Stories from End-of-Life Care with Helen Bauer Part 2

In this week's episode, I talk with Helen Bauer, host of the Heart of Hospice podcast. This is part 2 of a two-part interview. Over the years, she's observed a profound inward shift in patients as they approach death, noticing changes in their communication and socialization long before their bodies begin to shut down.

In describing the dying process, she emphasizes the profound stillness she's witnessed at the moment of death, reflecting on the sacredness and emptiness of the physical body. While acknowledging the difficulty in articulating the sensation, she mentions a sense of missing energy.

She reflects on various beliefs about the afterlife, remaining open-minded to diverse perspectives. Having learned from her experiences in hospice, she now values the importance of supporting individuals' beliefs without imposing her own. She emphasizes the significance of meeting people where they are, respecting their beliefs, and providing support tailored to their needs.

She challenges the notion of a universal definition of a "good death," emphasizing the individuality of the dying process. For her, dying is deeply personal, and preferences for the dying process vary widely among individuals. She advocates for honoring each person's wishes and beliefs, rejecting the idea of a one-size-fits-all approach to death.

My episode with Helen Bauer on the Heart of Hospice Podcast

https://www.theheartofhospice.com/podcast/episode/23f1c2af/death-doulas-are-expert-guides-at-end-of-life

To connect with Helen, reach out via email at helen@theheartofhospice.com or visit https://www.theheartofhospice.com/.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Helen: I think hospice has taught me to be much more open minded and more curious, more receptive to other people's ideas and beliefs, which I think is a wonderful, wonderful benefit of working in end of life care. 

[00:00:15] Jill: Welcome back to Seeing Death Clearly. I'm your host, Jill McClennen, a death doula and end of life coach.

[00:00:21] Here on my show, I have conversations with guests that explore the topics of death, dying, grief, and life itself. My goal is to create a space where you can challenge the ideas you might already have about these subjects. I want to encourage you to open your mind and consider perspectives beyond what you may currently believe to be true.

[00:00:40] In this episode, I finish up my conversation with Helen Bauer, Host of the Heart of Hospice podcast and creator of hospice navigation services. We talk about embracing diverse perspectives on the afterlife, emphasizing the importance of respecting individuals beliefs without imposing our own. Helen shares her insights into the difference between provider centered actions and patient centered care, sharing examples of disregarded preferences in the end of life treatment.

[00:01:10] She challenges the notion of a universal good death, advocating for personalized approaches that honor each person's wishes. I put a short recap of last week's episode at the beginning of this one, but if you didn't listen to the first part, be sure to go and do that first before listening to this episode.

[00:01:28] Thank you for joining us for this conversation. 

[00:01:31] Helen: I've been practicing nursing here for the last 34 years, which sounds like a really long time, and I've been working in end of life care for the last almost 15 years. I really had just this intense, incredible experience on my first day in the field at this hospice job, and I realized I wanted to do this for the rest of my career.

[00:01:52] I have seen so many patients, I call it turning inward, because their socialization changes. The way they communicate, the way they interact with loved ones and friends, that does change a lot. And that does start. Way before the body actually begins to physically turn itself off, because our bodies know how to do this.

[00:02:12] It's natural processes. In my experience, being with people as they were actively laboring, because it's physical work to die as these body systems shut down, but then to see the actual death at last breath. It's so still, so still, I remember so many times being acutely aware of the sacredness of it, and there's so much emptiness to that physical body.

[00:02:40] There's definitely something missing. It's hard to describe it, but there's a, I don't know, an energy. That's gone. But it is such a stillness. It's the only way I can think of to describe it. 

[00:02:53] Jill: Yes, there's been many people that I've talked to that have said kind of that same thing, of that there is a shift when that energy, that life energy, that life force, whatever you want to call it, leaves a person, the body that's left behind, just even being near it, it feels different because there is something different about the body when that life force has left.

[00:03:17] And yeah, and I love to think about it. And I know I've read people saying that they've seen something and you don't hear it often, but like some people will describe like coming out of the top of the head, like maybe like a little white kind of thing. Misty thing. I don't know. And again, I am the type of person where I'm open to all of it.

[00:03:41] Sure. Why not? Just because I haven't seen it doesn't mean that I think it's not real. Sometimes I kind of hope I see stuff like that one day, just because again, that's more just curiosity because it is, it's interesting. That soul, that life force, whatever you want to call it. I don't know where it goes.

[00:03:58] And I will have people sometimes ask me, what do you believe? I'm like, well, it doesn't matter what I believe. I don't want to impression people, especially if I'm at the hospital and I'm just meeting somebody just because I'm going in as a volunteer to sit and talk and whatever else. And they'll say to me, what do I believe?

[00:04:16] Well, I, again, I don't want to be that person that comes in and says, well, this is what I believe. When they're reaching the end of life, I don't want them to be impressioned by what I believe. Tell me what you believe will happen. And even if it's something completely different than what I think, whatever.

[00:04:31] I hope whatever experience people get, because I've thought about that too, where Maybe it's whatever we believe is going to happen. Maybe that is the experience we get when we die. Oh, 

[00:04:43] Helen: that 

[00:04:43] Jill: it draws 

[00:04:44] Helen: off what you're open to. Yeah. That's pretty amazing 

[00:04:48] Jill: if you think about it. Right. And in some ways, it's really like if I believe I'm a bad person and I'm going to hell.

[00:04:54] Is that where my next existence, whatever that is, even if it's just heaven or hell or whatever else is like a function of the brain as it's shutting down, honestly, who really cares what it is, if I go through that experience, and even if part of my being thinks that this is eternity, I'm going to feel like it's eternity, right?

[00:05:15] Because there's no time. There's no way to measure that. So even if it's only five minutes in human life, maybe I feel like it's this eternity. So if I believe I'm going to hell, maybe I'm going to go to hell. If I believe I'm going to some heaven in the sky in the clouds, maybe that's where I'm going to go.

[00:05:32] If I think like my husband thinks when we die, it's like light switch, turn it off. That's it. We're done. Nothing exists. Maybe that's what he's going to experience. I don't know. I'm not sure, but I love to think about it. That's 

[00:05:44] Helen: interesting. So, you know, when people ask me what I believe, if you'd asked me 15 years ago, I probably would have said heaven and hell, more religious based than anything else.

[00:05:56] But after having worked in hospice, especially when you work with chaplains, Right? When you work with spiritual counselors, I think hospice has taught me to be much more open minded and more curious, more receptive to other people's ideas and beliefs, which I think is a wonderful, wonderful benefit of working in end of life care.

[00:06:16] I think now if somebody were to ask me, what do you believe? I think I would say, I believe in the possibilities. I believe so many things are possible. So maybe what's important to you is what is possible for you. If you are a person who believes in a deity, if you believe in a heaven, if you believe in nirvana, all of those different things, maybe that's what's possible for you, possible for your spirit.

[00:06:43] Because isn't our spirit composed of those beliefs? And I'm not a spiritual counselor, right? I'm just a nurse. But that's my own personal viewpoint. Just from doing this work for so long and really learning from every patient, every family member, and every practitioner that I've ever come across. 

[00:07:04] Jill: Yeah, I feel like it leaves me with more questions than answers, for sure, because then I'm like, what about people that believe in reincarnation?

[00:07:10] Or you'll hear stories of children that will, you know, quote unquote, remember things that they shouldn't know about, right? That I've been here before kind of things. Yeah, totally. And it's interesting when they talk about a six year old that knows how to work on a World War Two airplane, like knows all the pieces.

[00:07:29] How would that child know that? I don't know. Like, again, I'm kind of open to all of it, but I, it's, it's the possibilities. What's possible. I like that. The possibilities, because I even had my son one day asked me, we were talking about witches and witchcraft and all that. And he was like, do you believe that that's real, that people can do these things?

[00:07:49] I said, I believe that there's probably some people that if they believe it enough, and if they really set their intentions enough, they could probably do things that would seem like magic. Right? Could I do it? No. Like, I don't have that intention. I don't believe I could do it. So, no. But do I believe that there are people that could?

[00:08:09] Possibly. Even if you read in Buddhism, they talk about monks that could levitate, right? That they were able to get to this point, where they were able to levitate. That's magic, right? It's just a different thing. term that they're using for it. Right, they wouldn't call it magic, I guess. No, they wouldn't, but it's supposedly things that humans have been able to do.

[00:08:28] But do I believe I could do it? Absolutely not. So it's not a possibility for me because I don't believe it is. And yeah, I don't know. Again, I love to think about it. I love to talk about 

[00:08:39] Helen: it. That's interesting. It really is. I think the more you work with people who are approaching end of life, the more opportunities there are to learn from them.

[00:08:49] Oh my gosh, I have, I've gained so much wisdom from every patient and family. I probably learned more from my patients. Hopefully I taught them something that helped them get through what they were doing, but I know I learned from every single one of them. 

[00:09:07] Jill: That openness too, to learn from people is important, right?

[00:09:11] Like so many of us, we get so set in our beliefs. learning from somebody. Because I actually had somebody that I was trying to get to be a guest on my podcast. And she said, as long as you're fine with me talking about how I have a very strong belief in Jesus, Jesus is a very big part of me and my grief story and all that.

[00:09:31] And I was like 100 percent if anything, I love to talk to people that believe something different than me. I will possibly ask questions about why you believe something, but that's not with the intention of saying that what you believe is wrong. It's more just that explain to me why you believe the thing, because then it just shifts what I believe even a little bit.

[00:09:51] Like I love that, but so many people find that threatening. They don't like their beliefs being challenged. They don't like feeling like maybe they're Quote unquote, wrong in what they believe and somebody else is right, where to me, there's no right or wrong in any of it. It's just, it's, I don't know. I feel like a lot of this stuff is kind of fluid and it can move and it can change depending on where you're at in life.

[00:10:16] And honestly, if somebody's belief in Jesus got them through the death of a loved one, amazing. I'm happy to hear it. It's maybe not what I believe and that's okay too. As long as we can have that conversation, then I love to have those conversations. 

[00:10:30] Helen: Yeah. I would say that I don't have to agree with you.

[00:10:34] My not agreeing with you or sharing that belief doesn't mean you're wrong. Yeah. And again, working in end of life care taught me that. Having patients who are atheists. We don't believe in any afterlife. What I learned is atheists have hope. Atheists believe in so many different things. We have a tendency to label people.

[00:10:53] One example is something that I have seen written in medical records when it comes to a spiritual assessment of a patient, stating that a patient is a believer with a capital B, which is something that's used in a conservative Christian vocabulary. But it's a label, and it's not generally used across all of medical care because it doesn't have the same meaning for everybody.

[00:11:16] And what I've found is atheists believe in things. They believe in family, they believe in hope, they believe in compassion, they believe in mercy, they believe in generosity. So saying someone is a believer, everybody believes in something. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, I don't agree with confining what I think or limiting it.

[00:11:38] That's where it goes back to the possibilities. And I may believe this now, but ask me again in 10 years, if you and I were to have the same conversation and I've gone through the death of both of my parents and I've aged 10 years and maybe had an illness or a disease of my own and seen what the world does, Would I tell you I believe the same things?

[00:11:59] Maybe not. Yeah. It's true. 

[00:12:01] Jill: Depending on what would happen to me in my life, my beliefs really could change. And I've heard cases of people having their spiritual beliefs completely change as they near the end of life. Whether it's going back to what they believed when they were a child versus what they believe most of their adult life.

[00:12:20] Whatever it is. I mean, again, I'm not here to. tell anybody what to believe. I'm not here to judge what they believe. I'm just here to support them through their process as they are processing the fact that their life on this existence, on this plane, whatever you want to call it, is now ending. And they don't know what's coming after this.

[00:12:39] I don't care who you are. I don't care what you believe. Nobody knows for sure what's coming after this. And so when you're really faced with it, A lot can come up and that's just kind of my job. It's just to help people through that, not to tell them what they should believe and what they shouldn't. 

[00:12:56] Helen: Well, can you imagine if you were facing a life threatening illness and somebody comes in whose job is to take care of you and help you explore whatever emotions and anticipatory grief, because patients have anticipatory grief.

[00:13:12] Right? Just like families. And it turns out they want to change something that you have believed for 50, 60, 80 years, depending on how old you are. And when you came to that particular belief, they want to fix you. They want to change it. Well, if this is part of your identity, that's deeply founded in your life rituals and activities and experiences and beliefs, The timing is lousy.

[00:13:39] Yeah, you're going to come in in the last couple of months of my life and you're going to fix something that I have relied on since I was a kid? Something that has incredible meaning and history in my life? No, that's not what we are called to do. We are supposed to meet people where they are. If you believe this way, I can support your belief, Jill, whatever you say you believe in, I can support and provide you with what you need without ever compromising anything I believe in.

[00:14:10] I don't have to believe in any of it, I believe in you, and I believe in your right to have that support at the end of your life, but I don't have to embrace that particular belief for myself. It's not my job to change you. 

[00:14:23] Jill: I'd be very upset if I found out that somebody came in when my, say, my husband was dying.

[00:14:28] He's been atheist his entire life. If I found out somebody came in and was trying to convince him of something else at the end of his life, I would be really upset about that. It seems like that's more about them. It's not about the person and what's best for the person that's dying. And yeah, that would bother me.

[00:14:46] That's 

[00:14:46] Helen: exactly 

[00:14:47] Jill: what that is. 

[00:14:47] Helen: What I refer to that as is provider centered action. We have people that provide the care and people that consume the care. So our patients are the ones that consume the care. Everything is supposed to be patient centered. And an intervention is what we offer them, patient centered interventions, how we manage their symptoms, the medicines, the equipment, all of those things that's supposed to be there with the patient, the best interest and the quality of life at the heart of what we're doing, right?

[00:15:18] It's all about the patient. But when we do things like I'm going to go in and I have a personal agenda that I may or may not even realize that I have. But I'm going to help this person change their belief system, convert, redeem, save. That's provider centered. It's not an intervention. It's an action. It's an action.

[00:15:36] It's no longer about the patient. We've put ourselves at the center of things because it's about us. 

[00:15:42] Jill: Yeah, that's a good way to word it. And I don't like to think it happens that often. Some people don't even realize they're doing it. You know, they're, they're just, Doing what they think is best, but again, that goes back to that being willing to learn if somebody was to call you out on it and say like, Hey, maybe this thing that you're doing is not really putting the patient first.

[00:16:06] It's really more centering you. That gives us the ability to say, Oh, okay, let me work on doing better. Unfortunately, a lot of people, especially if it's about their deep core beliefs, they take it personal and it becomes a personal attack on them when really it's not. It's just, we need to focus on the people that we're caring for because that's our role.

[00:16:30] Well, we see that, uh, 

[00:16:31] Helen: We see that kind of thing, not just in the spiritual care that we provide. Things like LGBTQ community. Our patients and their caregivers, their families that are in the community, and then they get a condemning experience. I had a friend who's actually a hospice social worker, and she and her wife, had been together for years, legally married, living in a progressive sort of state in the United States, and her wife became terminally ill and was placed on hospice.

[00:17:02] It was actually the hospice agency that my friend worked for as a social worker. They had a nurse that knew them both had come in, provided care. It was great. And on the way out the door, she looked at their wedding photograph and she said, I'm really sorry about what you're going through, but I just can't condone your relationship.

[00:17:23] Well, first of all, nobody cares. 

[00:17:25] Jill: Yeah. 

[00:17:25] Helen: That's your opinion. And how horrifying that she as a professional caregiver just isolated that unit of care, the patient and her wife. letting them know that this hospice agency is not friendly to us, we're not going to get good care, we're not being going to be respected, and here we are, our relationship is devalued, who we are as human beings is devalued, and yet the nurse seemed to feel that it was appropriate and necessary and needed for her to say that.

[00:17:56] Jill: Yeah, 

[00:17:57] Helen: I've heard of 

[00:17:57] Jill: people with just even like live in caregivers or like part time caregivers that somebody would hire on, how couples that have been together. will have to put away pictures that they have together, pretend that they're just roommates, like rearrange the house so that one bedroom looks like it's one person's room.

[00:18:16] The other bedroom is the other person's because for some reason, especially that issue, when it comes to gay marriage and gay relationships, it's like, just because a person would never be in a same sex relationship. That's not your business if somebody else is. If you're being paid to care for them. It's baffling to me, honestly.

[00:18:37] I mean, like even coming from food service when there was the cake maker, somebody wouldn't make a wedding cake for a gay couple and it became like a really big thing in the news, but right? There was a huge lawsuit. Huge lawsuit. Again, like as a business, When people come in, my husband and I were fairly liberal.

[00:18:56] Again, he's atheist at that time when we had the bakery. I wasn't even Buddhist like I am now. We both were just kind of in a different place and we would have people that would come in and they'll tell us all kinds of stuff. We did christening cakes. We did christian wedding cakes. It's none of my business.

[00:19:13] What they believe and what they don't believe. Again, if you come in and you start trying to forcefully and aggressively convince me that I should be one thing or another, that's different. But if somebody's just living their life, it doesn't matter if I agree with it or not. It's not my place. And it is sad because that's not the first time that I've heard of somebody not getting the care that they should.

[00:19:37] Because their relationship style is different than what somebody believes is right or wrong. Well, I guess somebody would 

[00:19:44] Helen: say, well, the care wasn't compromised. And I would beg to differ on that. Because if we are taking care of our families and their patients, mind, body and spirit, you're talking about.

[00:19:55] Psychosocial, psychoemotional, spiritual, physical, all of those things. And you're taking care of this little care community with the patient at the center. It absolutely affects the care. I would have no confidence a practitioner that made a comment to me like that. In fact, that did happen during my father in law's care.

[00:20:17] The hospice chaplain talked to us about what would be meaningful for my father in law towards the end of his life. And granted, I live in a, I wouldn't say small, but it's Southeast Texas. Right? It's a conservative community. And the chaplain said, we have this app that we recommend. It plays this great gospel music, which is very big in this part of the state, right?

[00:20:45] And I said, well, my father in law's not a particularly religious man and he's not spiritual. He liked the oldies like Hank Williams music, country music from way back when, but he was never, never a spiritual man. And I don't think that would have any meaning for him. And the chaplain persisted and he pressed it and he was talking to me and my husband and he said, but a lot of people my father in law's age get a lot of comfort from listening to music like this.

[00:21:14] And I'm like, no, he would not. It would be unfamiliar and it's not appropriate. I stopped very short of telling this guy, what you're trying to push is something that's an inappropriate intervention. And it's based on your personal experience. and your personal beliefs, it's not appropriate for my father in law.

[00:21:32] Jill: People are just human, trying not to judge when things like this happen, because I know I make mistakes too, I'm not perfect. 

[00:21:39] Helen: Right. 

[00:21:39] Jill: But also, if you don't like gospel music, that is not what I would want to hear as I was dying. 

[00:21:45] Helen: Well, he assumed that because my father in law was a certain age and lived in a certain area, certain race, certain background, that, oh, this would be comforting to him, except you asked us.

[00:21:58] And we're telling you that's not who he is, and yet you still want to provide that? That's no longer about us. That's no longer about my father in law. That's about you. Yeah, we just don't like to look at ourselves, that kind of introspection. We have an idea of what a good death should look like. Good death should mean that there's no pain.

[00:22:18] Everybody's there. We even write it. In medical records, the patient died peacefully with the family at the bedside. Not everybody wants to do that. It's not appropriate for every patient. Some people don't want pain meds. Some people have 20 years of sobriety and for them to take morphine ruins that.

[00:22:35] Sometimes it's cultural that suffering is a part of the cleansing that one goes through during the dying process. So who are we to say that a good death looks a certain way? I personally for myself don't believe that dying is a spectator sport for me. I don't want 15 people around me as I labor to die.

[00:22:53] It's kind of like when you play in your funeral, you want certain things, certain people will tell you, do not put me in a casket with that lid up. I don't want people looking at me. And then other people will tell you it's a celebration. I want everybody to have a party. I think how we die and what that looks like for each of us gets to be super, super individual.

[00:23:14] It's very personal. 

[00:23:15] Jill: It is very personal. And I don't think I would want to be surrounded by a bunch of people either. That's just not me in general. I don't like a lot of people around. I don't think it would make me feel good, but I don't know. I'm not dying yet. That might change. Maybe when I'm older, I have two children.

[00:23:32] Maybe they have a couple kids. I might have some grandkids. Like, who knows? Maybe then it would be a different situation. We don't necessarily know until we're getting there. And you're right, that not everybody is. Death is going to look the same in what they want and what's appropriate. I try to educate myself as best as I can about my clients beforehand so that I know what they would want.

[00:23:56] And that's the hard part with going into a hospital with people that I've never met before. Sometimes I've sat with people that are dying. I don't know anything about them other than what's on their chart. I know their name, what I can see, right? I could make A judgment based off of what race they are, what sex they are, what age they are, but that is not necessarily going to help.

[00:24:17] And so sometimes I'll put on music and I try to go with no vocals, just like very soft. Just kind of neutral. Exactly, kind of neutral. But I've even tried reading to people and I thought, what am I going to read to somebody if I don't know who they are? I couldn't figure out anything. I wasn't going to read any spiritual text at all, because obviously I don't know the people.

[00:24:37] So that was out of the question. Then you're kind of limited. I was looking at books for adults. Then they tended to talk about a lot of things that this person doesn't need to hear about sexual relationships and fights or whatever it is. We don't need that. Right. Suspense or thrillers. Exactly. So then I was like, all right, now we go to kids.

[00:24:55] Children's books, but do they really want to hear a book about a puppy? 

[00:24:58] Helen: Like, I don't know. Or do you go back to poetry or classic literature? I think, I think tastes like that really become important because it is so individualized. And I don't think we can rely on cultural stuff, race, age, gender. I'm a little older than middle age.

[00:25:20] White lady living in Southeast Texas. How would people profile that for me? What would you assign to me because of that? 

[00:25:29] Jill: Yeah. Yeah. Very different than me, basically middle aged white lady living in New Jersey. I'm sure people would automatically put me in one bucket, you in another bucket, and then you take a black woman from North Dakota and she's in a totally different bucket.

[00:25:41] Right. So, yeah, you're right. Honestly, I don't think we ever should judge people based off of, we do. Again, we're human. It's natural that when we meet somebody kind of put them into a little bit of categories, but I think we should not be so attached to those categories either. Well, 

[00:25:57] Helen: that's a good way of saying it.

[00:25:59] We shouldn't be so attached. And I think we should let people teach us. Who they are. 

[00:26:03] Jill: This has been amazing. And we are actually, I think, even a little over time, but that's fine. Why don't you tell us first off your podcast? Why did you start a 

[00:26:12] Helen: podcast? The podcast started in 2016. We're in season eight.

[00:26:18] We've been working on it a whole lot longer than before we started recording it. It's called the heart of hospice podcast. And really, the podcast got going because of that question that every end of life worker would like to see you. Stopped the statement where people said, I wish we had known about this sooner.

[00:26:37] If we could eradicate that because people knew everything they needed to know in advance, right? Those upstream conversations that we needed to have. That's how the podcast got started. I interview some of the most amazing people, experts, people I have no business hanging out with because they're just doing this incredible work.

[00:26:56] I learned something from all of my guests. We talk about advanced care planning. We talk about grief. We talk about death and dying hospice philosophy, what it should look like, what it shouldn't look like, and people that are doing amazing work in all of those spaces. Just some, some really incredible people.

[00:27:14] The website is theheartofhospice. com. I also have a new service that I launched at the in the fall of 2023 called Hospice Navigation Services. It's a remote support service for anybody who needs end of life care information, either for themselves or somebody that they love. And you can book a 30 minute complimentary call.

[00:27:38] You can have it by phone or video, whatever's easier for you. Or I also do a 60 minute call that's for a fee. It's 95 for that. And we talk about all of those things. Advanced care planning. We talk about hospice. How to shop for hospice. I also do a lot of troubleshooting in the navigation sessions. If you're experiencing a hospice journey already and you're receiving end of life care, but you have questions about whether it's really what it's supposed to look like, that's a conversation we can have as well.

[00:28:07] Jill: That's 

[00:28:07] Helen: amazing. 

[00:28:08] Jill: I didn't know that you did that service now. So yeah, it's brand new. Very cool. And I will put all your links in the show notes. And I was honored to be on your podcast already. So I'll definitely put that one in the show notes as well. So people can hear it. But yeah, this is amazing. Thank you so much for taking your time today.

[00:28:24] I really enjoyed this. Thank you. It was a wonderful conversation. At the end of the last episode, I talked a little about death doulas and the work we do. There's also additional support from services like the one Helen mentioned, which she started that is called Hospice Navigation Services. I dug in a little deeper into exactly what they offer at Hospice Navigation Services.

[00:28:47] This is not an ad for the service. But I wanted to learn more myself since I do not have a background in hospice and there is still so much I can learn about it. Being a podcaster myself, I know that you get to talk with a wide range of experts and you can learn so much from them. This knowledge helps us to guide our clients, which means that Helen's Hospice Navigation Services will be there to guide people at the end of life, specifically focusing on hospice.

[00:29:14] This could be helpful for individuals facing the end of life, their families, but also professionals who work with the aging population and around end of life care. When you get on a call with Hospice Navigation Services, the navigation session offers insights into the hospice philosophy, the roles of hospice team members, and what to expect during this journey.

[00:29:35] Each call is individualized with comprehensive information on hospice care from advanced planning to family conferences held over the phone or video. They will meet your unique needs with compassion and expertise. The process of finding the right hospice can be very overwhelming and they will help assess inpatient facilities and screening hospice agencies.

[00:29:56] The team conducts thorough research to ensure you can Access the highest quality care available. I have occasionally heard people say that they went with whatever hospice company the hospital recommended for their loved ones, and then they are unsure if the care they are receiving is what their loved one really needs.

[00:30:13] You can set up a navigation session to address your questions and concerns.

[00:30:24] Death duelists can help with this process as well, but having a hospice expert to turn to offers another level of support. Remember in times of uncertainty, you don't have to navigate this journey alone. There are people who are here to help you find your way one step at a time. To learn how I could support you, your loved ones, or your clients at the end of life, book a complimentary 30 minute consultation today on my website, endoflifeclarity.com. And to book a complimentary call with Hospice Navigation Services, visit theheartofhospice.com and schedule your appointment today. You'll find a link to both of those websites in the show notes for easy access. In next week's episode, my guest is Ashley Opan, host of Dine with the Divine podcast, a registered nurse, and a death doula in New Jersey.

[00:31:11] Ashley's curiosity led her to explore various faiths, shaping her understanding of human beliefs and cultural traditions worldwide. Her experience in oncology and her multicultural background sparked an interest in supporting others through the grieving process, leading her to become a death doula. you Ashley emphasizes the importance of living without regrets, embracing life fully, and accepting death as a natural part of existence.

[00:31:37] Tune in next week to hear Ashley's story. Thank you for listening to today's episode of Seeing Death Clearly. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or family member who might find it interesting. Your support in spreading the podcast is greatly appreciated. Please consider subscribing on your favorite podcast platform and leaving a five star review.

[00:31:57] Your positive feedback helps recommend the podcast to others. The podcast also offers a paid subscription feature that allows you to financially support the show. Your contribution will help keep the podcast advertisement free. Whether your donation is large or small, every amount will be appreciated.

[00:32:11] is valuable. I sincerely appreciate all of you for listening to the show and supporting me in any way you can. You can find a link in the show notes to subscribe to the paid monthly subscription as well as a link to my Venmo if you prefer to make a one time contribution. Thank you, and I look forward to seeing you in next week's episode of Seeing Death Clearly.