crash, I have at least some perspective on what it's like to live in that world, but still be in this world, so it's not the same as dying, it's not the same as being around people who are dying, but-- - No, it might be, I think there's a strong connection to this psychedelic experience and the dying experience.

For sure, I mean, and right, John Halifax, our friend, there also speaks about this and was very interested in doing that, along with Stanislav Groff, who was her husband, but my question is this is, what is your personal, I'm having you move out of your professional capacity and move into the personal kind of relationship with death and beyond, I mean, where does reincarnation fit in this for you?

I believe in reincarnation, which is interesting, 'cause I don't really have any specific religious beliefs, but I do, I don't know, it's sort of an inner knowing that I have, that I'm way older than I actually am, and that I've been alive before, somehow, somewhere. I believe it, and I think when we go into that oblivion, we're sort of resting and recalibrating and seeing where we're gonna come back down and fit into the order of things at a different time.

Yes.

And that gives me hope, I mean, reincarnation might be a form of denial of death, denial, it kinda gives me a little bit of hope, but I'm also gonna be just fine if I die and nothing happens, right? It's gonna, that whatever that oblivion is, it's not necessarily a conscious space. So I would like for myself to be reincarnated and to have a greater purpose in this world and keep coming back and keep improving or whatever, but I might just be warm food, and that's okay for me, so I wanna nourish the earth, and I won't know any otherwise, so.

You know, and it can be both, too. I think it's really what it probably is in this sense. I mean, I stake out pretty firm, it's not firm ground, but a firm stance in terms of I very much believe in reincarnation. What you're describing also with the oblivion is very much in line with the Tibetan Buddhist ideas of reincarnation, right, and the Bardo states of these intermediary states between life and death, even. And there's a whole complex kind of hierarchy and kind of cosmology of how that all works, but it essentially is what you're describing. We can say that there's no real purpose to it, but the same reason that I don't think this is your first birth and life is because it's probably focusing on death is not what people do their first time around.

There's probably a lot of other things to pursue, but it's weird, I mean, how, what are people's perspective? This is where I wanna merge kind of what you're doing and your beliefs, like when people come to you, what percentage of them come with firm beliefs about what happens after death and how many of them are malleable and kind of, what do you notice from different subsets and different, depending on their belief systems at all? I know that's kind of a complicated question, but I think you know what I'm getting at.

I do, and the answer is that people who are very religious and attend church or temple or whatever regularly, they actually have a built-in support system. So I don't work with the extremely religious very much because they kind of already have, they've already thought about this kind of job in their own way. So the people I work with are usually spiritual, not religious or agnostic or atheistic. And that, I mean, I don't believe in a true atheist. I believe that even if you believe in God, you have a belief system, which is not to believe in a deistic God, which is totally fine. You're gonna be a humanist, you don't know.

So, you know, everybody has something that they work through, but my clients tend to be more open or maybe not as dogmatic in their belief.

Thank you. So when they're coming to you, do you see, how does their relationship, as someone who's, let's say I'm diagnosed and I know that I have, you know, maybe two or three months to live, what changes do you typically see someone go through irrespective of their family and kind of support systems? Like what begins to happen typically? And I know like every person, each death is different. They're not all the same, but what are kind of the general processes and themes that you see happen to someone?

Yeah, yeah. So I like one to like three months out of dying, you'll notice that people sort of do like a bit of a social withdrawal. And it's really at that point that I see them, 'cause the more you begin to die, there's like grades of dying, right? The more you start to die, the more within yourself you become until you're actually totally unconscious and probably moving in, you know, throughout, you know, back and forth over the veil without people really knowing. Dying people, if you die naturally or whatever, you usually first begin to socially withdrawal and then you begin to withdraw from even food and water until you're just like a sleeping, you know, unconscious being and then you sort of slip into the death.

So yeah, noticing when people start to not be so interested in their human life anymore. And that's hard for the family because, you know, they want to get closer during this time, which is total, there's ways to get closer, you know, just by touch and, you know, using other senses, you know, talking with them, other stuff like that. So, but yeah, it's usually, dying is about a three-month process if it goes, quote, unquote, naturally.

Yeah, it's interesting to me how people kind of naturally, I mean, the body is dying, so you understand, there'd be less external contact, but it's interesting that there's this kind of built-in way to die for people, even if the emotions and psychology and situations are different, but it is this kind of internal knowingness and people repeat these similar patterns. No, I saw and heard you talk about something else that I think is really interesting, and my grandmother had dementia. And I, you know, you said something during the episode with Michael that I thought was amazing 'cause my grandma was pretty far out there, she thought she was pregnant, you know, she's like something years old, it's having quintuplets and all of these things.

But I was actually like, my mom and my aunts were very distraught and upset because they think they saw the person who they knew that identity kind of get stripped away into something else. But for me as a grandson who, you know, grew up not as a grandchild, I wasn't directly around this person for all of my life, I was able to kind of engage her in her dementia and she was happy, she was genuinely happy during this and it was clear to me now was she engaging with reality at all and our reality, not really. And that was very troublesome. So I'm curious 'cause I know you work with dementia patients too, what are the differences?

'Cause there's, I know there's a ton of similarities, but what are some of the differences of working with someone who's maybe losing their sense of self and everyone else, their relationship to everyone else and someone who's physically not gonna be there?

Yeah, it's a totally, it's actually a totally different kind of client for me. So cancer is my wheelhouse just because I have a passion for it and a personal vendetta against it. But an Alzheimer's dementia patient, they're totally different. It's not their body that's against them, it's their mind. So their process actually goes on for years and they're very hard to predict because some days they will start to withdraw and you'll see them start to go through the whole death withdrawal and then they'll just pop right back up and eat lunch and, you know, everything's fine. It's strange how they kind of bounce up and down which can be very, very trying in the family, especially the kids of that parent.

'Cause you have to make decisions for them, you know, do I put them in a memory care scene and then you have to choose how you're gonna interact with them. And when I work in memory care units, you can walk up and down the halls and you can see family members just like sitting in the room with their loved ones and not really knowing how to act.

Yeah.

And the truth is, even if they don't know who you are or what you're doing, if you just go, excuse me.

No problem.

Sorry about that.

No, don't worry.

I don't know. If you just sit down and put your arm around them and look them in the eyes and say, I love you so much. You know, they're gonna get that feeling. They're gonna get that emotive, you know.

Connection, yeah.

Yeah, connection, something, they still feel, you know, every type of emotion, probably hyper. So if you need to answer the delusion that they're having answered, who cares? For correcting them is not gonna have any kind of benefit for you or them. It's just gonna be frustrating for everybody. So it's much harder. I get it. My grandma had dementia and she thought there was like a meth lab next door and that they were, I don't even know if she knew what a meth lab was. (laughing) She definitely, yeah, came up with this delusion. So we used to laugh and joke about it. And then we'd go with it. What else can you do?

You gotta laugh through some stuff, right?

That's, I mean, that's really important that you say that too and it's good to hear because, you know, I think, again, whether it's death or dementia or Alzheimer's, like, I think a lot of the not knowing how to act and what to do and what to say also just adds, like the second arrow thing, like you're just, you already have an arrow in you and you're shooting yourself again just because you're obsessing now about the social interaction. So I mean, like, how do you, let's say you know someone who has just lost someone, you know, someone close to them. What do you typically say to someone in that situation?

I think I know there's the, I'm sorry for your loss, you know, I'm there for you. What do you like to say to someone who's just lost someone?

One foot in front of the other, if you can, you know, you just gotta let them, let them be a grieving person. You know, it's, we have such a stigma against grief in this American society. What do we get, like, three days of like corporate bereavement time? It's like, I don't even get over the flu in three days so I can get over a death, you know?

Yeah, Jesus.

And I think we also move away from grievers because again, grievers show us how painful death can be because it is painful, it's the opposite of love, right? You know, grief, all the love that we felt for that person, that grief is gonna come back and hit us pretty hard. Which is, that's, you know, in a way a beautiful thing but for new grievers, I mean, they're not even, for the first month their head isn't a fog and people don't even realize that. People are at the death, you know, for the first week or so and they're around, you're getting food and attention and cards and love and flowers. And then two weeks later, everybody's gone.

Yes.

Or in this, like, fog of like, oh my God, my whole life is being restructured because my dad just died or my dad just died. And, you know, when my dad died, I didn't get out of bed for two months, you know? I didn't work, I didn't, well, I actually ate quite a bit. (laughing) Like, I didn't eat, that's not true, I ate everything. And drink everything. But, you know, just allowing people the space to go through it, however that looks for them. You know, there's a great book out there for grievers by this woman named Megan Devine. Maybe it's Davine, but it's called, okay, it's okay, you're not okay.

And I think that's a great thing to say to grievers, just, hey, it's okay. And if you do small things for them, like, hey, can I come walk your dog? Or, do you need dinner tonight? You know, Megan just kind of figure out what's best for them, but just knowing that they're gonna be in it for a while.

Yeah, I mean, again, my friend several years ago, his dad died, and I just remember, you know, he was one of my best friends, my best friend. He basically, I remember speaking to him, I don't know, two months after the fact, and I was just checking in, and he's like, you know, he could be candid with me. He's like, you know, the hardest part is just everyone forgets. Like everyone else except you, and the immediate people who are affected by this, like they go on with their lives, and you stop getting the, I'm sorry for your losses, you stop getting how are you doing, and you start to feel the loss even more acutely, 'cause it's like everyone else has forgotten, you're still going through this thing.

And again, this really speaks to kind of where we started with this, which is, we need to start talking. That's why I'm so excited for this episode. Like anything, any small part of bringing this into the conversation, any ability to laugh at death, and laugh at these things as well, and lighten kind of the soberness of the situation and the solemnness, like that needs to be embraced because like as we spoke, and like you can't stem the tide of death. It is, you can't do it.

I really like the combination of death and comedy. I don't think, I mean, I try not to take myself too seriously, but some of the best laughs I've had have been over some dark, just dark funny shit.

Yeah.

Sometimes we just gotta laugh. Gotta laugh.

You know, and again, this is, I think these are the things that people have a hard time confronting, but that it, someone who can, like you, who can be around the dying, you know, face, as much as we're talking about lightening the mood, it's still a very difficult and painful experience, not necessarily physically for everyone, but the idea of losing this world and yourself and your family is not gonna be a pleasant experience for most people, and the ability to kind of maintain a sense of humor and laugh at shit still. Like, you know, it'd be one thing if we were having this conversation and you were talking to me kind of like a funeral director and all like a mortician, like, "Oh yes, it's quite bad being around dying."

Like that's the last thing we need to attach to this process because that's not gonna help anyone kind of latch on and understand that there's value here. So that leaves me on my next question, which is if you weren't gonna say there's not one, but maybe a few takeaways from all of your time spent with dying people and families. Like, what would you wanna say? Like, what have you learned as kind of the main thing about being around dying people?

I think number one, the more you touch, and physically, like, connects with the dying, I think, the more you understand. And we talked about that more. And again, when we looked at that historical perspective, we stopped touching our dead and what, you know, psychologically, that's brought us to a darker place than we know or expected. So, you know, try to do that, you know, if you can. Don't be afraid to do that. And I just, yeah, I wanna empower people to be, to have courage, I suppose. If you don't have any other connection with death, try a death meditation. And these are actually something that I facilitate here in Los Angeles, and they started over, actually, in South Korea, something called living funerals, where you can go and you, like, write your own obituary, you're staring at a picture of yourself that has your birth date, and then that day's date is your death date.

And we go through a whole, like, letting go of each of your fingers, your toes, you know, saying goodbye to each of your body parts. It's like a three-hour meditation. It's pretty long. - Yeah, yeah.

And then also, you know, meditating through your subconscious, like, you know, how, you know, imagine what it's like to be, like, drifting away and letting go, and the world gets smaller and smaller. So these meditations have actually been, had a profound, I mean, everyone who attends them is just, like, whoa, like, my whole life is different. My friend who does these in Texas, I mean, cross, she said someone came out of her living funeral was like, I gotta get a divorce, 'cause you would go, like, life-altering. - Yes, yes, yes.

And so it can be a really scary thing. People who show up to these are definitely scared, but they come out and they're connected, you know, with their own mortality. - Yes.

I might suggest doing some of those, you know, getting close, reading, of course. You know, if you want to read some good, modern, death-denial philosophy, I would suggest the book "The Worm at the Core" by Sheldon Solomon, very, very good stuff. Or just look him up on YouTube. He's brilliant. He's like, he looks like the dude. He wears, like, a Bob Marley shirt, and then he talks, like, the most brilliant philosophy.

I love it. - It's like, I love the dichotomy, it's so good.

I love that. Well, the meditation sounds very interesting because, you know, one of my favorite mystics from the east is Ramana Maharshi, and he famously, whether you believe this or not, became enlightened when he did exactly that. He laid down one day, I think he was, like, 12 or 11, and he's like, I'm dead now.

Awesome. - And he kept asking the question, who am I? Who am I? And he kept going through this, and it essentially was the same process of saying goodbye to each part of his body, the whole thing, and then he was enlightened, and weird, magical, and mystical things started to take place around him, and he was generally recognized as, you know, a very pure and wise person, and also one of the few people throughout history who never really got accused of doing anything fucked up, which is great, so. But it really does kind of point to this idea that if we can let go of just our physical body and the mortality and our fear of losing that connection, sense of self, and that can be such a liberating experience.

I mean, this is why people go to the jungle and take ayahuasca, right? They wanna get jolted out of their body psychically and come to these realizations like they need to get a divorce. It's a very similar thing. I mean, that's. - It is, it's another kind of, it's like a sober ego death.

Yes, yes, but I mean.

That's not exactly how I explain it to people.

Well, and it makes, like, it's just as valid, and then we can get into the weird placebo effects of some of these psychedelics too, because I mean, I think inherently, we all have this ability to kind of let go of these psychic and psychological shackles that we kind of build ourselves, but also kind of get voiced it on to us, and anything we can do, you know, psychedelics are great. I love them. I think meditations are great too.

You do.

Very much, I mean, there's a lot of things I do that I really very much enjoy, but I will say the one that I think I continuously shy away from is any real work with death, and that's why I think using it as a tool or modality or perspective to look through kind of, you know, this illusory aspect of life or what even life means through the lens of death is like, that's really fucking powerful stuff, as I'm sure you know.

Yeah, absolutely.

I love it. Well, what else, I mean, there's, I could literally ask questions forever about death, but what else do you, would you want to say about the death and dying process if there's--

I mean, okay, so we just touched a little bit on psychedelics, and I just want to comment on that for a second because right now there's a lot of research and also a lot of laws that are passing in Oregon and Colorado, you know, just legalize the use of psilocybin. I'm not sure if it's medicinal or recreational, but--

They decriminalize it, so basically what they said is, is that anyone, we're not, they basically said we're not going to arrest or do anything about this, so go for it.

Okay, I see, so it's like slowly but surely, just like weed came down, that's probably going to come around, which is great. I'm a big fan of psilocybin, you know, when I use it, I use it to get in touch with my inner mother, my inner wisdom, and also to sort of, I use it to recalibrate myself or, you know, get back in nature, but really it's, there's an inner person that I like to connect with when I use psychedelics, and that's really powerful, I've been reading a lot of research about how dying people are using psychedelics, and everybody's sort of lashing onto this idea, but it's been my experience that sick people do not want to take drugs, okay?

Like they do not feel good, they're already throwing up and impane and possibly on opiates or whatever, it's like, I don't know why people are thinking that it just takes psychedelics on your deathbed because you're already on a psychedelic trip on your deathbed. Ego death with, you know, psilocybin or whatever, any kind of psychedelic is for the living to explore death.

Yes.

Not for the dying, they're all, like, leave them alone, do it before, you know, they get to that point, do your psychedelics before, have your trips while you're alive to understand death, like by the time you're on your deathbed, it's too late.

Yes, so this is incredibly important to talk about, so we're not all gonna be Aldous Huxley getting injected intravenously with LSD and sleep ass away, that's because we're not all writing Brave New World. So here's the thing, this is why it's so important, is I had a really good discussion with Katherine McLean who was part of the Johns Hopkins psilocybin experiences that specifically worked with dying people, and she shared an experience of someone who basically freaked the fuck out, and he was a terminal patient, and this is, we're talking about something we were kind of talking about earlier with the Civil War and the capitalism stuff, there is an effort, a corporate effort, and it is being aided and abetted by organizations that people somewhat trust and think are trying to do good things for psychedelics, there is an effort to monetize psychedelics, and one of the first places they're looking at to do that is specifically with psilocybin as an antidepressant, which, just to be clear, is a fucking terrible idea, and I love mushrooms, I think if you take them at the proper set and setting and reverence, you can really, really do some special things, but to think that we're going to clinically and allotropically deal with psychedelics as we would, even with something like cannabis, you know?

We don't have a psilocybin annoyed system, we have an endocannabinoid system, so it's a completely different trajectory, and I couldn't agree more. I think psychedelics can give us a wonderful glimpse into the dying process, and, you know, maybe for the very student, veteran psychedelic taking person, you could take psychedelics around a dying person, have an amazing experience, but for the actual dying, what a stressor, holy shit, like for most people, especially if you haven't done it, which I think anyone who's done it probably isn't going to really want to do it when they're dying, I mean, yeah, and if someone's been on chemo, I mean, it's just, I can't, I've been racking my brain, trying to understand why people think this is such a good idea when, like I said, my experience around dying people is that they're too sick, you know?

I mean, I don't know, I don't know. I just, I don't think it's a great idea. I think psychedelics are for the living, and for our own egos, not for people who are back in their health. Yeah, it's, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I, I think it's a really important thing to talk about because this is, people are looking, so I'm still in New York where weed is illegal. Like it's just flat out illegal. Like I, it's, you don't even know this weed, weed is my spirit animal too. No one loves it more than me. So it's really just like, I just want to be able to grow it. I fucking love it. I give you a rent for your money.

I don't know. You've been, this is now, now we know why we're getting along. But basically, I see the paths that have happened in other places for legalization. I see them even in Massachusetts, which is like an hour away from me. They're, it's corporate, right? They're, these big companies have come in and kind of dominated the landscape. This is absolutely what is planned with psychedelics. All this clinical research is not just so we can open the floodgates of human consciousness and have a better, more open-minded society. Like there are clear interests going into this stuff. And I think intuitively, just anecdotally from your own experience, you've keyed in on that like, yeah, this is, this is probably not the best application.

And the worst thing that could happen is that this is the plan. This is how we're starting to treat people. And then all of a sudden shit starts going wrong, which it's already been shown to happen. And that would, the disservice it would do to something is amazing like psilocybin or any of these psychedelics or people who aren't dying or aren't dealing with psychological issues. I mean, that, that would be a travesty.

Right, yeah. And it's like monetizing sacred medicine, actually. And actually now that you say that there is like forces behind it, I remembered having a conversation with my partner who is actually a chemical engineer and works in big pharma. So I remember him saying how big it was that psilocybin got some kind of like FDA clearance that like nothing gets. Like it got some kind of like pharmaceutical clearance for research that was, you know, pretty high up.

Yeah, that actual-- - You're turning.

Yeah, that process from what I understand from speaking people who are behind the scenes and know a lot of the players and we're actively involved, basically what ended up happening is there were a group of people who've been trying to legalize psychedelics for decades. And some of them, there's all these different factions, right? There's never one coalition that's all on the same page, just not how shit works, we know that. But essentially people with very noble and altruistic motivations and intentions were basically used as pawns to get certification and FDA approval and make sure that everything was done on the up and up.

And once there started to be kind of questions raised about not only the ethics and kind of application of psychedelics, but also some of the sexual abuse things that were popping up in these clinical studies, just like really rampant stuff, there were warning signs. A lot of those people quickly kind of got the brush off and were like, thank you, but no thanks, we're good on our own. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see how this develops in the next five to 10 years, but I'm really glad you brought up in the context of dying because I also, it just sounds like a truly terrible idea.

It does, I don't know why everybody's latching onto it.

It's really weird. Jill, this has been amazing. I would actually love to have you on again for another chat about this stuff, 'cause we spoke a lot about death, but I feel like there's a lot of other ground we could cover just getting a sense of what you're interested and what you're doing.

History, not though, I love history, by the way, it's like one of my favorites, it's great. I got on a Ron Chernow kick two years ago of his biographies, and man, oh, they're like tomes, they're like 800-page books, and I just, I have...

I know, my dad used to carry them around.

They're so good.

My dad is also a historian, so.

Oh, okay, awesome, awesome.

It's in the blood.

It's so cool, and I think what's cool about history too is that it is so cyclical and to understand kind of these patterns that repeat and kind of the etymology and where these things come from, just gives us so much insight. Like I think that point about the Civil War and kind of Americans, but that's so fucking poignant.

It gives me hope, you know, if history is cyclical, maybe we, and what I am, I mean, I'm literally trying to bring back Victorian death practices, like having the dead in the home, washing her own dead, leaving them there for, you know, a few days, whatever you need. So I'm like literally trying to bring that back. So, you know, maybe, maybe this is the time, I'm hoping that we can get back to those practices and move away from corporatized and medicalized death.

Which I never even thought about as a thing. It was just, that's how it happens until you mentioned it. Truthfully, like I was never thought that there was some corporatized, like it was like, this is what happens, you go to do this, this is, you know, you do this now.

Yeah, it's pretty bad, it's pretty bad. I could do a whole expose on the funeral industry and my feelings on them, so.

Yeah, that's pretty awesome that you pointed that out. So, all right, before we get to the questions that I end the show with, where can people find you? I'll have links to everything too, but if people are like, you know what, I need these services, I'm interested, what can people do to get in touch with you?

You can go to my website, deathstulaLA.com and send me an email, or you can call me, and I'm happy to offer you a consultation and hopefully move forward and make a death plan for you. You can be healthy or dying, it doesn't matter. So, you can find me at deathdulaLA.com and I have a blog, you know, going there and, you know, there's a lot of information, I have events that I post there, so any, yeah, play around with the website, there's a lot of good stuff.

That's a really nice site, and I do this for a living. It was actually quite pleasant to use, and I don't say that very often, yeah, it's very nice, you did a good job. So, questions towards the end, here we go. What's your favorite color?

The color just popped into my head with blue.

Very nice, what's your favorite number?

24.

Why 24?

I mean, it's a really nice, like, even number, right, at home, boiled down and down, doesn't it boil, it has a boil down to, I'm not sure, but I'm born on the 24th, and I just, I don't know, I like that nice, even number.

The 24th of what?

January, I'm in a various.

Very cool, very cool. What's your favorite animal?

Dogs.

Nice, dog, I think it's the most common answer, but also very understandable why it is.

Yeah, I love, I'm just, like, so connected to my dog.

What kind of dog do you have?

He's, like, a dog's interior mix, and he's so cute. He has a little mohawk we cut on him, and he's a cutie boy, he runs around, I'm so happy. He just, like, radiates happiness, that's why I love him.

What's his name?

Monty.

Monty, very nice. Last question, what's a practical tip that's helped you in your life that you could share with people listening?

Oh, practical tip that's helped me in my life has been compartmentalization, so, for example, when I'm working, I'm totally present in my work, but when I'm not working, I let everything go. I don't bring it home, I keep it in a certain area, and that's how I enjoy the rest of my life. I look really rich in life, I really do, you know, I have a great love in my life, I have great friends, I have a good family system, and we live, you know, we really live, but I don't think I'd be able to do that if I didn't compartmentalize my work as much as I do. So, just keeping time for you, you're authentic you, and then, you know, keeping time for the working you.

Yeah, well, I mean, I'll say this just from speaking with you now, and briefly the other day, you know, it's refreshing to hear someone who's around death, be so joyful and happy, just in luck you can tell from speaking with someone, like, that is a very positive reminder that this isn't something that's gonna fuck up your life, in fact, it can enhance it in so many amazing ways. - It is, it's life affirming, it really is, I mean, yeah, and I'm also happy to say that everyone around me has their advanced directive and stuff filled out, if anything does happen to anybody, like, we're all good.

Me and my wife are having a conversation tonight about this, if anything, so. Jill, thank you so much for coming on, let's do it again in the not too distant future.

Absolutely, thank you, Noah, this was really great.

Awesome, we'll talk soon.

Okay. - All right, bye bye.

Bye. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)

Thanks for listening to that episode, Jill. Go check her out, deathdullala.com, she's cool, she resonated with you, if you resonated with her, you know what to do, you know how to do it, she does free consultations, so that's pretty fucking awesome. Tell her Noah said hi, that's it for this episode. Rate and review, the podcast, if you would, that would be amazing, for Sigmatic, big thanks to them, they're great, you know how to get their stuff, do it. New sponsor coming next week, pretty excited about them, very excited, very, very, very, very excited. There'll also be guests on the show, which was my suggestion, they did not ask for that, but I was very much impressed with who they are, so look forward to that.

That's it, oh, did I mention the synchronicity playlist on Spotify, follow me. I put together synchronicity playlist, music I'm listening to, there's 15, 16's coming around the corner, I'll let you know, go check that out. Okay, see you next week.

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