Former hospice and oncology nurse turned Doulagiver Trainer, Suzanne B. O’Brien has dedicated her life to teaching people how to care for those at the end of it. In our first podcast conversation (BLBD #105), we explored the reality that most of us will, at some point, be called to support a loved one at the end of life. And guess what – that is still true. But couldn’t we be more prepared? In this episode, Suzanne shares insights from her new book, offering practical guidance on what contributes to a “good death,” including becoming less fearful of the unknown, how emotional considerations come into play, and preparation that goes beyond paperwork. What do caregivers need to know? How can they be supported in this truly life-changing role? This conversation and this book are a guide to help you become more ready.

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Transcript:

Diane Hullet: Hi, I’m Diane Hullett, and you’re listening to the Best Life, Best Death podcast. And today I’m super excited to be talking again to Suzanne O’Brien. Hi, Suzanne. 

Suzanne B. O’Brien: Hi, Diane. 

Diane Hullet: Suzanne and I first spoke back on Best Life, Best Death number 105. And we talked about, well, the title of it was, we will all be called to care for someone at the end of life.

And I think that title of that first episode we did together. really sums up your life’s work, which I think is so incredible that we will all be called to care for people. And how do we do 

Suzanne B. O’Brien: it better? I agree, Diane. And I think it’s the whole premise of what we’re going to talk about today. I mean, everything is an extension of that statement of that phrase, and this is why it’s.

It’s so important that we share and have resources for people and have this conversation so that when we are in that position, we have the tools and we have a roadmap or a blueprint to navigate through a very difficult time for most. 

Diane Hullet: Yeah, exactly. So Suzanne is the founder and CEO. CEO of doula givers.

She’s a doula giver trainer. That’s all based on her experience as a hospice nurse and an oncology nurse. So, you know, Suzanne brings a lot of boots on the ground kind of experience to this. And then she basically, I think you saw an opportunity and you said there are So many people who need this kind of training, not to keep it in one medical facility or one kind of what I want to say, like one through line of nurses or doulas or home caregivers, you said everyone can benefit from this.

So how do we take it even bigger? And one way is through your online courses and your webinars and another way. is through this book. You’ve just written this fabulous book that comes out essentially next week in March. And so it’s really exciting in March of 2025, you’ll be publishing the good death and tell us the 

Suzanne B. O’Brien: subtitle.

It’s a guide for, I’m going to show it to you right here because I do have a copy if I may which is really beautiful. So it is. The good death, a guide for supporting your loved one through the end of life. And this is, this is the book. This is like the, what to expect when you’re expecting, but for the opposite end of life.

And it is a complete guide and it is life changing and I think every family should have this book. 

Diane Hullet: I completely agree. What I love about it is, you know, it’s broken down into sort of what I would call almost like foundational chapters at the beginning that really kind of say, why does this matter and why do we need to talk about this and learn about this?

And then you’ve got a whole middle chunk. That’s basically a work. Book. So, you know, from some of the foundational things at the beginning, you’re then saying, okay, the rubber meets the road. Let’s do this. Either you personally or with your loved one, let’s have this conversation and write these things down.

And so it goes from both this theoretical level to also this practical level. And I think that’s, what’s going to make 

Suzanne B. O’Brien: people love your book. Yeah. Thank you so much for that. And if I may, I want to just highlight what you said at the very beginning here, which is super important. So I am a former hospice and oncology nurse, cancer nurse.

I always say this work chooses you, right? So, you know, it’s not like you’re a little girl and you say, I’m going to grow up and work with people at the end of life and all that it chooses you, your path unfolds. If you allow it from the heart and being in the position of being a hospice nurse, working with those at the end of life and having more times than not.

The end of life not going as well as it could. And I’m being very gentle when I say that, and there’s multiple reasons. And I kept saying, okay, what’s happening here. And the model of hospice is so beautiful. We know that it’s a holistic model of care because of the reimbursement structure that is part of our modern day medicine today is that the hospice nurse myself had actually very little time in the house.

And as a hospice nurse, I’m supposed to teach the families how to do that end of life care. Now, Medicare determined that 98 percent of the end of life care is done by family caregivers, even with hospice on board. There’s multiple reasons why this model doesn’t work at this moment. Death is the number one fear in our world.

The number one fear. We’re going to get to that in a minute. How that happened. Number two is a hospice nurse. I was there for one hour once a week. If my patient was stable, I’m supposed to teach the family how to do that care. People are coming on hospice services very late. It’s just not working. And so when you shared that.

I went out and, and thought bigger of how to solve a problem, how to solve the gap. And it’s really based on death is not a medical experience. It’s a human one. And we totally forgot that. And if families are supposed to do the care, find themselves in that position and don’t know how to do the care. We have to fill that gap.

That’s what the training, that’s how doula givers launched. It was a family caregiver training that I went to the CEO of the hospice that I was working for. And I said, I have an idea of what can help. And he said, this is great. We can’t do it. I said, why? He goes, we won’t get reimbursed for it. So I just went out to the library and taught it for free.

And this is how this. whole movement of our training started. Then I put it online people from other countries because we have end of life everywhere. And the book is an extension of that. So I think that’s really important to again, remember that we need to empower ourselves with a skill that a hundred years ago was handed down from a grandmother to a grandchild.

It’s all today, but lost. We’re still expected to show up for people. We want people to know how to do that. 

Diane Hullet: You also have some really powerful statistics on how much longer we are living. So at that time where this understanding and, and, and just the simplicity of you died at home, you got very sick and there was nowhere to take you and you died at home and you were 50 years old or 60 years old.

It’s very different with people now living well into their 80s. And I feel like there’s such a tendency to just simply want to put our heads in the sand, right? People just kind of are like, Well, I hope it’ll work out for me, for mom, for dad, for my sibling. I just hope it’ll work out financially, emotionally, in terms of where they live.

And you break all that down and say, essentially, you know, people, this is not a plan. 

Suzanne B. O’Brien: Yeah. So let’s make an analogy of let me just. I’m going to present something to everyone. Try to put a wedding on in a weekend and see how that works for you. Trying to figure out the pieces, spending money like crazy, the stress that goes along with that.

And that’s, that’s a mild way of like looking at it. So what I want to say is if end of life is a hundred percent guaranteed for all of us, which by the way, unless you know any different, I have not heard anything yet. When we don’t have a plan, we plan to fail at it. We know that statistically, there are people that share that, but here’s the thing I’ve been honored and blessed to work with over a thousand people at the end of life.

And I have so much that I could pull from to teach you. And the part of the planner part of this is the five categories that really prevented someone from having A peaceful end of life, a positive end of life. And so breaking it down for you. And again, in simple things, what we need to think about what logistically you need to, like, again, just a simple thing of an advanced directive and letting your family know what you would want or not want in that end of life care, giving them a roadmap to support you.

And then when that inevitable time comes in our journey, which it will, we go, okay, this is our moment that I’m going to go home and be kept. comfortable with my pets in my surrounding. This is what I’ve shared with my family. And let’s have this sacred time be as beautiful as it possibly can. And it can be when we don’t plan on that.

And when we’re going into default and I call it a default, I also call it the medical treadmill when we’re continuing. And we know as a medical. staffing. We know how to keep people alive. And I, I think we need to talk about that for a minute too, because when we’ve removed end of life over only the last 100, 120 years, we’ve completely removed it.

We’ve learned how to extend life, but there’s a, there’s a point in that. road. That’s a gray area that keeping people alive and living are two very different things. And whose choice is that supposed to be? It’s supposed to be my choice that I make for myself based on quality of life. And then we can go into tight symptom management, which is a game changer.

Now our medical doctors. They haven’t been taught how to care for people at the end of life. They haven’t been taught about death, how to have a conversation. Everything is going in a direction to preserve, preserve, preserve. And it’s a very dangerous place to go because we know eventually we can try and outrun it.

Eventually death is going to win. And who made this a battle? Like even our. terminology we use. He lost his battle with cancer. If it’s a battle, we’re all going to lose. So I think subconsciously we’ve set up this fear surrounding death and it’s time to completely bring back the fact that death is a sacred natural experience.

Yeah. 

Diane Hullet: Let’s go into those five places that you talk about that are important. And then let’s jump back to some of the theoretical pieces. So in the book, you’ve got this kind of workbook section where you say, here’s the five places you need to plan. 

Suzanne B. O’Brien: Yeah. So let’s start with physical. So I talk about the physical peace of mind or a physical good death.

What does that mean? So it means everything to do with physical. So let’s start with where do I want to be? Where do I want to be at the end of life? Now, here’s what one of the big catalysts for me starting Duly Givers Institute was, especially in the oncology unit too. So in the oncology unit, We have people with all different levels of cancer, but I’m going to speak about people with end stage, stage four cancer that were dying.

They’d say to me, Suzanne, I just want to go home. How come I’m still in the hospital? And I thought, and the fear just on family’s faces and everyone, you know, try this or try that, or just scrambling was so. Additionally, heartbreaking for something that’s hard enough as it is. And so again, if I thought, wow, this person’s of sound mind and they want to be home.

This is their end of life. How come they’re not? And it’s because families were petrified. They didn’t know the first thing about how to do this. And so for me, and then it’s the hospice nurse now working in hospice care and seeing it not go well either or as well as it could go because it’s a beautiful model.

We need to have more training and support for family. So they feel confident being able to bring their loved one home, right? So everyone wins. And so first we want to say, where do I, I have to think about where do I want to be when that benchmark of quality of life is not there anymore. And that’s going to be subjective to each of us.

So thinking about what brings my day joy and when that’s no longer attainable, I don’t want extensive measures or, you know, aggressive treatments trying to preserve my body because if it can’t be reversed, why would I want to do that? I do want now comfort care. Most people want to be at home. And what do I want that to look like?

It’s interesting because people think that when we get to that space in our journey, we don’t have any control or any choices. You have every choice. You want ice cream Sundays, three times a day. You get it. You want your pets there. You get it. You want the Bee Gees album playing all day long. Cause we, I did have a client like that.

You get it. You know, this is really important to turn it into an empowering situation. And then. And what do I want to happen to this beautiful gift I’ve been given to have this journey in after I’m not here? There’s many beautiful choices now for home wakes and environmentally friendly options financially friendly options spiritually friendly options like water cremations and just natural burials and life celebrations, so Everything to do with physical and we give you an actual list of prompts of what, if you, if you can’t think of all the things, these are things that you have choices about and it turns it really into an empowering journey.

So that’s the first one is physical. Any questions on that? No, 

Diane Hullet: that’s great. I think that thinking about physical in terms of both place and in terms of body and putting body disposition in with physical makes a lot of sense. So it’s kind of everything about care. What do you envision? What would be your ideal?

And What happened? And 

Suzanne B. O’Brien: if I may, I even want to extend a little further on the physical of your care. How comfortable do you want to be? Do you want warm blankets? I’m gonna, I’m using myself as an example, but I think a lot of people would agree. Would you like a, you know, blankets thrown in the dryer and then, you know, wrapped up in them?

Would you like your hair brushed? These are all options that we can have. And so very important that we understand that. And then of course our after death. Then if I may, you know, we go into mental good death. What’s a mental good death? And I think that What’s happening for many of my patients and people that I see and work with right now is that when we pretend That death is optional and it shows up.

It’s a crisis. It’s a shock It’s a train wreck not just for the person but for everyone involved And there’s something that is so important. You’ve probably heard the term of radical acceptance and acceptance. And this is so incredibly important that we come to a place because that brings us peace of accepting that our journey is in this.

Sacred part of the end of it. And I will tell you one of the pearls, I call them doula giver pearls, is the key to that acceptance here starts way back here. When we’re aware that one day this journey will not be the way I know it today. And, you know, you could go to the extreme of saying, okay, I have an end of life here.

Where am I now? End of life here. But there’s multiple levels during our life that we may lose. Quality or functioning or parts of things that the journey is not how we know it today. And again, if we can be accepting and have gratitude for where we’re at, it changes everything. So we talk about the.

Mental peace of mind, which is an incredibly important thing and it’s not something you just go, okay, I accept it There’s a process and there’s things and so giving you that pearl now about wow And I want to share this because I think your listeners will appreciate this and I think you will too Diane I think one of the things when I started working with those at the end of life My life completely changed on so many levels like day one One of the reasons is that it was no longer.

I have to go to the gym. It was I get to go to the gym. It was no longer, Oh, I have to go to the grocery store. It was, I get to go to the grocery store. It was like a different lens that I live my life with gratitude of everything. And I also take each day and live it like one little lifetime because the reality is I don’t know how many days I have.

So I want to make sure I don’t miss it in this day. And that will help me get acceptance when that day comes. And so it’s a beautiful thing. And then we have emotional good death and emotional good death. And I think that is really, If I, if I could highlight, it’s about regrets and it’s about most people, the end of life are never saying, Oh, I loved having that car.

I’m so glad I had, you know, 20 pairs of black pants, which the, by the way, I’m always trying to downsize. I’m just saying, how many do we need? I don’t have 20, but I have more than one. How many do we need? But it’s really important because. The regrets at the end of life, you know, they say death is the number one fear and I don’t think from my patients it was really actually the fear of the death.

I think it was the fear of, wow, I’m told my time is over and I didn’t live. And so that’s for everyone that I want you to hear. And then we go into financial good death. Dying is expensive. And it shouldn’t be. I want to say how many times that I’ve had people outside the oncology unit, families outside the oncology door of their loved one who’s dying, saying, how are we going to pay for this?

That is not something that should be part of this. So that’s one thing. So when you decide when that benchmark is for you not to keep pursuing aggressive treatment, if it can’t be reversed, there’s a lot that can be saved, not just but pain and all of all of it across the board. But what about. Your funeral and your celebrations, you know, the average funeral, I think in 2023 and it’s in the book is quoted between 7, 000, about 7, 000 and 11, 11, 000.

That’s, that’s the average standard when people don’t know they have options. They don’t know they have choices and there’s multiple reasons to, to choose different things if you want it, because just going into default again, when we don’t plan, that’s what happens. And it’s also not a emotionally sound way to have that whole process go so quickly, but you can literally have a beautiful funeral for 200.

If you so choose, and all of this is in the book. So it’s not that it’s always about money. It’s about the whole picture of it. And, and these are options that you want to know. And you have great choices that again, impact the planet impact you emotionally and spiritually. Because one of the things that has been proven is the immediate time after somebody has their end of life.

When they have their end of life, not rushing that time when your loved one dies is so critically important. It’s almost like the imprinting that ducks have baby ducks when they’re born, how that grief and bereavement is going to go is directly starting like right at that moment and slowing it down is one of the best things we could possibly do.

And then there is a spiritual good death. And so I think that this is such. It’s an exciting, beautiful conversation to have because there are things at end of life that patients will say from all different religions, all different cultures. It’s almost like Diana’s, their physical body’s diminishing.

It’s like their spiritual body’s growing because we’re holistic beings. And there’s one point in that journey that they have one foot in this world and one foot in the next. And it’s what I call, they get their spiritual eyes or spiritual wisdom and they all start saying the same things. And if they were fearful before they, they, I get it now.

We’re all like, I just got chills again. And I do this all the time. They talk about us all being connected to this unconditional loving energy, how there is no death, how everything was meant for a reason for learning. I mean, it’s so beautiful. And I think the thing that is really profound here is that what people are saying at the end of life.

It’s the same that psilocybin studies are reporting with that experiment, but also people with near death experiences are saying there is something to this and it is life changing. 

Diane Hullet: I think that’s a really beautiful thing to connect because there’s a, there’s a way in which as part of moving death out of the home over the last 120 years, as you said, we’ve moved away from understanding those experiences.

And I think people have tremendous. experiences in that kind of realm of mysterious things at the end of life. But many of us don’t talk about it. But if you’re in a room of 300 people and you start asking who has heard of someone in their family or who had the experience of someone in their family with seeing dead relatives or saying these kinds of profound connections about love in our reality.

200 people will put their hand up. I mean, it is not, this is not kind of a in the closet. Nobody talks about it thing. It’s really coming forward now. And I think that is part of the mystery and part of the gorgeousness of this spiritual place. And I also want to go back and just highlight what you said about.

slowing it down. There’s something really I think because of our fear and our discomfort that we sort of rushed through that, like, oh, they died. Okay, they died. What do we do now? We call, who do we call the coroner, the office, the nurse, the 911. You know, we get a little panicky. Slowing that down. That is time.

You will not get back and allowing people to sit. The body does not decompose so quickly. You have to rush to do anything you, you know, if it was going to be a home wake that you wanted a couple days. Yes, you would get dry ice and you detail some of this in the book, but also you. It’s perfectly fine to sit there through the course of an eight or 10 hour day and just be with your person and see what arises in and who wants to come and what is needed to be said.

There is this palpable sense that they are not that far away. Right. In that moment, they’ve gone, but they’re, they’re kind of still around on some mysterious levels. So, so I love that. So opening ourselves up to the possibility of the mystery at the same time, preparing for the practical. And like you said, the financial considerations and then just knowing that we can slow the whole thing down a bit.

And while we’re talking about slowing down, I think this is an interesting experience. People have, maybe it’s such a misconception from watching too much weird. Yeah. fake death on TV, right? But we think that death happens really fast. You know, we think, well, mom has been ill, and she’s having this disrupted breathing, and she’ll just be gone in a day or two.

And often it’s much longer and much slower. And I think we’re ill prepared for that. And our society, our jobs, our work, our economy doesn’t support us taking the kind of time that we need, ideally, I think to be with that, to be with each other as a family or as friends gathered and support the person. I mean, the lack of support at an institutional level at a societal level just kind of floors me, Suzanne.

I don’t know. I’m sure you have lots to say about that too. 

Suzanne B. O’Brien: Yeah. I mean, I have so much to say and it’s heartbreaking because I know that doctors, nurses, all of us went into the profession to make a difference. That’s why we chose that. And it’s It’s almost impossible to do that today because of how many patients we all have, how much documentation and the actual care of the patient almost seems like the last part of this whole thing.

And so without a lot of judgment or any judgment, but the reality of the observation, the minute we put a dollar amount and a time limit on end of life, we’re doing something wrong. But I think Diane, the point here, and the most important point that we need to highlight made. is that death is not a medical experience and we’ve been dying for thousands of years and for thousands of years it has been looked at as a sacred part of the life journey and it’s time to bring back the ritual, the knowledge that we have and what you just highlighted for families to understand.

How the body naturally starts to shut down so that when they hear different breathing changes, when they see different things, when they have different temperatures of the skin, they’re not frightened. They go, Oh, this is a natural way that the body knows how to shut down. The body is incredibly brilliant.

It really is. And yeah, it’s usually about a. three day process in the actual sleep coma from start to finish. Now I have seen things that science says is impossible. I’ve had people hang on and, and this is the other thing that is one of those sacred, beautiful awarenesses that, wow, people can hang on for a certain person to come for a certain date to, to.

Like a baby being born or, or some kind of date that there, how are they, how are they aware of that? And how are they able to do that? There’s a much bigger picture going on here. And I think for us to bring in the fact that there’s a much bigger picture to this human being experience that we’re a part of is enlightening.

Is healing and is the answer. I think that we’re all searching for because if we just are operating in a human ego part of it and there’s one winner and this is, you know, we live, we die. It’s very, very small when we can expand open to the more that is part of the journey that we’re learning from people at the end of life.

Wow. It opens up a whole new set of guidelines to live this beautiful experience and to live it together in our humanity. 

Diane Hullet: So well said, and I love going back to some of the early chapters in the book, your very first chapter is called, we become less fearful of the unknown when we embrace what is known.

And I thought that was such a great chapter title and kind of thing to explore because yes, there’s a lot of unknown, but there’s also a lot of known. And so how do we learn what we can learn so that this unfamiliar. nerve wracking experience can go well. And you had a couple of great examples in the book.

One was there was a son who, you know, this is the other thing. Everybody has to kind of catch up to what’s happening. Right. So often there is maybe a. sibling. I don’t know. I’m generalizing wildly here, but maybe there’s one person who’s been a primary caretaker for someone. And then when other people come in at the end, there’s some catching up that has to happen.

So you were sitting at the table with this family and the son got up quite angrily and said, you know, so we’re just going to give up. That’s it. We’re giving up. And he kind of stormed out of the house. But two days later, he came back around. He had some quiet time with his dad. He got to sit with his father.

It was clear that this slow unfolding was happening. And he came out of the room with tears in his eyes and said, my dad just told me he loved me. And so there can be these moments of healing and possibility. But we all have to kind of catch up to the fact that something’s happening here that’s bigger than simply stay on the medical train, which may have been useful for some time, but at some point is not useful.

So this idea of becoming less, we can be less fearful of the unknown when we embrace what there is to know. And I think. You know, I would say to listeners, there’s so much good information out there. This is what I always say to people. I’m like, you haven’t read a book about death. Like there’s so many good books.

And Suzanne’s is just one in a great pile over the last two years of really thoughtful books that have come forward from leaders, from hospice nurses in this field who are speaking from experience. And they’re trying to tell all of us that there’s something here we can learn. 

Suzanne B. O’Brien: Yeah, I love that Diane. So even just from practical right understanding the practical steps and stages that people go through and why.

So I think it’s very important as a teacher is not to just say to somebody okay, they’re going to be breathing heavy. Tell them what. Is happening when you hear some gurgling sounds at the very end, tell them what is happening so that they understand it from a physiology from that standpoint and can say, Oh, I can understand that my loved one’s not suffering.

Now, the other thing about people writing in this space, and I applaud so many people like yourself, stepping forward to educate and to have conversations and invite people into this, this space. is that we’re telling you firsthand accounts. We’re telling you what patients are saying, what their experience, what they want you to know, and they’re not trying to sell you anything.

They are really wanting to impart wisdom while you are still in this journey so that you can make it the best. And also, To think again, outside of, I think what most of our limiting belief system is right now around it. And I just, I, it baffles my mind how something that we all are going to experience that, that by the way, we’ve been doing for thousands of years.

So spoiler alert, we know how to do this. We do. How did it become the number one fear and that fear? And we all know that fear is really the fear of the unknown. We’ve removed it all. And it, part of it, like you had elaborated in the beginning is this. incredible aging demographic we have now. So a hundred years ago, the average age of life was 47.

Today it’s 80, 81. We’ve literally learned how to almost double life expectancy globally, by the way. And when you have a demographic that is new, you don’t have the setup for it. So my concern is not only with people at the end of life with how to care for people, but is that. decades, those decades of our elders, which we’ve really discarded for many reasons.

And again, we’re not judging, we’re making observations. Oh, if they don’t have the quick answers, you know, if they’re not fast, it’s like they don’t have value. By the way, in Atul Gawande’s book, Being Mortal, who I absolutely love. The older you were back in the day, the cooler you were. So people used to lie up, not down, because you, you were the wisdom keepers.

And we have to get back to honoring and having what we need for our elders with holistic care and with compassion and housing and. And all of the things that we really have lost touch with because we have an aging demographic like we’ve never seen. And so we’ve just removed aging and end of life. You get, might get a phone call that grandma died, you know, in her nursing home in Florida come for the services.

It’s almost like it’s not real. And so, you know, that, that is the fear to me. And so when we can bring back the truth, not a show, not some, some example that might not be true, real stories. of end of life, all of a sudden we go, Oh, wait a minute. And maybe I can learn how to live more fully and present hearing that wisdom.

Diane Hullet: Oh, I think that’s so well put, Suzanne, because really, as you said, there’s this light up that can happen when you look at mortality. There’s this gratefulness for being here in this body now, right? And I think that that’s really the broader message in the good life. I’m sorry. It’s so funny that I just said that backwards.

It’s the broader message in your book, The Good Death. Right? Because it’s, it’s I don’t know, there’s just this disconnect. And I think it’s a really interesting choice of a title. I wonder if you want to talk about that at all. Because I know some people would say, Oh, don’t put the word good on it because that makes it sound judgmental.

Maybe there’s no such thing as a bad death. But what would you say in your experience? Well, 

Suzanne B. O’Brien: I love that you called it the good life because I honestly. Could have titled it the good life, like, because you learn everything about life from death, from the awareness of death, the sacredness of it, all of the beautiful.

So what I will say is that the minute that I, and I was in the oncology unit that I had my first experience with the most beautiful end of life, not from anything that I was doing just because for whatever reason it happened. And I, I remember walking out of that hospital room and a tear came down my cheek and I thought I was so moved by the energy, by the family, just in silent presence around the bed and the beautiful love that was in that room.

And I, and I said to myself, I think this was like 2009, I said, if people saw that if they knew end of life could be like that, they’d never be afraid. So I’m going to tell them. But here’s the other thing, Diane. Is the very few end of lives that did go well, I really was studying what were the elements that brought it to that place that allowed that family to be.

And it was different disease processes. It wasn’t that it was like, Oh, it’s an easier disease. It was that they lived with the awareness that one day would be. At this journey that they had an advanced directive, or at least had a blueprint that they lived fully so that they weren’t caught in all these regrets at that moment.

That was the difference. That’s the learning. And, you know, I walk away with knowing that the most important question we’ll ever ask ourselves is how I’m choosing to spend my time. And who I’m choosing to spend it with, because that’s your un refillable commodity. And we don’t know how much we have of it.

And so, the other thing I got to is, oh, regrets. And the other big thing is forgiveness. And we could do a whole podcast on forgiveness and maybe one day we should, but I want you to know that the people at the end of life that had their regrets and sat in that period of time of trying to work through some things, because I think all of our stuff bubbles to the top at the end of life.

It wants to be worked out when they’ve been able to utilize the power of forgiveness, not just for others, but for themselves. It has led to the most beautiful end of life. I have. Ever seen. And I thought, wow, if that can happen for them, what do I need to let go of? What am I carrying with me subconsciously, consciously in this world?

That’s keeping me blocked. That’s keeping me weighted down. And I was like, let’s do this. And I’ll tell you, my life has. It’s completely been a miracle since I’ve worked in hospice because of what I’ve learned. I’ve learned to follow my heart guidance. I’ve learned to just show up and to say, how can I show up to be of service what’s being asked of me?

And it has just been a miracle upon miracle of love and global community and just opportunities to help make a difference and leave the world a better place. And we can all do that if we learn to follow the heart guidance, not the head guidance. 

Diane Hullet: Well, I think that’s a fantastic place to wrap up, Suzanne.

I love, you know, through doula givers, you’ve taught literally hundreds of thousands of people how to do death better and how to strive towards the good death and, you know, quote unquote the good death, because that’s going to be different things for all people. But you’re really talking about a, a connected death and accepting death, a place in which you can leave this world.

As complete as you can leave it as opposed to pulled in multiple directions and racked with fear. And the thing I think is powerful too is realizing that a death that’s connected helps those who live on. And so there’s something about these five areas that you talk about in your book and you help people work through.

is for the dying, but it’s also for the living. It’s very important how that framework gets laid down for how people move forward. So whether it’s the financial chapter, do you move forward in debt or the spiritual chapter? Do you move forward in confusion or the emotional chapter? Do you move forward in regret and lack of forgiveness?

What is possible in this matters both for the dying and the living? 

Suzanne B. O’Brien: Yeah, I love that you share that because it’s, you know, it’s for you, but it’s one of the most important gifts you can give your family as well. And they should only be focused on their grieving and bereavement after your physical, beautiful physical self is no longer here.

Usually they’re thrown into a scavenger hunt of all the things of putting together and we wonder why we have such traumatic grief. So this is a roadmap for you in all categories. And again, one of the greatest gifts you can give your family so they know how to love and support you. And they of course can have the healthiest time afterwards as well.

Diane Hullet: Well, I thank you. I am so grateful that you’ve taken your years of experience and thousands of people of experience and put them down into a book that we can all access. So you can look for the good death, a guide for supporting your loved one through the end of life by Suzanne O’Brien. You can also find out all about her work at doula givers.

com. And thanks so much for being 

Suzanne B. O’Brien: here. Thank you, Diane. Thank you so much for having me, and thank you everyone for listening. 

Diane Hullet: As always, you can find out more about the work I do at Best Life. Best death.com. Thanks for joining us.