Hey friends
If you’re feeling raw about this topic at the moment - and there are times on the breast cancer/serious illness journey when we all do - I want to reassure you that this video is not at all morbid or hard to digest. There’s tons of humour and light-heartedness in it. There are no tears or drama. It’s simply a pondering about the big questions we all have, but don’t often vocalise. Don’t be scared to dive in.
Anyone who’s read my physical book, or followed along with this second volume of it on Substack (I’m calling it a living autobiography now, I like how that sounds) knows how strongly I feel that we, as a collective, need a healthier relationship with death, and that I talk about it openly as a part of life.
The reason for this is partly so that we can die better (fearless and at peace), and partly because pondering your own death gives you a fundamentally new perspective on life. You realise how much you love being alive and how grateful you are for your life. It’s as if you’re wearing new lenses and you see clearly - often for the first time - what matters and what doesn’t. You stop engaging with minor irritations and irrelevances (I think I just made a word up) in the knowing that they are entirely insignificant in the context of the magnificence of the universe, the beauty of the planet on which we live, and how wonderful it is to love and to be loved. In the book I say that thinking about my own death, which I did in a very conscious and deliberate way, caused me to “fall in love with life”, after decades of living with depression, and what I called “a take it or leave it attitude” to it all. It woke me up big time.
Because death is such a hard topic I want to contextualise a few things about the interview:
It was recorded by my very talented friend Ben, who you might recognise as the dude in the AAMI ads, and who has recently put on a show in Melbourne to rave reviews. He feels the same way I do - that we need to talk about it more. As he’s an actor, playwright, director, his way of communicating is through performance and theatre - and so he’s taken on the huge and challenging job of writing and producing a play about death, and how being comfortable with it brings you into a new relationship with the joy of life. To gather perspective for what he’s doing, he interviewed a lot of people - nurses, doctors, people who’ve lost people they love, those who are religious and those who aren’t. And me. This video is the raw, unedited, version of our conversation. It wasn’t pre-prepared or curated in any way, it was off the cuff, a conversation between friends about a massive topic.
The recording was done when I was only 4 months past my stage 4 diagnosis, and after several brushes with death during multiple hospital stays. I’ve written about them HERE and HERE. I had gone straight from a couple of weeks on the edge of life and death into doing AC chemo, which is hardcore (in bed for 10 days after each session), I had just recovered from covid, I had lost a ton of weight, I was exhausted, and I was still processing my diagnosis and the possibility that I might be dying. At this time my oncologist was saying that I was at risk of “immediate organ failure” - in other words I could die at literally any moment. With all of that going on it took a lot of effort and much caffeine to even be able to sit upright for an hour and to make my brain work. The point is, I’m not as articulate on some points as I would like to have been, and there’s some points that I missed that I would cover if I had the chance to do it again. But I think there’s enough goodness in here to publish it, even though the fact that it could be better makes my high-standards-self very uncomfortable. Also, I look pretty rough, skeletal almost, but it was several months ago, and I look and feel a lot better now - no need to write and ask if I’m ok. I’m ok.
I critique the religious myth that good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell. I want to be clear that, whilst I’m not religious myself, I respect fully your right to your own beliefs, and that this is not in any way a criticism of those of you who would consider yourself believers. As a person with a Stage 4 cancer label, I know from the inside how hard it is to navigate the emotional and spiritual challenges of cancer/illness, and I’m all for anything that gives you comfort on your journey, particularly if your journey on earth is coming to an end. I’ve called this narrative out, because even I, as a lifelong atheist, and a person who would call themselves spiritual-but-not-religious, would find strange thoughts making their way into my consciousness when I was so close to death: “What if I’ve been so bad that I’m going to hell?” and the like. That’s how deep this idea goes in our culture. No-one should die with this fear. We are all children of God, a phrase I just love in spite of not being religious. Which is to say that there is nothing that any of us has done in our lifetime that is beyond forgiveness and redemption, none of us are good or bad, and not one of us is better or worse than any other. We are all love, we are all loved, and everything is forgiven.
I’m very much planning to live. Do not interpret this content in any other way.
What it covers, so you can go straight to parts that might interest you if you don’t have time to watch the whole thing:
3:30 A bit about me and my career, how breast cancer has nuked my business and changed me
7:56 Why I’m not fighting the cancer, why I focus on love instead
12.30 The purpose of thinking about death
15:22 What is death?
20:47 Some humour about a conversation with God after death
22:44 Why people are so fearful of death, religion and the myth of Heaven and Hell, how there is no healthy framework or narrative for death
29.04 When Ben gives me a gold star and satisfies my need for achievement
29:39 How death and grief impacts our relationship with time
32:34 The phrase that really bugs people with cancer
33:20 How we don’t honour death, the dead, or grief
36: 50 What are we grieving when we lose someone?
39:58 How I feel about ‘the end’ and my experience with death last year
46:23 Why I can’t see what my death looks like, living with the knowing that death can come at any time, how I’m still very focussed on living
48:40 How and where I want to die, why I want a pre-death party, and why everyone should make plans for their own death
51:43 More humour: how I would end my days in the gin and tonics of my friend Liz
52.20 The greatest myth about death and dying and why it’s past it’s sell-by date
53:10 We end on some humour about my approach at The Pearly Gates - VIP all the way
Would love to hear what you think of this one, what it’s made you think about, how it’s challenged you, or how it may have comforted you.
Sending love as always xxx
HOW TO SUPPORT THIS PROJECT
I’ve realised I’m too shy about promoting myself. So here goes: there are multiple ways you can support me so I can keep providing this content.
You can buy the award-winning book here, and you can recommend it to others. I’ve extended the 50% special offer for one more week, which means it’s ONLY $25.
Or you can pay to subscribe to these weekly book instalments that I call TNTABC VOLUME II, and recommend it to your friends.
VOLUME II: An interview I did...