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Death doula Alua Arthur never thought about death until two back-to-back experiences changed her life. A serendipitous encounter with a woman on a bus dying of uterine cancer and the terminal diagnosis of Burkitt lymphoma by her brother-in-law opened her eyes to what happens when we don’t plan for death. From those moments on, Alua realized the power in guiding people through the dying process, and devoted her life to working as a death doula. On this episode, Ricki and Alua talk about how to plan for your death, why dying can bring about a fuller life, and the wonder Alua witnesses as her clients pass from this world to whatever comes next.

Show Resources:

• Check out Alua’s book, Briefly Perfectly Human
• Learn more about becoming a death doula at Going With Grace

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Alua Arthur, Ricki Lake

Ricki Lake  00:00

This is The High Life With Me, Ricki Lake, where we find out how my guests crack the code to living a full and vibrant life, so you can too. Now it may sound counterintuitive, but I am convinced that the one important part of living a joyful life is thinking and talking about your death, planning for it, making peace with it, can help you cherish the time that you do have on this earth. And I’m holding up this beautiful book, and I’m so excited to talk to my guest today, Alua Arthur is a death doula, meaning she guides people through the process of dying along with their loved ones. Her TED Talk, okay, I have to say this, this is not hyperbole. It’s my favorite TED talk I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen many. Her beautiful book is called, briefly, perfectly human, making an authentic life by getting real about the end. I love this book so much. It is such an honor, truly.

 

Alua Arthur  02:39

Thank you for all those beautiful things you just said about my book by the way, my book by the way.

 

Ricki Lake  02:44

I listened to it actually, and I hearing your voice. It just, I mean, it brought up so much for me. Okay, before we get into it, this is how we start all of our shows here. Where are you getting your highs from right now? What is bringing you joy lately? It could be anything.

 

Alua Arthur  02:59

This may sound really minor, but I have discovered the singer named Chapel Rowan.

 

Ricki Lake  03:06

Me too.

 

Alua Arthur  03:06

Who, oh my gosh, I’ve taken the top off of my jeep. I was just driving through the streets of LA on the top volume, singing my heart out. I’m having so much fun right now because of her.

 

Ricki Lake  03:17

Pink pony club. I’m gonna keep fun dancing at the, you know, the whole story, the back story of that, of that song, is about the Abbey and her experience of finding herself and, you know, you know, the whole she can’t grew up religious. She’s really, really special. Okay, I’m getting high on that too. Okay, so let’s start with, how did you become interested in working with dying and people going through that process.

 

Alua Arthur  03:45

I know it’s not one of those things that people generally write about when they’re a kid, like, I want to be a death doula, right? And I think I didn’t know that. I did. I actually thought I want to be a birth doula for a while in there. And I guess it’s the same thing, just on the opposite side.

 

Ricki Lake  03:57

And,you know, I’m also a trained birth doula

 

Alua Arthur  04:01

100% and it’s just it’s so exciting to me, like the fact that, well, the fact that people are interested in birth generally also seems to be interested in death, because of the parallels between the two processes, but also because of the portals that are open, because of the reverence and the awe and the sacredness of both times. It’s just we look at one more joyfully than we look at the other, yet they are both a birth into something else that aside, I started my professional life at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles as a lawyer. I practiced for almost 10 years in domestic violence work and sexual assault work, restraining orders, community economic development benefits for individuals that were getting kicked off of them, the ones that they were rightfully owed by the county based on law, and I got really depressed. Depression blossomed. And I know that’s not typically the word that we like we would think of when talking about depression, but for me, it took root and it flowered in my body, which meant that I took a medical leave of absence from work and I went. Cuba, where I met a fellow traveler on a bus who had uterine cancer. The way I met her is completely serendipitous and synchronistic, but our time together proved to be one of the most important conversations of my life. I was on the street running to the bus stop in Cuba, and as I was running, a car almost hit me along the way, and I slammed my hands on the hood, and thought, get it together, like, don’t die out here on the street. Well, I got to where I was going, and then eventually made it to the bus stop.

 

Ricki Lake  05:28

Wait, explain, I’m sorry. So you were almost in a car accident, and she was in the other car.

 

Alua Arthur  05:32

She was in the car. So when I got to the bus stop, she was trying to help me get on the bus because I was late and so on and so forth. And so she helped me get on the bus, and then we started talking about death.

 

Ricki Lake  05:44

And how old was she when she was a young woman?

 

Alua Arthur  05:46

She was 36.

 

Ricki Lake  05:48

Wow.

 

Alua Arthur  05:49

Yeah, she wasn’t old. She was just a couple years older than I was at the time. And it was so it was so startling, because I didn’t know anybody around my age that had been sick, that sick, or anybody who had died. I don’t know if I consider myself fortunate or not because of that, but it was the first time that I was having a very real conversation about death with someone, and it was so enlightening. It opened my eyes to not only what the system is like for people that are grappling with serious illness, who have to put on a happy face, for the people that love them because they want them to focus on hope and healing instead of illness, but it also opened my eyes to how important the conversation about mortality is and that we’re just not having it, and that we really need to so it was really tremendous. We talked a lot about her disease. I asked her questions, and gratefully, she was open to share. We talked about our relationship with mortality. We talked about what was undone in her life and what was still undone in mine. And we just really we sunk into this very intimate space of being human that we don’t often travel to. And yet, something about the intimacy of being with a stranger in a bus allowed that to blossom. But also you know who she was and where she was in her life, and who I am naturally very curious and sometimes asking inappropriate questions.

 

Ricki Lake  07:05

I’m the same way. I’m a former talk show host. I can’t help but like ask the questions that no one will else will dare ask. I mean, do you believe in destiny? Were you destined to meet her that day?

 

Alua Arthur  07:17

I learned this Yiddish word called beshert.

 

Ricki Lake  07:19

Beshert, it’s meant to be.

 

Alua Arthur  07:21

I love it. I love it. In some ways. It feels like beshert it, you know, the fact that we, we there was a crash, there was an accident that occurred beforehand. So it was like, almost, I was on a crash course because she was in the car that it almost hit me prior to and so when I eventually met her on the bus, it was like, look at this magical meeting. Although I didn’t know that she was in the car until later. But it was, it was really very destined.

 

Ricki Lake  07:44

And how much later after that? Was it that your sister’s husband Peter got sick with cancer? Was it immediate after? It seemed in the book, very soon after.

 

Alua Arthur  07:53

It was six months after I came back from Cuba, Peter was diagnosed, and four months after that, he was dying. So he died almost a year to the date after I was in the bus in Cuba, which is also a strange beshert. So I got to journey with Peter through the last two months of his life and really see how isolating the system can be for people that are in the medical care system and grappling with serious illness and disease. How we hide it kind of behind doors where we don’t want to discuss the illness. We don’t want to discuss the potential for dying. In his case, he did die, but nobody ever said Peter was dying at all.

 

Ricki Lake  08:31

And you think we need to start saying it.

 

Alua Arthur  08:36

100% well, I mean, I’m dying, and you are too, you know.

 

Ricki Lake  08:41

And so that near death experience you had, like, shifted the trajectory for you?

 

Alua Arthur  08:45

Entirely, completely. It was a hard left turn after that, a beautiful one. Maybe it was a soft left, you know, I left the practice of law behind. But from that point forward, not only did it change my work, because I started my business going with grace, but it also shifted the way that I view the world overall, like it was, like all of a sudden the pretty little wool that had been hiding there that allowed me to move through this world like I was untouchable, lifted and I got to be present with my dying.

 

Ricki Lake  09:16

And I also had, I don’t know if it was maybe a little dramatic to say, a near death experience, but I lived through 911 living downtown. I watched the plane fly down the Hudson and hit the building the second plane. So in that moment, I had just given birth in my apartment in my West Village apartment, and so two months after that, I watched, you know, the horror unfold, and I thought that was the end of my I truly thought this is the end of my days. And I had an epiphany, If I lived through this, I’m going to find other work. My talk show, though it was really successful, I didn’t feel like ultimately it was my voice. It was really what I was meant to do. And I had a calling of wanting to explore midwifery and do a project, you know, looking at options when it comes to our birth. And that became the business of being born. But I feel like that. My sort of near death, quote, unquote, near death experience prompted me to shift the entire trajectory of not only my career, but my life. And like you said, it’s a gift. I mean, it’s an app. It was be shared. You know, dare I say, yes, so with Peter. Were you a trained death doula at the time you were helping Peter and your family go through this transition.

 

Alua Arthur  10:22

No, I was just somebody who had had her eyes opened about our mortality and living in relationship to it. I started to research to see what kind of work I could do in the death space, and I thought that I was well, I applied to several schools to become a therapist. I thought, I’ll be a MFT, and I’ll sit down with people, and I’ll talk to people that are about dying, about dying, about their relationship with the end. And then, as Peter was dying, I saw a whole other way to approach the work, one that seemed far more practical and maybe even a little bit more necessary, and that it was in the trench with folks. I saw all the things that we were missing as he was dying, the things that I wish that I had. And I thought, well, shoot, we didn’t have it. Let me see if I can make it for other people.

 

Ricki Lake  11:02

So like, what, like, what was missing, and what would you change?

 

Alua Arthur  11:06

So many things. Well, big picture, the medical care system could really spend a lot more time with their own personal relationships with death, so that they can be present for the conversation with other people. I’d really appreciate it if we’d, we’d had some notice that it was coming, that we were walking that path, that if we had more education about what dying looks like. The Death Rally was something that I had no idea about when I saw Peter rallying near the end of his life it’s when somebody is getting closer to the end, and all of a sudden they seem like themselves again, and they’re maybe ordering food or speaking orders or just like being jolly.

 

Ricki Lake  11:44

Can you explain that? So? So when Peter was dying, and clearly, like his body was shutting down, he suddenly rallied. For how long?

 

Alua Arthur  11:51

The night before he fell unconscious, he rallied. He died on a Wednesday, the Sunday before he rallied. And he’d been he wasn’t unconscious yet, but he was in the bed. He was feeble. His eyeball was moving in its socket. He was wearing a patch because of it. There were tumors on his lungs. He was so thin, He was pale, he was bald. He’d been bald for a while. You could see veins everywhere. His skin had started to change color. The end of his nose has started to change color. All the visible signs of dying were present, and yet, he wakes up on Sunday morning, and he asked me to bring my niece wearing a football jersey, and he wants food, and his friends are there, and he’s asking for whiskey. And I was like, What is going on? And what was happening was a Death Rally, which is a sudden burst of energy that people often expel as they approach dying. I think that it’s the last little bit of life, like being pushed out of the body, because later on that evening, when Peter was out of gas, he said he was tired. I kissed him on the cheek. I said, Good night, and he never woke up again.

 

Ricki Lake  12:51

And did you know that was going to be his last night?

 

Alua Arthur  12:53

No, I had there was no context for what was occurring. And so that’s one of the things that I would change, is I would give people information about the process of dying. This is what it looks like. These are some things that you might see. I asked everybody what’s going on, and nobody had an answer for me, and I thought it was the miracle that we were hoping for. I thought maybe Peter is going to be okay. Well, he died not long after that. So I wish you had somebody to explain the process of the Death Rally to us. I wish that there were people to explain the practicalities like transfer title of his vehicles earlier. Here’s what you do with his medications. Talk to him about his stuff. What does he want done with his stuff? He had this beautiful Balinese teak coffee table that I would have given a left leg for was so gorgeous, but yeah, I think he would have told me that he wanted me to have it before he died, but we didn’t talk about it. And so I had to.

 

Ricki Lake  13:45

Who got it?

 

Alua Arthur  13:46

I had to defer to my sister. That was her husband, after all, I’m not mad, I’m not mad. So there was, there were so many things that if we would have been on top of, or been in the conversation about we would have had in place prior to his death, and then even the process of grieving afterward, it was just been great to have somebody in our corner, you know, somebody to explain how to talk to my niece about dying, just somebody who was there who said, this sucks, you know. And what information do you need? What do you need? How can I support you right now?

 

Ricki Lake  14:14

Yeah, you know, I actually, just about a month ago, one of my besties, she’s training to be a death doula. So she held a salon in my home to do a Medical Directive. So we had it was really fascinating and kind of terrifying, even though I felt like my husband and I, oh, we’ve done this we met with my lawyer. We know where we want everything to go for the kids and whatnot. There were so many questions that we went through, and these were all strangers in my home. And it was fascinating, like, I remember, like, one of them said, I am not gonna be a donor, an organ donor. Okay, adamant, adamant. And I was like, why? Of course like, of course, I’m an organ donor. Oh, my God, it’s the most selfless thing. And that’s just one example of, like, two dozen, three dozen questions of, really. That are very complicated but those things are super important to have.

 

Alua Arthur  15:05

Absolutely, really important. These are things that we don’t think about until it’s too late, or until we’re in the middle of it, or until somebody is falling unconscious and we have no idea what their desires are for life support. These are the things that cause a lot of grief. They cause, I think, a lot of trauma around dying because we haven’t spent any time with them beforehand, and it takes an hour, two hours granted. It takes a lot of courage on our part to to journey through those conversations, but just to sit down and address it like, what do I want the things for us to think about is our desires for life support. You know, who’s going to make our decisions for us when we can’t anymore, like.

 

Ricki Lake  15:41

Quality of life, what quality of life is for you may be different for quality of life, to me, right.

 

Alua Arthur  15:47

And who can make the decisions that I want despite how it impacts them. You know, my mom is not the appropriate medical care proxy for me. She’s not the best power of attorney for me, because that woman would put me back in the womb if she could. She would just shove me right back. You know, she will do anything to keep me alive. And so I think that it’s probably best that it’s somebody else who will just do what it is that I want, which is let me go when the time comes. It’s important for us to think about how we want to be cared for, how we want to be treated, what we want done with our possessions, our services, our body, burial, cremation, green burial. Acclimation turned into a dime, a diamond, a record. There’s so many decisions to be made.

 

Ricki Lake  16:31

Aquamation, I don’t even know acclimation.

 

Alua Arthur  16:35

Oh, okay.

 

Ricki Lake  16:35

What is that?

 

Alua Arthur  16:36

It’s a water cremation, essentially. So your body is placed in a vat in a pool of water and lye. And over about four or so hours, more lye than water, it breaks down all the tissues and fat and muscles, and only the bones are left, which are ground down. They become very, very fine. The water is disposed of, or the water can be used, and then the family or the loved ones are given the bones and whatever is remaining there to do what they want, and you can spread those like you would cremains. It’s far more environmentally sound. It’s not available everywhere yet, but I hope it will be soon, because it’s a process that we use for pets often.

 

Ricki Lake  17:12

Yes.

 

Alua Arthur  17:13

As I wish it would also be available for humans. That’s acclimation.

 

Ricki Lake  17:16

This is fascinating. Okay, we’re gonna take a quick break, and I have many more questions for Alua.

 

Ricki Lake  20:09

Do you have any feeling or knowing of what happens to us when we die, like once we’re gone? I know we don’t know, but I have a knowing the experience I had during that Ayahuasca journey over a weekend with my beloved who passed and took his life and suffered from bipolar disorder. I feel him, I feel like I got a sense that he is going to, I mean, he said to me in this in this ceremony under the Redwoods in Northern California, it was the most beautiful. I mean, I’ve done Ayahuasca many times, but this was the most profound connection I got to have with him, you know, because normally, I don’t know if you’ve sat with the medicine before, well, you know, because, you know, it’s so personal. It’s so solo. You’re not really connecting with people during these ceremonies. It’s really you go inward and with him. He held me under these trees, and he just had this moment where we were, like, locked and crying, and he was almost punching my chest and holding me in his arms and saying, I will always be right here, no matter where I am. And then he took his my partner, took his life, like, I don’t know, a couple years later, but he knew, and he’s like, he wanted me to be able to tap into that, you know, other world to get that message to me, and it, it came through. It’s crazy.

 

Alua Arthur  21:27

Yeah, thank you Chris.

 

Ricki Lake  21:29

Blessing.

 

Alua Arthur  21:29

Thank you Christian.  What a gift.

 

Ricki Lake  21:32

Absolutely.

 

Alua Arthur  21:32

That sounds so tough.

 

Ricki Lake  21:35

It was really hard, but it was, I mean, all of the trauma that I’ve gone through, and I’ve gone through a lot, has all been a gift. And he was here. I wish he was here longer, but the life I have now I wouldn’t have had with him, or had he stayed, even, I wouldn’t have been able to move on so I know he hand picked my new guy. And, yeah, it worked out. And he’s, he’s exactly where he’s supposed to be, you know.

 

Alua Arthur  22:01

What a gift is that also so fascinating that sometimes, like a dying, I mean, it is always a birth into something new, but that it does create new opportunities in our lives sometimes, you know what I mean? Like, I none of this would happen if Peter hadn’t died. None of this wouldn’t happen. And thank you, Peter, not that he died for this, but it is one of the things that came from his death. In the way that, you know, death always sows seeds, like always, things bloom from it. And I think it’s hard to tell when we’re in the midst of that really deep grief, but 100%.

 

Ricki Lake  22:33

I do have this knowing, and I can’t prove it, but I just know he’s right here right now. He is like completely, has the biggest smile on his face that we are talking about this, that I’m bringing this up, but it’s very healing for me. And I know, of course, none of us can, we don’t know anything, but I just wonder if you had any sort of experience like on that medicine, where you feel like you have this connection to the 5D that maybe others don’t.

 

Alua Arthur  23:00

I mean, in medicine, absolutely. You know, in medicine, all this is broken down, and there’s so much more to be accessed and to commune with and to be present with. And it’s easy for me to see the divine in all things, even like the fabric that I’m wearing, I’ve been able I noticed some things. I’ve noticed a lot of things. For starters, the almost like the stillness, the deafening stillness that occurs after, right after death, that grows in density as the dying is happening. You know, it’s hard for us to figure out exactly when death occurs, what time people stop breathing or their heart stops beating, isn’t it? But you can just feel the stillness. Just get thicker and thicker and thicker in the room. It feels like a blanket somebody’s put over the room that that feels like there is something intangible, something I can’t see or touch, but something that is very present. I see the piece that people have on their faces generally. And this is when we’re talking about dying from disease. I should mention because there’s also a whole lot of deaths that occur out there, but mostly people dying from disease. I’ve also, I’ve heard a few things that make me think, oh, there’s something going on here.

 

Ricki Lake  24:09

Can you tell me one, one of those things?

 

Alua Arthur  24:12

Gladly, so I had a client with Alzheimer’s and dementia. She hadn’t spoken a sentence in a year and a half. She hadn’t spoken a word, probably in like, three or four months. And yet she at some point, she’s in the bed. She’d had a cardiac event, but she was still alive, and she’s laying in the bed, obviously winding down, and she sits up, not all the way, she’s 95 years old, and reaches into the corner of the room and says, Hubert, help me, Hubert, please. You know, I don’t know how to do this. Hubert help and then lays back down. Sentence strung together, understood perfectly what she was saying. Her eyes were open. She was reaching for somebody, something in the corner of the room. Now, I was alone with her when this happened. Her daughter had stepped out. When her daughter came back, anything happened? Yeah, something happened. And I explained to daughter, what happened and daughter tells me that Hubert was mom’s boyfriend when she was 17 that died in a car accident.

 

Ricki Lake  25:08

Wow, right?

 

Alua Arthur  25:09

So daughter had never even met Hubert. Just knew his name and also the way that mom was speaking, she was so coquedish, you know, like a teenage girl helped me. You know, I don’t know how to do this she were at hell, stunned.

 

Ricki Lake  25:21

Wow.

 

Alua Arthur  25:22

There was somebody something, and she knew it. And at that moment, I believe that there was something there too.

 

Ricki Lake  25:29

That’s amazing.

 

Alua Arthur  25:31

Yeah.

 

Ricki Lake  25:31

So how do you walk away from that? Does that sit with you for days and days and days.

 

Alua Arthur  25:36

Years.

 

Ricki Lake  25:36

Years, yeah.

 

Alua Arthur  25:37

It’s still with me, for all time.

 

Ricki Lake  25:41

There has to be something beyond just this. You know, where we are now. There has to be I know I’m going to be reunited with my beloved. And I know that Ross, my new beloved, my new husband. He is so on board with me, like having all the love, you know, like having this, this, you know, I know it. I just know it.

 

Alua Arthur  26:00

It’s hard to deny, you know, it’s hard to deny that there isn’t something at play here when we think about the utter perfection in nature, the fact that I what is happening in my body right now, is a trillion functions that I have. I had no participation in the creation of or in their current functioning, that there is that spark of the divine sometimes that you witness another human, that you can make eye contact with somebody and feel utterly at home and at peace without speaking a word. Like there has to be some beauty, some there’s certainly mystery, there’s awe, if we’re open to it. And that just fills my heart.

 

Ricki Lake  26:37

Absolutely, can you tell me another story?

 

Alua Arthur  26:40

I could tell you stories for the rest of our lives.

 

Ricki Lake  26:44

So yeah, tell me one more story about a client of yours that where you saw the awe and felt it.

 

Alua Arthur  26:51

There are so often when, well, let me explain this one. This client, and this is on quite a few different points, but this client had decided that she was not going to die until she had had a chance to talk to her children. She’d been estranged for them for years, but she just was not going to do it until that had happened. I talked to the kids. They didn’t want to come. They had made their peace with moms and and mom was still admit that she needed to see them first before she died. We didn’t make that happen. They just weren’t going to do it. And so we were able to get a letter out for the kids somehow, and as we, like, eke out the letter, and mom is, like, working really hard to communicate so we can get everything done. Mind you, she told me she’s not dying until it’s done, right? It looks like she’s falling unconscious. We’re three quarters away through the letter. I was like, well, we did the best that we could. We folded up, I put in the envelope I’m leaving for the evening, about to mail it off. Then her granddaughter calls me back and she says, come back. She’s not done yet. And so I get back and she says to me, I told you I wasn’t going until this was done. Now, mind you, and it’s funny now, but she was committed to staying until it was done. And she said in the time when she fell unconscious, she saw her children and was able to talk to each of them individually. They were all still living, but was able to communicate with all of them. And when I tell you, within 15 minutes, each of those kids called to talk to their mom again, because she had communicated with them somehow in the time that she fell unconscious, they called. They couldn’t make it, but they called, and that was all she needed. And by the time I was leaving that evening, she was unconscious again, and she died, probably, like, a day and a half later.

 

Ricki Lake  28:35

That’s unbelievable.

 

Alua Arthur  28:37

Yeah, she was absolutely clear. I’m not going until I see them.

 

Ricki Lake  28:41

Oh my god. And then so for the family that’s left behind, how did those children handle like did you did your ongoing doula work be with them as well?

 

Alua Arthur  28:50

100% because it was a granddaughter that had hired me, the granddaughters who brought me on, because she didn’t have any of her aunts to support her in the process, or any of her cousins. So she was doing the work mostly on her own, and that after that incident, then they all slowly started, like coming back and they wanted to hear stories and share stories, and.

 

Ricki Lake  29:10

Did they have regrets?

 

Alua Arthur  29:12

No, they didn’t. They didn’t, which is something that I found really powerful. You know, we talk, or we think a lot about forgiving people at the end of life, and when somebody is dying, maybe it’s a time for us to release all the things that they did to us. And would you hold a grudge if they were dying tomorrow? And the answer sometimes is yes, you know, and that’s okay. I think as long as we have made peace with the choices that we’ve made, and they had all made peace with their relationship with their mom and what it had been, and so they just released it, it was, it was a it was really dense, you know, yeah, I’m blessed to have a strong, beautiful relationship with my mother and my sisters all do as well, and to see a mom and her kids that were at odds with each other, and yet in her final moments, was still so concerned about communicating with them that she went unconcious just visited and came back to say, Let’s die now.

 

Ricki Lake  30:04

Wow, so powerful. We’ll be right back with more from Alua Arthur.

 

Ricki Lake  32:59

What would you say is the hardest part of your job?

 

Alua Arthur  33:01

Running a business, taxes, job descriptions, contracts, not for me, being with dying, illness, pain, suffering, joy, beauty, awe, like cake, but all this click clack, clacking I can’t do that’s not for me.

 

Ricki Lake  33:21

Yeah, so how do clients find I mean, obviously, through your book now, you mean, it’s a New York Times bestseller, and so you probably are inundated. You have too much work at this time.

 

Alua Arthur  33:31

Well, I don’t. I haven’t been seeing clients much lately. I want to get back into it, because it feels like it’s missing. Mostly what we do is we we train deaf doulas. We train doulas, which is, to me, like the highest expression of the work, because it allows me to be with all the trainees and their relationship with dying. But it also amplifies and multiplies the work over and over and over again, which is super fun. So folks have been able to find us, I think, through word of mouth, like the training program has grown exponentially in the past five years, and I think it’s because people are hip to the fact that we need more of this in society.

 

Ricki Lake  34:03

Who makes a good death doula? Would you say anyone who’s a good birth doula? Is it same hand in hand?

 

Alua Arthur  34:10

That’s a great place to start. I think somebody who has a lot of comfort and emotional depth, you know, somebody who can just be down for the ride of rage and joy and giddiness and sex and all that, somebody who has comfort with like, the full range of what it’s like to be human, somebody who has built a personal relationship with death themselves, so that they are clear about what their fears and concerns are, and they’re not putting it on the client, somebody who is also down to like, journey into their own prejudices and privileges and bias, because all that stuff is going to come up when you’re around you’re around dying, and if you don’t spend time with it, it’s going to bleed out on the people that you’re caring for. That’s a really violent description, but I think you know what I mean, yeah, yeah. So people that are comfortable there people that make really good death doulas. We also have to learn how to hold a lot of space, like hold space for hours. Else as well as what’s happening concurrently, because we don’t have to put one above the other, but rather hold both. I’d also say somebody who can keep their calm through other people’s chaos, which is an important thing to do, because when the emotions get heightened, it’s up to us to hold that space for other people you know, and to be able to be present with folks as they move through it. It’s something that I have figured out how to do it, I think, is just an element of who I am based on, who knows what, maybe early childhood trauma, or just who I be where it’s like things are getting big around me, and I can keep even that’s not to say that I don’t get big and excitable plenty myself, but when it’s that of other people, I can stay calm, I can stay easy.

 

Ricki Lake  35:42

Yeah, no, yeah and reading your book, you are the voice of calm. I love what you’re doing. I think, I mean, it’s just just so important what advice would you give to sort of anyone listening that wants to take the first step to thinking about and planning for their own death?

 

Alua Arthur  36:01

Wow, there’s a lot of things to do. I mean, there’s I’m gonna hit on both the emotional and the practical. Let’s start with the practical, because that’s sometimes a little bit easier to swallow. But think very clearly about what your desires are like. Think through your desires, what condition of living is worse than dying. That’s one question to ask that can help you start to think through what your values are, because all these decisions must be made on our values. So think through what decision of what what condition of living is worse than dying wildly supportive, and make some clarity. Get down to the nuts and bolts of what that means to you, and then be in conversation with people about it. Talk to the people that you love, the people that you care about. See if you can spark some conversation with them as well. Think about the practical things, the tangible things, like your possessions. I think we can also use it to curb our consumerism in some way. For every item that comes into your house, somebody’s gonna have to deal with it at some point. So think it through this pair of scissors that you got, like, what are we going to do with this at this point. So consider things like that. For the practical, there’s a whole host of other things to do, but that’s just a place to begin. On the emotional, I suggest strongly that we all just spend maybe three minutes in the mirror looking at yourself, looking at your body without judgment. I’m not talking about who wrinkle this and without there, but rather this vessel, this this body that you get to move through earth in and with, and repeat to yourself that you’re going to die and just be with that. What that feels like, like, what is coming up in you when you say that, when you repeat that to yourself, and whatever it is that’s coming up, learn from that and start implementing it into your life. So if when I’m looking in the mirror and I’m seeing this body that is 46 years old, and I’m thinking about all that it’s been through, and I repeat to myself, I’m going to die. If there’s fear around what I’ve experienced or haven’t I need more chocolate cake. I want to have more sex, more red wine. I want to I want to be at peace in it. I want to be at home in this body. Start cultivating that practice so that by the time you reach your end, you’ve gotten there, or you’ve done your best to do as much of it in this body as you could.

 

Ricki Lake  38:15

So you say every, every day, to look in the mirror for three minutes and to just say I’m going to die.

 

Alua Arthur  38:22

I’m going to die. It’s huge, it sounds so simple, or it doesn’t, I promise you, Beetlejuice won’t come out. Poltergeist is not coming out, you’ll be fine.

 

Ricki Lake  38:33

Did you have like, ego death or well, I mean, clearly you don’t fear dying, right?

 

Alua Arthur  38:39

I have some concerns. I have some concerns. I’m just more comfortable with them I think, you know, I think even those of us that have a fear of death or that are in death care and can identify what it is that is still coming up for us, that’s the I think that’s the best that we can ask for. I still have concerns. Like, I want to grow old as my man. He’s already salt and pepper, but I just want to see him get all the way wrinkled, he’s gonna be so hot.

 

Ricki Lake  39:02

I’m so glad you have a man because you were single, you were you know, you had all these love affairs in your book. I’m so glad you’re your partner.

 

Alua Arthur  39:07

I do.

 

Ricki Lake  39:10

feel like I have lived like I feel like when I die, I want people around me that knew me to say I fucking lived. And I also feel like I’m okay if I die like, I really feel like I’ve raised two sons, I’ve had this extraordinary career, I’ve had loss, I’ve had great love. I’ve been 260 pounds. I’ve been 120 pounds. I’ve like, I feel like I’ve ticked all the boxes. I’m not ready to die, I’m not choosing to die, but I do feel like, when that time comes, I did it all, like there’s not really a stone that’s not unturned, you know, with me.

 

Alua Arthur  39:48

That’s the important part that’s so refreshing to hear. Because those are two different things. Like, when I look at my life, if this were it, I’d say, fuck yeah girl, like you did it. You know, you did it. Like add adventure and beauty and love and peace and all of that. I did it, and also I would like to see my man grow all the way gray at the same time, holding both of those things concurrently. And I think that the closer that we can get to the I could go and it would be okay, the better. You know, if there are things that are still holding us back, the mission statement of my business is, what must I do to be at peace with myself so that I may live presently and die gracefully?

 

Ricki Lake  40:26

Wait, say that again.

 

Alua Arthur  40:28

What must I do to be at peace with myself so that I may live presently and die gracefully? And I just want to note that it’s a must, it’s not that would be really nice. It’d be really cool to do. But what must I do to be at peace with myself, only myself, so that I may live presently and die gracefully?

 

Ricki Lake  40:50

Yeah? Amen, yes. Do people who do death work lean towards living simpler lives? Would you say?

 

Alua Arthur  40:59

I don’t know if I’d say simpler necessarily, but I’d say more full. I’ll tell you, nobody knows how to party. Like deaf people know how to party okay, oh my God, every time I get together with the folks that are also in death care, the team at work. Claire, BJ, my like all my folks, it’s just we go in, we go hard. And I think we go hard for life. You know, we go hard. I’m like saying the things and the irreverent humor and the like, the big stickiness of being alive that can make it also really ridiculous when you’re paying attention to it. I don’t know if it’s simpler necessarily. I don’t know that we’d call my 147 pair of shoes, simple, necessarily, but it’s rich. It’s full it was complete.

 

Ricki Lake  41:47

Yeah well, I want to come to one of those parties, if I may invite myself.

 

Alua Arthur  41:51

You’re invited.

 

Ricki Lake  41:52

Or I’ll host it. Yes, all right, I’m gonna get on that. You are so special and wonderful. And this book really is a gift to everyone. I urge everyone to go and get it briefly, perfectly human. Alua Arthur, thank you so much for this enlightening conversation.

 

Alua Arthur  42:09

My pleasure. This was so much fun. Who knew ?

 

Ricki Lake  42:13

I knew.

 

Alua Arthur  42:14

I did too

 

CREDITS  42:22

Wow, that was that was so beautiful. I love this woman. I don’t know her, but I want to be her friend. And I have to say, when she was telling the stories about her clients and just the magic that she witnessed, it’s just, it just really moved me. Uh, Alua Arthur’s book is called, Briefly Perfectly Human. It’s a wonderful gift to not only yourself but someone you love. And I actually encourage you to listen to it on Audible if you have the ability, because hearing it in her voice really was extra special for me. It’ll spark so many important conversations with your family and friends, I promise you. And her death doula training program is called going with grace. You can find her on Instagram @goingwithgrace. Thank you so much for listening, and there’s more of The High Life with Lemonada Premium subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content, like extra rapid fire questions with Alua herself subscribe now in Apple podcasts. The High Life is a production of Lemonada media Isabella Kulkarni and Katherine Barnes, producer show our mixes by James Barber. Executive Producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer. Additional Lemonada support from Rachel Neal and Steve Nelson. You can find me @RickiLake on Instagram. Follow The High Life with Ricki Lake wherever you get your podcasts, or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership.