In this episode of Peaceful Exit, host Sarah Cavanaugh interviews an anthropologist who immersed herself in the world of assisted dying in Oregon, Anita Hannig.
Anita shares the methodology of participant observation, the emotional dynamics of end-of-life experiences, and the distinction between assisted dying and suicide. Her extensive research and personal reflections, highlight the differences in cultural practices and legal frameworks regarding euthanasia and assisted dying around the world. They also touch upon the death positive movement and the importance of discussing mortality openly.
You can find Anita’s book, “The Day I Die” on her website: https://anitahannig.com. You can also find her on twitter @anitahannig.
This podcast is produced by Larj Media.
Transcript:
Sarah: [00:00:00] Hi, I'm Sarah Cavanaugh and this is Peaceful Exit.
Sarah: Every episode, we explore death, dying, and grief through stories by authors familiar with the topic. Writers are our translators. They take what is inexpressible, impossible to explain, and they translate it into words on a page.
Sarah: My guest today is Anita Hannig. Anita is an author, cultural anthropologist, and death educator. Her latest book, The Day I Die, The Untold Story of Assisted Dying, provides an in depth look at the legal, ethical, and personal aspects of assisted dying. As an anthropologist, Anita was able to embed herself in this field for five years. She has a unique perspective on this difficult topic.
Sarah: Welcome to Peaceful Exit. Thank you so much for having me. I love your book and I love that you talk about language. We talk a lot about language here [00:01:00] at Peaceful Exit, and the origin of the word euthanasia is fascinating. It literally means a good death. Americans get really tongue tied in the language around death.
Sarah: Can you tell me, what are the distinctions of assisted suicide and assisted dying? And are there any legal differences?
Anita: Yeah, and this is something that a lot of people get caught up on. The distinction, is there a distinction between assisted dying and suicide? And when I'm talking about it, I'm only talking about the United States because there's a very specific cultural context.
Anita: When you're talking about assisted dying, so from the beginning, assisted dying laws in the States made. a very clear distinction in Oregon at the time that assisted and assisted death was a medical procedure that alleviated somebody's suffering and that it ought not to be conflated or confused with suicide or mercy killing or euthanasia.
Anita: And I think that distinction is actually quite meaningful [00:02:00] because when you're talking about the difference between assisted dying and suicide, Something that really hit me, one of the people I interviewed for the book, Roger Kligler, he said it most succinctly. He said, when you're using the word suicide, then you're not talking about end of life issues because those are very specific, right?
Anita: People who, in order to qualify for an assisted death, you have to have in the States a limited life expectancy of six months to live. So you have a terminal, you must have a terminal condition that qualifies you for an assisted death. People who commit suicide outside of this law usually don't have. a life limiting condition.
Anita: So for assisted dying, that's not the case anymore. If people do nothing, they will die from this disease. And if they have an assisted death, they can kind of preempt this other death, right? So I think that's a meaningful distinction. It's also to do with the legal definitions around assisted dying, right?
Anita: So that it's openly coming together of your physician, of your family, [00:03:00] of your friends. Um, and so it's, everything's very much out in the open. It's not a covert, uh, unilateral decision. I mean, it can still be unilateral, of course, and you might not have a big social network, but there's, there are procedures in place.
Anita: that allow somebody to make this decision and be kind of separated along this like very predictable path of what will happen to them. And the same is not the case for suicide. So I think it's really important to keep that distinction, um, operational, because I think it adds a lot of stigma to assisted dying to conflate the two.
Anita: And it's unhelpful, right? There's, there's nothing helpful. And then, and then of course, because what happens, you go to these public hearings and you have people from the opposition who say, well, if you pass this law, you're just going to, um, add to this epidemic of, uh, suicides in the state. And it's like, No, those are two totally different things.
Anita: People who are at the end of their life and choosing to drink medication to expedite their death [00:04:00] are not committing suicide. So they're not increasing the suicide epidemic in the state. And so for that reason, and so many other reasons, I think it's really important to keep them separate. It's an uphill battle really to fight.
Anita: But I've yeah. always insisted on using it in my own writing and I know people who care about this issue, um, do too.
Sarah: So as an anthropologist, you decided to just jump in, immerse yourself in the world of assisted dying in Oregon, not trying to be objective, but like a fly on the wall, if you will. And you researched for five years, which is amazing.
Sarah: Tell me, what's unique about being an anthropologist in this context?
Anita: I think what you just spoke to this idea of immersing yourself while being a fly on the wall, right? That's our methodology as anthropologists. So what we call participant observation. So you're a participant and at the same time, you're an observer.
Anita: So you have some skin in the game because you're not [00:05:00] just sitting there with your notebook. You're actually helping open capsules. You are helping take family photos. At one point I signed somebody's, um, application as a witness because they couldn't find anybody else. But as anthropology kind of teaches you in order to really understand what is happening, you actually have to become somebody from the inside in some ways.
Anita: It's not just enough to sit in the corner and write your notes. You have to help carry this person into the bedroom. You have to, you know, do things that other family members might, uh, look for you to do. And Of course, then what somebody could say, Oh, well, doesn't that make you biased? No, it just makes you a part of what is happening because at the same time, you're also observing, right?
Anita: You're taking all these mental notes and you're thinking to yourself, okay, I need to exactly remember every second of this and what everybody looked like, um, because you're not taking notes as everything is happening, right? You know, there's some obvious challenges to that methodology, but there's [00:06:00] such a world that's opened up to you because you're such an active participant in, in what is happening.
Sarah: As part of your research, you volunteered with hospice. Can you talk a little bit about what your activities were as a volunteer and what you learned from that experience?
Anita: So I, they ended up sending me on assignments that kind of went beyond just being a presence at somebody's bedside or what have you, or reading them stories or something like that.
Anita: They ended up being more involved, except that one assignment where a person who was, I think, over a hundred, who was having really, really severe dementia and was bed bound and whose son wanted to go out and volunteer at his church and leave the house once a week. And so I came and basically, um, watched over his mom.
Anita: And that was the, the one that really stuck with me because, was very little left to her at that point. I don't think she noticed that I was there. That was a tough one. That was harder than any [00:07:00] of the others, I would say.
Sarah: People get very reflective at the end of their lives. Yeah. Did you notice that?
Anita: Almost relaxed too. I mean, as Ken said, you know, I don't have to wear fancy clothes anymore. I don't have to do all these things that I felt pressure to do when I was, you know, even in my 60s or what have you. I don't need to perform for anybody. This is me. I am dying. This is what this looks like. And just this absolute freedom to just like flaunt convention and to be themselves really.
Anita: Because who else are you going to be? you know, when it's time to die. So I think it's really that authenticity that comes through because it's also an alignment that has happened, right? So something that the people that I accompanied so wished for to have some sort of control over the end of their final days has happened for them.
Anita: And so there's almost like a settling into it and not to say that, you know, those moments [00:08:00] weren't, you know, scary also, or sad. But there was also such palpable relief that I think made it easier for people who were witnessing these events to then kind of feel like, okay, well, this is really what this person wants.
Anita: And so there's a kind of coming together and a acknowledgement of, okay, then let's carry you over the threshold here, you know? What
Sarah: was your learning from that experience?
Anita: I think it's always easy to say what you would want for yourself if you're not in the exact situation. So I didn't have to be the caretaker of a mother who was so unresponsive and so beyond recognition for herself even.
Anita: But I kept thinking at that moment that is not something I would want for myself. And I have since actually lost two grandparents, not to dementia, but both of them had dementia. But it was, really hard to see where this [00:09:00] could potentially be going and to know that I really didn't want them to go all the way to what I had been witnessing.
Anita: Because I, it's hard to put it delicately because there's such value judgment around what people choose at the end of their life. And I can just say for myself, if I feel like there's no recognition in like who I am and what I think and any of my capabilities are vacant, then I don't, for myself, I know that I probably wouldn't want to be around anymore.
Sarah: I just want to say I so appreciate you sharing that because I know that's a very personal choice. There's such a spectrum of dementia. There's just such a wide range and where do you pull the lever for yourself of If I don't recognize my sister, for example, is that, is that the moment?
Anita: In the beginning you might still be recognizing that you're going down this path and [00:10:00] at what point then do you lose that self awareness?
Anita: That's always what I'm curious about because I've been to memory care facilities and Those are very difficult places to, I think, to work at and to live in and to visit somebody in. And not unambiguously, right? Uh, sad or anything, but definitely extremely challenging.
Sarah: I love what you call in the book, the cultural fixation on fantasies of immortality.
Sarah: And it feels so pervasive in our culture, in our TV, our movies, our books, our stories. Where did you come up with that phrase?
Anita: So when I was teaching a class at Brandeis, on the end of life. The last kind of segment of the class always dealt with these kinds of fantasies of immortality. The very fact that we are not immortal just makes all of our, all of these moments so precious, right?
Anita: And this is what the students in my classes kept coming back to over and over again. Like, [00:11:00] well, if this kept going, then what incentive would we ever have to do anything in our lives or to excel at something? And yeah, I get really uncomfortable when I The more I kind of read about the, all these efforts to keep somebody around and to keep somebody's essence going, when really then there's no, then you don't ever have to make peace with the fact that they're gone, really, because they're just like a mouse click away.
Sarah: It's so interesting because I think we imagine conversations with people after they're gone, and yet this creates something sort of tangible, which is I don't know how, that's something to unpack in a future day, but I think that that's so fascinating. And there's a whole movement on the other side to remove the anti from aging.
Sarah: Instead of anti aging, it's like anti aging is never in style, you know. really creating an elder style, if you will, and celebrating it, celebrating all the weird things that happen to your body. Because there are a lot of weird things that start happening. [00:12:00] How are you called to this study, to this work as an anthropologist?
Anita: Just kind of stumbled into this topic when I was teaching a class on medicine and religion at Brandeis University and showed them, showed my students a documentary called How to Die in Oregon, which I highly recommend is still, I think, the best documentary on the subject. And, um, it follows this woman, Cody, who, um, had pancreatic cancer and the film does a really, really beautiful and sensitive job of showing how she.
Anita: came to this decision to end her life. And at the time, not many people had done research on assisted dying. There was something about all the profound, difficult questions that people ask around the end of life that really, I guess, called to me. I think it was, The more I got into it, I peeled away all these like different layers, just like with any project, right, that you hadn't anticipated in the beginning.
Anita: I mean, I really became [00:13:00] so enamored with this, like, like the death positive movement or like people who, who are in that world and who just have such a quirky sense of humor, sometimes dark, but so joyful. Like so many, like the most joyful people I've met in this research are people who were like work and death, you know, I mean, I didn't have strong opinions about assisted dying when I started the work, I would have to say.
Anita: But after the research, and I think this becomes clear in the book, I became like a very strong proponent of it, where I would never not want to have this option for myself.
Sarah: In the five years of your research, what was kind of the age range of people you were with? I'm just super curious about, was there a difference in this?
Sarah: sort of outpouring of wisdom and dropping of filters. Was there any difference in, in different ages, um, and how they coped with their death?
Anita: It's interesting. I don't think so much an age as in terms of terminality. [00:14:00] I remember meeting this couple, I think they were both in their 40s or maybe early 50s.
Anita: And one of them had a really, I think a glioblastoma and they were, you know, And they were so, they had like named her Cancer and, um, and we're like making jokes about it and they were just so clear eyed and so affectionate with each other, but also so real, more so than age. I just realized like, the type of condition somebody had often and um, that even, you know, caused them to face immortality much sooner than they would normally have.
Anita: But I know plenty of people in the 80s, including my own grandparents who were completely in denial of their own death and would never have talked about it in any way. Age by itself and what I found wasn't necessarily what made people more willing to talk about death or reflect on it. It was really their [00:15:00] personality and like their,
Sarah: I'd like to go back to definitions and distinctions, and the legal differences in different countries.
Sarah: Because Canada passed a federal law for MAID, which is medical assistance in dying, which means that the doctor can actually administer the medicine, whereas here in the U. S. it The physicians are not allowed to administer the medicine. There was a really compelling piece in your book about someone in a wheelchair who might have to push the wheelchair into the wall to actually administer it to themselves, and that was startling.
Anita: Yes, absolutely. And this is the only reason why we even have assisted dying loss. Because for the decades before then, legislators tried to introduce laws that still contained this euthanasia provision. So euthanasia means a physician administers the lethal medication and it would not pass. And this was really something that lawmakers, physicians, the public was really hung up on.[00:16:00]
Anita: And so it was only after they removed that requirement and said, okay, well, then everybody self administers said. it passed. That was, I think, the big reason why it passed in Oregon in 1994 and then it didn't get enacted until 1997. But it's created a lot of conundrums for people. So lately, so the wheelchair is one example.
Anita: Um, the, I mean, right now they're actually experimenting with eye recognition software in some cases that is hooked up. to some sort of apparatus that, um, releases the medicine, because if you're talking about people with advanced neurodegenerative diseases like ALS, who don't have often, uh, use of their hands and who can't swallow, how do you, how do you make them self administer the medication?
Anita: So in some ways you're inadvertently discriminating against them, right, based on their physical ability to self administer. And so, and so I've read of some cases where the person then. uses their eyes [00:17:00] to direct the medication because nobody can physically put their hands on the plunger for you. Uh, and there are huge discussions among, um, physicians about that.
Anita: Well, is it okay if a person says yes, and then I feel their hand on the plunger and can I help them push it down? Technically, no. And it also means that you are limited to the gastric tract. So something that has to can, has to be ingested by you. So it means you can't actually put an IV in yourself. For people who, whose diseases have progressed such that the intestinal system is gone, right?
Anita: It's like has been obliterated by the disease. They have a really hard time absorbing the medication. And so I talk about one of those unfortunate cases in my book where it didn't work. But what we have in the States is a little bit of a ironic situation where you. You already have to be very sick to take this medication, right?
Anita: So you, you have to be within six months of the end of your life, but you can't be too [00:18:00] sick because otherwise you can't take the medication anymore. So people, especially with ALS, and I talk about this guy, Joe, in the book, have to kind of find that spot where just qualified and they, they haven't yet lost all their abilities.
Anita: that allow them to fulfill this one requirement.
Sarah: Another interesting angle, I think, uh, that some opponents say that medical assistance in dying, I'm quoting, implicitly devalues the lives of people with disabilities who must live daily with the same sorts of limitations of terminally ill patients. How do you make sense of that thinking?
Anita: I think it relies on a very unfortunate conflation of terminal illness with disability. They're not the same. So, of course, a lot of terminally ill patients eventually have to contend with some sort of disability the further they progress. But a disability by itself would never qualify you for an assisted death.
Anita: And that's just the [00:19:00] reality. And I think we hear a lot of fear mongering and maybe some, well, there might be an implicit value judgment, right? But right now, there's no expectation in this country that if you become terminally ill, you must choose an assisted death. And we're very far from that. So I think that people are worried about like those implicit pressures, but I mean, I think we're at the opposite that we have the opposite problem that people who once they become sick and even very sick are still being treated with interventions that have become futile.
Anita: So that is the real problem. So the, the real problem isn't that we're pushing people over the cliff here at all. And not that anybody could even, right? Because it has to be completely self directed from the very beginning. But this idea that somehow life gets cheapened because people choose to end their suffering.
Anita: I just, I don't make this, jump to then say, but that is a reflection on everybody who must contend with a similar [00:20:00] medical condition or whose, whose medical condition ends up looking similar in some ways or who, who must use a wheelchair or what have you. I just, I, to me, that is not a logical jump.
Sarah: Has the American Medical Association shifted its opinion at all in the last couple of years since you wrote the book?
Anita: They have now allowed for different definitions. Instead of saying, oh, this is assisted suicide, which I'm not sure they're still using that, but they have something from an opponent and something from a proponent and say, and basically say, these are the different ways that people are calling it, but they have not come out in favor of assisted dying still.
Anita: And I don't think they will anytime soon.
Sarah: I was thinking about how the U. S. seems to have the strictest laws in the world. And how do other places compare?
Anita: So the Benelux countries, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium, have much more permissive laws. [00:21:00] There is no time frame for terminality. You just have to have a condition, an irremutable condition that causes you great suffering, something like that.
Anita: It doesn't have to just be a physical condition. It can be a mental condition. Um, you don't have to over 18. It's usually administered by a physician. Switzerland is one of, one of the countries that is open to non citizens. And in New Zealand and Australia, it's interesting because they also insist on self administration, but they have provisions for people with neurodegenerative diseases that can self administer.
Anita: So this is exactly something like, of what would make sense in the United States, right? If somebody's unable to take their medication, but they fulfill all the other requirements, why couldn't you help them self administer? I mean, administer.
Sarah: Let's talk a little bit about access. Assisted dying in the U. S.
Sarah: is very expensive.
Anita: It can be. Yeah, [00:22:00] it depends. It depends. Some private insurances cover the medications and the medications are around, the new cocktail is around 700. And sometimes physicians, like in Oregon and Washington, there are a lot of pro bono physicians who waive their fees. Otherwise, sometimes it's possible to charge it as an end of life consult.
Anita: So there are, and in Washington, they have a fund for people to help them defray the costs of the medications that you can apply for. So it really, really depends. But for instance, federally funded insurance programs can't pay for it. So Medicare doesn't pay for it. But state funded ones do or can and have.
Anita: So, so it really just depends. And, um, initially I kept thinking, I mean, the story around assisted dying is always that only rich people use it. And I don't think that's true. People who are well connected and have resources tend to be more aware of it as [00:23:00] an option and tend to, um, have the resources to kind of make things happen.
Anita: But. It really spans the gamut, but I think that you have to have some sort of like social or financial capital to make use of this option, I would say. And can you clarify what you mean by social capital? So people who can help you figure out how to find a physician, people who can, maybe get in touch with End of Life Choices Oregon or another organization that helps people navigate this process because it can be daunting when you first start out because you don't know all the different steps.
Anita: And so having somebody who's willing to help you, but that's with anything medical, right? You always, when you are older, even when you're younger, it helps to have somebody go to a medical appointment with you. Because it can be so confusing what physicians tell you, um, don't always translate well. And then you have to be your own advocate always when it comes to medicine.
Sarah: Yeah. It's coming back to the paradox of independence. Even in states where [00:24:00] assisted dying is legal, not every doctor will participate in the process. Um, and it brings up a question about what the physician's role is and the Hippocratic oath is do no harm. Is a peaceful death for someone with a terminal illness harm?
Anita: Physicians who prescribe life ending medications say it would be harm not to prescribe the medication because to them that is suffering. Then you are not ending suffering, but you are standing idly by. In this case, not doing harm actually means ending somebody's suffering and helping somebody die, right?
Anita: Physicians, there are some states that require physicians who don't want to participate in the process to at least provide a referral or to at least, um, provide medical notes and things like that. But in other states, that's not the case. And so people, you know, will go from physician to physician and if they are always being told no, they can get really, really discouraged.
Anita: But now there is, I mean, there's [00:25:00] a growing network of physicians that, that do prescribe. I mean, it's still small, but the, the organizations, um, that help assisted dying patients, but they can say, okay, call so and so and, um, that they might help you.
Sarah: So I want to go back to your book. Um, can I read a little passage and just see what comes up for you as I read this?
Sarah: Cause there were several passages I marked, obviously, but this one, I not only love the passage, I love the language you used and It kind of sums up for me this conversation. Um, the desire to die well is part of a growing social movement to wrest back control over life's final chapter from the domain of the medical and funeral profession.
Sarah: Refusing to be stifled by convention, millennials and baby boomers are the generations spearheading these efforts. They are the ones researching their options for green burial, natural home death Aqua cremation, [00:26:00] composting human remains, and turning ashes into tree soil. They write their own eulogies and obituaries, have living wakes to say goodbye, craft playlists for their funerals, design their own coffins.
Sarah: Some have found inspiration in the burgeoning death positive movement, which attempts to normalize discussions around our mortality.
Anita: What comes up for me is Meeting the person who designed the first mushroom burial suit. I don't know if you've heard of that. It's basically a suit with mushroom spores in it.
Anita: And when I, like hearing you read this list, I'm just reminded of all the inspiring people I've met along the ways who have contributed to this, uh, growing, movement to have some options around death and dying. My friend, Heather Massey, who lives on out on the Cape, um, is herself, um, a natural death educator.
Anita: You know, you'd walk into her room or into [00:27:00] her living room and she had like a casket as a living room table. Her entire book, uh, shelf was like filled with books on death. And, um, and she was like the most life affirming person I'd ever met. And she would teach families, uh, at home, death care. Yeah. And I'm just so gladdened to know that there are some options out there and, um, that if you want to be buried in a, in a forest or you have your ashes sprinkled, like compressed into a diamond and, um, or like a record.
Anita: It doesn't have to be like a stuffy, uh, funeral possession if that's not what you want, right? You don't, you don't have to be embalmed. Like you don't have to just, there's so many possibilities now there's no, um, and if people become more comfortable talking about the mortality, then they can really research those options and think about how they want to leave things when they go.
Sarah: I think you make a really good point that we. You know, kind of in the next part of the [00:28:00] book you talk about you don't want to make having a good death yet another obligation of the modern life, of the late modern life. Like, we have such a focus on productivity. We don't want to make this seem like you have to find the perfect death either.
Anita: Or have any sort of social pressure around that or any pressure at all. Right. I mean, it's fine if you want to throw your own funeral, as some people have called it. But if you just want to peace out and not have any of that. Yeah. I mean, it's like with anything, right? There are, there are going to be social trends around that, but especially, I mean, but on a serious note.
Anita: So when it comes to assisted dying, I don't think assisted dying can claim to be the good death by itself. Right. If your idea of a good death is being in a comfortable hospital setting surrounded by doctors and machines, that's fine, right? And that's why, that's why it's tricky to say death of dignity as synonymous [00:29:00] with assisted dying because there are so many other dignified ways to die.
Anita: And, um, and I think it's really, really important to not lose sight of that and to not claim that all assisted deaths are good or that, um, in order to have a good death, it must be assisted or what have you, you know, um, I'll be very curious to see what happens to assisted dying in this country. Will it continue to be so piecemeal?
Anita: Will there eventually be some sort of federal decision around it or will it all be taken away? Who knows?
Sarah: Yeah, who knows. So I'd love to ask you the question I ask all of my guests. What does a peaceful exit mean to you?
Anita: I mean, ironically, it comes pretty close to what an assisted death looks like. It's more than the how and the what and the where.
Anita: For me, it's the inner state of knowing that it's over and being at peace with that. Like I, I would want to have the [00:30:00] attitude of, okay, I've, I've done this life. I've done pretty much all I wanted and now it's time to go. So that like lack of struggle, that like lack of denial, this letting go and also being fine with that.
Anita: And that's kind of how I felt. Like when I became a mother, I was like, I had done such. crazy cool things in my 20s and 30s. And by the time I was able then to finally become a mother, I was like, Oh man, definitely there's still mountains I want to climb and definitely countries I want to travel to and all these things.
Anita: But right now I've done so many of these things. right now and I'm so grateful so right now I'm okay not doing them for a while. Although now I'm again wanting to do them but um, but there's a certain I didn't have like any regrets of things I hadn't really done and that's how I want to die.
Sarah: Will you talk to your daughter about it as she grows up?
Anita: I hope so. I actually have a really beautiful book that somebody gave me. Where Do They Go? It's by Julia [00:31:00] Alvarez. It's for children. So it's basically when somebody dies, where do they go? And then it goes through like different theories that people have, you know, do they go where the wind goes when it blows?
Anita: Um, or do they turn into clouds and change every hour? A flamingo, a cat, a dancer, a flower. Do they fall with the rain from the sky? Are they my tears when I cry? So it, um, so we read this sometimes and I talked with her very openly about, well, insects dying, but also people dying. Like, so when my grandpa, uh, grandfather passed away, I was able to visit him a few hours later and I arranged some roses on his bed and he died in an assisted living facility.
Anita: And then I took some pictures of it and I have those on my phone and sometimes, you know, she'll like scroll through photos on my phone and she'll come across that. And my mom has before said, Oh, that's, My dad, he's sleeping. I was like, no, he's not sleeping. He's, he's dead. He died. Um, and so being [00:32:00] just like very open and candid with kids, um, I think is really, really important around this topic in appropriate ways.
Anita: Yeah. So that's a book I could recommend, but there are so many others. Yeah, it's beautiful.
Sarah: So one of our conversations here at Peaceful Exit was with Elena Lister and Michael Schwarzman, and they wrote a book called Giving Hope, Conversations with Children About Illness, Death, and Loss, and it's really well done.
Sarah: Highly recommend it for you and for any parent, uh, because it really has practical bullet points. This is kind of how you walk through, uh, if someone has an illness and can't get out of bed or something, and the child is wondering what's going on. And anyway, it's beautiful, beautifully done. And that's for the grownup.
Sarah: That's for the parent. Um, and your book more for the child and reading aloud, which is beautiful too. Um, but I think in the back of their book, they also have a bunch of other children's books they recommend. That's so useful. Yeah. Yeah. It has [00:33:00] been such a pleasure to talk to you today. Thank you so much for having me, Sarah.
Sarah: This was such a treat.
Sarah: Thank you for listening to Peaceful Exit. I'm your host, Sarah Cavanaugh. You can learn more about this podcast at A peaceful exit. net. And you can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram at A Peaceful Exit.
Sarah: 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 Noles our senior producer, and Syd Gladu provides additional production and social media support.
Sarah: Special thanks to Ricardo Russell for the original music throughout this podcast. [00:34:00] As always, thanks for listening. I'm Sarah Cavanaugh, and this is Peaceful Exit.