#39 — Can You Stop Needing to Know What Happens When We Die?
This episode includes an open and personal conversation about suicide, suicidal ideation, and suicidality, including experiences from childhood. If you're in a tender place with any of these themes, please take care of yourself first. If you need support, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available by call or text at 988.
This caller has spent most of their life in relationship with death. They'll tell you that relationship started before they had words for it.
A first-generation Filipino American who grew up without a fixed sense of home, they found their way into community death care through the accumulation of things they survived and the people they stayed for. They talk about sitting with people who are actively dying, about the family crisis that became an unexpected doorway into this work, and about what shifts when we stop treating certain kinds of pain as unspeakable.
Underneath all of it is a single thread: learning to live inside uncertainty. Settling into "I don't know" as a real answer. Finding that the mystery of death doesn't have to be something you solve to make peace with it.
Book recommendation: The Merriam-Webster Thesaurus.
If you’d like to watch this conversation instead of just listening, you can find the video version on YouTube.
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