Authentic Conversations About Death with Stephen Jenkinson

My guest on the show today is Stephen Jenkinson, and he challenged me to think a little differently about what I believed to be true about death, dying, grief, and living life. I hope this interview does the same for you.

Stephen is the author of 6 books, a storyteller, musician, culture activist, a ceremonialist, and a grief literacy advocate with many years of experience. In this episode, he shares some of his wisdom with us.

In our society, death is often shrouded in silence and denial. But what if we could change the narrative and create a language that allows us to speak openly about dying? Acknowledging the importance of open and honest conversations surrounding this inevitable part of life is crucial. 

Stephen shares with the listeners how he has helped people to have honest conversations about death and dying.

Stephen is an advocate for embracing the realities of death and engaging in honest conversations with those nearing the end of their lives. Through his unique approach, Stephen challenges the prevailing death-phobic culture and seeks to foster a deeper understanding and acceptance of mortality.

He also shares with the listeners a bit about the work he does on stage with "A Night of Grief and Mystery” which is a unique experience that defies genres and captivates the soul. He has discovered that what they offer is not theater but a profound ceremony. This is not a morbid endeavor, but a two-hour show filled with storytelling, advocacy, and thought-provoking messages. They delve into the urgent dilemmas of our time, reminding each listener that the future lies within our grasp.

To find out more about Stephen Jenkinson, his work and any of his events see the links below.

https://orphanwisdom.com/events-list/

https://www.instagram.com/griefandmystery/

https://www.facebook.com/orphanwisdom/

Chapters

• 1:16 Growing up
• 3:00 How Stephen got into the “death trade”
• 6:36 Death phobia appears whenever the dying appears
• 7:38 Do you owe dying people collusion?
• 10:00 It's important that we hear people say the words death and dying rather than using the words like “passing away” or “losing” somebody.
• 11:34 Vital signs expire but that's not what dying is
• 16:46 Psychedelics and end of life
• 21:11 One of the problems is that the natural process of dying is messed with during the treatment process
• 24:06 The practice of meditating on the fact that you will die.
• 25:27 Death's version of spiritual bypassing
• 28:05 A Night of Grief and Mystery
• 33:25 Closing and next weeks episode

Transcript

[00:00:00] Stephen: Your ability to have fun is not predicated on keeping the hard stuff away. Your ability to love being alive comes from the hard stuff of life, not being a stranger to you. 

[00:00:10] Jill: Welcome back to Seeing Death. Clearly. I'm your host, Jill McClennen, a death doula and end-of-life coach. My guest on the show today is Steven Jenkinson, and he challenged me to think a little differently about what I believe to be true about death, dying grief, and living life.

[00:00:27] I hope this interview does the same for you. Thank you for joining me and Steven for this conversation. Today I have a really special guest with me that I'm super excited about, Steven Jenkinson. And Steven is an author, he's an activist, he's a ceremonialist, and if you don't know who he is, please check out his YouTube.

[00:00:48] There are some really great videos. But Stephen, I'm really excited to have this conversation with you today. Thank you for coming on with me.

[00:00:55] Stephen: Oh, you're very kind. Thanks for the invitation. 

[00:00:57] Jill: Can you just tell me and the listeners just a little bit about your background, where you're from originally? Maybe like what religious beliefs you grew up with, if you wanna share how old you are, anything like that, that kind of set who you are as a human and maybe where your beliefs about death and dying originated from.

[00:01:16] Stephen: I don't think that my answers to the first clutch of questions will speak to the assumptions of the second part of what you said, but let's see. Well, I didn't grow up with any particular spiritual or denominational life or affiliation or even suspicion. As far as I knew there was no such thing, or it's what the Catholics did cuz they had a separate school system and I was alert to that.

[00:01:38] Beyond that, nothing. So there's a lot of scarcity in terms of anything to inherit on the one side and on the other side. Maybe that's not as true as it sounds because of what I did inherit. A lot of what you could call secular humanism. That's a consequence of the 18th century in Europe. And being a North American, a Canadian, in my case, I inherited all of the cultural rupture and dislocation.

[00:02:05] That was a consequence of mass migrations and the so-called Asia discovery and, you know, all of that. So, I mean, I was on my own when I came to this thing that I came to call the death trade. I, I think most people are. So, I don't think anything unusual about that, but it's, it has its own tragedy that has a bizarre and sometimes almost comical other science.

[00:02:32] By that I mean that you would think given that dying is an entirely known thing. I mean the place, the time, and so on. The manner, perhaps, obviously not. But beyond that, everything else about it, everything you need to know, you know, or do you, cuz you can't really tell. I mean, I would never have had a job in the death trade if everybody who was dying knew they were going to die.

[00:03:00] All of my work was a consequence of people not, as it turned out, not really knowing at all. So I didn't know there was a death trade and I was somewhat talked into it, heavily invited, you could say, strongly invited. And I took a little leadership of a men's group for guys who had, had recently somebody died in their lives like that.

[00:03:21] And that's all I wanted to do. It was a very nominal commitment. And about the third session in, I was as lost as they were as to what we were doing. But I did notice that they were remarkably agile where anger was concerned, very good at anger. And I don't say that in some snide and sneering way. I genuinely mean they were good at it.

[00:03:42] And it's good to be good at anger. There are times when it's completely and utterly called for. However, oftentimes when we're really good at something, we use that uh, as a kind of. Shadow to cast against. Those things we're not so good at. And tend to reuse that as a replacement. So they're very good at anger, not so good at sadness as it turned out.

[00:04:05] And so they dubbed the thing SAD school, that's what they called it, learning how to sad, you could say. And it was supposed to last six weeks and it lasted about 18 months or so and somewhere in there, I suppose I was hooked. And the next thing you knew, I was a full-time faculty member at the medical school at the University of Toronto.

[00:04:25] I was a full-time denizen of the medical system in Canada and the death trade in particular. And there is when I finally began to learn, my God, the poverty here is beyond, beyond reckoning. And so I said about my particular task was to find a language that I could speak with dying people in where they could actually recognize and hear the realities of what was happening to them, what was going on, what wasn't going on, the things that weren't being said otherwise, that kind of thing.

[00:04:57] And I'm not saying anybody thanked me for that. Well, I few people did, I think. But by and large, I found it an immensely compelling project. To make a language and then use it from the words that are available to us all. And in so doing serve dying people simply by speaking with him and giving them an opportunity to speak differently.

[00:05:19] Not speaking doctor, not speaking, pharmacist, not speaking social work, not speaking, self-help, not speaking, being no burden to my next of kin, et cetera, you know, but speaking, dying. That's kind of how it started. 

[00:05:33] Jill: That's really beautiful. Thank you for sharing all of that. I do find as well working what, you know as you're saying like within the death kind of work community, that there is a lot that's not being said to people that are dying and.

[00:05:50] I'm not sure exactly how to fix that problem. I think over time as more and more of us do this type of work, it'll hopefully get a little bit better. But I do find that people are not always told the realities by the doctors. It's kind of, let's work on fixing you. But in the long run, we're humans, we're going to die.

[00:06:12] There's no fixing the fact that we're all gonna die at some point. And so when you talk about using the language, can you talk a little bit more about what that means to you? Is it just a certain way that you speak to people or is it actual terms that you use, that you find people will feel more comforted from when they're nearing the end of life?

[00:06:36] Stephen: Okay? I didn't say that anything I was doing was designed to comfort people. Okay? I should be, I should be very clear about this, and here's why. So if people are dying in a death-phobic culture, which in my case they were, you'd reasonably expect the death phobia to appear whenever the dying appears. And it did and it manifested.

[00:06:57] And as it did, so there were expectations that dying people and their families had about how things should work and what kind of things should be said and what kind of things shouldn't be said. And for example, there was the notion that death talk was premature. Now they're dying, right? That that not a matter of opinion, they're dying.

[00:07:16] And their view is that speaking about their dying is somehow premature and unbecoming. Because they foreclose on other possibilities. Huh? So alas, how do you comfort people with this kind of pre-election, this kind of frank prejudice? And the answer is you have to collude with them to comfort them. And you have to decide early on what you owe dying people.

[00:07:38] Do you owe them collusion? Do you owe them speaking to them the way they're speaking to you about it? And so you're asking me for examples of what that would be. Well, first of all, I don't think, I think the word die. Is a perfectly good word. It doesn't need synonyms. It doesn't need euphemisms, but there are euphemisms galore, you know, and all of these are employed.

[00:08:00] You know, as well as I do. Why in order to be comforting, in order not to be overly direct if I don't use the D word. I mean, people literally use that phrase, the D word. If I don't use the D word, what secret am I helping dying people. And their families keep, you see. So I refuse to use euphemisms if dying is what we were talking about.

[00:08:23] I talked about dying. It's an industrial strength word. I'll grant you. It certainly is. But for all of that, it's an industrial strength. The time that these people were in, and we have an obligation to them, you know, and it's not to collude with them as if, if we just say the right thing or avoid saying the wrong thing, then there'll be a better day available to all.

[00:08:44] As a consequence, it's treating people like children, frankly, it's disrespectful in the extreme, even if they want you to disrespect them. In that fashion, you could treat people like adults. It doesn't mean they'll thank you for it. I think you have a clear, palpable, professional, and moral obligation to proceed with people as if what's happening is happening.

[00:09:05] If they lose their way, which they oftentimes did, if they feel cast adrift by the kind of things that are being said around them, then they have to look no further than you to remind themselves where in the arc of their life they are. That's what you are, you're kind of a, a homing signal, you see, but you have to have a very clear understanding that you can't blink on that job because if you do, then they're gonna lose their way.

[00:09:32] As a consequence of the fact that you lost your nerve, my principal responsibility was to dying and then secondarily to the dying people and somewhere down the list, my peers, my co-conspirators, you know, in the trade or maybe at the top of the list, the culture. It's hard to know. I, I realized eventually that I was a culture worker, not a psychodynamic practitioner, not a psychosocial practitioner, but a culture worker.

[00:10:00] Jill:  There's definitely a lot of work that has to be done within the culture in the United States. I'm sure it's very similar to Canada, where we are in such deep denial about death. And I try very hard as well, not to use all the silly terms that people feel comforted by, but I notice when I will say to people, you know, sometimes you say the word death, they'll actually flinch.

[00:10:26] It's a flinch sure. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And I think it's important that we hear people say the words death and dying rather than using the words, the passing away or losing somebody. And I'm starting to try to do that more with my children. I have a nine and a 12-year-old, and I think that's where we really need to start these conversations with some of the younger generation, because I notice in my experience, kids are more open to it than adults.

[00:11:00] I find the older somebody is usually the harder time they have with these conversations with me, and I really love that you are doing this work and bringing your books out into the world and the different events that you're doing to try to get people to feel. I don't know. More at home with the terms, because I actually do like that you brought up that it's not so much to comfort them.

[00:11:30] If we wanted to comfort them, we would continue to kind of soften things and not say the words. It's really about bringing the reality of the fact that we all will die. There's no way to escape it. If we were born, we will die.

[00:11:43] Stephen: Mm-hmm. Well, I'm going to say something that's gonna sound a little strange given what you've just said, but I'm not sure I can go along with the allegation that everybody's going to die.

[00:11:56] Ooh, tell me more. Here's why. When you say that, I assume, and I'm fairly confident this is true, that you mean vital signs expire. Okay. Yes. But I think we could agree with the little development of the notion that's not what dying is. Dying is a whole person, prolonged, highly existential, mythic, and poetic, metabolic, and physical, and medical event.

[00:12:25] It draws in as it properly should every aspect of a person's life, all the unconsidered parts, as well as the parts they're familiar with, you see? So now I'm going to indulge, indulge me for a minute and let me give the people who are listening a bit of a grammar lesson. This is gonna sound like totally beside the point for five seconds.

[00:12:44] And then it won't. Okay, so we're talking about the verb to die. Now, the truth of the matter is try as you might in common English or even in uncommon English, you cannot use the verb to die in the passive voice in a sentence, and speaking proper English can't be done. What does that mean then? It means that if you're an English-speaking person, dying by definition, grammatically as well as existentially, it's something you do.

[00:13:12] It's not something that happens to you that's passive, but you can't actually say it that way. If you say, I die, you're telling me what you do. If you say, I died, you're telling me what you did. So if that's true and it's clearly linguistically correct, then it's probably fair to say that those of us who speak English, we face the distinct possibility that if dying is what we do, we may not do it.

[00:13:39] We may refuse to do it. We may be unlearned in the extreme under matter. We may have no suspicion that we have to undertake this work called dying. We may have been trained, if you want to use that word in the notion that dying is a terrible affliction that sets upon you and tears you limb from limb and has no business being in the world.

[00:14:00] A terrible intrusion is to the natural order, and so on and so on. And so, as you said, you can't avoid it. But in actual fact, of course you can avoid it. Of course you can. You wouldn't have this podcast if people couldn't avoid it. You see, yes, certain things are going to happen, but most of those are metabolic right over which you have no choice or can exercise, no dominion.

[00:14:24] But a about the rest of you, oh man, you have a lot of choice. If that weren't true, they wouldn't be working so hard to bring back hallucinogenics into the trade. Another choice. You see, there's lots of choices and many of them are. Grief bypass choices, so it's not inevitable that you'll die. So then it turns out that my job was to get people to die, to understand that it was like their life, their death was like their life.

[00:14:52] It was entrusted to them. It wasn't a personal possession to do with as they suffered. It was an obligation they had to learn and to nurture and to care for it, to learn its ways and to be faithful to it when it's time. Came. The problem today, of course, is there's no such thing as your time to die is there?

[00:15:13] There's no such thing. There's always plan B. There's always an opt out. There's always something else that could be done. Yeah. You know the word palliative while we're talking about grammar, palliative care. Oh, that's the care of dying people. Well, not etymologically. It's not known Well, what is it? Well, A P A L L A Paul is an old Latin word, which as a verb.

[00:15:36] It meant to cloak or to conceal. And indeed that's what palliative care mostly is. It's a cloaking or a concealing of the realities of what's underway for the sake of an easier time of it, for the sake of comforting, for the sake of the practitioner, feeling like they're doing something that's want, that's appreciated and all the rest.

[00:15:57] But I'm not sure we're doing the right thing by doing the thing that's the passive of least resistance. 

[00:16:04] Jill: That was really beautiful and very interesting. I don't often talk to people that have such really profound thoughts about death and dying, so I'm really appreciating this. I'm curious if you would want to share your thoughts about psychedelics around the end of life, because I know Canada is kind of a little bit further along with it than we are in the United States.

[00:16:29] Stephen: Maybe more than a little bit. 

[00:16:32] Jill: Yeah,  that's true. And I don't have a lot of experience with psychedelics, even just on a personal level. So I do find it interesting some of the research that I've read about using it for the end of life. So I was just curious if you do have more thoughts about that.

[00:16:46] Stephen: Well, first of all, I haven't done anywhere near the research that you've done, so I should automatically disqualify myself as being uninformed.

[00:16:54] But being uninformed is not the same thing as, as having misgivings that are rooted somewhere. So, as you might be able to guess, I have some misgivings on the subject, which are very similar to the misgivings that I still have about the fact that my country legalized what used to be called euthanasia.

[00:17:12] What's my misgiving there? And then I'll segue to the hallucinogenic part of things. Well, the people who wanted euthanasia legalized were of the view that dying was, in many respects, a horrendous thing that nobody should have to go through. Okay, so there were things we could do and we should do them, and that was the harangue.

[00:17:34] But the assumption was that dying in and of itself is suffering inducing beyond measure, beyond anybody's ability or obligation to bear. It’s that conviction is still there after they've legalized it. It didn't touch it one bit. It corroborated a death-phobic culture, legalization, euthanasia, surprise, and still death-phobic.

[00:17:58] Nothing changes. Just the notion that you can opt out of dying, which of course is what that is. It's opting out of dying. How? Well, you have to use another verb to describe what happens, and the answer is that you are obviously killed. I know that's inflammatory language, but grammatically that's accurate.

[00:18:19] You're not dying. You're in the process of dying, but you won't get to die. Because you've opted to be killed instead. Okay. Am I saying that there's no such thing as suffering beyond enduring? Nope. I'm not saying that at all. Certainly, there is, but by definition, dying is not that. No. Dying in a death-phobic culture might be that.

[00:18:40] Okay. So hallucinogens to my mind, they extend the range of personal Dominion Personal agency at a time when you should actually be. Very clearly surrendering your personal decision making your I'm the boss stuff you really should. It's no surprise to me that the people who were in the sixties, once upon a time now in their seventies or eighties are demanding yet another lifestyle option to go along with their dying.

[00:19:13] It's just not coincidental. Not at all. I remain concerned that the understanding is that if you. If you opt for a hallucinogenic death this helps the work. This is what they say. This is what I hear. I'm not in a position to say it's not true. I'm just wondering, wow. Is that the way, is that the help?

[00:19:36] And when you say help, you mean from who's point of view? From the sufferer’s point of view. So that they're not suffering anymore and, and they're not suffering anymore. Why? Because certain things are not afflicted any longer because they've. They've seen things, and this is the way to see them. And, it's not available in any other fashion.

[00:19:55] This is an augment to what you could see that maybe without it, you, you simply can't. And what does this do to your suffering unto death, and what does it turn dying into? I wonder. So yeah, I, I think I have a healthy arms-length reservation about the whole enterprise. And that makes, which makes me, sorry.

[00:20:15] I was just gonna say, which makes me. Clearly out of date, 

[00:20:19] Jill: I think that is okay and it makes sense that there's some reservation. About the psychedelics, but also about, you know, what we call in the United States medical aid and dying. Yeah. In New Jersey, it is legal in our state and I have talked with some people that when they're really in a lot of pain and they're really suffering and they know that they're gonna die, they're has been the interest in pursuing more information about medical aid and dying.

[00:20:50] I think for me, the part that I can understand about that is that sometimes just having the option to choose when you can end your own suffering could bring a lot of comfort, but I liked the way that you explained it in that. I mean, it really stops you from going through the natural process of dying.

[00:21:11] Stephen: Well, I don't know if it does and this is one of the problems we have, is that the natural process of dying, we have so messed with that during the treatment process, for example, that it's not clear any longer that you are in or you are still in a quote, natural process. This is what I meant earlier when I said, when's your time to die?

[00:21:33] What does that even mean anymore? I mean, I remember many a time people would say to me, you know, it's God's will that so-and-so's still alive. And I would, I would point to the IV and I would mention the chemo and all the rest. And I would say, are any of those a consequence of God's will reigning supreme?

[00:21:50] Because we all know why they're there, our will. And if you are saying that your will and God's will are the same. We all have reason to be concerned. See, so it's not clear. I mean, natural is secular people's phrase for God's will, I think more often than not. And I don't think by and large a natural death is available to most people.

[00:22:14] Certainly not in an urban setting or a suburban setting. Not at all. So all this language, when it creeps back in and tells you, you know, it's gonna be okay, you're gonna have, these are options. And you don't have to go through anything you don't wanna have to go through and you're thinking, that's the way we talk to seven-year-olds.

[00:22:32] You don't have to do this Now, don't get me wrong. I grant you that there are things that border on the unendurable, and there are circumstances that are beyond that, and I wrote about them in die wise. I acknowledge that fully. So I'm not a hard ass on this matter by any stretch, but I'm saying this, dying is one of the peak experience elements of one's life.

[00:22:57] Okay? Among other things, it makes available to you a range of understanding that ordinary life forbids. Or makes, makes scarce if you come to dying time as an extension of your ordinary life. Just another thing to get through. Don't be surprised that it turns into another just ordinary grind and nothing revealing about life is available and before you know it, antidepressants become one of the most highly resorted to treatment regimes in palliative care antidepressants.

[00:23:34] These people are, are depressed because they're dying. No, they're depressed. If they're depressed because they're dying in a death-phobic culture and they can't get any traction for trying to do it otherwise. So then need to use pharmaceuticals and all the rest begin to look very compelling if the ordinariness becomes unbearable, but we make dying ordinary by turning it into another thing that we shouldn't have to go through.

[00:24:00] We are the architects of the current regime of misery on the subject. 

[00:24:06] Jill: I think yes to all of that and the death and the drugs at the end of life and all that. It really is so tied together that we just don't want to have what can really be, it's a sacred experience to die, you know, if you wanna use the word sacred, I know in Buddhism, Part of the practice of meditating regularly is so that you can face the end of your life.

[00:24:33] There is actually a practice of meditating on the fact that you will die. But I mean that basically their entire meditative practice and their life leading up to their moment of death is to practice. For the moment of death, so that hopefully in their case there's the idea of, you know, being reborn into a better existence, I guess.

[00:24:55] But I thought that was really interesting that if you're somebody that really meditates regularly, you should be able to meditate through that moment of death. And I have a pretty strong meditation practice. I'm certainly not like a Buddhist nun or anything, but. I like to think that I will face my moment of death with clarity and openness for it all, but I don't know because I still was raised in a very death-phobic culture.

[00:25:27] Stephen: Right. How about, we'll see. So sorry. Yes, indeed. We'll see. Mm-hmm. For me as well. But you know, a apropos of Buddhism for, to take this example, if you, if you hear the orientation Buddhism has towards death in a generic presentation, and you understand it as another lifestyle option available to you to do as you see fit as it pleases you, and you fail to do the work, which is the other half of the inspiration, isn't it?

[00:25:56] You've gotta put the time in, you've gotta do the work. If you don't do the work, but you still got the phrases available to you, what does it sound like? I'll tell you what it sounds like, cuz I heard it all the time when I used to do teachings in the rest and went like this. Ah, we're all dying all the time.

[00:26:13] Really? Oh yeah, we're all dying all the time. It's nothing new. It's not news. You hear the blase kind of, don't worry, don't sweat the small stuff. Kind of orientation to it. That comes from not doing the work, just copying the kind of fridge magnet saying, you know, we're all dying all the time when it's demonstrably true.

[00:26:32] That we're not all dying all the time. Not at all. As if we were. Then every newborn that's born in your circle, you should go visit them and look down at them the first time you see them. Then look up at the parents and say, not bad for a dying kid. That's what you should be saying. And every time you go to the bedside of somebody who's dying, you look at them with that kind of look.

[00:26:55] You know, you say, I know how it is, me too. But you'd never do either one of those things. Never in a million years would you do it. Why not? Because somewhere inside you, you know that it's factually inaccurate. That's why dying is real. It's not always happening to you. And then when it's on, it's kind of not negotiable.

[00:27:17] So it wasn't there yesterday, but mysteriously it's there today and then you're gonna wish you had to put some time in, but you better put it in right now. Then that's kind of plan B. It seems to me. 

[00:27:29] Jill: Yes. I guess that's almost death's version of spiritual bypassing of just repeating what we hear, but not actually doing the work.

[00:27:38] It just kind of is another form of the death phobia of being like, well, can't do anything about it anyway. We're all dying anyway, rather than actually facing our own fears. 

[00:27:50] Stephen: It's death light. Definitely. 

[00:27:51] Jill: I like that. Wonderful. Well, I don't wanna keep you too much longer. This has been amazing. I honestly could probably sit on here for hours and talk to you, but I do wanna talk a little bit about what you have coming up in Philadelphia in July.

[00:28:05] I'm actually right outside of Philly, so I'm pretty excited to hear about this. A Night of Grief and Mystery. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is? 

[00:28:16] Stephen: Sure. Well it's a name we gave to the event. Not to the band. Not to the genre. There is no genre that I can figure out. You know, I could tell you the architecture of it, but it still wouldn't answer what is it.

[00:28:31] But I could explain it this way. Some seven or so years ago, I met a singer-songwriter, composer, and he was very convinced that what I was doing was in league with what he was doing. I wasn't convinced, but he was. And we've probably performed together literally hundreds of times since then. What we've done is take something that you could imagine is kind of theatrical.

[00:28:59] Not entertaining really, but theatrical. And we've reconsidered what the rudiments of theater actually are and have come to the conclusion that what we're doing isn't theatrical. It's ceremonial, and so, The difference between the two is that in theater you have an audience or spectators, whereas in ceremony you have participants in theater, you have a script that determines the outcome.

[00:29:25] In ceremony, you have the gods, the ancestors, and the outcome is far from guaranteed or even clear. Yeah. That's what we do. So it's not, it's not a death focused. Enterprise. It's about a two-hour show with no intermission. It's me speaking kind of storytelling, you could say. Advocating in some fashion, pleading admonishing from time to time, doing the culture work, making the dilemmas of the day available and discernible to the people who are listening, and suggesting very strongly the likely near future outcome for us.

[00:30:07] Is literally in our hands and there's something bordering on the criminal in failing to respond to that, including some criminality visited upon generation or two from now, people who are not yet born, and the responsibilities we have to them. So you might think to yourself, God, who would pay to come to that kind of a thing?

[00:30:29] And my answer would be, well, let's see. Over the last three years, you've tried Netflix. You've tried Google, what you've tried, everything that's catering to you, how's it working out? How are things sitting? Are we really post-pandemic? What does that even mean? What measures have you taken? What's your understanding of what's left?

[00:30:50] And this Nights of Grief and Mystery sits right there. And so of course it doesn't play to, you know, audiences with tens of thousands. It never would. To play to audiences of tens of thousands, you have to tell people what they already know. To do what we do, you have to take a chance and ask people to reconsider some of the fundamental things that they bring to their ordinary lives.

[00:31:13] So it's the best thing I've ever done and it's the best thing my partner's ever done. And sometimes we have a band and sometimes it's the two of us. And uh, it's a handful of mu I was gonna say musings. That sounds a little late. It's. It's, there's a lot of people laugh a lot and they're stunned that they're laughing so much.

[00:31:33] Is it comedic? It is, but you know, comedy and tragedy, they're about a half-centimeter apart. They belong together. And where you find one, you find the other close by. So it appeals to both. It's tragic in its fashion and a certain degree of absurdity almost at where we find ourselves is part of it too.

[00:31:55] And we proceed like we're lucky to be there. So that's, a little taste of it. And if, and if anybody's interested beyond what I've said. Of course, I got a website, who doesn't. And of course, there's all kinds of film footage of us doing the shows and musing about it all and writing about it and so forth.

[00:32:13] So don't take it from me. Go listen to me and see what you think about it. 

[00:32:19] Jill: I'm definitely gonna put in the show notes a link to your website, anything that people might need to find out more information. I did this morning watch one of the clips of one of your events that you had done and it was, and it was really lovely to hear the music and then to hear you speaking and the two combined together.

[00:32:40] It's different. It's something that I'd never experienced before. Is there any last thing that you want to share with people listening about you or about death or events, whatever it is? 

[00:32:53] Stephen: I would say if people are overly concerned that spending a little bit of time with what we've talked about today somehow takes the glow off the rose somehow is depressing or despairing somehow.

[00:33:07] Takes all the fun out of life, I can assure you in the following matter. Your ability to have fun is not predicated on keeping the hard stuff away. Your ability to love being alive comes from the hard stuff of life, not being a stranger to you. That's a practice too. Amazing. 

[00:33:25] Jill: I completely agree. Thank you so much for being with me today.

[00:33:28] I appreciate you taking the time. Thank you. Thanks for the invitation. Thank you for listening to this episode of Seeing Death. Clearly, Stephen will be performing the show that we were discussing Nights of Grief and Mystery all around the world this year. Be sure to check out his website, which is linked in the show notes to see if it will be performed near you.

[00:33:48] He also has other online and in-person events listed on his website as well as other interviews he has. Done and a lot of other resources. My guest next week is Suzanne Anderson. For over 30 years, she has worked as a psychologist, author, coach, leadership consultant, and transformational teacher. We were connected to talk about her new book, you Make Your Path By Walking, which she wrote after her beloved husband took his life and she faced a choice of whether to be broken down and defeated or broken, open, and transformed.

[00:34:18] We talk about how she used trauma and loss in a way that was. Profoundly transformational as well as a little bit about her work of guiding others to awaken their full feminine and masculine strengths. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend or family member that may find it interesting.

[00:34:35] Sharing the podcast helps to get it out to more people. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast. So, you know, as soon as a new episode comes out and leave a five-star review, the podcast has a paid subscription feature where you can financially support the show. Financial support will help to keep the podcast advertisement free, and I'm gonna be creating more content of portions cut out of episodes, compilations of interviews around a.

[00:34:58] Specific topics, some guided meditations for you to go a little deeper into the work of using death awareness in your everyday life. Any amount larger, or small will help. I appreciate all of you listening to the show and supporting me in any way you can. There's a link in the show notes to do a paid monthly subscription.

[00:35:14] There's also a link to my Venmo if you'd like to do a one-time contribution. Thank you, and I'll see you next week for a new episode of Seeing Death Clearly.