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In this episode, my guest Jeanne Denney and address how to talk about life's most difficult moments. When the end of life draws near, what do those you’re caring for want for themselves? It’s a question that stops many dead i...
In this episode, my guest Jeanne Denney and address how to talk about life's most difficult moments.
When the end of life draws near, what do those you’re caring for want for themselves? It’s a question that stops many dead in their tracks (no pun intended). We are all drawn to, yet repelled from, asking questions about death and dying. Is it because of fear or some other reason? What fears and taboos do we hold onto that keep us from sharing our wishes? What should we be afraid of? Should we even tell someone that they’re dying? How do you make such a difficult subject easier to talk about?
In this episode, my guest Jeanne Denney, a Somatic Therapist and founder of The Unusual School of Life Lessons, and I discuss the answers to some of those questions about death and dying. This subject is particularly interesting and useful as it involves discussions we may be afraid to have with those we care for and those who might wind up caring for us. Talking about those final stages of life could help us actually better understand our loved ones and ourselves.
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Guest: Jeanne Denny, who is a transpersonal and somatic psychotherapist, educator, hospice worker, healer, author of The Effects of Compassionate Presence on the Dying, and founder of the School of Unusual Life Learning (SoULL).
Jeanne began her career as an engineer, and for the past 18 years, she’s worked to help people fearlessly embrace a life that includes aging, dying, and nature. This has involved years at bedsides with the elderly and children, in the study and research, in contributing pioneering ideas to somatic psychology, in death and grief work, teaching, and years of helping create and facilitate the Art of Dying Projects.
Her insights on energy and the body through aging, illness, and dying are unique in that they are derived from a wide lens of human experiences and a deep understanding of our mortal journey.
Host: Nancy May, is an award-winning family caregiving authority and author of How to Survive 911 Medical Emergencies, Step-by-Step Before, During, After! is an expert in managing the path of step-by-step caring for aging parents, even from over 1200 miles away. For a free, fillable File-of-Life go to www.howtosurvive911.com. Nancy is also the Co-Founder of CareManity LLC, and the private FaceBook group, Eldercare Success. She is also the new voice of the Caregiving Network.
Disclaimer: The views, perspectives, and opinions expressed in this show are those of the show guests and not directly those of the companies they serve or that of the host or the producer CareManity, LLC. The information discussed should not be considered or used as medical, legal, or financial advice. Please seek the advice of your own medical, legal, or financial advisors, as each person’s situation differs. (c) Copyright 2023 CareManity, LLC, all rights reserved.
Unedited transcript:
[00:00:00] Hello, everybody. It's Nancy May, Doing it, Best With Eldercare Success. And this is a rather unique show where I have my guest here today is Jeanne Denney, who is a Somatic Therapist who specializes in using body-based therapies through the whole life transition, of end of life. And. Although we as caregivers are focused on making the life of the person that we're caring for better, we're also dealing with the reality as much as whether we want to admit it or not, is the reality of them leaving us, which is incredibly hard to face. Jeanne has a unique way of approaching this. She's a whole-life doula, teacher, author, and founder of The School of Unusual Life and Learning. And with that short intro, I'm going to let you take it away here, Jeanne, because.
[00:01:01] I want to know a little bit about the school and what is a whole life doula and unusual life learning. I think all our life lessons are somewhat unusual and unique, this is a little bit more special than that there's something else there. I don't know. Tell me about it.
[00:01:19] Yeah, well maybe it's a little crazier, I don't know. But yes, I did start this project called The School of Unusual Life Learning, or sometimes we call it soul. Um, because I was a somatic therapist and a hospice worker and a person that helped people with grief and the transformations of grief and care in elders, and I saw that this was very much a missing piece.
[00:01:44] If people don't know what somatic therapy or somatic psychology is, it's a type of therapy and psychology that works with the mind and body and consciousness as a unity. And I'm very grateful that I had that particular background and I started. That way so that I was looking at all these processes together, when my mother died actually.
[00:02:06] and I started hospice work soon after with lots of questions about what was really happening in this interface between as people were dying and all the room around them and all the inner relationships around them. So it was a marvelous, A launching pad for all of my questions being with end of life and being in somatic therapy, and so I evolved with those two things together.
[00:02:31] And then I saw that somatic therapy, had none of these theories in them. And I started evolving the theories and then eventually started teaching it and saying, wow, this is pretty powerful for people. So where we are with it now is we have a little school that, instead of just teaching about birth doulas to be birth doulas or death doulas to be death doulas, we're looking at the entire life process, which is essentially teaching people to be somatic therapists, But also in a three-year training.
[00:02:57] we're also teaching them what the patterns are within all these processes and how to be really present for people in this passage of, one of them of course is death and dying and to be less afraid. So that's what we're doing.
[00:03:10] you mentioned the process and everything around them, or them being the person that's dying and ourselves as the caregivers. And what came to mind was my own experience thinking there's so much going on in the room and in the house at the time that both mom and dad were passing.
[00:03:31] Mm-hmm.
[00:03:32] That, as I look back now, I'm thinking, not intentionally, but I think we almost forgot that they were there. We were so busy with the process of what we had to do to help them, that they almost became a non-entity and that was not that we wanted it that way, but it's the activity, it's the busyness, it's everything where if I had the ability to be.
[00:04:00] More, as you say, present more frequently. I mean, there are times we have to stop and go through the hospice intake and deal with a call or a question or everything else, but if I could be more there,
[00:04:16] Yeah,
[00:04:17] not just for them, but for myself too.
[00:04:19] Absolutely. that is
what we're teaching people to do and in fact, we're so unprepared for this passage both from the child perspective, the caregiver perspective, and for the dying patient perspective. We arrive at this passage so unprepared that of. Course we grasp the to-dos because we know how to do life, and that's what we do, and that's what we think we have to do.
[00:04:41] And, it's a tremendous burden for people. No, question. All the things. And yet this presence, this ability to then stop and sit and recognize that something is happening here that's silent. That's nonverbal. That is important to everyone concerned. You know, that's part of what doulas do is make the space, create the environment where that part can be honored.
[00:05:07] You know, and it's also frightening at times too, because this is not something we deal with day in and day out. But it is, it's part of who we are as living creatures. Whether we're a dog, a cat, an elephant, a giraffe, a vegetable. You know, you're, you come out of the earth. you're born, and you wither and die.
[00:05:30] that's just part of a cell yet. it's frightening at the same time because we're not taught to deal with it.
[00:05:37] Yeah, exactly.
[00:05:38] there any, is there any way that we can even just approach the, the fear factor, right?
[00:05:43] Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's what SOUL's doing is trying to help people with that because it doesn't really take much to. Turn the screw and help us see life as the continuum that it is and the process that it is. But we must have that education and in a certain way, the entire culture has shut that down so that we, we really do believe there's a cliff out there.
[00:06:05] We're going to fall over and the great unknown, and we can't possibly know anything about it. And, and they're now, they're dead. And, and there's nothing I can do to connect with them now. And all of this is nonsense. you can be a very rational person. You don't have to believe in the woo, but you just have to look carefully what the body's showing you, what consciousness is showing you, what research is showing you, even about near-death experiences and reincarnation and so on.
[00:06:29] It, we know a lot about what consciousness does through dying and when you learn that, and through grieving, by the way, when you learn that. You relax, you just see the air come out of the anxiety balloon and people suddenly feel like, oh, I do know this. My body knows this. The vegetables do know this. So do I.
[00:06:48] so why are we so afraid of this?
[00:06:50] We've been taught to be,
[00:06:52] So it's a societal thing. It's not just you think of it like, the Buddhists are not afraid of it.
[00:06:57] well, I, I think so.
[00:06:58] may they say they're not afraid of it. Right.
[00:07:01] I don't know. they practice. Working with it, which is brilliant. It's, I think it has been part of what we considered initiation throughout human history and being an adult was to understand what this death thing was. there's part of it, it's organismic, right?
[00:07:14] We react, in fear. I if our death, our life is,
[00:07:19] Threatened. Is it going to hurt? Like what?
[00:07:20] Yeah. All, all of it. of course. but the real teaching about, what's going on here with this life process. This was part of our human birthright to know this throughout our history until a certain point. I, I don't know when the point was changed, maybe patriarchy, maybe it was, the black death where there was so much unprocessed trauma.
[00:07:40] But for some reason we got the idea that death and life were separate things. And I think that core assumption is something I teach in the school, that is the core, what I call the misconception or the. The false dichotomy running our culture that isn't true. And when we see death as really a part, a necessary part of life, and all of these movements within even illness and a as something that we can understand a little bit about and know how to work with, we get less anxious about everything, and that helps a lot.
[00:08:11] So I see the aspect
of becoming less anxious, helping caregivers. There's got to be something else that, besides I'll call it chilling out because it's more than chilling out, right? that can help us as caregivers to be better support for the person who is going through this life passing.
[00:08:32] You know what? What can we do? What are some tips to say, Nancy, if you're going through this, Here are three things that you can do or even just one thing that I can do to just be there for somebody and make it a more gentle process for both of us.
[00:08:51] Yeah. Well, I do think we have to confront our own beliefs and images around what this process is as part of that. To do because unless you can, unless you do that, you can't be very present.
[00:09:06] So can you get, wait, wait. I'm going to stop you there a second. So, my own images and beliefs of what this looks like, right? Or what this is, is I. Explain that a little bit more. Cause I'm kind of, I'm kind of lost there. Is, is it just in like my own head trash or what I'm told in movies or?
[00:09:27] All of the above. We arrive at the death and grief process or the caregiving process with all kinds of unexamined material. this is the main reason I, I'm not, A hospice volunteer. I decided to be an educator because I saw that people were coming to the experience full of things.
[00:09:46] They had no capacity and no support at really examining and trying to do all this catch-up work educationally at the bedside. And it's overwhelming both for the patient and for the caregiver. Does that make sense? Do you know what I'm talking about?
[00:09:59] Yeah. I'm almost thinking of, around the holiday times I. I used to be scared to death to watch the old, I think it's Arthur Finley, Scrooge movie, right? Because the Grim River came, it was dark. it was everything. I mean, the Scrooge was beyond being scrooge. It was, all about facing death and missing out on life really is what it was, right?
[00:10:21] Right. And you can hear, there, can hear the opposition. Here's life, it's good, there's death. It's bad.
[00:10:27] Yeah. And it was dark and it was gray. It like, oh, scared the hell out of me. But as you're talking, those are the images that come immediately into my mind.
[00:10:34] Yes, yes, And you and a lot of other people and I don't think that's gotten any better. Since the time we were kids. Because what I saw when I was teaching in college, uh, you know, 22 year olds, is they would come in with, without any background, never having been to a funeral, never having been given a picture of this is the natural way.
[00:10:53] I mean, I grew up in a. More rural place where, people were growing and planning things, many kids have no connection to nature. They learn about death through video games and very hyper dramatized media stuff that has created anxiety in order to hook people In certain ways.
[00:11:08] And it's so removed from reality, right? I mean, you don't see a dog die, unfortunately. that we want to be there, but you take them to the vet. You're not there with them. I mean, I, I would never do that. But, um, we, you know, it was, it was hard, to be there with my animal to going through this process.
[00:11:28] And that's, you
know, animal and people, I guess it's a little different. People might think,
okay, Nancy, it's like, you know, get,
[00:11:32] Well, it's very similar. I, I mean, people take people to hospitals to die, for example. You know, it's like, oh, you need to go there And then, or, uh, so it, we do have this image that death is some foreign country that we go to, and we resist it as long as possible cuz it's a bad place and a bad thing and so on.
[00:11:50] And it's ugly. And it's not ugly
[00:11:52] it's ugly. Well, it depends on how much support you have around that, but, Of course it can be challenging, but, I think we try to normalize a lot of things and see death so much as part of life. In fact, the reality is, and this is what being with dying taught me, the reality is that without some kind of death education that's.
[00:12:12] Sensible and real and natural. We don't have a very good life either, and we have a lot of misconceptions, so I try to bring this to all full through the life, not just try to help people at end of life because it's almost too late, you know? I mean, it's like, yeah, it's like a third grader in a calculus
[00:12:29] Right, and, and kids are curious about this, right? When somebody dies
[00:12:34] yeah.
[00:12:34] they don't know how to ask questions. I was in that role myself, and I'm using myself as a, Guinea pig. An example, and I remember when my sister died when she was three and I was about five. My mother, later on as an adult, as I got older, told me I.
[00:12:49] Gosh, you drove me nuts. All you kept on asking was why, why, why? And she could. My mom couldn't answer that because she had a, my sister had childhood leukemia and she was grappling with the problem and the questions of why, too. So here, I'm ignoring this annoying child that she's going to take care of and she can't even dealwith her own issues.
[00:13:12] Yeah.
[00:13:13] I, I wish, I wish I knew at. At that stage in my life had to be of support to my mom. When I, you know, as a kid, I didn't even know what the answers were themselves. So, but it was buried under, under the carpet, so to speak, and we didn't talk about it and, and that was it. So I understand that, but it is a curiosity I think, for kids.
[00:13:33] And if we were able to talk about it more even from the beginning, it might be easier on us. Well, losing somebody to. To death, whether it be an accident or just old age is never easy, right? Because they're gone. We can't physically talk to them and hear them talk back. Well, I guess you can't hear 'em talk back in some way, shape, or form.
[00:13:58] But, I don't know how to practice
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