As Sarah looks forward to the future of a Peaceful Exit, we take a look back at some memorable moments of the past year with some of her most impactful guests, including:
Katy Butler who wrote “The Art of Dying Well: A Practical Guide to a Good End of Life” based on her own life experiences and countless interviews. Sarah’s compelling interview with Katy touched on what Katy learned from each of her parents’ deaths, what she wants at the end of her life, what the research says most people want in their final chapters.
Louisa Zondo who grew up in Apartheid South Africa and helped write the country's constitution. In our interview we talked about her experiences as a young mother, her high-profile career, and the heartbreaking loss of her son Rikhado to suicide in 2022, which she shares in her book “Dearest MaRiky: A Mother’s Journey through Grief, Trauma and Healing.”
Mary-Frances O’Connor is a neuroscientist at the University of Arizona where she studies the impact of grief on the brain. In this informative episode, we covered how grief is really the brain learning to imagine a life with the absence of a loved one.
As a writer, mother, widow, daughter and friend, Leslie Gray Streeter chronicles her heartbreaking experience and the depths of her grief in her book, “Black Widow: A Sad, Funny Journey Through Grief for People Who Normally Avoid Books with Words Like ‘Journey’ in the Title.” In our interview we discussed why humor is so essential for navigating grief, how you can’t take anything too seriously, what NOT to say to a grieving person.
Michael Wiegers is the Editor-in-Chief at Copper Canyon Press, an independent nonprofit press that publishes award-winning poetry. In this episode, Michael gave us a masterclass in poetry. If you’ve ever felt that poetry is unattainable, Michael will convince you otherwise.
Transcript:
Sarah: [00:00:00] Welcome to Peaceful Exit. I'm Sarah Cavanaugh, your host, and I've been doing this for a couple of years now. And so today I wanted to do something a little different. We've been working in the death and dying space for about five or six years, and this podcast has been up for almost two years. It's time to celebrate that.
Sarah: And so rather than a guest today, I wanted to share some moments from doing this podcast that really touched me. There are so many to choose from. All these conversations were so powerful. A few really stick out. And so if you haven't heard these full episodes, think of this as a great place to start listening to the show.
Sarah: If you have heard them, maybe you and I can go a little deeper into some of the insights that were shared.
Sarah: One of my special guests, Louisa Zondo, who's from South Africa, wrote a book about losing her son to death by suicide. We've talked a lot in this podcast about [00:01:00] long term illnesses and loss, but one of the things that Louisa and I were able to address was the challenges of being the mother of a child who's addicted to drugs and alcohol and how in that role you have to hold both hope and worry at the same time.
Sarah: And to then see
Louisa: him start to, shaping his life, his music career started taking off at a point where he was in outpatient management of his addiction and had stayed constant in treatment in that way. And his career then takes off and I see him blossoming. He becomes a star.
Louisa: And you know what's happening at the back of my mind is, Oh God, Oh God, help him through. [00:02:00] Let him shine, let him shine, but let him always Have the protection from the addiction in the space where stardom was such a huge trigger for everything that goes with alcohol and drugs and all sorts of addictive behaviors.
Sarah: I wanted to play this clip because I'm super curious about what happens when we lose a loved one and how we remember them, how our memories work, and whether or not they're still around.
Louisa: Ricardo's mantra, which he left for his fans and for all of us, It says, we never die, we multiply. This is a mantra that is all over because he left it for us.
Louisa: And his body, the human body, [00:03:00] the physical body is gone. It decays. It's perished. It's no longer in existence, but his many, many forms of body are with us. And from that moment, I really, really saw how I. Had been given something that changes me deeply.
Sarah: Louisa goes on to say that not only is her son still around, but it informs the way she thinks about her own death.
Sarah: To die is
Louisa: to be transformed, so that I'm no longer seen in this way, but seen I am. I no longer continue in this physical form, but perhaps even in them, in my loved ones, I continue, and I continue in all sorts of forms with
Sarah: life. As a reminder, the book is called Dearest MaRiky. The subtitle, A Mother's Journey Through Grief, [00:04:00] Trauma, and Healing.
Sarah: Look for the title wherever you're listening to podcasts.
Sarah: Another author I'm particularly excited to share with you is Dr. Mary Frances O'Connor. She's a brain scientist who wrote The Grieving Brain, the surprising science of how we learn from love and I love that she talks about resilience and also in a moment in our conversation when she explained what crying is.
Sarah: And when my mother passed away, my tears changed. And that was, Such a profound shift for me. It's almost as if the water started flowing out of my eyes before my body even knew that I was crying. And I don't know if that's a state of shock or what, but since then, and it's been many, many years, my tears are different.
Sarah: with that deep grief. Um, whenever her memory comes up, whenever I remember the loss of my friend Jeannie, whenever I remember another significant loss, it's as if the brain has shifted [00:05:00] somehow. And so her explanation here in our conversation really resonated with me.
Mary-Frances: Crying is in part motivated because of hormones.
Mary-Frances: Many people find it validating to know that this isn't, you know, I'm choosing to cry, I'm choosing not to cry. It is partly simply a physiological response, just like I should retain more water or I should not retain more water.
Sarah: If you're looking for the full conversation, the title is The Grieving Brain with Mary Frances O'Connor.
Sarah: Another one of my special guests was Leslie Gray Streeter. She wrote a book called Black Widow, A sad, funny journey through grief for people who normally avoid books with words like journey in the title, here she is talking about the many faces of grief.
Leslie: Grief is sadness. Grief is disappointment. Grief is ludicrously funny in a weird way.
Sarah: What's remarkable about Leslie Gray Streeter's life [00:06:00] is that her mother was also a widow. So to share this experience of becoming a widow with your mother is truly remarkable and gives her some really particular insights into this experience.
Leslie: And that's how I felt about widowhood. I would say to my mother, is this normal?
Leslie: She goes, yeah, it sucks, but it's normal. This is, this is how you feel. This is how you can feel. This is how it is possible for you to feel. And I was like, well, that sucks. But then you know, you're not, it's not just you. And it's just, there is so much comfort in it's not just you. Oh, okay. Cause I thought I was losing my mind.
Leslie: And she said, well, maybe you are. We laughed hysterically.
Sarah: If you're looking for the full conversation, look for Grief is Funny with Leslie Gray Streeter. I love Katy Butler's book, The Art of Dying Well. It's a practical guide to a good end of life. I love the way the book is structured by age and what happens in your body.
Sarah: So you can go directly to that [00:07:00] section of the book. And she also talks about how Something as simple as signing paperwork is a spiritual act.
Katy Butler: Signing your advance directive is in fact a sacred ritual because you are contemplating your own death and your love for others when you sign a document like that.
Sarah: One of the things I've learned over many interviews and especially in talking to Katy was to think about how we can recognize those we love before it's too late. I recently wrote a letter to my father about all the things I appreciate, about what I learned throughout my life and being his daughter.
Sarah: And I really resonated with some of the things Katy writes in her book and also in our conversation for this podcast.
Katy Butler: There's a thing in hospice about these Sort of emotional test of the end of life of thank you. I love you. Please forgive me I forgive [00:08:00] you and goodbye and I never had heard that phrase at this time But she intuitively did things like she called me to say Oh Katy I found the little booklet you created for me for my 80th birthday, and I was so unappreciative So she did her You And it was really quite beautiful.
Sarah: If you want to hear the full conversation, look for The Art of Dying Well with Katy Butler. So only a few times so far, have I had the absolute pleasure of having someone in person in the studio. And my dear friend, Michael came in the studio and It was so fun to talk about poetry and art and give kind of the Poetry 101.
Sarah: For those of us who may not read a lot of poetry but turn to it in times of crisis, it's such a beautiful art form. [00:09:00] Here's Michael Wiegers talking about art.
Michael: One of the keys to immortality is through art. That's how we can live on. That's how, you know, those we love live on, is through the art.
Sarah: Hearing Michael again, that makes me think of a painting I have in my home that belonged to my mother, and when my mother died, my father looked around and said, Is there anything that you want of hers?
Sarah: And it's Interesting to have that piece of art in my home because every time I pass it, I think of her after decades. One of my ongoing concerns is the fact that we are losing wisdom of our older people.
Michael: As I see older poets dying, I'm seeing some of the wisdom go with them.
Sarah: When he said this, I felt really sad.
Sarah: I often feel sad that we lose wisdom of our older people in this culture. Sometimes we don't honor their experience. And then we [00:10:00] can't learn from it. Michael Wiegers is the editor of A House Called Tomorrow, 50 Years of Poetry at Copper Canyon Press. We'll put links to all the books mentioned in our show notes.
Sarah: Thank you for listening to some of my reminiscing about moments in these conversations that have really stuck with me. I hope you'll follow us on social media, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, at A Peaceful Exit. If you enjoyed this episode, please let us know. You can rate and review this show on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Sarah: This episode was produced by the amazing team at Larj Media. You can find them at larjmedia. com. The Peaceful Exit team includes my producer, Katy Klein, and editor, Corine Kuehlthau. Our sound engineer is Shawn Simmons. Tina Nole is our senior producer, and Syd Gladu provides [00:11:00] additional production and social media support.
Sarah: Special thanks to Ricardo Russell for the original music throughout this podcast. As always, thanks for listening. I'm Sarah Cavanaugh, and this is Peaceful Exit.