56. The Death Doula Episode: Helping People Have a Good Death During a Pandemic

Explicit content warning

08/06/20 • 46 min

We try to talk to people who are doing good and having an impact on our show, but rarely do we get to talk to someone who is truly doing as much as today's guest is. On this episode, we talk to Ashley Johnson, who is a death doula and nurse working at a hospital in Central Florida, one of the areas that is getting hit the hardest by the coronavirus pandemic right now. A death/end of life doula is a person who advocates for those who are dying and walks them and their family through the end of life process from a place of compassion, very similar to the way a birth doula advocates for pregnant mothers.

Ashley is in a very unique position as a death doula in that she also works as a nurse, meaning that because hospitals across America are currently suspending hospital visitation rights to friends and family to prevent spread of the coronavirus, she is one of the few death doulas who still has access to hospitalized patients. In fact, her role as a doula is so much more critical right now, in a time when families can't be there for their loved ones. She talks with us about her experience as a doula in the midst of the current pandemic, how she got into this work, and why continued education around the death doula movement is so important.

Links:

Loyal Hands End of Life Doulas Website: https://loyal-hands.com/

Loyal Hands Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/LoyalHands

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

Links:

Loyal Hands End of Life Doulas Website: https://loyal-hands.com/

Loyal Hands Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/LoyalHands

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

Previous Episode

55. The Queerness Episode: Nonbinary, Nonprofit, Nonconforming

In their previous job, B. Pagels-Minor had a senior female leader tell them they wouldn't go far in their industry because they were nonbinary despite also using them as a symbol of diversity for their company. B. is here to tell you that does not fly. (Also, we will note, that lady was wrong: B. is thriving.)

In this episode, we talk to B. Pagels-Minor, who is a Black, nonbinary product manager based out of Silicon Valley who also serves on the board of Howard Brown Health, a nonprofit health organization serving the LGBTQ+ community. They are also planning to have a baby soon, so we touch on SO many topics for this episode, from why nonprofits are so important and how strict their mentality should be around hiring effective workers compared to for-profit companies, how not to have your kid turn out to be an asshole, the problems nonbinary folks encounter with healthcare providers, their experience with coming out to their Southern black parents, you name it. Many of the themes in this episode tie back in with topics that have been on our minds recently, from diversity in hiring, to navigating class to activism. This is one of the most far-ranging conversations we have had in a while. If you liked our entrepreneurship episode, where we basically talk about everything under the sun, you're going to like this episode too.
Links:
B. Pagels-Minor's website: https://www.bpagelsminor.com/

B. Pagels-Minor's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bpagelsminor/?hl=en

Howard Brown Health: https://howardbrown.org/
Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.

Next Episode

57. The Liquid Death Episode: What Does Stepping Back Mean?

In a time and place when our generation has come to terms with the fact that the society we live in is not working for huge swathes of the population, and is in fact actively working against them in many cases, how to we move closer to a more equal society? In the case of gender equality, should you bridge the gap between men and women by asking women to be more masculine, or by asking men to be more feminine and society as a whole to value feminine-coded behaviors and professions more.

Like with so many questions on this show, the answer is obviously both, but we talk about some major reasons why we need to address masculinity, ranging from the serious (men are dying more during this pandemic because mask usage is seen as unmanly, the AI revolution is increasingly going to be automating traditionally male jobs like doctors before the traditionally female jobs like home health aides and nurses) to the hilarious (the internet has discovered that some men don't wipe their ass when they poop because they think it's gay, apparently "seafood is for women," and you become the brunt of ridiculous marketing campaigns, like that of "Liquid Death," canned mountain water that promises to "MURDER YOUR THIRST").

Note:

In this episode, Isabel cited the statistic that 80% of high school valedictorians are female. Actually the number is 70%. Citation: https://www.applerouth.com/blog/2017/08/15/troubling-gender-gaps-in-education/

Links:

Pew Research on how women read books more than men: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2016/09/01/book-reading-2016/

Data visualization on best-selling authors by gender: https://pudding.cool/2017/06/best-sellers/

Article about men who don't wipe because they think it's gay, as discovered by the wives of reddit: https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/what-its-like-to-be-a-guy-who-doesnt-clean-his-ass

Eater article on Liquid Death: https://www.eater.com/2019/5/8/18537259/liquid-death-canned-water-punk-rock-startup-fanfic

Liquid Death website: https://liquiddeath.com/

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.