Normalizing the End of Life Conversation: Success Strategies with Sheri Kline, ARNP, End of Life Doula

National Healthcare Decisions Day (NHDD) exists to inspire, educate, and empower the public and providers about the importance of advanced care planning. Advance care planning allows us to make informed decisions about our medical care in case we are unable to communicate our wishes in the future. It is a thoughtful and compassionate way to take control of one's healthcare journey and alleviate potential burdens on family members during difficult times. 

In this episode, join in the conversation with Sheri Kline, ARNP, MSN, GNP, BC, EOL Doula, Holistic Wellness Coach,  Essential Oil & Pilates Educator.  Sheri is currently working on Doctorate of  Holistic Health

Sheri is driven by a passion to serve people holistically. Realizing the need for a comprehensive approach beyond her medical background, she pursued certifications in Integrated Nutrition, Aromatherapy, Polestar Pilates, and the Doulagivers Specialist Program, alongside NEDA proficiency.

With a diverse nursing background spanning Labor and Delivery, Neonatal ICU, ER, Med Surg, Medical ICUs, and nursing homes, Sheri's journey led her to specialize in working with adults, older adults, and especially the Veteran population. After obtaining her BSN from the University of Florida and her MSN from St. Louis University, she became an Advanced Practice Registered Nurse, focusing on Cardiology, Telehealth, and Home Primary Care for frail and/or older Veterans with complex comorbidities.

Collaborating frequently with Hospice teams to optimize palliative and end of life care, Sheri recognized a need for additional support beyond traditional care models. Her firsthand experience as her mother transitioned reinforced her calling to become an End of Life Doula. This profound moment solidified her mission to guide individuals and families through the most intimate and meaningful experiences of life, offering knowledge, support, and planning with every step of the journey.

To connect with Sheri and learn more: Age Well, Die Well

http://www.doulagivers.com/ for more information on what it is to be a Doulagiver specialist. 

"9 Questions" Advanced Directives 

DOWNLOAD THE WHITE PAPER, The Power of Peace of Mind

To learn more about The 5 Wishes

Transcript

GMT20240327-192303_Recording_gvo_1280x720: 0:59

Okay. Welcome, Sheri. I'm so glad that we were able to coordinate this. So I hope that you guys are enjoying this chat because I think this is a really important topic. the whole idea of this podcast is to default to our extraordinary selves. And to do that, I think we have to embrace everything. And I know, do you know that that healthcare decision day is upon us and. Many people don't even know what that is. And so I'm excited to create some awareness. So we met through our passion for essential oils. And it's been fun to watch your journey and hear your story. And I think that I'm just so glad that you are here too. Share a little bit of that, share your expertise with us so that we can think about this end of life process and making our health care decisions differently. And so that we can default to our extraordinary selves. Along the journey. So maybe just, if you could just introduce yourself Tell us a little bit about yourself. Julie, I really appreciate you calling and connecting about this because it is really important. It's become a passion of mine. I am a geriatric nurse practitioner. And so I've been dealing. With geriatrics, mostly older people in the last part of my 40, 45 year career as a nurse, and, I worked in the hospitals and ICUs a lot. And I also have family experiences which are very different, between being in the medical world and being in the personal world. One thing I there was always missing pieces when you're in the hospital. Everything is physical. It really is. Sometimes it's mental health. We do try to bring that in more now than we used to, but we're still missing something so as I was nearing the end of my career at the VA, I worked, retired from the VA about seven years ago, I was like, I need to get more holistic, I, for myself, for the world, for everybody, and blend more holistic modalities. So my first one I got into was Pilates, movement therapy. It helped. So I had to learn more to help people. Then I got into essential oils because they worked, the chemistry of them made a big difference. Once I realized it wasn't just a, coincidence and I learned a little bit of the science. I'm like, okay, I'm okay with this. And then I started being a magnet for death, but not in a bad way. But I seem to be there and I seem to like I wasn't doing it on purpose or anything, but I would just find that I would be able to bring some education to people in their most fearful moments, and their education seem to give them tools to be able to. deal with it and work through it. And then when my mom died, this is a long introduction here, but when my mom died, 24 or five years ago now, I, as I was holding her and her body, holding the body as her spirit, Left her body and I, just got the chills and I gave her permission. And I said, Oh my goodness. I feel like a doula a doula who helps a baby transition into the world. It brings that baby and the spirit and the life into the world. I felt just like that in reverse. I really did. And I didn't even know it was a thing. So as I finished, about 10 years ago, 12 years ago, I was being this magnet in this situation for these other people. And I realized there is a thing called end of life doula. So I actually took a certification course. I looked, there are many, out there, and you can go to the NEDA website and EDA, and they list all the ones. That, they approve, so to speak. And they are certification courses at this point. There are some college courses as well. But anyway, I decided to take the one called doula givers. It started in 2012 by a hospice nurse, and she and I just connected like I felt like the things she had to say she experienced what I experienced and what it is death isn't a medical experience that we learn in our culture learns. It's a human experience. And so I took her course out of curiosity. Now I'm a nurse and I've been with many people who died and family members, but I wanted to take the course and learn what it was. And I was so glad I did because an end of life doula is really a non. medical profession. And so what I do now is I'm an adjunct trainer with them. And our goal is to educate everybody because whether we know it or not, a hundred percent of us are going to die, or we're going to have no somebody who's going to die. And when our loved ones die, I don't care if we're the nurse who even works in hospice. I don't care what it is, that person, the family, and that person needs support. They really do because it's all different. Everything goes out the window when you are so connected. And the caregivers, a family caregiver, a loved one, shouldn't have to bear so much responsibility. They doula fills the gap. When I would always recommend hospice to my patients. In the day and today because they fill a gap that the regular medical model just can't fill, but they're under the guidelines of Medicare and, special insurance says a nurse can go one hour a day. Or what have you, there's a huge gap. And, they say there's 84 million people now over 65. That's a lot in 20 percent of them. I can't even do the math. Don't even have children. Our culture is grown up to be our children take care of us, but we've gotten away from that and we don't know how to do it. So end of life doulas really help people, decrease the fear. Okay. With education and planning, if we plan now our end of life and there's more to it than just a one page advanced directive, there is way more to it because think of if you're planning to have a baby or think if you're planning a wedding or you're planning to buy a new car or heck, even a washer and dryer. You, you put some research into it. Yeah. And so I like to provide a safe space to begin with where we can talk about it. And so I do things like death talks where it's like a nonjudgmental, safe place and it's very organic conversations. That's just, and then we go to advanced directives or we go to support grief kind of topics, grief for ourself, grief for others, forgiveness. Really important things. So anyway, that's what I'm doing these days. you had such a powerful story. First, I'm struck by just the awesomeness of your, you took your experiences and you listen to them. And this has created this beautiful opportunity for you really to, bring this to our culture and to the humans around you. I, love that. That's inspired like some painful experiences and some confusing experiences, some things that maybe were a little scary and just hearing how you leaned into that. And maybe it's just some of those things are just the things that call us to what we're supposed to be doing. You said you were a death magnet and that has not been an experience that I'm familiar with. And so I'm just so glad there's you out there doing this important work. You said that death is not a medical experience, it's a human experience, and we're both nurses, so we are around death, and we can get really casual about how we talk about it, but that doesn't mean that we're comfortable. So that's where I am too. I like, especially talking to people that I'm close to about maybe their own death or about my death or about our, that's when I can feel that I'm not completely equipped to do that. I have not done the work to process this. So, I'm really glad to know that there is a specialty out there that you are there to bring this to the world. I'm curious about what you would want most to change about our culture at, as far as how we deal with the end of life and what, are the things that even given some of the things that I just shared, what would you. What would you say to that, all of that? I think what you were saying, you fall right in the general population of, we might think about it, but we don't talk about it enough. And so we're trying to change that in our society to make it, to normalize the talk of death. When we can get over that hurdle, then we have a whole new perspective on life. We really do. And so in the planning for the end of life, it's, like we always say, it's like Simon Sinek says, right? What's your why? What's your why? I like to think of that with end of life issues too. What is your why? And then we work backwards. So for example, what's important to us before we get to the end of our life? So in my family. Thanksgiving, we all talk, we all do our advanced directives. We update it if we want to, or we leave it alone. It takes us five minutes at this point, because we talk about it all year long. Wow. Things come up. How do you get to that is what you're getting at, I think, and it's hard in the beginning, and if you need to have someone else come from the outside in to bring up the discussions or to keep steering back to the topic, then maybe that would be worth it, and this is valuable because with the planning comes a lot of peace of mind for a person who's dying, And peace of mind for the people who are going to be left behind grieving the people left behind if the planning hadn't taken place. For example, the, a person is in the end of their life, they're in the last week or two, and the family starts arguing over what situation, how we should do this, should we leave her in at the hospice house, should we bring her home, how can we afford to get extra care in at this point, how long will this go on, there's so many unanswered things, but with the planning, and I usually like to plan A, B, and C, And we divert it back to what did that person want? What would they have wanted? If they, if you're able to get all this out of a person, or for example, one of the ones I use is the five wishes. You can get it online. Okay, five wishes. Okay, it goes into something to that. Is there, there's probably a link then to that. Yeah, it's with aging with dignity. They put it out, but there's so many more things to think of then who is yes, you have to have a health care proxy named one and two so they can talk on your behalf. They don't talk what they want. They are going to represent what you want. They're going to represent what you put in your forms because they knew it so well. They knew you so well. Today too many people may or may not, just write down like John Smith is my husband. He's my health care advocate. Sometimes John Smith isn't the best person because he's going to do what he wants. Yeah. Or the person. That's an interesting thing to you. How many times do you see people maybe designate somebody that isn't maybe close family? Because I, a lot of times think having been in the trauma unit, I see people, young people come through. So it's not just You know, we think of death and we think about planning for death for aging or when you're sick or when it's coming in around the bend, but what about when we're surprised by it? And I think when you said that, I think about, I have a couple of nurse friends, colleagues that I would trust to inform the decision and ask the right questions. And they aren't necessarily people that my family. Might not even know them, but they could come in and ask how often do you see see that like just a trusted, like having an expert at the ready to ask the questions and help your family make decisions like that. I think that is a great idea. And then you would have to decide in that situation, do you want to like, incorporate that person into your living will saying you want them there to advocate for you and guide you? Do you want them to be your healthcare proxy and actually be the one to make the decisions on your behalf, not because of what they know, Yes, that's important. But on the other hand, would you want that person to be an advocate to help hold the hand and educate your family? say your family or friend that you did write down as your healthcare proxy. So you can do that. You can write down and be so specific in a more unconventional, which we're trying to get these to be conventional. This is five wishes. And then I have another one that I use. It's nine questions it's called, and it's very new and it's not quite out there as popular yet, but it's good because questions you're asking are real. When we go into the hospital, they'll say, do you have a healthcare advocate? Yes, no. And if you say no, sometimes they just move right on to the next it's like. Hello, when I come in and I'm having a knee surgery on Sunday or Monday, and when I come in with my advanced directives, they're going to, but it is what it is, right? That also speaks to that. I know that I I work in surgery and we talk about advanced directives. I, I asked that question to my patients every single time, every single patient gets a question about, do you have an advanced directive, a living will, a durable power of attorney for healthcare. And yeah, we just move on then yes or no, that's all we want to know. because too okay. So somebody comes in to get a knee replacement. We're not thinking they're going to need it. But because it's, Because we're wanting to reassure them that they're not going to need it. We glaze over it and then that makes it abnormal, right? Yeah. And I think another thing I learned how every bit of experience we have in our world, one of the first legal. like legal care consultant. I did work. It was a 67 year old lady who went in for a routine knee surgery who ended up dying later she never came back from it. She never left the facility kind of thing. I just want people to know that a good death for the person and for, the one standing by, like it's 89, 80 to 90 percent Better if it's planned and if it's written. You talk about risk benefit ratios. Oh, what's the risk of if I have this conversation with my loved ones, they don't want to talk about it. And you did ask a question like a lot of people have asked me before I actually became a death doula. A lot of people were putting me down as their advocate, like in my in law family and my in laws. I don't live near them or anything, but like all of a sudden they, because they knew I had a little medical experience, they thought I'd make the best decisions, but I want them to know I'm not going to make decisions based on what I know. I'm going to make decisions based on what I know, my experience, but what I know about what you want and how you want things. Yeah. There's a big difference. Yeah. I would imagine it'd be easier to make decisions like that, knowing what they know, like it comes and educate them along the way. For example, like people don't know what it's like to be intubated or people don't know what it's like. So you have to really educate them. It's not like TV when you're going to, have a code and then five minutes later, you're going to walk out. So where do you, how do you want to end your life? Do you want to take six months of taking every possible medical treatment? possible and maybe have some side effects or if the likelihood is that six months is going to give you go back to your why what's important to you living what's is it important would you rather take this opportunity to reconnect with people or tell people you loved them that you were too busy telling you were too busy working or something you know live your life out The way it's intended. And then you feel, it helps your peace of mind as you get closer to the end, because you have more peace about fulfilling what's important to you. Especially when we put back the consideration that it is going to happen to all of us. Yeah. Yeah. Like you said, a hundred percent of the time, right? Yeah. It affects all of us, whether we're going to experience it or not. And I say that because yeah, you could be cut short quickly and not have to deal with it, but somebody's going to have to deal with it. I also, but in those circumstances, I also wonder if this helps us. And I think that's what, when we, by answering those questions, we're also living out our why way before the, or the end of our life, because we thought about it and we've been intentional. I wonder about that. I wonder about, would that help us age? Yeah, I definitely think it's a huge part of it because we're living life to the fullest way more, I think, yeah, there's a song live like you're dying, right? It's really true. I think it's important. what are some of the five wishes? Okay. Five wishes. Number one, your healthcare proxy, the person I want to make the decisions for me when I can't, when I can't say it, they're going to say what I would want from my heart. And two is the kind of medical treatment I want or I don't want. And that is nice because It, goes into, do I want to be tube fed? Do, if I have dementia, for example, do I want to be spoon fed? Because first of all, we know that there's risk for aspiration. There's risk for pneumonia. There's risks like that. And what I have on mine is, If I can't put the food in my mouth and I'm not asking for you to put the food in my mouth, don't put the food in my mouth, my body will shut down accordingly. And they say it's not that painful, but as an outsider, as a family member, we think, oh, they're starving. And it's, oh, it's terrible. But really our body just shuts down naturally. Like I say, if I have the dementia and I can't literally do this, or for whatever reason I can't, but maybe I'm hungry and I'm alert and oriented kind of thing if I just can't do it, both my arms are broken or something. I will say put the food in my mouth and yes you have your permission there so that's an example of one thing I would want to do to me. Life support, of course, and you can write in different scenarios, I want to be intubated for three days and give everybody I have a terminal illness, and someone comes along and intubates me by mistake. It happens. Keep me intubated for three months or three days and take me off if use the medical wisdom along with whatever. But before I go on, I want to say. You asked a question in the beginning. What is What have I found the most interesting or the key, one of the key things that we've all been missing in all this whole thing? It's the spiritual, like we have the physical, we have some mental. The spiritual, the energetic, and I don't mean religion. Although religion plays a part, it's the energetic level that makes us a person, a being, brings that baby into the world, takes that person away out of their body, that spiritual being. And, I know I jumped around, but to me, that's like really important. And the more things I learned, About just all this holistic stuff and medical, we can't forget. And we need to start bringing in the energetic awareness of a spirit that the person has inside them. And that helps determine their why and their will and their this and their that. Yeah, I would say that's probably, I think that's what I'm responding to when I get so inspired and touched by even your story. The experiences that you had were for you because you had a calling. You had a purpose in while you're here. And that, I think that speaks to that spiritual nature. We are connected. We are all, everything is connected. And I believe that we are also operates are meant to operate interdependently. And so that means that. I need you to step into your gifts and step into that role that you are meant to play, what you were created for. And to see you do that so beautifully is bad. That's, I think that's what I'm responding to. And I think that speaks to the spirit of it as well, but the spiritual part of it is also the mystery that we have to get comfortable with. And I think is that, do you think that is what. Keeps us from because we can't get comfortable because we can't explain it, or we can't the mystery. And it's magical. It's mystery for sure. But when I was holding my mom and I felt that body leave, or the spirit leave. It was like a hammer went down on me. And it took me a while a decade to really unravel it all. But the more I was there, and when I'm with people and they're, they have visitations as it's called, where they're near the end of their life, they're in a coma, they're really not talking. And then all of a sudden they'll say, Oh, let them in. Or so and so's at the door or 50 people are surrounding me right now. They're not lying because you can feel the pressure. Of the energy of all this, and people can say woo but you know what, there's energy, and I don't understand at all. And for people who do Reiki and things, they feel a different kind of pulse wave through people. It's an energy wave. And then there's a lot of science. That when people have all the electrodes on and everything and the brainwaves they, can see the different kinds of, I'll just say excitement or what have you. And they'll correlate it even with the near death experiences, which people have died and come back while they were having these electrodes on for whatever reason, They were able to measure there was real brain activity going on that correlated in some way. What was the movie after death? It was recently in a movie theater. I don't know. Just do a little research. We'll find that. But there was so much research that it was overwhelming on the after death experiences and how there was energy going on. Yeah, I've heard powerful talks even done like in the hospital setting to help healthcare professionals manage this because there is that time even if you don't lean into it, there's. We've all been with in that end of life experience and not all of us, but if you've been in that end of life experience that there's just a knowing that you can't explain or a feeling that you can't, that spiritual part of it. And I've heard those stories, but even telling those stories outside of that context with people that aren't experiencing that, that's even uncomfortable. What's a good question for us to ask ourselves about where that fear is coming from, or what would it look like to get comfortable with the end of life? I think fear comes from not knowing, and yet we don't know what we don't know. So if we're more open. And we're actually reaching out to find more answers. We're open enough to consider some things that come our way in the form of education. And education is several things. But like for just an ease of mind kind of thing for lay people, like I start with a talk, and I drop in little pieces of this and that, so that there will be some discussion because, and it grows. I think it just grows. And we have to remember to be present. We have to remember to be nonjudgmental and let people know that there's so much more. It's not just about death. It's not really just about that five minute period where the person dies. It's about all the stuff that lives up to that. And the spirit moves on maybe, but that a part of that spirit goes into everybody. Like you said, we're all interconnected. I remember different patients that I knew for less than eight hours and they died. I didn't know a lot about them, but I remember situations or I remember this 32 year old, he had two kids, he died on Christmas Eve alone. I remember an 18 year old and what size shoes he wore and just different things. What I'm getting at is. One person who comes in the world and dies, they affect their loved ones, their family, their friends, their neighbors, their nurses, they just affect everybody. And so in that, our spirits. Connect and we move on and we all move together. Did that answer your question? I don't remember what my question what, would it look like? But I, that's so powerful. I'm just getting more and more curious about that too, because how powerful is it to know that as you think about the end of your life and the, and your five wishes and the, all of the things, as we educate ourselves and we start thinking about that, how powerful it is to remember that. That our stories and our spirit, our energy is going to affect so many people. We can't understand that either. We have no idea. There are people that we probably aren't thinking of that. That are going to be impacted by our life and by our death and by just by that, that we've shared that human experience, that's pretty powerful. So I'm going to finish the three, five wishes on number three, my wish for how comfortable I want to be. There's a whole list of 10 or 12 considerations and you can, you say X or circle. You can write in other things, for example, I wish to have religious or spiritual readings or poems, like I've been there where we've surrounded people with the people from their church have come and sung and brought music at the bedside and they were wonderful not just prayers, I want my lips, are really dry like right now. I want somebody to make sure my lips are moist, keep me moist. Okay, wish for, it goes on like that. Shave my legs. Yes, put toenail polish on me. What oils you might want, what, so I had one man. He loved magnolias and he'd sit under his magnolia tree every day. And every day he'd go out there while he couldn't in the last two or three days. So I brought the magnolia flowers in to him and rubbed them and the essence filled the room, yeah. I have a lot of times wondering about the advanced directives with the oils. So I have, I created one called soul connection. And it's just really special for end of life and the people around them. So four is for my wish for how I want people to treat me. There's a whole list of things to choose from if you want just to spur your. You're thinking, and then you can write down whatever you want. I wish to have members of my faith community told that I'm sick and asked to pray for me. I wish to be cared for with kindness, cheerfulness, not sadness. Things like that. Number five. My wish for what I want my loved ones to know. And this one is really cool. It goes on for a little bit. Lots of things to choose from and lots of things to fill in, so it's very specific and individualized. If anyone asks how I want to be remembered, please say the following about me, and you write in. I wish for my family and friends to know that I do not fear death. I think it is not the end, but a new beginning for me. Those are just examples. There's a lot under there. So you complete those a lot with people who aren't comfortable and don't, like who says, I want people to know that I'm scared. Yes, we just cross that off. For example, that's, we would cross that off and write that in an explanation, yeah, because once again, we have to respect that person and what their wishes are. So if the person says, I have no fear, I want to be treated not with sadness. If everybody around the room is, sad, someone brings up the fact, they really, John Smith doesn't want you to be sad right now. He wants you to make the most of this moment. He wants you to be happy and have happy thoughts about good memories or what have you, versus the opposite. If he wants, to know how sad he is, go for it. And, everybody still could talk to him, talk to the person in the way that they will feel most at peace. And in doing so, we're so connected that it's going to send off, I think more peace for everyone around knowing you did the right thing. Yeah. I, right now it's coming to my mind. that it doesn't always go the way it goes in the movies or the way we want it to go. So even when, I guess when we say, I guess to drop the heroics, right? To to just be honest with what we want or what we feel so that people know and that it's really important for me to see this person or before. And it's okay if they don't, or I don't know, like, how do you deal with things like that? Cause those are the hard conversations, like with family, when you have one person that's comfortable with it, And one that just yeah, I don't want to have anything to do with that. So I just try to direct to what did the person want and the person can't do it. Cause I've had like one guy with seven kids and in laws and some of the people in the room just couldn't go in the room no matter what. And. Even if that person dying wanted everybody in the room, if those people could not go in the room, they were doing the best they could. Huh. And it was okay. And this person loves you. He'll always love you. And so just trying to let people know, that's an important thing. Because we don't want people to be or feel guilty for decades and ages because they did or didn't do something right. Yeah. And wrong. Yeah. And I like that. Yeah. You said that earlier. Like no judgment. And that would be like from all angles, to that place. And be present. Once again, like I was in the home, say for the last, during that situation. And I could, you can tell the tensions and the, this and that, maybe talk to them. Sometimes just talking, getting the fear out will, will be enough support to, for them to go into the room because they really wanted to, but they were so afraid. Yeah. Yeah. Things. Yeah. There's no right way. Yeah. What beautiful work that you do. I, again, I, we have a long way to go in our culture. I saw you posted something about bringing that into schools for education, educating kids on even and I think how cool that would be to, as a kid to be able to like, your parents are comfortable talking about it. And I think that's, again, really important work that you're doing and. And I think about all the implications of a whole family or a whole community getting comfortable with going into that place, how we can be prepared even you mentioned dementia, just before we get into that place. You already know what they want. And so you're not guessing as, and they're not, frustrated trying to communicate with you because we don't know where that really, where that point is, right? So you are so right. And, think back to 1800s. People in the families really took care of their, own people. The average age might've only been 45. But starting from the two to four year olds, they would, and the, older children and the wives, they'd all take care of that person. And even the, the parlor, the person would be laid out in the parlor for the funeral, yeah, and we don't do that now because now, like a lot of the families, they'll say what are you going to do? Home health wants to come for one hour a week or one hour twice a week. What are we going to do? They have a fit It's a fit of fear, that they have to take care of physical fake care, maybe of someone who is sick or worse yet dying. And there's no, we don't teach, we need to teach and support that because once again, we spin our wheels. And there's not enough help in this world. There is not enough nurses or healthcare techs. There's just not enough. So we have to teach family it's okay, but yet guide them that say a wife of an old man, that wife doesn't have to do everything. Because she'll burn out. Yeah. Lots of curiosity and lots of questions about this. We could probably go on and on. But thank you so much for sharing that. Is there anything else like that? You'd like to share with us, like something for us to keep in mind as we, explore this topic more, or I'll put the links to the five wishes. Are there's the 9 questions available to online. Is that yours? Or looking to see if I can put that out there. Okay. We'll put resources in the show notes. Also want to share with people how to get ahold of you as well. You're doing some important work here. Maybe somebody has questions for you or wants to see like what, it's Sherry to work with us or with me. How, what, share that. And What would you like to leave us with as we start on this journey of exploring this? I just want everyone to know that we all need and deserve to live our very best life until the last breath. And there's not just one way to do that. And we don't do it alone usually because we're interconnected. We can't forget our spiritual aspect. And that's it. And my links, my email is Easy. It's Sharon, S H A R O E N at mac. com. And I have agewelldiewell. com is my website. Okay. Agewelldiewell. com. Yeah. So it's simple because once again, I want everybody to live their best life until their last breath. Agewell. Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Sherry, thank you for your time and for your expertise and your, the way you show up in the world, it's inspiring and I just want to acknowledge the way you've leaned into using that experience and understanding it, embracing the mystery and then sharing it with the rest of us. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me here and all you do. You just are more wonderful than the way you help everybody learn and grow. You're very kind. Thank you. My pleasure. Here's the question I ask everyone. And so my question is, what does it look like to you when you default to your extraordinary self? Okay. I think I have to just say, living my best life, whatever that is. I try to do some self care to be healthy. I try to, make a difference. And be nonjudgmental and I try not to hold grudges and I realize that everybody else has something going on And I bring myself back to that when I'm out of control. That's what it looks like when I default to yes.

46:11

Thank you, Sherry and. thank you for tuning in today. And if you enjoy this episode, I hope you will share it. And subscribe and bring others into this conversation. We dove into some profound topics of aging well and dying well, and I hope this conversation has sparked that reflection and awareness. Around the end of life. And it's important, navigating it with grace and dignity. And until next time, remember that by embracing these discussions and planning for the inevitable, you can strive to live your life to the fullest until the very end getting up every day to default to, yes, you are extraordinary self.