TABOO TUESDAY: Preparing for Death with Author and Global Editorial Director of IDEO, Shoshana Berger

Emotionally Fit

Death is the most guaranteed part of life, yet it’s a topic most people avoid thinking and talking about. In this Taboo Tuesday discussion, Shoshana Berger, co-author of the book “A Beginner's Guide to the End,” joins Dr. Emily to talk about how her father’s prolonged death changed her perspective on death and dying. After seeing firsthand how difficult and overwhelming the process was, Shoshana set out to explore various aspects of end-of-life care, from navigating the healthcare system and hospice to green burials and the various and strange ways grief works. Listen now to hear why you should be thinking and talking to your own loved ones about death.

Staying emotionally fit takes work and repetition. That's why the Emotionally Fit podcast with psychologist Dr. Emily Anhalt delivers short, actionable Emotional Push-Ups every Tuesday and Thursday to help you build a better practice of mental health, and surprising, funny, and shocking conversations on Taboo Tuesdays - because the things we’re most hesitant to talk about are also the most normal. Join us to kickstart your emotional fitness. Let's flex those feels and do some reps together!

EPISODE RESOURCES:

Follow Shoshana Berger on Twitter and Instagram

Check out Soshana’s book A Beginner's Guide to the End: Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing Death

Learn more about green burials and Better Place Forests

Read a 1996 LA Times article Rest in Space : Company Plans to Become First to Launch Cremated Remains Into Orbit

Read The Washington Post’s A public park for ashes? As cremations soar, demand for scatter gardens grows.

Thank you for listening! Follow Dr. Emily on Twitter, and don’t forget to follow, rate, review and share the show wherever you listen to podcasts! #EmotionallyFit

The Emotionally Fit podcast is produced by Coa, your gym for mental health. Katie Sunku Wood is the show’s producer from StudioPod Media with additional editing and sound design by nodalab, and featuring music by Milano. Special thanks to the entire Coa crew!

JUMP STRAIGHT INTO:

(01:16) - How Shoshana first got interested in the topic of death - “If you think of death as an experience like every other experience we have in life, giving birth; falling in love; getting married; maybe getting divorced; raising our children; all of these huge life cycle events, death is one of them and it is a transformational event. It was kind of stunning to me how unprepared I was for it.”

(05:24) - Investigating our biases about end-of-life care - “You do not have to be dying to take advantage of palliative care. It's about making you more comfortable, and so you can be far from death. The one criteria you have to have to engage with palliative care is that you are suffering.”

(07:20) -Why Shoshana wanted to start researching and sharing about death - “In the midst of that chaos, my instinct is always, ‘Man, how is it possible that someone with a graduate degree can be so clueless about something so elemental in life?’ It's like you're book smart and completely life clueless. And I thought to myself, ‘If I'm having this much trouble, there's probably a lot of other people who are having trouble with this experience.’”

(12:29) - The benefits of being prepared for death - “We die every night that we close our eyes and we trust that that's okay. We're going to close our eyes and we're going to kind of go into oblivion, and there's something beautiful about learning from that too, that we've been practicing this our whole life.”

(22:13) - How Shoshana's perspective on death has changed - “The fear part is tricky because you have to kind of dig into what you're really afraid of. Are you afraid of oblivion? Are you afraid of just going into the darkness and what's there? Are you afraid in a much more kind of religious way of, like the fiery ovens of hell? Like a lot of people are really afraid of judgment on what that's gonna look like.”

(29:18) - Shoshana’s message for thinking about death - “One beautiful way of getting engaged with it is just really paying attention to how the world works. So, there is a natural life and death cycle to every day, every moment, every season. We are shedding thousands of cells every day. Parts of us are dying every day. Leaves falling from the trees, insects and animals dying in our midst. Death is all around us all the time, and so is renewal. So is rebirth.”