Alua Arthur on Honoring the Full Humanity of the Dying

·41 min·4 clips

Alua Arthur left law after depression bloomed, leading her to walk alongside the dying.

The episode begins with host Helen Bauer introducing Alua Arthur, a death doula and founder of Going With Grace, who has a background as a recovering attorney. Arthur explains how depression led her to leave law and enter death care, where she found more authenticity. She describes applying legal skills like issue spotting to identify unspoken needs in end-of-life clients. The discussion delves into advanced care planning, with Arthur advocating for starting conversations by asking about an ideal death and revisiting plans regularly. Arthur critiques the term 'good death', preferring 'most ideal death under the circumstances' to avoid judgment. She shares her personal ideal death, involving being outside with natural elements and tidy affairs. The conversation explores how humor and irreverence balance the heaviness of death work, honoring the totality of human experience. Arthur highlights the importance of expanding advanced care planning beyond legal forms to include sensory details, life reviews, and relationship mending. She addresses activism, calling for death care integration across society and reducing disparities in pain medication based on race and gender. Arthur reveals a unique element in her end-of-life plan: wanting applause at her death as a celebration. The episode concludes with resources for connecting with Arthur and her book, Briefly Perfectly Human.

As heard by us

A humane conversation about writing down wishes and letting each person define a good death.

Alua Arthur and Helen Bauer look at how end-of-life wishes can be carried with care, starting from a plain but important point: stress can make memory unreliable, so it helps when wishes are written down.

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Why you'd press play

You want to put end-of-life wishes on paper before a grocery-list brain is in charge.

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