Episode: 229
Don’t Learn This Too Late: Make An Authentic Life Now, By Getting Real About The End
with Alua Arthur
This mindset shift will change how you look at life, death, and everything in between.
Mel sits down with death doula and best-selling author Alua Arthur for a transformative conversation about how getting real about death can unlock the authentic, fulfilling life you’re meant to live.
Alua shares 3 powerful questions you should ask yourself today and reveals an inspiring exercise to perform on your birthday to help you live with more intention and gratitude.
Listen on:
When I’m thinking about my death, I can see very clearly who I want to be.
Alua Arthur
Featured Clips
Transcript
Mel Robbins (00:00:00):
We're all dying and we're all going to die.
Alua Arthur (00:00:01):
Correct. We are all dying and we should be talking about death. When I'm thinking about my death, it allows me to see exactly who I've become and knowing that I'm still living. I have an opportunity to change it. I think death can be a great inspiration for us to start living more authentically and be real with who we are and who we want to be. I'm going to be the one who has to meet myself on my deathbed. I want to make sure that I've been happy with what it was that I did while I was here.
Mel Robbins (00:00:29):
Wow. I've seen this amazing talk that you did online where you talk about how you want to die, you said, and when my loved ones notice that I've released my last breath. I want them to clap. I want them to clap because I died well, but I died well, only because I lived well.
Alua Arthur (00:00:47):
I want them to clap in honor of a life that I lived and the grace with which I let it go. There are three big questions that I suggest people ask themselves when thinking about their lives and their relationship and their death, which is who did I love? How did I love? And
Mel Robbins (00:01:10):
Hey, it's Mel. I am so excited that you're here. Welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. It is always such an honor to spend time with you and to be together. And if you're brand new, welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast family. Thank you for choosing to listen to this podcast. And you know what it tells me? It tells me that you are the type of person that values your time and you're interested in learning ways that you can improve your life. I love that. Me too. Recently I read something that just stopped me in my tracks. It was written by a woman named Alua Arthur. Here's what she wrote. Our deaths are practically begging us to live. When I'm thinking about my death, I can see very clearly who I want to be. I've never thought about death that way, that it's going to help me clearly see who I want to be.
(00:01:59):
Well, that's exactly what we're going to talk about today, Alua. She's a bestselling author and a death doula, and she's the founder of Going with Grace, an organization that has trained thousands of people in end of life planning, and she's flown here today from Los Angeles to be in our Boston studios to speak to you and me. She says that simply allowing yourself to think about your death, how you want to feel, where you want to be, who do you want to be surrounded by, what kind of life do you want to live so that you're proud of yourself? Just thinking about it unlocks deeper joy, purpose, and happiness in your life in ways you can never imagine. She also has three questions to ask you today and a powerful exercise for you to do every year on your birthday. And if you answer these three questions with courage and honesty, it will inspire you to make some incredible changes in your life. After you and I spend time with Alua today, I promise you we'll both be looking at our lives and our death in a whole new way.
Mel Robbins (00:03:04):
Alua, welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.
Alua Arthur (00:03:08):
Thank you very much for having me.
Mel Robbins (00:03:10):
I am so excited that you're here and there's a number of reasons why I'm excited that you're here. But the main one is that I watched your Ted talk and it is one of the most beautiful, profound and just kind of jaw dropping 20 minute talks I have ever seen in my entire life. I was absolutely captivated and that led me to your book briefly, perfectly human. And I have to say, first of all, before you even crack this book open, this is one of the most gorgeous books I've ever seen in my entire life, and I cannot wait for you as you're listening to us to hold this book in your hands because it's going to make you think completely differently about your life. Where I wanted to start is there's so many passages in your book that just had me gasp and reread, and I want to open up to page 10 and have you read to the person listening from your beautiful book.
Alua Arthur (00:04:25):
Thank you. Okay, ready?
(00:04:29):
Looking out the window toward the ro cumulus clouds blanketing the countryside. I think about what I want for my life and who I want to be at my death. It's the first time I'm asking myself these questions. I'm 34 years old. I realize that the eua I want to be on my deathbed is a woman who has filled her life cup all the way up and has built a life. She feels comfortable leaving on that bus. In Cuba, I feel far off from being that Alua. I'm a shell of a human with the mere pinprick of light left inside my body, I feel the heat of shame for not knowing I've been living dead for so long, my insides tighten. Looking around the bus, I take stock of the individuals aboard and wonder what end they will meet. These people are currently distracted by the daily business of living. One day they will die if they sense the immediacy of life, the preciousness of it, the insignificant significance of it, what would they be doing differently now, how many unwritten books, undeclared loves and unfulfilled dreams like dormant here in these seeds and in these bodies, would they be content dying from the lives they live or do they hunger for more?
Mel Robbins (00:05:49):
Beautiful, beautiful. This book begins where you start to talk about how brings you back to life. What does that mean? And can you tell the person listening where you are in your life right now, just personally because you're 34 years old and you're not facing death, you're just contemplating it. So what does this passage mean?
Alua Arthur (00:06:14):
This passage means that I'd spent 10 or so years in a career that didn't really fit me doing work that while very important and noble wasn't really working for me,
(00:06:27):
I put on somebody else's life. It felt like I was wearing somebody else's skin, pretending I was in somebody else's life, but I was in my own. And at 34 at this moment, I was finally noticing that I was not in my life. I wasn't living it. I was surprised to find out that this was my life, even though I'd very carefully created all of it. And when I look back on my life, I saw somebody who hadn't lived the way that she'd wanted to. I saw somebody who was living out of alignment with who she was, but yet kept going and just kept putting one foot in front of the other. That's not the death I wanted to meet. So something had to change.
Mel Robbins (00:07:05):
Have you always been this deep?
Alua Arthur (00:07:09):
I don't find myself to be very deep
Mel Robbins (00:07:11):
what
Alua Arthur (00:07:12):
You should ask my mom. Maybe.
Mel Robbins (00:07:13):
Well, the reason why I say that is because I think almost everybody has the experience of feeling stuck and boy, oh boy, did I relate to that sentence that you said that you felt like you had put on someone else's life, that even though you had carefully created it, now that you're in it, you're thinking, well, this doesn't feel like I thought it would feel. And what's interesting to me is you're the first person that I've ever talked to who in that very normal real human experience of waking up and being unsatisfied with your life or having the courage to recognize this isn't what I want it to feel like that you immediately jumped to your death. Why is that an important leap and how did it help you to access something within you to truly change?
Alua Arthur (00:08:09):
In full reality? Our deaths are practically begging us to live. My death is my best advisor. It's my greatest teacher. It's my greatest motivator. It's the one that tells me all the time that this life is brief and it's precious and it's short. And so when I'm thinking about my death, I can see very clearly who I want to be. I can see how I'm spending my time. I can see if I'm pleased with what it is that I'm doing, and if I'm not well, my death is asking me to change it all the time. I'm going to be the one who asked to meet myself on my deathbed. I want to make sure that I've been happy with what it was that I did while I was here.
Mel Robbins (00:08:45):
Wow. Can you tell the person that's listening how their life might change if they take to heart absolutely everything that you're about to share us today?
Alua Arthur (00:08:56):
Well, my hope is that when we are thinking about our desk consistently, that we think of our lives in context like a big glass bubble that holds all of our hopes and our dreams and our wishes and our authenticity and our fear and our doubt and our insecurity. And when I'm thinking about my death, it allows me to see exactly who I've become and knowing that I'm still living. I have an opportunity to change it. I think death can be a great inspiration for us to start living more authentically and be real with who we are and who we want to be.
Mel Robbins (00:09:30):
And you're going to teach us how to do that
Alua Arthur (00:09:32):
Well, I'm going to do my best to share what I've learned along the way.
Mel Robbins (00:09:35):
I have a feeling you're going to teach us how to do that. I'm already thinking about time traveling ahead, and I of course create a lot of space for myself between where I am now and where I am when I'm on my deathbed. Why is it that we have such a hard time talking about death?
Alua Arthur (00:09:51):
It scares us. It makes us uncomfortable. It brings up all of our greatest fears. It brings up our inadequacy. We feel really, really small in the face of it. We don't know anything about it. Nobody who's ever been there all the way has been back to tell us exactly what happens. We use our human minds to try to think through something that is not part of the human experience to die is human, but the death part, well then it's over. And so my brain can't quite fathom what that might be like, and that makes us uncomfortable.
Mel Robbins (00:10:24):
I hadn't even thought about the death part. I guess I'm more focused on the sadness that I feel for leaving. How does that also prevent us from seeing death as our greatest teacher and advisor in life?
Alua Arthur (00:10:42):
Well, we shun it because of the sadness and because of the pain and because of the grief and the loss. We're conditioned to feel the good things all the time. I want to feel happy and free and joyful and I have everything I need, but to think that one day my life will end or that of people that I love also makes me really uncomfortable. We shy away from pain. We try to do our best to guard ourselves from pain, and that's a certain pain that's coming. And so people don't want to think about that too much either.
Mel Robbins (00:11:09):
It's true. And there's this saying that you have that I find both hilarious and comforting that talking about sex won't make you pregnant and talking about death won't make you dead. And why is it important for us to be able to talk about this?
Alua Arthur (00:11:26):
People pretend it's not happening and they pretend it's not happening by not talking about it, but it doesn't change the fact that it's happening. And then there's the other side of it that says, well, I can't talk about it. If I talk about it, I'm going to bring it on myself, but it's going to happen anyway. And so not talking about it doesn't make it not happen. It just means that we are ill-prepared and it goes unexamined when it's time, so we may as well just start talking about it. It's going to happen anyway.
Mel Robbins (00:11:53):
You have made it your career to be a death doula, and a lot of people have not even heard that term before. Can you explain what a death doula is?
Alua Arthur (00:12:03):
Sure. A death doula is a non-medical care and support person for the dying person and their entire circle of support through the process. When I say the dying person, I mean anybody who's come into recognition of their mortality. That means that even when people are healthy, we can help them create comprehensive end of life plans to think through their ideas about or thoughts around their death. When people know what they're going to be dying of, which is typically what we think of a death doula doing, we can support them in creating the most ideal death for themselves under the circumstances. And then after a death occurs, we can help family members wrap up affairs of their loved one's life. And so we're doing all full scale emotional, logistical, practical, spiritual support for the dying.
Mel Robbins (00:12:49):
Wow. A lot of people have heard of hospice. How is this different from what hospice may provide to a family or someone who's dying?
Alua Arthur (00:12:57):
It's collaborative, it's supportive. I like to think that we play really well together because often what happens is that I can either catch somebody much further upstream like they're still healthy and they're starting to think about their death or they have a serious diagnosis and they're not yet on hospice and they're trying to figure that out. But when somebody's on hospice, we work really well together. Oftentimes a hospice nurse will come into the room and ask me, what's going on with day? How is everybody doing? What needs paying attention to,
Mel Robbins (00:13:26):
But it also sounds like you work with people who aren't, well, I guess I should correct that. We're all dying.
Alua Arthur (00:13:32):
We're all dying,
Mel Robbins (00:13:33):
And we're all going to die.
Alua Arthur (00:13:34):
Correct.
Mel Robbins (00:13:35):
And you work with people that don't have an acute diagnosis and aren't even that close to dying. They're just wanting to use death as a teacher and as a way to really think about and reshape their life
Alua Arthur (00:13:50):
And also get their plans down, start to think practically through it. I noticed that a lot of the clients that come for end of life planning probably have parents that have died recently, or they're seeing the elders in their family died or a friend died and they think, what a mess. I don't want to create that for myself. And so what can I do right now in order to get that
Mel Robbins (00:14:08):
Going? When I think about end of death planning, when I'm about to get on a plane with my husband, good call, and I can't help but think over and over in the back of my mind, okay, do we have our affairs in order? Great.
Mel Robbins (00:14:21):
What happens if this plane goes down and we die? And I don't want to think about that.
Alua Arthur (00:14:29):
Understandable. Speaking of which, how's your planning going?
Mel Robbins (00:14:33):
I think it's done. We've done some things with people. My husband, we've done some things with lawyers and planning and setting things up, but I haven't looked at it in three or four years. I probably should.
Alua Arthur (00:14:48):
Yeah, that'd be helpful.
Mel Robbins (00:14:49):
How often should you look at this?
Alua Arthur (00:14:51):
Yearly. Yearly? I think so. I love to do it around my birthday, and I know that sounds wild, but being able to celebrate another year reminds me that I'm still here, but one day I won't be like, I may not see my next one. And so let me take some time to reflect. I think we need to look at all the practical things, but also start asking the tougher questions. What kind of death do I want to experience? Who do I want to make my decisions for me? If I can't, how do I feel about life support? How do I feel about my life currently? Who do I need to say I love you to? Who do I need to forgive? Think about it like big picture.
Mel Robbins (00:15:29):
I love that you do this on your birthday.
Alua Arthur (00:15:32):
Yeah, it's a nice little ritual. It's a nice little touch.
Mel Robbins (00:15:35):
So if you were to, in fact, my birthday's coming up. Great. So what questions could I ask myself on my birthday to really invite the subject or the, I guess I should say reality. Look at this. I'm even sanitizing the way I talk about this to create distance between me and something that is going to happen. I will die. How do I use my death to shape my life and what questions could I ask myself on my birthday to invite the reality of my death in and help me truly think about how I want to live my life?
Alua Arthur (00:16:16):
There's a lot of ways to go about this. We can spend time on the practical, which I think is an easier entry point for some people. Thinking about your affairs, who do you want to make your decisions for you? What do you think about life support? What do you want done with your body? What services would you like? How would you like it celebrated, et cetera. Also, your possessions, any dependence, all your important information and stuff. But I also suggest that we think about the life that we've lived so far. If folks are interested, there's a little exercise that I like to do, which is to think of my life as a line, think of my lifespan as a long line and place myself somewhere on that line, my birth being one end and my death being the other. So if I place myself someplace on that line at that current birthday, how far do you I think I am, how much further do I have to go and what do I want to experience in the time that I have remaining? It allows me to conceptualize my life in terms of a lifespan and then see visually where else I still have to go. Hopefully.
Mel Robbins (00:17:19):
How old are you?
Alua Arthur (00:17:20):
I'm 46.
Mel Robbins (00:17:21):
How long do you think you have?
Alua Arthur (00:17:22):
I would like to live another 40, 45 years. I don't want to be like a hundred and something.
Mel Robbins (00:17:32):
I'm thinking about it right now because I'm going to turn 56 and I'd like to be a hundred.
Alua Arthur (00:17:38):
You would?
Mel Robbins (00:17:39):
Well, I mean when I pull out the line and I visualize what I want because I get to say that might not be what happens, but I get to say what I want. I want to be vibrant and active and engaged and connected to my family.
Alua Arthur (00:17:58):
Great. So what you just said is you listed also some core values, which is really helpful when we start thinking about how we want to experience the rest of our life, if we have a serious illness or if there's treatment or something coming, you can think about your values, you said engaged and with your family and all those things that can be helpful when you're starting to think about what is remaining of your time and how you're going to spend it.
Mel Robbins (00:18:21):
I love that. How the heck did you get into this?
Alua Arthur (00:18:23):
Into death work?
Mel Robbins (00:18:24):
Yes, is
Alua Arthur (00:18:27):
I'm still wondering that myself. I mean, I know some events happened that made it, but big picture sometimes I'm like, now how do we pick this one? But I really don't think that we choose death work. I think death work chooses us.
Mel Robbins (00:18:38):
I was just going to say, do you think you pick this?
Alua Arthur (00:18:40):
No, not at all. I mean, when I look back, I can see how perfectly set up everything was so that this is what I'm doing with my time right now. I am a attorney by trade. I worked at Legal Aid for about eight years, and while I was doing so, I grew a very, very thick depression. And I say thick, it was heavy, it was dense, but I was incredibly thin. My body was a hollow shell. I wasn't living in it anymore. And during that depression, I took a medical leave of absence by my psychiatrist who was like, girl, you can't work anymore. And I said, I think you're probably right. So I took a leave of absence, and during that leave of absence, I went to Cuba where I met a fellow traveler on the bus. And her and I talked a lot about life and we talked a lot about death. She had uterine cancer, and that's how the ideas around being with mortality really started.
Mel Robbins (00:19:37):
Can you share more about that story of meeting this woman on the bus and how that impacted you?
Alua Arthur (00:19:45):
Yeah. So through all this beautiful serendipity, I ended up in Cuba, and as I was heading to the bus stop to go get on the bus to go to Santiago on the other side of the island, a car was hit me along the way, and I slammed my hands on the hood and thought, don't die on these streets. Please. Like your parents would kill you.
Mel Robbins (00:20:05):
Well, you'd be dead. So
Alua Arthur (00:20:06):
Yeah, right. I would be mortified also with the roots and death, but I'd be mortified that this occurred and I, after the almost car accident happened, I was just kind of shocked back into myself. I did what I had to do and raced out to the bus stop where I met a woman in line and we started chatting. She offered to hold the bus for me so that I could get on it. I was in the wrong line and I was running late. She did hold the bus for me in a really interesting way, and when I got on the bus, we started chatting. She told me that she was in Cuba to see the top six places in the world she wanted to see before she died because she had uterine cancer. And it was jarring to me. I didn't know anybody my age who had died.
(00:20:50):
She was 36, I was 34, and we started talking a lot about her mortality. I asked her questions that I still don't know where I got the hubris to ask, but I asked her about herself on their deathbed. I asked her what meaning her life's work had up until that point. And it created a really fertile ground for us to get into the thick, thick, thick bits about how we're living and ultimately how we're dying during that bus ride. I thought there should be somebody that people can talk to about death because she hadn't been talking about it. Because when she would, her friends and family would tell her to focus on hope and healing instead. Don't think about that. No, you're going to get better. Don't worry about it. Oh, think about now. But the reality is that she's dying. We are all dying and we should be talking about death. And the fact that we'd had an opportunity to do so together, it seemed to create some value for her. And I also felt totally in my pocket talking to her about death. I could ask all the weirdo curious questions I have anyway, and somebody finally answered them. So it made it really a right place to begin talking about mortality.
Mel Robbins (00:21:56):
Do you remember the first question you asked her about death?
Alua Arthur (00:22:01):
I think I asked what would happen. Well, she was telling me about uterine cancer. She said she was sick and she said, I might die. And I said, well, what would happen then? And she said, well, I guess I'll be dead. And it was the beginning of like, well, what happens if this is it? What does that mean? What does that mean? So we started talking about the afterlife. We talked about herself on her deathbed. I asked her to look at herself on her deathbed and tell me what she saw. And while she did that, I started to think of myself on my own deathbed. And I didn't like what I saw. I didn't like what I saw, which is where that passage came from. I wanted somebody who was really full of her life, somebody who enjoyed it, somebody who's present for it, and I wasn't.
Mel Robbins (00:22:45):
And that's what you meant when you said, talk of death is starting to bring me back to life.
Alua Arthur (00:22:51):
Yeah. I finally felt signs of life in my body again. I finally felt like myself. I felt like a version of myself. I really liked somebody who was curious and engaged and connected and present. I was really present for that conversation. I was leaning forward and maintained eye contact and wasn't thinking about what a mess I've made in my life, rather, I was almost hopeful that I could feel myself again.
Mel Robbins (00:23:22):
Well, it's interesting because if you do time travel forward, it creates this space that allows hope and something different to come in to your consciousness. And so many of us have this experience in our day-to-day life of just going through the motions.
(00:23:44):
And it is true that when you allow yourself to push through the fear and the sadness, and truly think about that moment on your deathbed that it forces you to think about how you want to feel about your life and ironically creates an opening to change.
Mel Robbins (00:24:03):
What are some of the things that people say wrong when they are talking to someone and maybe it's a friend that has a cancer diagnosis, or maybe you find out that somebody's parent is got dementia and their hospice is called in. What are some of the things not to say and what can you say?
Alua Arthur (00:24:28):
Let me start with what you can lead with.
Mel Robbins (00:24:31):
Oh, great.
Alua Arthur (00:24:32):
Which is perhaps that you don't know what to say. If you don't know what to say, that's a great place to begin.
Mel Robbins (00:24:37):
What does that mean?
Alua Arthur (00:24:38):
I don't know what to say. This sounds really tough. This is a really big deal. This sounds really difficult for you, but I really don't know what to say now. That's a great place to begin. Rather than try to fill the space with platitudes and the things that we think that we're supposed to say, we can just begin with saying, I don't know what to say. And acknowledge and validate their experience. It sounds really hard, or how are you feeling? How are you doing with this news? I think if we can keep our focus on the person who is in the experience of it, then we can avoid getting into some really yucky, muddy waters where we're trying to tell them how to feel about their experience.
Mel Robbins (00:25:15):
That's beautiful. And that's probably where the problems come or like, oh, it's going to be okay and you'll get through it. We don't know that they might die from it. Well, they're going to die at some point.
Alua Arthur (00:25:24):
They're going to die at some point. It might be this disease, Alzheimer's and dementias gnarly. It might be going downhill really fast like saying, it'll be okay, or I know what you're going through. That's another thing we should avoid because we don't know what their experience is like. Even if we have a similar family situation ourselves, I don't know what it's like to be you experiencing this thing right now. And so we can also avoid trying to put ourselves in their shoes or trying to, I say invalidate what they're experiencing by filling it with what I've experienced or what I would like to experience, or what I think the experience should be like.
Mel Robbins (00:26:00):
I love that. I don't know what to say. That sounds like it's very difficult. How are you doing today?
Alua Arthur (00:26:06):
Great. A plus.
Mel Robbins (00:26:08):
Oh my gosh. Thank you. I'm very motivated by doing well, so thank you. I appreciate it. I can do that one. I can do that one. In your experience as a death doula, what are some of the best ways that you can show up for other people when either they're dying or they're supporting somebody else who is?
Alua Arthur (00:26:26):
It's a similar way to approach it, which is you show up, you acknowledge and you validate, and you create space for the person to have their experience, and you keep asking questions and you just allow them to be, and you allow them to guide the conversation because maybe they also don't want to talk about it. Maybe they want to talk about the Kardashians instead and that's totally fine. That's totally fine. So it's important that we create space for them to be where they are and to be in their experience primarily.
Mel Robbins (00:26:54):
I mentioned earlier I've seen this amazing talk that you did online where you talk about how you want to die at sunset with socks on. If I die with a bra, you're coming to haunt everybody.
Alua Arthur (00:27:11):
Everyone.
Mel Robbins (00:27:13):
You want to die at home with your affairs in order. And then you said, and when my loved ones notice that I've released my last breath. I want them to clap. I want them to clap because I died well, but I died well, only because I lived well. Can you talk more about that? I've never heard anyone say, I want you to clap.
Alua Arthur (00:27:37):
I want them to clap. I want them to clap at how authentically I lived my life. I want them to say, yeah, she did her. I want them to clap in honor of a life that I lived and the grace with which I let it go. I want them to have been proud of me. Even at my death, I still want the people that I care about to think, yeah, girl, you did it. I want them to feel as though I filled out my life and that I lived by example. I want them to think that I was generous and present and I cared and I did my best that I was here for the time that I was here.
Mel Robbins (00:28:25):
I just love the visual of everyone clapping. Isn't that
Alua Arthur (00:28:28):
Cool?
Mel Robbins (00:28:28):
It is. Because if I didn't have the context, it sounds like you're cranky grandmother who you couldn't stand, oh my God, thank God she's finally let go. Oh baby. But even in that instance, you're clapping because they were a fighter. But I love the acknowledgement of the spirit.
Mel Robbins (00:28:47):
What do you think happens
Alua Arthur (00:28:49):
After we die?
Mel Robbins (00:28:50):
Yes.
Alua Arthur (00:28:51):
I hear so many theories that I'm constantly cobbling it together myself. One of the things that I really love is when somebody presents something that I'm just really struggling to understand, and they give me a little bit more context. Can I share one with you please? Okay. So there was a client not that long ago who at the 11th hour decided that she needed to be baptized, that she was not sure about anything that happened, but she felt that she needed to go back to the religion of her childhood that may get her into heaven or wherever else after she died. And so I asked what had been going on, why she got to that point. She had been having these really incredible dreams right before she died when she was in her unconscious state, and she'd see a great big eye in the sky when she said that. I thought she meant the capital I and the non-dualistic perspective, like the eye that exists within us all. But she meant an actual eyeball in the sky.
Mel Robbins (00:29:48):
Really?
Alua Arthur (00:29:48):
Yeah,
Mel Robbins (00:29:49):
That sounds scary.
Alua Arthur (00:29:50):
Watching us all the time. I got very uncomfortable all of a sudden. And as we talked through that, she said, yeah, an eyeball that she sees in the sky that sees all and also that we'll go back to so we can watch all. And she thinks of that as heaven. And so she wants to get baptized to go to heaven, to that I in the sky.
Mel Robbins (00:30:12):
And is that a piece that you cobbled together that helps you think about what you believe about what happened?
Alua Arthur (00:30:18):
I like the idea of an I, but I like the idea of the letter I, the capital.
Mel Robbins (00:30:24):
Yeah, the eyeball scares me.
Alua Arthur (00:30:25):
The eyeball makes me a little uncomfortable.
Mel Robbins (00:30:27):
So what have you cobbled together in terms of how you think about what happens?
Alua Arthur (00:30:32):
Well, what I've cobbled together is this is tricky because it's changing all the time. And also the more I talk about it, the less it makes space for my clients to have whatever experience that they may be having.
(00:30:50):
When I feel the space with what I think or how I feel, it makes it a little harder for other people to share with me what they think or feel. Because first of all, everybody thinks I'm right because of the work that I do. Well, now that I want to hear it, now I really want to hear it. They think I'm right because of the work I do. My hope is that we can all return to all that ever was and all that ever will be in a place of absolute perfect and profound stillness and perfection and peace and love. The transcendent, the space from before we were born where I have no conscious memory of which I think was also a perfect place because it made a perfect human along the way. And my perfect death will hopefully lead me back to that real juicy, perfect place,
Mel Robbins (00:31:39):
I think I believe something very similar.
Alua Arthur (00:31:41):
Yeah.
Mel Robbins (00:31:41):
Yeah. I think a lot about the fact that when you're at the moment of creation and you're in your mother's womb, you have no consciousness about the world that you're about to be born into. And I feel that death is the exact same sort of birth that there is an entire world, and I have no consciousness of what it might be. I know what I hope it might be, but I just trust that as the transition happens, that it is another form of birthing yourself from one world and one state of consciousness to another.
Alua Arthur (00:32:20):
Well, every death is a birth into something new, and every birth is also a death. Upon my birth. I died from the womb. I changed the way I breathe. I changed probably how I think. I changed how I experienced the world. I changed my sensory experience. I died from that experience into this, so I'll likely be dying from this into something else. Now what I don't know, I hope it feels like riding a glitter wave for all of eternity where I just see sparkles and I am in that perfect place, reconnected with everything that ever was.
Mel Robbins (00:32:54):
Hey Lu, I'll see you there. Right on that sparkle wave. I have never been present when somebody died. Can you walk us through what happens in those
Alua Arthur (00:33:08):
Moments? Sure. So dying itself doesn't happen linearly when people are dying from disease. However, it generally happens that the cells shut down and then the systems, the tissues, et cetera. So it goes outward like that. So it looks different for every person, but for the most part, what I experience more often than not is that the person starts to recede in the days before death. You can tell that there is a distance that's happening. If they have a death rally, it'll probably happen right before that time. And the death rally is, I think when the last little bit of life's light is just all burned off, all the energy is used up. And so if the rally has occurred, there is a stillness that starts to happen that you can tell on the person they recede. They likely fall asleep and stay asleep for a while. The breathing changes, the skin color changes, the breathing gets kind of jagged. You can tell that the body has kind of taken over. It is doing what it needs to do to die. And I trust everybody's in innate capacity to know how to die. And so it's doing what it must do. And at some point, when the space between the breast gets very long, you can tell that there is a separation that's occurring and then there's a stillness, and the stillness comes when the breath has stopped.
Mel Robbins (00:34:41):
And do you in your work feel that separation and you feel an essence or spirit of a person leaving or
Alua Arthur (00:34:53):
I can tell that something has occurred because the room seems to get very full. It feels like there's a blanket in the space, but a warm cozy blanket if you've been in the space of it, you know what I'm talking about? After the breath is complete, the room is still very thick. The clapping would help. The clapping would
Mel Robbins (00:35:20):
Break it out,
(00:35:21):
For sure. For sure. Wow. Thank you for sharing.
Mel Robbins (00:35:24):
How do you bring this conversation up with your parents? There are so many people listening around the world who have parents that are aging, and I personally kind of tap dance around it. I'll then say, Hey, we should probably have the conversation. And my mom will say something like, yeah, we should. And she'll remark about how there's so much stuff in this house. I'm not even going to do anything with it. You and your brother are going to have to clear it out. And so it's more about the surface level stuff, but do you have advice for the best way to set up a conversation with your parents so that you can talk about this topic?
Alua Arthur (00:36:09):
I love that your mom is bringing it up and she's bringing it up that way. And I think that the practical is a great way into the deeper emotional, spiritual, psychological stuff that happens.
Mel Robbins (00:36:19):
Great.
Alua Arthur (00:36:19):
Yeah, because as she's talking about it, like, oh, I won't be here and so I don't need this thing anymore. She can explain to you what the meaning behind certain objects were. That meaning has her look back on her life. Oh, I got this in 1967 and when we were kids and we were doing this. You know what I mean?
Mel Robbins (00:36:35):
Yeah.
Alua Arthur (00:36:35):
So it's a way into the deeper emotional stuff.
Mel Robbins (00:36:39):
Thank you for saying that.
Alua Arthur (00:36:40):
Yeah,
Mel Robbins (00:36:40):
Because maybe it's my discomfort, but every time I go home to Michigan where I grew up and we start going through stuff and she's so focused on, what do you want? What do you want? Let's get this stuff out of here. And she's only 70 something. I mean, she is full of let's go. She's got a lot of life in her, thank God. But I always was thinking, this is a deflection. And you're saying, actually, no, this is fantastic.
Alua Arthur (00:37:13):
She's talking about it. I'm so glad to hear she's talking about it. It's an entry point to talk about the things or the practical things. And often, as I was saying, it shows what else is under the surface. It may be through an object, but when talking to people about what they want with their body after they die, I'll hear people say things like, I can't think of my body burning when talking about cremation, or I can't think of myself burning. That suggests to me that they think of themself in their body as one or they don't because they said, my body's burning. So that's an opening into the deeper spiritual conversation. It's all in front of us. We can tell how people think about their death based on how they talk, and certainly when they're talking about their stuff, that's another way into, thank you Mel's mom.
Mel Robbins (00:37:59):
We're flipping through a bunch of framed things that used to hang on the wall that have now been replaced and like, oh, I love that thing. Oh, those are drawings for my kids. We'll take that. I love this. Is there in that moment where you're engaging in the stuff, is there a way to just crack the door open a little bit more to go a little deeper
Alua Arthur (00:38:21):
Into the emotional stuff?
Mel Robbins (00:38:22):
Yeah.
Alua Arthur (00:38:23):
Well, one way is to, if you are noticing that she likes particular objects or if there's some things that she likes, maybe you can ask if this is a way that she liked to be remembered. When I see a spoon, will this help me think of you? And she'll maybe say yes, or I don't care, or whatever else. But maybe she'll say, well, I really like butterflies, or I feel like your Aunt Helen visits me through the butterflies or something to start that part of the conversation also.
Mel Robbins (00:38:50):
Well, she's been very funny about it. I know exactly what she wants to happen.
Alua Arthur (00:38:54):
Yeah,
Mel Robbins (00:38:54):
She's literally meltdown on my jewelry.
Alua Arthur (00:38:56):
Great.
Mel Robbins (00:38:56):
And then get an urn and let's put the jewelry all over the urn cremate me, and then that urn can rotate between you and your brother's house. And when your father dies, he goes in there too.
Alua Arthur (00:39:07):
Great.
Mel Robbins (00:39:08):
I'm like, okay,
Alua Arthur (00:39:09):
Thanks. She's giving you some pretty clear instructions. Oh
Mel Robbins (00:39:11):
Yes, I'm into it.
Alua Arthur (00:39:13):
Okay. Mom gets an a plus too.
Mel Robbins (00:39:14):
Wow. She's going to be really happy about that. And meanwhile, I feel like a jerk because I've been sitting here going, we haven't talked about the end of life care. We haven't talked about where you're going. We haven't talked about whether or not you're going to stay in this house or whether or not we're going to look for something else. Or what you're saying is that those conversations actually are an open door and they represent somebody processing this reality.
Alua Arthur (00:39:40):
It's starting to happen. People often say people don't want to talk about death or older folks don't want to talk about death. And I think that they do. I think we're uncomfortable with it. And so when we hear the opportunity, we shun it or we pretend it's not happening or we make it mean something else. Or there goes mom being crotchety again or mom is starting to engage you with her end of life because they're thinking about it. Okay. I mean, the older I get, the more I think about my mortality. I feel it in my kneecaps. And so at like 80 something, you're definitely thinking about it more and more. Your friends are dying. You're seeing people that you grew up with die on tv.
Mel Robbins (00:40:16):
It's true. I think about my dad who just turned 80 and he's had three very close friends die very suddenly, including his best friend. He had a surgery on his eye for glaucoma go wrong, and so he's got now floaters in there and he can't quite see, and I know that makes him feel like frail and he just had back surgery because of a pickleball injury. And so I've been thinking a lot about him and he's very stoic and doesn't talk a lot about that kind of stuff. The way my mom is very out there, get the urn, melt the jewelry. Let's go get this crap out of this house. I'm not cleaning this out. This is on you and your brother. Bless. How do I engage my father?
Alua Arthur (00:41:06):
You already said some really useful things. The fact that his friends are dying. That's a great place to begin. What's his grief? What happened when they died? Did somebody have an accident? Was there a surgery? What happened? Medically using the deaths of people in their lives is a great place to begin, just to ask them how they're feeling or what their thoughts are around it. You can also, if that's not happening in your family, you can also talk about celebrities or people that are happening in popular culture, people that are dying there as another entry weigh in. Did you like what happened? Did you not like it? I got to be with a group of black elders around the time Aretha Franklin died. And when I tell you all their end of life plans were done by the time that we left because one of them was like, I can't believe they had her in all these outfits, and I would never want a glass coffin and nobody better put shoes on me when I die. Got it, got it, got it. You know what I mean? Yes. These are
Mel Robbins (00:42:00):
Great
Alua Arthur (00:42:01):
Ways to start the conversation. It's available.
Mel Robbins (00:42:05):
Well, it's true. We all go to weddings and let's be honest, we enjoy ourselves. And then either on the way home or the next morning, we're like picking apart. I do this. I wouldn't do this. Why did they do that? Never even thought about funerals being a point of understanding what people like, what they don't like, what they want, what they don't want, what they're comfortable with, what they don't. They're not like, get no open casket for me. Absolutely not. Cremation all the way.
Alua Arthur (00:42:32):
You don't want to be viewed at all.
Mel Robbins (00:42:34):
Oh my God. No,
Alua Arthur (00:42:35):
That's helpful.
Mel Robbins (00:42:36):
Absolutely not.
(00:42:37):
And there was this thing that happened at my father-in-law's funeral that I thought was the coolest thing in the world that I had ever seen. I absolutely want this to happen. He was cremated and my mother-in-law, I don't know if she went to eBay or whatever, she bought all of these tiny little, remember the film canisters that were metal that you would kind of screw apart? She got like a hundred of them. And I just have this image of her spooning his ashes into all these canisters. And at his end of life celebration, she came out and had them in this huge salad bowl, and she invited anyone who wanted to have a piece of Ken to come up and take a canister. But there was one requirement. You had to spread his ashes somewhere or keep him in a certain place, and when you did it, she requested that you write her a letter and send a photo of the place where he is, and she now has this extraordinary photo album of him all over the world. I have a friend that snuck onto the US Open Golf course the last night of the tournament and poured him into the 10th hole, and then he was sealed up. He's overseas, he's been on bike trips. My husband, every time he rides his bike, he puts his little, he takes his canister of his father and tucks it underneath and is just a beautiful way to see what he meant to other people. And that's what I want.
Alua Arthur (00:44:18):
That's incredible.
Mel Robbins (00:44:19):
Isn't that cool?
Alua Arthur (00:44:20):
Have you written it down? No. Okay. Well, I'm glad now we've recorded it. Now we know that's what you want.
Mel Robbins (00:44:28):
Yes.
Alua Arthur (00:44:28):
That is so great.
Mel Robbins (00:44:30):
What do you want? I know how you want to die, but what do you want to have happen after?
Alua Arthur (00:44:34):
I want a green burial. I want a natural burial.
Mel Robbins (00:44:38):
Meaning they put you somewhere and light you on fire. Is that what that is?
Alua Arthur (00:44:41):
No.
Mel Robbins (00:44:42):
Oh, okay. See, I went like, boom. I see. Okay. I feel like, okay. That's a beautiful natural thing to do.
Alua Arthur (00:44:48):
It is also very beautiful natural thing. I want to be in a hot pink and orange raw silk shroud, no more than three and a half, maybe four feet underground so that the natural decomposition can happen. The bugs can get to me. The elements can. Yeah. Why do you want that? I want to go back into the earth also, I spent a lot of time in all the cellulite. The bugs should feast. You know what I mean? Don't that chocolate can go to waste. Let's use it. Let's use it. Let's use
Mel Robbins (00:45:14):
It. Oh my gosh. And I love that you're sharing this and that we're going to details and as you're listening, think about what you want.
Alua Arthur (00:45:24):
Yes.
Mel Robbins (00:45:26):
Allow yourself to truly reflect on this the same way that I feel like my daughters popped into this world and they've been planning their weddings ever since. And it's interesting to think about your own death and celebration of your life and how you want it to feel as something that can be as amazing as a wedding,
Alua Arthur (00:45:54):
Even more so
Mel Robbins (00:45:55):
Why even more so?
Alua Arthur (00:45:56):
Well, weddings are cute. I wish that we'd focus more on the marriage than on the big day itself. But the weddings are cute. Weddings are cute. I think funerals to me are a nice, big, beautiful period on that sentence. That really would be nice if they showed who the person was, if it really showed who the person was and people had a chance to be together in their grief around the end of this person's life. I ask all the students that come through the going with Grace end of life training program, what kind of death that they would like, what kind of funeral they like about their legacy, et cetera. And there was this one student years ago who got stuck in the question about who her body belongs to and who her life belongs to. I thought it was so rich. Yeah. Because when we were talking about who our body belongs to, it got our thinking, got me thinking about what happens to this body after I die? And this story that you shared about is his name, Ken, that his body now belongs to all these people and they are now spreading it everywhere. They're doing what they want with it. And so we can use our value system, try to figure out what do I care about? And now you see, I care about eating enough cakes so that the bugs can be happy after I die. I'm trying to give back. It's not just about me and my taste buds. No, it's about the earth. I'm trying to help the earth.
Mel Robbins (00:47:16):
Well, I think some people do that when they think about whether or not they want to be an organ donor, but there's a even deeper, richer way to think about who you are and how that gets expressed through your death.
Alua Arthur (00:47:28):
That's what death does for us every single time about my work, about my relationships, about my love, about how I care about my body, certainly what I want to have happen to it after I die, how I planned for it. That's what my death does every single time if we let it. But most of us are way too scared to even engage in the conversation.
Mel Robbins (00:47:51):
In your experience, what are the biggest regrets that people have on their deathbed?
Alua Arthur (00:47:58):
They're mostly around how they spent their time, how they lived about being authentic. I wish I lived a life for me, not for my parents or society or my partner or my kids, but what was most authentic for me. People also often regret how they spent their time spending more of it at the office or not playing pickleball or not doing the things that they really want to do with their time. I also find that people regret how they showed up for the people that they loved or
(00:48:30):
Didn't or didn't show up for the people that they loved, probably more far more how they didn't show up, not saying their I love yous and thank yous, or Please forgive me. That's a big one.
Mel Robbins (00:48:42):
That's something that I think a lot about that
Mel Robbins (00:48:46):
It's only when it's over that some people find the ability to forgive or to ask for forgiveness, and for somebody that's listening to us right now, could you speak directly to them about what's available today based on the reality of death and what to do today in order to not die with regrets?
Alua Arthur (00:49:20):
There are three big questions that I suggest people ask themselves when thinking about their lives and their relationship and their death, which is who did I love? How did I love and was I loved? Now, these questions, I speak of them in the past tense because I'm thinking about somebody who's on their deathbed, but those questions are available for us right now and should be available to us right now. I don't say should very often, but this is one where it's wildly, wildly important for us to think about how we relate to one another and what's still sticky between us. Too often I see people at the deathbed where they're wishing for that magic moment where that person that they've been loving from afar because they did something or the other person did something, they're waiting for that to be reconciled, and it just isn't. Can I tell you a story?
Mel Robbins (00:50:12):
Yes, please.
Alua Arthur (00:50:13):
It was a client a few years ago who was in her late eighties. She was a grandma and one of her grandkids was there. She'd had three biological children, nine grandchildren, and only one was there. This one grandchild been busting her butt to make so much money to put grandma in one of these homes where there was maybe six people in a room. You know what I mean? It was not fancy or top of the line, but this kid had worked really hard for, it turns out grandma was a terrible parent. Her kids didn't want to be there. They'd made their peace. But grandma insisted that she did not want to die until those kids came to say goodbye to her. And I talked to all those kids and they were all done. They'd made their peace with her dying. We eked out a letter, and when I say eek, I mean she was practically nonverbal at this time, but there were things that she still wanted to say.
(00:51:02):
So we tried really hard to get all these things out. Some of them were asking for forgiveness, but also some of them were staunchly. I did what I need to do and how I need to do it, and you kids should be grateful. And she moved into active dying a very short while later. I don't know what happened with those letters. I don't know if those kids got them. I don't know what they thought of them, but I know that they did what they need to do for themselves. Sometimes we don't have to forgive just because somebody is dying. We need to speak the truth about how we feel about people while they're living. And if grandma maybe had tried that earlier, she may have been in a different position when she was dying.
Mel Robbins (00:51:42):
Well, I have a very good friend who's been estranged from her parents for a number of years, and her father just died.
Alua Arthur (00:51:47):
How's she feeling?
Mel Robbins (00:51:48):
I don't know how she's feeling today, but I can only imagine that her feelings are all over the place. And mourning someone that you have been estranged from for a long time must just, it doesn't prevent you from, you still grieve somebody even if you haven't seen them for a long time, even if you ended on bad terms. And so I don't know how she's doing today, but as soon as I heard the news, I told her that If you want to go to the funeral, I will get on a plane with you. I will go, if you do not want to go to the funeral, that is okay too. I will come and support you if you want somebody to be there. And she thanked me and said, you have no idea how much that means. And I just felt like I wanted to do something. And so I decided to send her just a beautiful arrangement of flowers from my husband and I. And I thought and thought, and thought, and thought and thought about what to put on the card. And so I put this, never forget you cut ties with your father, not because you didn't love him, but because you loved yourself enough to know you deserve to be treated better.
Alua Arthur (00:53:04):
You get another a plus. Oh, really? That is incredible. That's so good. That's so good. What I'm hearing from that is the reinforcement of the choice that she made. And what I think is wildly important is that we remember just because somebody is dying doesn't mean that we then have to undo all the things. It doesn't make them a great person anymore. It doesn't make them a great person for us anymore. I think it's important that we tell the truth about who people are when they were living. And after they die, they tell the truth. We tell the truth about their impact on us. It doesn't change because they died. And when we make people saints after they died, it marginalizes, it disenfranchises the grief of those people that didn't experience them like that. People still have to grieve complicated relationships. They still have to grieve when they haven't seen their parent in decades because they chose to step away. And sometimes to me healing looks like that. It doesn't look like maybe speaking the forgiveness. It looks like making a choice and reconciling it within ourselves.
Mel Robbins (00:54:13):
Yeah, that's a lot. It's big.
Mel Robbins (00:54:18):
What advice do you have for all of us as we experience grief? How do you think about the process of grieving, which I don't think ever leaves?
Alua Arthur (00:54:30):
No, it doesn't leave. It just changes for him. When I think about my brother-in-law, I still get emotional thinking and talking about him. And it's been 11 years, it's December.
Mel Robbins (00:54:40):
Can you tell us about Peter?
Alua Arthur (00:54:41):
Oh, I would love to. Peter was my older sister's husband, Bosma St. John as her husband. And I loved Peter. He was the only big brother I had. I didn't have one, and I was his younger sibling. He was the youngest of seven and didn't have anybody he could exercise dominion over until I came around. Peter was gregarious, he was silly, and really, really smart and probably just as stubborn and self-righteous as I am, which made for a lot of butting heads because he was really conservative in nature and I am not. And so we would just go to war over the death penalty and vegetarianism and veganism and just anything. We got along really, really well despite our challenges, and I got to support him in his death.
Mel Robbins (00:55:34):
Did he know it was coming or was it an accident?
Alua Arthur (00:55:36):
He knew it was coming. It wasn't long. He got diagnosed with Burkis Lymphoma in June and by October. They said they couldn't treat him anymore, so it was fast, but there was some awareness it was coming. Even though the doctors, they never said he was dying, they said they couldn't treat him anymore. That for somebody who wishing, hoping with all hope that he would live, I did not hear that he was dying. I heard that they weren't going to treat him. My brain maybe made the jump, but my body, my spirit, my insides didn't want to hear it. Didn't want to receive that. How old was he? He was 43.
Mel Robbins (00:56:22):
You write about his death in your beautiful book Briefly. Perfectly human. Would you mind reading us that passage on? It's on page 53.
Alua Arthur (00:56:39):
I'll do my best. Okay. Start here. As I'd done countless times before, I took my position at Peter's feet, which I'd regularly massaged with moisture rich pollution to prevent them from cracking. Today, they were cold and yellowing due to jaundice. I since learned that in some faith traditions, the soul disengages from the feet first to leave through the head. I held them quietly and tearfully thanking him for walking the earth and walking into my life in wished him well for wherever he was walking to next, shortly before 4:00 AM, four days before his 44th birthday, my brother-in-law, Peter St. John breathed his last.
Mel Robbins (00:57:40):
I feel like I'm right there in the hospital with you
Alua Arthur (00:57:42):
Every single time. Every single time. The grief doesn't go anywhere. I just learn how to live with it. I think I learned how my grief wants to express gratefully. I get to talk about Peter all the time because of my work. I learned how to do love through Peter.
(00:58:04):
Many people don't get that chance. People stop asking about that person after a while, but I still get to talk about Peter. I still get to remember him. He feels very present for me, even though I haven't heard his voice in almost 11 years and he hasn't seen my niece as a teenager. He hasn't seen me finally get it together.
Mel Robbins (00:58:28):
I think he'd be pretty proud of you.
Alua Arthur (00:58:30):
Yeah,
Mel Robbins (00:58:30):
I hope so. I hope so.
Mel Robbins (00:58:32):
What do you want the person listening to know about Peter and how he lived his life and how it impacted you?
Alua Arthur (00:58:41):
It sounds wild to say because when I look at it at a distance, it kind of pinches in a way, but Peter's death did serve as a gift to me. Of course, I wanted him to live and with the reality that he died, it ultimately created a lot of opportunity for me, and that's something that we don't think of. I don't mean to brightside it, that's not what I'm doing, but rather I'm seeing what was created from his death, which was for me, a real purpose. I learned how to doula. I got real angry about how society does death. I wanted to do something about it. I created a company to do. I teach people how to be death doulas. I'm still angry about how he died. I still wish that he got better, but that has now turned into fuel to support other people. Grief allows a new version of ourselves to emerge. It allows whatever version is being held and boxed in to come to light. It allows a seedling of self to grow because when it's all cracked open, who wants to come out? All bets were off. I didn't even wear pants for a while. I was like, forget it. I don't have to. I'm grieving. I'm sad. Everybody's just going to have to deal, and what I saw was a me that was really on purpose, who was really on fire, who was clear about what she wanted to create in the world, and I used my grief to support me in doing it. That grief became, it became a way through. It still is a way through. Grief can be useful. It's hard, but it can be useful.
Mel Robbins (01:00:22):
You talked earlier about how all death is also a birth and it sounds like Peter's death was a birth for you, A new version of you was born. In that moment,
Alua Arthur (01:00:35):
I met myself in my grief, and I think we often do if we're willing, I saw really who I was and what I wanted and how I showed up in the world. What did you see?
(01:00:46):
I saw fire. I saw anger. My grief expressed a lot through anger, which is something that I typically had not a allowed myself to feel much. I think a lot of women are socialized to sadness first before anger. I also, as a black woman in America, being angry is something, is a trope, and so I did not often allow myself anger. I just would defer to sadness, but I was pissed. I was hot about the medical care system, about how we care for our dying, about our lack of support for it, and I wanted to fix it. Now, anger can move mountains if we'll let it. I'm sitting here right now because I got really pissed. I'm still a little mad.
Mel Robbins (01:01:29):
It's all right. You're using it to make incredible change.
Alua Arthur (01:01:33):
Thank you,
Mel Robbins (01:01:34):
And those feelings are valid.
Alua Arthur (01:01:36):
Yeah. Well, that's the thing about grief too. I think when we're allowing ourselves to just be in the experience of it, we see how nuanced it is and that we have a lot of emotion and all of them are fine. They're all totally okay. Grief allows us finally to express all the things that perhaps we keep repressed because we're too busy trying to pay the bills and do our taxes, but grief allows us to be in a deep emotional space.
Mel Robbins (01:02:02):
You know what else I love that you touched on is the fact that when somebody dies, it's almost as if we anoint them with sainthood. Come on, and you read these eulogy, not the eulogies. You read these things that people put in the paper and you're thinking, did this person also walk on water? Yes. What, and you see at funerals sort of that quiet murmuring of now we're just talking about all the good stuff and there's no acknowledgement that there are real difficulties in the relationship that you may have had with this person. Is it important to kind of acknowledge that for yourself so that as part of the process of grieving, like grieving even who that person wasn't for
Alua Arthur (01:02:48):
You? Absolutely. It's a necessary component of grieving is being honest with ourselves about the nature of the relationship, what we got from it, things that still stuck and rubbed us because those don't change just because the person died. Not everybody lit up a room when they walked in, but virtually every obituary says she lit up the room. Maybe she was meek and hung out in the corner. That would be fine too. That's how her human hood was expressed and people experienced her that way, and we don't give them an opportunity to be with their grief if we don't tell the truth about somebody. We need to tell the truth. I want people to tell the whole truth about who I am. I can also be a massive pain in the ass. Yeah.
Mel Robbins (01:03:31):
What does it mean to leave a legacy and how do you advise people to think about creating yours or what you want yours to be?
Alua Arthur (01:03:42):
Our legacy is often sometimes rooted in who we are. I think people often mistake a legacy with the money or our accomplishments, but rather it's more about who you are as you're accomplishing those things. I noticed that at funerals, people do talk a little bit about how many lives a person changed, but they also talk about the fact that they changed lives because they were kind or generous or thoughtful. Legacies aren't optional. We're all leaving one every single day. Even people that we think of as those that maybe don't hold a big position in society are still leaving a huge legacy. I tell you another quick story. Absolutely. There was a human that came to me for some support because she wanted to plan a funeral for somebody who did not have much of a family, at least that she knew he was unhoused. He lived on the corner where she got her coffee every morning on her way to work, and so she would talk to him sometimes and got to know him a little bit over the years.
(01:04:42):
One day she noticed he wasn't there anymore and searched up and down for him and found out that he had died and she wanted to honor his life. What happened was we planned what we thought was going to be a small ceremony and about 400 people showed up because of the impact that he had had on her life because of how she talked about him, because of the gems he dropped on her because he was a touch point for her every single day in her grief or in her sadness or in her anger or in her joy, she would talk to him when she got her morning coffee. That was his legacy. Somebody who otherwise folks would just disregard, pretend that their life had no meaning or purpose. He touched that many people through her. That's a legacy.
Mel Robbins (01:05:27):
Yes, it is.
Mel Robbins (00:01:05:30):
Alua, what are your parting words
Alua Arthur (01:05:35):
In my life,
Mel Robbins (01:05:37):
In this conversation, in your life? What are the last words you want to say?
Alua Arthur (01:05:41):
I hope the last words I say are Thank you. I hope they're Thank you. Because this life is an utter gift. I am so grateful that I get to look you in the eye and feel connected just by virtue of my sight that I get to feel joy and cold and crunchy, french fries. I'm also grateful that I get to feel anger and grief. I'm grateful that I get to live in my purpose and teach death doulas and spread the message as far as it will go. I'm grateful for cake. I am really grateful for cake. I'm grateful for exercise. I'm grateful for feeling my heartbeat. I'm grateful for this air that I breathe. I'm grateful for my life. I want my last words to be. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you to all the beings that journeyed with me, to you, to everybody that I met today, to the folks that'll fly the plane. Just thank you. Yeah, thanks.
Mel Robbins (01:06:47):
We'll all be clapping, that's for sure. I got the memo. I hope
Alua Arthur (01:06:52):
So,
Mel Robbins (01:06:52):
And I'll see you on that glitter wave. I hope so. I believe so.
Alua Arthur (01:06:59):
In gratitude. In gratitude, gratitude.
Mel Robbins (01:07:01):
You are a remarkable human being. I am so deeply moved and changed by our conversation today.
Alua Arthur (01:07:09):
I'm glad to hear that,
Mel Robbins (01:07:10):
And I also want to just take a moment and thank you for being here with us, for staying all the way until the end, and in case no one else tells you, I wanted to be sure to tell you that I love you. I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to create a better life and what an extraordinary gift to use your death as a way to help you make the most of the time that you have left so that when you are on your deathbed, you are saying thank you, thank you, thank you for this life too. I'll be waiting for you in the next episode, and thank you to you for being here with me on YouTube for watching all the way until the end. Wasn't this incredible. I cannot wait to hear the insights that you got out of everything that you learned today, and one request that I have is that little subscribe button. If you could hit subscribe, that would mean the world to me. It's my goal to have 50% of the people that watch this channel be subscribers, and I'm 9% away from achieving that goal, and so thank you, thank you, thank you. It really shows me that you're enjoying and getting a lot out of the content that we're posting here every single day. Now, I know you're thinking, okay, I would love to watch another video. What do you recommend? I'm going to send you to this one next.
Key takeaways
When you let yourself visualize your own death, you create space to finally ask what kind of life you're living and whether you’re truly proud of how you’re spending it.
You don’t need a diagnosis to start asking, "Who would make decisions for me?", or "What do I want done with my body?"—those questions are your entry point to freedom.
The moment you realize you’re the one who will meet yourself on your deathbed is the moment you take full responsibility for how authentically you’re living today.
Don’t wait until someone dies to forgive, thank, or say I love you. Death doesn’t erase your truth; it just robs you of the chance to speak it out loud.
Your legacy isn’t your job or bank account. It’s how you make people feel, how you show up, and the impact you leave in the ordinary moments of daily life.
Guests Appearing in this Episode
Alua Arthur
Alua Arthur is a death doula, speaker, and founder of Going With Grace, an organization dedicated to end-of-life planning and transforming the conversation around death and dying.
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Book: Briefly Perfectly Human
For her clients and everyone who has been inspired by her humanity, Alua Arthur is a friend at the end of the world. As our country’s leading death doula, she’s spreading a transformative message: thinking about your death—whether imminent or not—will breathe wild, new potential into your life.
Briefly Perfectly Human is a life-changing, soul-gathering debut, by a writer whose empathy, tenderness, and wisdom shimmers on the page. Alua Arthur combines intimate storytelling with a passionate appeal for loving, courageous end-of-life care—what she calls “death embrace.” Hers is a powerful testament to getting in touch with something deeper in our lives, by embracing the fact of our own mortality. “Hold that truth in your mind,” Alua says, “and wondrous things will begin to grow around it.”
Resources
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- Scientific American: Thinking about Death Can Make Life Better
- Muallim Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities: Embracing mortality: psychological preparation on death in the guidance of stoic philosophy
- Cleveland Clinic: What an End-of-life Doula Can Do for You
- Palliative Medicine: Death doulas as supportive companions in end-of-life care: a scoping review
- Palliative Care and Social Practice: Describing the end-of-life doula role and practices of care: perspectives from four countries
- OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying: “Death Bouncers” and “Spiritual Guides”: How End-of-life Doulas Provide, Frame, and Navigate Spirituality and Spiritual Care
- OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying: Dying a “Good” Death: The Work, Care, and Support of End-of-Life Doulas
- National Institute on Aging: Providing Care and Comfort at the End of Life
- Annals of Internal Medicine: Redefining the “Planning” in Advance Care Planning: Preparing for End-of-life Decision Making
- American Family Physician: Making Decisions with Families at the End of Life
- Public Library of Science: Specific and Individuated Death Reflection Fosters Identity Integration
- NPR: How to prepare for the death of a parent: A checklist
- Psychology Today: The Complexity of Grief with Estrangement
- The American Institute of Stress: Resilience in Grief: A Journey of Post-Traumatic Growth
- Journal of Humanistic Psychology: Bereavement and Personal Growth
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