Willow End of Life Education and Planning is all about changing the conversation around death and dying to include living. As Reena Lazar says, “All that matters in the end, matters now.” We talk about how the finiteness of life is profoundly motivating; how thinking about the end and working backwards makes a difference in how we live; the impact of a quick love letter exercise; and how conversations are key. We even dive into five concrete steps that can help guide you in having more successful end-of-life conversations with someone you love.

https://www.willoweol.com/

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Transcript:

Diane Hullet: Hi, I’m Diane Hullet and welcome to the Best Life, Best Death podcast. Today my guest is Rina Lazar and she’s with Willow EOL, Willow End of Life, and she’s going to tell us all about that. I think we’re going to have an interesting conversation because we’re kind of having a conversation about conversations, right, Rina?

Reena Lazar: Exactly. It’s exactly what it’s about. Willow, E O L, so the long, the whole name is Willow End of Life Education and Planning. And we’re all about changing the conversation around death and dying to include life and living, but helping people. basically educate the public. There’s, we re I realized that there’s a real lack of public education around the fact that we’re immortal beings.

So that’s what we’re trying to achieve in the world. 

Diane Hullet: Yeah. I’ve kind of, we’ve joked around with some guests about like, why isn’t there a class on this in high school? You know, we have these like basic cooking and basic nutrition and basic sex ed and basic economics, even like home economics, but how about basic mortality?

That would be a good one. 

Reena Lazar: Absolutely. No, we don’t, we don’t want to talk about it. It’s like, you know, for most people, I think it’s the second biggest fear. The first one being public speaking. 

Diane Hullet: Totally. I think those are huge. Well, you started Willow with a friend and colleague and tell us how you got into this work.

Reena Lazar: Okay, so Michelle Pantay is the co founder and she was an old friend, you know, before this, and it was kind of because of her that I got into it because uh, she, well, before this I was doing other interesting things. I led a non profit organization that brought Israeli and Palestinian youth together for program and dialogue and conflict resolution and actually filmmaking and well, we all know how well that’s going.

And anyways, we, we closed that down. And I was looking for my next venture. And I was thinking of friends doing interesting things. And Michelle had told me a few years previous to this, that she was studying to be a funeral director. And I didn’t know anybody who was doing that. You’re doing what? But I remember when we talked about it, we were having dinner and you know, when you’re listening to someone, you’re like lean way forward.

Cause you’re just so interested. Well, that was me. So she was talking about the whole reclamation of death care in communities and families and she was talking about greening your death and how that’s a big deal and I just found it so fascinating. And I realized, you know, when I look back at my life, I have always been pretty interested in this thing.

I used to love, I still love going to funerals, but even as a kid, I just found it fascinating to learn about the people who died and be inspired about their life and even to, Touch on the feeling of grief that we usually don’t touch on. It’s very cathartic. Anyway, so move forward. And I said to Michelle, Hey, Do you want to start a business together?

And she was she at that point she was working at a she had studied to be a funeral director but quit part most the way through her practicum because she was working for the big corporations and found it very unsatisfying. Anyway so that’s when I said hey you want to start a business together? She had a part time job in something sort of related to Cemetery design and she wasn’t really sure but we, so we did is we got together one day a week or half a day a week for almost a year and we just researched and learned about who’s doing what this is back in like 2015, 16 something like that and there wasn’t a whole lot out there about education and at the same time I took a course that was called, it doesn’t exist anymore unfortunately, the Beyond Yonder Virtual School of Community Death Caring in Canada Although we did have some American students in it.

It was a wonderful class, 12 week program with 10 different instructors. And what I love most about it was learning, like just learning about all, all the stuff I was learning about every, all these different aspects about end of life. And I thought education, that’s what we need to do. We need to focus on education.

Nobody’s doing this. So that’s the sort of short story. And so she quit her job. We created willow. 

Diane Hullet: So great. And willow is such a beautiful name. I think it’s so evocative. What, what did it mean when you put the name 

Reena Lazar: willow? It’s great. It was Michelle’s idea. We were looking for different names and She wanted, it’s so funny, she wanted, definitely we kind of realized we wanted something in nature and she also thought it’s really important to have one word because she wanted people to, you know, turn to each other and say, hey, have you heard about willow?

You know, have you heard about, she just wanted one word and we, we focused on willow because willows are these amazing trees. They’re very diverse and ubiquitous at the same time. There’s so many, hundreds, I think, different kinds of willow trees and willow species found around the world and, and they have really beautiful qualities.

They’re flexible. They’re resilient. They’re. Vigorous, they’re regenerative, they’re adaptive they also have healing properties. Apparently the bark is a source of some sort of source used for natural remedies. And those remedies are used in natural painkillers like aspirin. So it in, in many different cultures, it’s a symbol of sorrow, mourning, and even ta ta ta immortality.

So somehow it evokes protection and surrender. So that’s. I mean, I can go on and on, but that’s basically, yeah. 

Diane Hullet: And then willow EOL, which of course stands for end of life, which we’re talking before we hit record. We’re like, if you’re working in this field, EOL is like one of those things that rolls off your tongue.

But otherwise we kind of have to clarify like, and 

Reena Lazar: yeah, so usually I write out the whole thing. Willow end of life education and planning is our official name, but the URL is willoweol. com. 

Diane Hullet: One of the things I love about your website is you’ve got, you’ve got just some great phrases and like one of them you say death is an opportunity in disguise, you know, and I think if you’re listening, just like, listen to that death, an opportunity in disguise, because I think in a lot of Western culture, we just turn away from it and think opportunity, my patootie, you know, it’s just, yeah.

Fear and loathing, and I want to avoid it at all costs. It’s a real opportunity. And so, throw out a couple more of those great phrases. 

Reena Lazar: Well, before I throw it out, I just want to say a little bit about that. Because I think of that phrase in two ways. You know, people say people always ask if there’s a, an old philosophical question, like, would you like to be immortal or not?

And then most people ever come to the conclusion that, well, no, because if I was immortal, like I wouldn’t do, you know, so like we need deadlines and this is the ultimate deadline. So that in that way for everybody, every mortal being death is an opportunity to disguise, knowing that our life is limited and precious and finite, it gives us, it motivates us to do things.

But the other way I look at it is people who have been brushed with death. And, and survived like their lives transform in incredible amazing ways like people who’ve had some sort of serious illness or they’ve had a close call in an accident. It wakes them up in a way that like, You almost want to have what they’re having, you know what I mean?

It’s like people who’ve had near death experiences. I haven’t had any of those. I’ve had a very serious car accident, which did wake me up, but I didn’t have, you know, the near death experience where I leave my body and stuff like that. But I love listening to those stories because they’re incredible. The, the impact on the life they live afterwards is incredible.

Yeah. Yes. 

Diane Hullet: Well, I, I think that’s just such a strong way to think of it. It, it’s, it’s turning it on its head. It’s taking something that we fear and embracing it for the lessons that 

Reena Lazar: are in it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so the other phrases we use when they’re too, I like one is all that matters in the end matters now.

And that came up in working on our departure direction series. So that series of workshops and tools is all about. Thinking about how you want to be cared for after you die based on your priorities and values and what we realized that when people start thinking about how they want to be cared for, like, besides just cremation versus burial, but, you know, there’s other choices now, too, but, you know, who do I want to have at my funeral?

What kind of people don’t want to be involved? Like, what kind of music, you know, the whole bit. When they start thinking about that, they realize So I’ll just illustrate it with a story. So Michelle, she, she will totally don’t mind if I tell the story we’ve told it so many times. So when she was thinking about her departure directions, she realized she wanted this fairly long, like multi day event where her body is, her corpse is, is cared for in multiple different ways by multiple different people.

And she had this whole thing. And then she realized, well, wait a minute. I’m not really taking great care of my body right now. So that’s kind of what came up, like all that matters in the end, actually it matters now. And another woman realized she wanted this whole big community event for when she dies.

And then she, she also realized, look, wait a minute, I don’t really have a big community right now. And then she decided she’s going to move into like a co housing situation. Like she, you know, so when you think about, and you know, they do this in business as well. They think about. You know, where do you want to be in 25 years?

Like you always think about the long term and then you work your way backwards. So that’s what we do with, with departure directions. Like what’s important later. Well, guess what? If it’s important later. Look at your life now. 

Diane Hullet: Yes. Yes. And we, we always think about, you know, it sounds so simplistic, but really people at the end, what matters are those close relationships, those that’s, that’s really what matters.

So how do we tend to those now? How do we show up to those now and how does thinking that they are finite impact our availability to others in our lives that matter to us? 

Reena Lazar: Yeah, one of our most popular tools and and workshops is called the five minute legacy love letter. And that’s all about writing a letter just to a single person.

It’s not about writing a heart will, which is something else. But it’s about writing a letter to somebody important in your life, as if it’s the last letter. You’ll ever write to them. And so it’s a very simple and yet very beautiful process where you write a letter and we call it five minutes because once we warm people up in the workshop, we literally give them five minutes to either start or complete the letter.

And what happens is whether that letter ever leaves your top drawer, it’ll change your relationship with that person. Because what you’re doing is you’re just talking about, it’s a love letter. So you’re not talking about, you know, the stuff you want to resolve with them. You’re talking about what you love about them, what you appreciate them, how they’ve touched your life.

It’s the last letter they’re ever going to receive from you. If you have stuff to work out, you can work that out before you write this letter. But this is that letter. And so when you write that letter, whether they receive it or not. It’s going to change your relationship with them for the better. Yeah.

So love 

Diane Hullet: that Rena, you know, I love that because a big thing of what I talk with people about in the work I do is how to turn this into actual action, right? Because we always, we end up with all these big ideas that are always on the back burner that never are important enough to quite get done. Or we just don’t prioritize them, but to say like, Hey, this is going to take five minutes and you’re going to do this thing.

And it’s going to have a big impact. That’s fantastic. Yeah. We 

Reena Lazar: love 

Diane Hullet: it. It’s perfect. That’s really great. Another one that I loved from your website was explore the reality of your mortality and that’s 

Reena Lazar: such a great ring, right? Right. I mean, that’s our tagline because I mean, it sort of goes along with the wake up before your time’s up line because we are mortal beings and it is real and why not explore it?

Because, and the way we guide people to explore it is through heart centered. Inquiry based end of life planning and heart centered because we want people to, to go deep. And usually when people come to a willow workshop, they leave energized, inspired and connected, which is not what people say. Like sometimes when people hear them in this work, they’re like, Oh, that must, isn’t that kind of like, you must be really strong.

Like that must be really sad and morbid. I’m like, not the work I do. Like people come to these workshops and they leave, even, even those who come to us with. That have terminal illnesses, which are, I’d say the majority of people who work with are not that way. They’re just mortal beings that are touched by death and they want to explore this.

But some people do come to us knowing that their life has a limited time left. And it, even with them, it makes such a difference in the remaining time they have. And it makes, and it has made a huge difference on things like their funerals and their, their letters, their, their goodbyes. Yeah, really big.

Diane Hullet: Yeah. The legacy that we leave when we face that. Yeah. So, you know, on the one hand we’ve got people listening who are probably, you know, curious and maybe willing to face this themselves or they work in this field or they’re, they’ve got a spouse that they’re concerned about and they’re working with.

So it’s one thing to be curious yourself, how do you, you know, how do you sort of move that conversation with other people? But you and I both work with people who are, are eager for this conversation on some level. At least they show up for it and they come to a workshop or a class or they’re listening to a podcast.

But I was intrigued by, you know, one of the things on your website was this kind of information about how to have successful conversations with your loved ones. And what would you say about that? 

Reena Lazar: Well, so my background is in communication and conflict resolution, so I love this stuff. I love helping people have conversations that are challenging.

And I put together a tool, which is also a workshop called Five Steps for a Successful End of Life Planning Conversations. And that’s exactly what it is. So it’s really how to begin a conversation. So you’re absolutely right. People, there are many people who are interested in this, and there are probably many more people who would do anything in the world to avoid talking about this, thinking about this, planning for this.

And often. People who are interested in this have someone in their life who’s the latter person who doesn’t want to talk about it. So these are five steps. So one of the steps first is creating your intention. What do you want to have happen in this conversation? What do you want the impact of this conversation to be on you, on them and on your relationship?

So it’s really good to just sit down and write that down for yourself. What is the intention? So you do that. And then the second thing is to I don’t know if it’s in this order. Wait, 

Diane Hullet: pause just for a second. I love that because one conversation intention might just be to open the door, right? Another conversation intention might be to have a conversation about an upcoming medical procedure.

Another intention might be to get two people to talk to each other. You know, your brother and his wife or your parents or a beloved friend and their children. So, so what the intention, what you hope for is the outcome of the conversation actually kind of matters in terms of how you. Yeah, 

Reena Lazar: it does matter.

And another intention that often comes up and, or, or this may not be an intention, but this is often an outcome is it brings you closer together with that person. It opens up some something that hasn’t opened up before. So, so you create, you just decide for yourself, the intention that sort of gives you some motivation.

And then when you’re starting to have a conversation with somebody who you’re You have some concerns and some fears of how they’re going to react the best thing to do is to put those concerns and fears on the table, like, hey, honey, there’s something I really want to talk to you about, but I’m worried.

You’re not going to like this or I’m concerned. You’re going to think it’s kind of morbid or what you so you write down for yourself. There’s this. Tool we have in our shop or in the workshop. You do this. You literally write down a whole bunch of concerns or fears that you think would happen. Like, I’m worried you’re going to think this or I’m worried it’s not going to go well, whatever it is, you write that down and you put it on the table for any parents out there.

You may or may not have used this with your kids consciously or unconsciously, where you say, you know, sweetheart, I have something I’d like to ask you, but I think you’re not going to like it. It actually diffuses the potential problem before it even starts, because then they can’t go, I don’t, you know what I mean?

Like it gets, anyway, so it’s, it’s a really great little tool to use for any difficult conversation. So that’s another step. Another two steps, they sort of go together. I mean, they’re similar, but different is to think about the context Or the motivation. So you want to say to this person why you want to have this conversation.

So for example um, you know, when, you know, uncle Bob was sick and then eventually died, like nobody wanted to talk about it. And everybody is still very hurt and sad. And the family was torn apart. I just really don’t want that to happen to us. Like, so that, or so you take a real context and you say that, or you, so you can use that like a context, or you can take a motivation.

Like the reason I want to talk about this with you is because I really want to understand what’s important for you and for us. And I think it’ll bring us closer together. So in the tool, we have a whole list of things you can actually, if you, if you can’t think of your own, a whole list of things you can check off, like why you might want to have the conversation.

And it could also be to avoid a negative thing, right? Like, I don’t want such and such to happen. Yeah. Right, 

Diane Hullet: like that’s what I was picturing like I want to have this conversation because you’ve said you don’t want extreme measures to keep you alive. But I need to know more about what that really means.

So when you go into this hospitalization, we know that we’re on the same page. 

Reena Lazar: Yeah, yeah. And like another good one again with my. Co founder is her dad didn’t really want to talk about this stuff and she has one brother and she said, dad, I’m really worried that if we don’t talk about it, Mario and I are going to argue and fight and it’s not going to go well.

And he’s like, Oh, okay, let’s talk about it. You know, like, like that’s a loop. What parent wants their kids to be fighting about them? Right. 

Diane Hullet: Oh, that’s so great. I love this thinking of it as naming. It’s like naming the intention, whether the intention. Is for the positive or for the, what we want to avoid because both of those are present, right?

Exactly. So just kind of saying that that strikes me as one of the biggest ways to, to shift the barrier to talking about. 

Reena Lazar: Yeah. Yeah. And then there is a final step, but before, well, I’ll tell you the final step and then I’ll tell you some other tricks. So the final step is actually what happens. So those are the four steps to like help you just initiate the conversation.

Then you have the conversation. And then the fifth step, which is really important is to afterwards. When the conversation ends to really reflect on it and to think about what went well, what didn’t go well, what shifted things, you know, and so that next time you have it, you can learn from that. It’s really important thing to do.

So those are kind of the five steps. But the other thing is to get people to talk about this. It may not be like, Hey, I’m going to have a one on one conversation, but I want to, I want to bring them. So Willow has a whole bunch of workshops and they’re on quite a big variety of topics that hopefully there’s something for everybody.

So the legacy love letter one is often a good starting point. Cause you know, who doesn’t want to write a love letter to people they love. Right. And, you know, yes, we’re talking about death and dying, but we’re really just talking about. Relationships and we have a similar one with a heart will, which is really about writing sort of message that you read publicly or put with your important papers meant meant for a wide audience.

We have a whole series of stuff about greening your death. And so that brings in people sometimes more men, because, as you know, not a lot of men seem to get involved as much as women here. But people are interested in that because it’s the way they live their life. Like, what do you mean, greening your death?

I can green my death. And so it’s a fascinating that one’s the most information heavy one. And, you know, so it really expands people’s mind. And so, yeah, we have different conversations to help different kinds of people might come in and once they’re in, because it’s very inquiry based. They kind of get into it and they want to know more.

That’s really 

Diane Hullet: what I find over and over again, that once people open the door to this and they find out it’s not so really so awful or terrifying to discuss, there’s really a lot to learn. And also I always try to acknowledge there are so many people who’ve had trauma around death, whether as a child, as a teenager, whatever the circumstances, there’s, there’s a lot of trauma for people that makes this really difficult to go into.

And that’s. That’s a whole other piece. Setting that trauma infused place aside, there can be curiosity for most people. Once they open the door, they, it’s, they often think it’s going to be a lot worse than it is. 

Reena Lazar: Yeah, no, it’s great. And my the program director program manager at Willow, her name is Deborah White, she.

And she’s not on the website yet. It has to be changed. She recently did a series, a four week series at her elder college in the community she lives in. And there were about 25 people who came every week. And one session, it was in the It was in the when she did willow workshop called values, wishes, and who and what matter most that’s kind of explains to you what the workshops about.

And at one point, who and what matter most we have a series of questions where you turn to the person next to you choose one of a safe five or six questions and you turn to someone and you, you just answer the question and let them listen and they answer. Whichever question they wanted you listen, and it’s just super simple, but super powerful exercise.

And so during that exercise, I’m not sure what question she answered, but she got very emotional and she had to leave the room. This one, one student and Debra was a little concerned. You’re like, Oh, you know, did I push them too far, blah, blah. And then at the end of the class, the husband of this woman came up to her and thanked her, said, Oh, that was so great because we had, they were, those were things we really had to talk about.

And that was really great. So she felt, you know, a little better. And then. You know, fast forward a couple weeks, I’m in synagogue for high holidays, and a friend of mine says to me, my friend up in this community did your workshop and absolutely loved it. And I was like, oh, that’s nice. And then I, and she told me the name.

And so I asked Deborah, so and so, you know, I heard about so and so, she goes, that’s the woman who went crying out 

Diane Hullet: So we never know. We never know. You would have thought, Oh gosh, it was too much. And she hated it. But she was so, so touched 

Reena Lazar: that she’s told her friends about it. And apparently Debra at the end of the four weeks got a standing ovation.

Wow. Wow. It gets a standing ovation for, you know, talking about death and dying 

Diane Hullet: for death is an opportunity in disguise. 

Reena Lazar: Exactly. Wake up before your time’s up. No, I think it really, like I said, it really. It does that. It really wakes people up. And it takes them, sometimes people enter it. If this is on video, my shoulders are all up.

They enter a workshop with their shoulders up to their ears. And at the end of the workshop, their shoulders are down and relaxed. 

Diane Hullet: Yes. Yes. I think that’s the biggest surprise for people when I work with people that they think it’s going to be much more difficult and they think it’s going to be, I don’t know, more slog instead of a relief and kind of intriguing.

Reena Lazar: Yeah. Yeah. I have to say, I just piloted a workshop with one of my colleagues about medical assistance and dying. And it’s, it’s particularly suitable for Canadian context just because. You know, it’s a little different than in the U. S. And, it’s a topic that a lot of, there are a lot of lectures out there about this topic.

And, often they’re very dry. And so, I took the material, and I, I don’t know why, this seems to be my superpower, and I have no idea where it comes from, because I don’t have any training in this. But, I, I seem to have a superpower in creating a curriculum that’s very engaging. So, I took the material, and I, I turned it into something that was engaging.

And, it went off, it went over so well. Like, people were just Like, it wasn’t about just, here’s how it works, this is what you need to know, this is who qualifies, this is who doesn’t qualify, blah, blah, which is interesting, of course, and important, but it was more like getting people to think about how come the legislation changed from this to that, why didn’t it go to that right away, like, what’s different now, and then, oh, the disability advocates, okay, that’s why, and so then we had this whole, you know, got people to really think about, you know, what are the risks for, you know, different people, and, and again, it was always, we always have some conversations, You know, turn to the person next to you or write down for yourself, or we always have engaging.

Diane Hullet: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That, that piece is so important. I think people these days, our attention spans are short. We don’t want to just be taught at, we want to think for ourselves and figure out how does this material apply to me? So it’s medical assistance and dying or medical aid and dying in the U S people, people often flippantly say, Oh, we treat our pets better than we do people.

And I definitely want that. Well, under what circumstances do you really want that? What are the ethics of it? I mean, there’s so much interesting, 

Reena Lazar: rich, rich, rich conversation. And we don’t promote any point of view. We just, we’re just laying out the discussion pieces so people can. Come to their own conclusions.

And that workshop, we had all sorts of people come who’ve never come before because they have an elder parent or they’re considering it for themselves or whatever the situation and they just wanted to be informed. And guess what? They got to engage and think about their mortality, whether they’re close to the end or not.

We don’t know. 

Diane Hullet: Right, right. And they got to think about how that applies to them specifically, or it applies to someone they love. And, and I just, I think, I think this is such an interesting field. I, I you know, it applies to everybody and yet we’re sort of. stuck still in these old, like 19th century visions about it, like I sometimes think we haven’t evolved that far out of like Lincoln’s, you know teen going across the country with his embalmed body.

In some ways we’re still in that mental, like the mental fixation on an old funeral home that’s local with a casket, you know, and I think it’s changed so 

Reena Lazar: much. It has, and there’s so many great independent progressive funeral homes popping up everywhere that are helping people do it. They’re helping, they’re guiding people to do what they want to do.

As opposed to just saying, here’s, here’s the menu. I’m going to do it all. 

Diane Hullet: You probably saw, you know, Caitlin Doty’s got a great video that she put out in October of 23 about the funeral industry in the U. S. and how much it costs and how the federal government is considering making changes to, you know, try to regulate some certain things.

For example, One of the things being debated was do funeral homes have to put their prices on a website? Actually lobbyists arguing that, you know, that wasn’t necessary and price wasn’t a factor. And Caitlin’s got this very funny commentary on, you know, yeah, price is a factor and yeah, people want to know and yeah, prices aren’t public.

Things tend to get, you know, jacked 

Reena Lazar: up. Oh, in Canada, they have to be on the website. They have to be, they have to publish them. Yeah. 

Diane Hullet: Oh, our reasonable, our reasonable neighbors to the 

Reena Lazar: North. Yeah, I just thought that was universal. No, they’re actually have to publish them. Yeah. Yeah. Prices have to 

Diane Hullet: be published.

Well, you know, I just think the work that you are doing is so is so fundamental. We 

Reena Lazar: are so keen to have hundreds and thousands of educators, Willow educators around the world to do this work because they, They love it. And the people that come to their workshops love it. So 

Diane Hullet: absolutely. And it strikes me.

It seems like your work is both relevant to lay people, the regular person who wants to get some more information, and then also educators who want to take it and next level. And I’m sure you’ve got people who’ve been through doula programs or geriatric programs who add this on to their 

Reena Lazar: Absolutely.

It’s like another tool in the Some people do it as the way to get into the field, and some people do it to add on. Lots of deaf doula nurses, retired or part time nurses, are coming in. Some funeral directors, celebrants, some people in the kind of legal industry, spiritual leaders as well. Yeah. 

Diane Hullet: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, are there any final nuggets you’d want to leave us with about conversations? Have them. 

Reena Lazar: Okay. Really, it’s a beautiful connected connection building mechanism. I had a conversation with my siblings because when my daughter wasn’t quite, well, she’s only 19, but I realized they are my next, one of them would be my next of kin.

anD they, I realized I, I don’t really know how they want to be cared for after they die. And they don’t know how I want to be cared for. So we had a conversation at, one of my sisters has this beautiful place outside the city. We spent half a day and I led them through some, some exercises. And oh my God, that was like the best time I’ve ever had with my siblings.

I’m telling you, we laughed, we cried. It was the first time we really talked 20 years later about my parents, but maybe it was 15 years later who had died 15 years earlier. It was the first time we had a really meaningful conversation about it. It was so beautiful. And yeah, you feel real much closer, you know, more.

It’s awesome. 

Diane Hullet: Cool. And in, in your experience, like in that regard, you really set aside a half day and said, let’s talk about these things. 

Reena Lazar: Yeah, I did. Yeah. Yeah. And they, they were like, now we understand what you do. 

Diane Hullet: Yeah. Yeah. Now we understand what you do. That’s really true. Well, I really appreciate everything you’ve brought today to this conversation.

And just your you and I are definitely like sisters across the board are working together. Promote discussion, promote conversation, however you need to do that with your loved ones, be it relatives, family, friends, family of choice, whatever you call them, have these conversations. And I think you can use things like this podcast to say, Hey, I heard this podcast and I was thinking about, and I’d love to talk to you.

Reena Lazar: Exactly, exactly. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah. Really, talking to you too, Diane. Yeah. 

Diane Hullet: Thanks for all you do, Rena, and you can find out more about Rena’s work at Willow EO l.com. As always, you can find out about the work I do at Best Life. Best death.com. Thanks for listening.